Say you have a new product you want to launch on Amazon, how do you get people to buy it?

In this article I’m going to focus solely on how to attract and convert sales and improve the rank of a new product on Amazon, and leave the basics like “get a main image and write copy” or the operational aspects aside.

So how do we do it?

1 Set the right KPIs

This is the first step, if you are not measuring what you’re doing you cannot know if you’re progressing.

I like to aim for 2-3 KPIs, more than that just adds more noise than signal. 

My preferred KPIs are:

1 Revenue: This is self explanatory, you need to know if you’re actually selling more every day.

2 Best Sellers Rank (BSR): This tells you how you’re doing relative to your category. 

3 Reviews: Both the quantity and rating. Your goal should be to gather as many reviews as possible early on since it’s a deciding factor for converting sales, additionally checking for negative reviews will let you correct any potential issues that your customers may have.

Other KPIs I like, but which I reserve for more mature products given that they’re not as informative early on are:

Market Share (using Search Query Performance): The SQP dashboard can show you what share of the sales coming from a given customer query went to you. I like this KPI for more mature products and for detecting long-term trends since early on your market share will vary wildly.

Contribution Margin: One of the most important metrics in all of ecommerce, in the end the goal is to make money, however early on your Contribution Margin will likely be close to zero as you invest all the money you make into discounts and PPC in order to drive your ranking.

Keyword tracking: It’s good to track your ranking per each keyword early on (I like Datarova for that), however you won’t be ranked for your top terms early on and when you do there’ll be wild variations, so it’s better to focus on overall BSR rather than obsessing over each individual KW’s ranking. 

2 Target the right Keywords

I use three sources for KWs: 

1 Product Opportunity Explorer

2 Search Query Performance Dashboard 

3 Competitors (using Datarova, Helium 10 or any other Amazon Analytics tool)

I love using sources 1 and 2 since they are Amazon’s internal data rather than an estimate from an external tool. The Product Opportunity Explorer will even tell you what is trending and what are the most common pain points of your customers.

These are the KWs that you’ll use for tracking your ranking, writing your listing’s copy and creating your PPC campaigns.

Then create PPC campaigns, the standard structure I use for my PPC campaigns is to create 4 types of campaign per product, and use Broad matching, why? because we still don’t know how exactly customers will search: Auto + Branded + Market + Competitors

3 Use Amazon promotions

The goal here is to pull every lever available to you. 

Right after you launch you should run a 20% coupon for the first week, then reduce it progressively  by 5% every week to build FOMO (All credit to  )

Use creator connections: Amazon has a native affiliate marketing platform that lets you connect with creators directly and pay them a commission. I like to set the commission using the following formula:  Commission = Product Margin – Current discounts , this way I’m giving out the maximum possible commission while still breaking even. 

In addition to commissions, you can also provide free products to creators. I recommend developing a product seeding criteria for a minimum number of followers in order to be eligible to receive a free sample, otherwise you’ll be giving away products to people with tiny audiences and get little in return.

Brand tailored promotions: You have several options for custom promotions that are delivered to Amazon shoppers right to their emails.

For this option you will need to wait a few weeks in order to actually have cart abandoners to target.

The goal is to make this promotion work hand in hand with the 20% coupon you ran for the first week, this way those who missed out on the coupon and got FOMO can receive the discount. 

Note: Don’t let it stack with other promotions to protect your margins.

4 Use established products to advertise your newer ones:

If you already have a popular product, use it to your advantage and advertise your new product for free. A few tactics for this:

Create a virtual bundle: If your new launch complements any of your established products, make them both part of a virtual bundle and set the established product as the main one. 

Use A+ content: Make a comparison table in your established product’s A+ and compare it with the new product. 

Use a Brand Tailored Promotion: You can create a cross-sale discount that will be emailed to customers who purchased complementary products from you in the past.

5 Take advantage of your free Real Estate

Brand Story banner: One of the most underutilized brand assets in general (see this post). Among several modules that can be included, you can link straight to your new product’s PDP or a create a “new releases section”

Brand Store: You can highlight your new item in the brand store or create a new release section

6 Promote outside of Amazon

Social media promo codes: You can create promo codes with in-built tracking natively on Amazon, then share those with creators you have selected or let Amazon share the code with creators already in their platform, this latter option works similarly to Creator Connections.

E-mail marketing: If you have an email list (be it from your DTC business or through a partnership with someone with one) you can create an Amazon link with attribution tags and share your new launch with them. The best part is that, with the brand referral program, you get 10% back on any sales on Amazon (even if it’s not your product) by people who clicked on your link. 

7 After launch

Amazon Vine: Enroll as soon as possible,  and submit as many units as possible. Early reviews are critical for building momentum.

Track your KPIs weekly and make adjustments.

Lastly, reduce your promotions gradually. You want to know if your product is a winner or a dud and you should aim at ending any special promotions by the 6 month mark. 

If you want to help with launching a product or brand on Amazon, I can help you. I’ve done this dozens of times in multiple categories.

Book a free 30-min chat with me or send me a DM and let’s make your product launch a success!