blog-headBy: Daniel Audunsson

How To Launch and Promote a Product on Amazon For the BEST RESULTS

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Before we start, I want to warn you because what I’m about to show you might completely flip your world upside down if you’re selling on Amazon. It may in fact shock you and even frustrate you a bit if you’ve been doing things the wrong way so far.

The truth is that most sellers on Amazon have things totally backwards and are simply not focusing on the right things at all.

So in this article, I’ll show you not what the majority thinks is right but what actually is right and what works, and this is what I’ve discovered through my testing and experience over the last six years. This is how to actually launch and promote a product on Amazon for the best results. Let’s get started.

Now that you’ve identified a product that’s highly likely to succeed, you’ve already minimized the risk and you’ve sourced the initial version, whether or not that is just a hybrid private label product, with about 20 or 30 units, or an MOQ of 300 units. You’ve set up a listing that’s designed to align with the previous work you’ve done with search terms, and you’ve really focused on getting that to then convert for the opportunity you found and chose.

Sales Results

Launching the Product

Now it’s time to launch the product. When the product is ready, it’s shipped and arrives at Amazon’s warehouse, FBA, you want to launch it by following just two simple steps. When you have found a really good product and a great opportunity within Amazon’s flywheel space for opportunity, it’s going to be very simple to get that product to start to do well.

Launch Product Step One

Again, to launch the product, you just do two simple things:

[+] First, you turn on exact match sponsored ads for the focused search terms that you’ve identified and chosen.

[+] Second, you just drop your price all the way to break even (remember the COGS in a previous part of this crash course, I showed you how to figure it out). You want to drop your price to the COGS, so it’s equal to the COGS.

As soon as the product is ready to be sold on Amazon, you want to then start this exact mass campaign as soon as possible.

The sooner you do this after the product listing goes live on Amazon, the better.

That’s what Amazon wants to see. They want to see a sign that it’s getting some traction immediately. And now you want to sell the product at a big discount, like I mentioned, break even. So the biggest discount you can give without losing money.

Launch Product Step Two

The purpose here is to create sales velocity, which means just basically generate sales, even if you’re not profiting on those sales. You also want to get reviews, so you’re sending all the right signals to Amazon. By the way, I do suggest that you get at least a couple of reviews from friends and family right away. It’s not within Amazon’s terms of service, but I’ve never seen anyone get into trouble for that and it will really help you get sales.

If you can get some reviews within a few days after launching the product, that’s really, really useful. Then just create that sales velocity by dropping the price to a super attractive, discounted price, break even and then run those exact match ads for the specific terms you’re focused on or targeting.

Competitive Pricing

Now if you’ve selected the right product via the product validation process, then this is literally all it will take to start. That’s the secret sauce, which everyone has backwards. If you did that initial validation work right and you selected the right product, then this is all it will take to get that product going.

Right Product

If it’s within that flywheel type of opportunity, filling that gap we talked about, and you really are targeting searches that are ripe for the picking with hungry buyers, and you’ve designed the product to really appeal and convert to those people, then this will kick things off. And you will start getting sales from your ads and start to get some rankings very quickly.

Just trust me on this: it’s really never about the marketing.

If you don’t have your fundamentals right, the marketing will just go to waste. It can help you at a later stage, but trying to implement all these fancy marketing tactics is a waste of time and energy if you don’t have those fundamentals right.

Remember Flywheel

I will repeat: remember the flywheel. Your product is filling a selection gap, and Amazon is extremely intelligent. Their A9 search engine has incredibly intelligent algorithms that can really look at the early signs of a new product when you get it some traffic.

You need to generate some traffic through sponsored ads to get it going, but then Amazon will quickly realize whether or not you’ve got a good product, and if it’s filling a gap.

Customer Spending

If Amazon sees the data and it’s showing them that this product is wanted and filling this gap, trust me, it is going to show and display that product to it’s customers. It is completely aligned with their growth model, and it’s improving their selection as well as the customer experience, which helps Amazon grow with more traffic.

That attracts more sellers like you, which helps improve the selection (at least the good sellers do). Then this leads to a lower cost structure and lower prices for customers, and it keeps the wheel spinning and it keeps Amazon growing. That’s what Amazon wants.

Promoting the Product

Now, to promote the product as evergreen, here’s what to do. After you launched it and it’s been up for about 14 days, which is enough time to give you the exposure to really start to rank and see and how things are going, look at the numbers. I’ll show you how we analyze the products here in just a moment.

Promote Evergreen

But the numbers are going to show you the things you really need in order to establish a baseline, and very possibly rank organically. Then you’ll want to switch to evergreen promotion. What can happen is that you sell out your inventory, you can get more inventory in even if it’s selling at a price that is break-even or a slight loss, if you want to go that far. By the way, something that’s really important:

You always have to be aware of your ad costs so that the break-even price is covering them.

Just keep that in mind. You probably won’t want to lose any money, just keep it at break-even.

Raising the Price

Once the product is ranking, then you’ll want to raise the price – but raise it slowly. You don’t raise it by double the price overnight, because that’s going to be a shock to Amazon’s algorithm. You want to raise it by one or two dollars, a minimal percentage of the entire price of the product. Maybe about a five percent increase.

Then, look at the data. How does it change? Look at your rankings, how do they change? Only look at rankings for the focused terms, just three to five. Then you’ll keep running the exact match ads for those search terms that you focused on.

Analyzing & Testing

You will also test. You’ll do more validation on different searches, and then find new terms. That’s how you’ll expand the searches you’re focusing on, maybe all the way up to 20 (but probably no more than that).

Focus on about 10 to 20 search terms over time, and get more and more traffic and really convert for all of them well.

And now you can add in all Amazon’s campaigns, too, so just automated and banner ads to expand your traffic. Once you are ranking and getting organic traffic, you can even turn off all ads and you will still be ranking. You’re also finding that right, most profitable price-point by raising the price slowly. You’re analyzing and optimizing the product so that it’s converting better and better.

Using Ads

This is when you will start to add other sources of traffic from Amazon. This can all be set up within Seller Central with the click of a button – automated banner ads. This can help you expand and grow the product faster.

Advertising

However, the main purpose of ads is to continue ranking and promoting your product on Amazon so it gets more and more organic traffic. You can make a lot of money from ads alone. But the main point is to use ads. That’s really why we focus on exact match ads on these specific focus terms.

Exact match ads will help you rank your product, get more sales velocity, and rank for those specific terms.

The main point of using ads is to really help you rank for those target terms and get more and more organic traffic, because this is where the huge numbers will come, with time. Ads indirectly influence your rankings, so keep that in mind. You run your ads and they’re breaking even. They’re making you money most likely because you’re getting a lot of organic sales, too, as a result of the ads helping you rank better.

You can also apply more promotions than is even necessary. For example, there are product giveaways and other techniques that influence your marketing and paid advertising and things like that over time.

Product Giveaways

Product giveaway techniques are extremely powerful and get you ranking at number one for any term if you do enough of it, but they can be very expensive.

You don’t want to do them unless you’re absolutely 100% certain that it will yield a positive ROI.

We have a specific mathematical formula and technique to figure that out, which we show our students in the Infinity Code program. That gives you a big edge when you are able to do that. Then you can really say, “Okay, it’s time to do a giveaway to give me a positive ROI.”

Product Giveaways

Remember the Fundamentals

If you just do product giveaways kind of randomly, like most people do, and think that’s the answer, you won’t get the results you’re looking for. It’s just going to waste your money and time. So you have to be very selective with those kinds of things.

As I’ve mentioned, the same thing goes for marketing. If your product hasn’t been optimized and isn’t converting, marketing probably isn’t going to go so well. It’s going to just waste money. Same thing with paid advertising.

You need to get your fundamentals done right first, the conversions, the understanding of your search terms, who you’re targeting, what they’re looking for, and all of these steps we’ve gone over in the crash course so far. This is top priority before you turn on the heat or ignite the flame further.

If the flame isn’t already pretty strong, being unprepared and jumping into marketing is going to extinguish that flame.

And remember, conversions are king.

Don’t Run Out Of Inventory

One more thing I want to leave you with here when it comes to promotion is to really be mindful of your inventory levels.

The worst thing that can happen when selling on Amazon FBA is to run out of inventory.

All those rankings you built up will go back down and it will set you back a long time. It might be fine to run low on inventory once or twice at the very beginning, but you never want to run out of inventory after that. Make sure that’s your number one priority.

Inventory

If necessary, slow down sales. Turn off ads or raise the price, just so you don’t run out of inventory. Of course, you’re not going to want to have to do that. You don’t want to do it to any of that, but if that’s what it takes not to run out of inventory, then go for it.

Running out of inventory will crush your momentum, which you want to keep it building so you can have that compounding effect over time.

Also, don’t extend yourself too far or spread yourself too thin. You will need cash to sustain that sort of growth that can happen if you do things right. One product can take you very far, and it can be huge for you.

So you want to be sure you re-invest the funds, the profits, to grow it sustainably so you can experience that compounded, hockey stick exponential growth over time and really get the most out of that product before moving on to another one.

Just one excellent product discovery, which I’ve been showing you through the product elevation and research, is worth more than anything else. You can take that product and really make that a big business on its own.

I hope this was really helpful. In the end, promotion and marketing is so, so overrated and I hope that is clear as you follow this crash course. It’s should be very simple: 95% of this process is the product selection and the fundamentals and conversions.

If you enjoyed this article or found it helpful, don’t forget to share it with anyone who might be interested. Remember, you can get full FREE access to this whole crash course by clicking the link here. Feel free to also follow along with our updates on our Facebook page.

Resources

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