How to Gain Discoverability for a New Amazon Product Launch
Discoverability & New Amazon Product Launches
Last week, ecommerce experts at CPC Strategy fielded Amazon-related questions for our webinar summit on how to gain visibility, discoverability, and tracking on new product launches.
The 4-day 2016 Amazon Virtual Summit was designed to arm high-volume, professional Amazon sellers with proven strategies and tactics to effectively grow a profitable bra.d on the Marketplace.
There were a lot of questions we didn’t get a chance to answer – so here they are now with answers from Jeffrey Cohen, Director of Business Development at Seller Labs – Snagshot.
Q. Amazon has removed reviews for customers who purchased at a deep discount.
Have you seen Snagshot reviews being removed, or have you seen the Verified Review being removed?
A. Amazon has stopped putting a Verified Review tag on items purchased at a steep discount.
Amazon asks shoppers who received a product at a discount in exchange for a review be transparent and include that information in their review by writing the phrase “I received this product at a discount in exchange for a review”, otherwise the review is not accepted.
Q. Are back end keywords given density? (ie, by taking advantage of the new higher keyword limit, are we diluting the relevance of the existing lower number of keywords?)
A. As far as we know the number of keywords you use doesn’t dilute the overall value, but be careful not to stuff keywords just for the sake of stuffing.
Q. I am running out of stock now. New shipment will arrive in about a week. The question is: What is better trying to keep my organic positions – overstate the price, so I will have some sales till the new shipment arrives, or to let it sell out to zero?
A. You have two schools of thoughts.
Overstatement of price – By overstating the price you reduce the sales but you hurt your page conversion. You do keep your product in stock but you slow your velocity and hurt your other key indicators.
Lower the price – The other strategy to consider is lowering the price and driving up your number, increasing conversion and sales.
Running out of stock is bad, either way you look at it. You have to pick a strategy that you think works based on when your new inventory will be in stock.
Q. Could you elaborate the check box of death in a promotion?
A. When you create your coupons you need to select the box that you do not want your coupon promoted on your page. By default, the coupon will show on product page, you need to review this.
Q. Customizing and upgrading your content is great in theory, but many Amazon products already have ASINs with pre-written content from other sellers. Is it worth the effort to try to override every single item?
A. If you are the brand owner you should register for Brand Registry, this demonstrates to Amazon that you own the product, the brand and now the page. If this is your product, you should optimize the page to optimize search.
Q. Do reviews impact the product ranking or do they aim at customer retention time at the product page?
A. Nobody knows the Amazon algorithm. We know that Amazon had mentioned that the recency of the reviews is more critical than quantity of review. It is critical to your customer experience and page conversion.
Q. Does Amazon discount or reduce the relevance of reviews gained through product discounts or giveaways?
A. Nobody knows the answer. Recently, Amazon has removed the “verified” purchase tag from discounted and free products.
Q. How can we avoid reviewers who were given a coupon code but were able to get more than 1 item? We have experienced 1 reviewer bought 100 units of our giveaway product using just one coupon and it was really a nightmare for us.
A. If your coupons are set up correctly you can only use 1 coupon per account. It’s possible the user set up 100 Amazon accounts. Snagshout monitors and removes customers of this behavior if identified.
Q. How do you determine how many sales per day the top of any particular category is generating?
A. You can use a tool to estimate sales, its recommended you look at a few different tools to understand your numbers.
Q. How does Sponsored Ads affect organic search? Can you effectively manipulate search results with Sponsored Ads and listing optimization alone on medium competition products?
A. Sponsored Ads generate keyword rich conversions. You are not manipulating search in any way by using Sponsored Ads and listing optimization. If you can drive enough velocity you can compete on these tactics alone.
Q. How would you use Snagshout when you sell a lot of different SKU’s at a fairly low stock/sales rate for each?
A. This is not a good case study for using snagshout. You want to use snagshout when you are deep on inventory.
Q. I have noticed that the Snagshout reviews are not labeled as “Verified Purchase.” Does that affect the reviews pushing up page rank?
A. A product review is still posted and the star rating counts toward the overall star rating.
Offering products at a discount is still one of the most effective ways to launch and market a product on Amazon.com. Not to mention that increased conversions improves sales rank/page rank.
Q. Is it better to have search terms in the title or copy? Or does it not matter where that goes?
A. Place it in the most natural space so it sounds good first.
Q. Is it helpful to repeat keywords in the title to help discoverability? (Example if “organic jelly beans” is important: Organic Jelly Beans, Organic Candy, Made from Organic Fruit Juice, Surf Sweets Organic Jelly Beans)
A. There is no indication that repeating the word organic multiple times will improve the rank for this team. If it makes sense to repeat it, then repeat it.
Q. We have used Snagshout in the past with great success. However our product is $100 so giving away many units is not cheap. Any strategies for higher dollar value items?
A. Many times high volume items can get value on a product such as Snagshout. Based on the velocity you are trying to receive determines how much of a discount you need to give.
Q. Would you recommend a steady flow of reviews and sales (at a discount rate) coming in, or a big spike in sales the first few days you are live, and then let the reviews come in as fast as possible. And why?
A. We believe slow and steady wins the race. Amazon typically looks at rolling sales over a longer period of time so big spikes work out.
Q. When creating the listing title, what are the pro and con of placing the brand name at the beginning of the title?
A. A pro of adding the brand name at the beginning of a title is if the brand name is easily recognizable and well known. If you’re just launching your brand/product, it would be more advantageous to start your title with the keyword phrase you’re trying to rank for at the first of your title.
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