Get Your Kickstarter Product Discovered On Amazon
Do you have a new product that you’re trying to sell on Amazon? Maybe you are somebody that is developing a brand new product. Or maybe you just finished a Kickstarter campaign. Either way, Amazon is a great way to grow your online sales.
There are many benefits of selling your product on Amazon. It can save you on shipping costs because of the Prime program, and advertising costs because you won’t have to worry about driving traffic and getting sales once you get your product listed. The hardest part is getting a high ranking to get discovered on Amazon.
By becoming an Amazon seller, you can get access to an estimated 50 million Prime members. However, competition is tough; there are now more than 2 million sellers on Amazon, and you need to find a way to get your products found above others in your category. This can be especially tough when introducing a new product or product category.
It’s easy to feel like a small fish in a very large ocean. However, you don’t need to rely on Amazon to push your product. There are several ways to ensure that you’re pushing your products higher in search results and to improve your visibility with customers.
Here are a few strategies for getting your Kickstarter product found:
Enroll in the Amazon FBA program
First of all being an FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) member as opposed to another regular merchant brings benefits for getting your products found. FBA membership means your products are eligible for Prime shipping out of an Amazon warehouse. This shows up on product search results and can give your products preference over others which are not available on Prime. Prime eligibility is available as a filter for search, which helps to push your product in front already. Prime members also get accessed to free 2 day shipping which is a huge plus.
Product Keywords
The keywords you use when setting up your products for sale are another important aspect of discoverability on Amazon. You should always conduct keyword research to figure out what people are searching in relation to your products, then use those terms in your descriptions.
Amazon is basically a giant search engine for products, and in fact, gets more product searches than Google does. However, don’t let that fool you — getting found on Amazon is not the same as Google SEO. Keywords are important, but Amazon recognizes individual words rather than whole phrases in the keywords field.
“Factors such as degree of text match, price, availability, selection, and sales history help determine where your product appears in a customer’s search results.”
A common question asked when launching a new product or product category is: How do you determine which keywords to use?
A good tip is to research using tools like Google Trends to determine if your keywords are trending. It is important to recognize related keywords of competitors or substitute products that can help optimize your rankings. Another great resource is Google’s keyword research tool which allows you to measure search volume for keywords that people are looking for monthly. This can help you generate more ideas and also quantify whether people are actually searching for your product keywords.
Sponsored Products
Amazon Sponsored Products is a pay-per-click program which helps to enhance the discoverability of your products. It gives you more real estate on product or search pages by featuring your sponsored product prominently on the page.
You can try it out with $50 worth of free clicks on their set-up page and use it to:
- Boost Buy Box traffic.
- Highlight any new offers.
- Drive traffic to sale items.
- Get exposure for any of your products which have low session numbers.
- Drive traffic to brand new items with no previous ASIN (Amazon Standard Identification Number).
Maintain Buy Box Eligibility
A picture probably illustrates this point best, so we’ve included a screenshot below showing the buy box and why it’s important. Basically, the buy box is the box on the product detail page where customers can add to cart. There might be multiple sellers of that product, but Amazon assesses offers to determine one “winner” each for new or used product listings.
Maintaining your buy box eligibility means meeting performance criteria as laid out by Amazon. For example, Amazon looks at criteria such as ODR (order defect rate), late shipment rate and pre-fulfillment cancellation rate, and these are obviously metrics you want to keep as low as possible.
Amazon Exclusives
This program won’t be for everyone, however it is a good way to get your products found on Amazon. When you sign up to Amazon Exclusives, you agree that your product(s) will be exclusively sold on Amazon. Of course, some may see this as too great a risk to exclude other sales platform.
However, if you’re prepared to give it a try, there is evidence to show that “Exclusives” can significantly boost sales. One couple spoke with Fortune about how their sales went up 80% thanks to the extra promotion when they opted to use Amazon Exclusives.
These are just a few ways to boost your chances of getting your products found on Amazon. We will explore more on how to transition from your Kickstarter campaign to online sales in our next article.*
If you’re still in the planning stages for your new product, click here to download our eBook and learn how to manufacture for Kickstarter.
