Selling on Amazon can be a great way to grow any eCommerce business, but visibility is key to creating a notable presence. However, visibility doesn’t have to start and end within the Amazon marketplace; driving traffic from external sources can be a good way to tap into a new pool of potential shoppers, introducing consumers to both your brand name and your unique products. These seven strategies can help Amazon sellers target new audiences and reach new heights.
1. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is a strategy in which a third party markets a company’s products in exchange for a commission or other kickback. Amazon Associates is Amazon’s affiliate marketing program, and makes generating these kinds of promoted links easy, so any seller can get started in next to no time. From there, all you need to do is determine partners with the best resources.
Influencers
Influencers operating in your industry are among the most common choices for affiliates. As individuals with ready-made audiences of consumers that may be hard to otherwise target, promoting content on social media sites or blog posts can lead to a lot of exposure—and a lot of sales. For example, if you sell cosmetic products, beauty-related influencers can do wonders in showcasing how your products could work in their followers’ daily routines.
Note that the influencer space is getting increasingly competitive, so the benefits from a promoted link with no other incentive may not be enough to entice bigger names. However, brands don’t need to only work with large influencers. Smaller creators (also known as microinfluencers) are a great place to start.
Related Businesses
If influencers aren’t the right fit for your sales strategies or your budget, related businesses might be a good alternative. These are companies that don’t sell your products but sell things that might be used in conjunction with your products. If you sell cooking tools, like pots and pans, a related business might be one that sells table settings and other home goods.
2. Google Ads
Google Ads is an avenue similar to Sponsored Ads on Amazon, but instead, these appear in Google search results. This can be very helpful in guiding shoppers who may not have planned to shop on Amazon specifically to your products and landing pages.
Google Ads work very similarly to Amazon Sponsored Products, so Amazon sellers used to implementing PPC campaigns can expand into this space easily. However, Google Ads are easiest to succeed with when bids are concentrated on areas only you can fill, like specific brand or product names, so there will still be some strategy involved in determining keywords that can generate the most valuable results.
3. Google Shopping (Organic)
Unlike Google Ads, which places sponsored advertising within search results, Google Shopping Ads position products organically within the Google Shopping interface.
Google Shopping also eliminates the stress of managing a PPC campaign. Because Google decides which keywords work best, sellers need only provide product information. Sales listings will be structured according to Google’s formatting and updated automatically, ensuring the data displayed is accurate and up to date.
4. Facebook Ads
Despite the diversity in social media platforms since the site’s launch in the mid-2000s, Facebook is still an indispensable place for Amazon sellers to place ads. Nearly 70% of American adults have a profile, ensuring a massive reach for a modest investment. There are a few different ways to target Facebook users, but these opportunities offer the most benefits for Amazon sellers—including resources that aren’t available anywhere else.
Lookalike Audiences
Lookalike audience advertising is a Facebook feature that targets users who share characteristics with an existing audience. Utilizing this feature does involve setting a source audience—a group of users who best match those you’re trying to sell to—but once you have this established, it’s possible to create up to 500 lookalike audiences. This means an expanded reach to tap into new potential customers.
Retargeting
Unlike leveraging lookalike audiences, which are intended to branch out beyond current customers, retargeting ads are used to keep consumers already familiar with your products engaged and aware. This works on a few different levels. First, it allows you to build a list of customers whose information you already have, like those collected in a CRM through website and in-person purchasing or via registered app users. It also provides a way to install Facebook pixels, a way of tracking how people engage with your brand or products to promote items clicked on or added to a cart effectively.
5. Email Marketing
Email marketing is a staple for all kinds of eCommerce sellers. This method of speaking directly to your audience involves building a mailing list that can then be used to share promotional content. Emails can be obtained via those who sign up for marketing messages or information collected during the purchase process.
Keep in mind that inundating customers or potential customers with emails can work against you. Opt for strategically planned email communication featuring limited-time offers or new products with links to Amazon, which can be a great way to guide external shoppers to PDPs.
6. Social Media Content
Social media content is a little different than advertising on social media platforms. This strategy involves creating your own content to attract interested shoppers and build a brand reputation. How you choose to approach this will depend on the platforms most relevant to you and who exactly you’re trying to reach.
YouTube
As a platform known for creating video content, YouTube is most valuable for brands that have products for which video tutorials and demonstrations will have a strong impact. This may not apply to all items, particularly common ones that everyone knows how to use. However, for products that are trying to stand apart from the crowd or might be confusing on the surface, YouTube should be a go-to.
For Amazon sellers already using a rich content approach or who are taking advantage of A+ Content, it’s possible to combine YouTube-style videos with product detail pages, which can go a long way in creating a brand identity.
Instagram is all about aesthetics and branding, but can hold a lot of value for Amazon sellers across many sectors. For those who have products that will appeal to Instagram’s image, this strategy can grow reach. It is also easy to incorporate for those who use Amazon FBA and can leverage the social media promotion codes Seller Central can generate automatically.
Facebook is great for targeted ads, but it’s also a good way to post content without being directly promotional. Currently, Facebook speaks more to the older generations, including Gen X and Baby Boomers, so posts and videos can draw in customers who may not be present on any other social sites.
Facebook offers more wiggle room for word count and types of posts than other platforms, so this can be a great opportunity to diversify content and broaden your tactics for maximum resonance.
TikTok
TikTok is most appealing to younger shoppers, including Gen Z and Millennials. This platform is known for quick bursts of content and packing a punch in a highly accessible manner, which should be a brand’s objective in this space. Focus on product features that can be showcased in a quick, easy, and eye-catching way to keep users from scrolling past your videos.
TikTok can also be a great place to grow brand recognition via affiliate marketing. If you build a robust profile and leverage placement via influencers, it can be much easier to target the shoppers who exist in this fast-paced corner of the internet.
7. SEO Content Marketing
Content marketing can be a great way to drive organic traffic and position your brand as a thought leader in your space. This strategy, which leverages original content, like blog posts and user guides, provides customers with the information they need to feel confident in your brand’s offerings.
SEO content marketing isn’t as simple as writing a quick blog post and throwing it up on your website. Content requires a strategy, including the keywords in use, how you stand apart from the competitors in your space, and what value you can add to the existing content landscape.
Things to Consider with Driving External Traffic to Amazon
Regardless of industry, strategy, or goals, tapping into audiences outside of Amazon (while still driving traffic to your Amazon detail pages) is an integral strategy. With the right tactics in place, driving external traffic to Amazon can offer plenty of benefits.
Avoid Internal Competition
All sellers know the value of optimizing product and brand pages within the Amazon infrastructure—and that includes your competition. Everyone seeking success on Amazon uses the same basic strategies, from keyword research to flexible pricing, so there’s only so much you can do to gain and maintain an advantage.
Driving traffic from other sources can help avoid internal competition as these shoppers don’t come to Amazon and happen to find your brand; they find your brand and intentionally follow your marketing material to Amazon.
Increase Traffic and Sales
Want more sales? You’ll probably need more shoppers. Targeting traffic both on and off Amazon gives you a broader pool of customers to work with, increasing the likelihood that those coming to your product pages will make a purchase. This can be particularly true for sellers still trying to find their footing in Amazon SERPs. If ranking organically or winning prime placement through PPC campaigns is slow going, soliciting traffic from outside Amazon can give your business a boost.
Amazon Rewards
While the semantics of this premise aren’t clearly established, it’s long been claimed that since outside traffic grows Amazon’s revenue as well as your own, sellers that see significant traffic from external sources might see a boost. This may take the form of better placement in the SERPs or an increased likelihood of Buy Box wins.
Additionally, Amazon launched its Brand Referral Bonus in 2021. This program offers qualified sellers (and marketing efforts) the opportunity to earn money back for driving traffic from off Amazon’s platform.
Brand Awareness
Have you ever heard the phrase, “Any publicity is good publicity?” It’s not exactly true, but the concept loosely applies. External traffic boosts the visibility of your Amazon catalog in other places around the internet, meaning that shoppers can get a chance to know you and your products in a more general sense rather than learning about you while on the hunt for a specific product. The more familiar they are with your brand in general, the more likely they are to remember you when making a purchase decision.
Strategize Your Landing Pages
Most of the time, external traffic should be driven to landing pages—pages you build to collect customer information and subsequently use to funnel traffic to Amazon. This is important for a few key reasons:
- The ability to collect information about customers outside of Amazon.
- Visitors who are idly curious are less likely to provide contact info before seeing products, making it more likely only serious consumers will visit your pages. This plays into how Amazon calculates metrics that can impact SEO, like conversion rates.
- Better access to customer demographics to improve future marketing and advertising methods, both on Amazon and in driving external traffic.
Individual detail pages might be the best choice in some cases, including when using affiliate campaigns based on specific products, but this isn’t universally true.
Grow Your Business with Trellis
Capturing traffic within the Amazon infrastructure can be extremely valuable; these shoppers are already present and ready to buy, and the connection between clicks and conversions can be much tighter. However, driving external traffic to your Amazon storefront can offer advantages as well, from increasing visibility to targeting customer bases your competitors might not be considering.
Regardless of your goals as an Amazon seller, the right tools can make a big difference. If you’re hoping to leverage cutting-edge AI technology in a holistic way, Trellis can support your eCommerce goals across Amazon and beyond. With an innovative dashboard and a strategic approach to the four Ps—Product, Price, Promotion, and Place—no other resource is better positioned to help you grow. Schedule a free trial and see what Trellis can do for you.Not ready for a trial? Download our FREE Google Chrome extension for critical data on your competitors and opportunities in the space.