admin_fortress | May 20, 2022
Published in The Marketplace Playbook
Ready, sellers? 94% of online shoppers look for a promotion before making a purchase. Percent-off, BOGO, giveaways, bundles—consumers are constantly looking for a deal and they’ll reward brands that offer financial value with both their dollars and their loyalty. For Amazon sellers, product promotions are easy ways to drive sales, boost traffic and raise brand awareness. They increase the visibility of your products and promote your brand on social media. In this article, we’ll look at some simple strategies you can use to make your promotions sing.
Lay the groundwork
Before you set up a promotion on Amazon, do your homework. Ask yourself a few important questions, e.g. what’s your budget? For any promotion to be successful, you have to be prepared to give up a bit of margin—how much is up to you and what makes sense for your business model. Think of your promotions as investments and figure out how much you are willing to test…and invest.
Review your marketing strategy
Once you’ve figured out your budget, you should make sure the promotion fits into your marketing strategy. We’ve established that promotions can have a positive impact on brand awareness and sales, but to achieve these results it’s important that your promotion aligns with your brand values.
Finally, identify how you will measure success. Which metrics will tell you whether or not the promotion you chose had a positive return? Page views, conversion, number of reviews, keyword tracking, and site traffic all contain key data which can often provide robust insights for your next promotion.
Choose your promo
Now that you’ve built the foundation for your promo, it’s time to get it up and running. The first step is to determine which kind of promotion to create. This may be driven by your product selection, e.g. if you have a lower-priced add-on that complements a popular seller, it might make sense to make the add-on a GWP (gift with purchase). Or, if you have multiple colors or styles in a product, offering a discount for buying multiples might be the way to go. Whichever type of promotion you choose, it’s vital that the customer feels that they are getting a solid deal. If you are going to offer money off, the percentage needs to be high enough to create excitement (in the context of your demographic, of course.)
What to look out for…
There are a few don’ts our brands live by. First, be careful not to run your promotion too long. An overly long promo—longer than 5-7 days—can reduce profits and negatively impact your brand. You don’t want your customers thinking you’re always on sale. You also need to pay close attention to the details when setting up your promo, which is a surprisingly common mistake made by Amazon sellers. If you have an error in your promo setup, you may end up sacrificing more margin than you budgeted.
Make it effective
The best strategy you can use to optimize the effectiveness of your promo is to make sure you have a stellar landing page. Use important keywords in the copy that will improve search results and, at the same time, are relevant to the product. Photography should be clean and compelling and the offer should be clearly stated. If potential customers click through from an ad or a social media post, you want them to see what they expect to see. Otherwise, conversion will suffer. At Fortress, we’ve found that all of these parts and pieces need to come together seamlessly to result in success, which is why we have teams to help do it all in one place.
Take it from us, Amazon promotions are a powerful tool. Done right, they can boost sales and raise brand awareness. They can bring in new customers and build loyalty with your current buyers, but they’re not without risk.
For more tips to help you create more effective, successful promotions on Amazon, follow us on IG @fortressbrand or reach out to us below to start an inquiry.