That is a lot of potential money. If your brand doesn’t truly understand how to maximize sales on Amazon, what are you leaving on the table?
Believe it or not, Amazon has 310 million active customer accounts world wide and 183 million monthly visitors in the US alone. Their closest competitor, Wal-Mart is a far second with almost a hundred million less visitors. Amazon has close to 178 billion U.S. dollars in 2017 net sales. And the growth of the platform is eminent: within five years, one fifth of the US’s $3.6 trillion retail market will have shifted online and Amazon is on track to capture two-thirds of that share. Two-thirds of $3.6 trillion.
Check out these statistics: 56% of Amazon users visit the site at least once a week. 17% log in daily. Many surveys claims that more people choose Amazon as the first place to search for products, than Google. That’s mind-blowing.
Amazon’s strategy has been to grow their Prime Membership; they know the more consumers they bring into the ecosystem, the more likely those consumers are to use Amazon for everything they can. In September 2017 Amazon had an estimated 90 million Prime subscribers in the United States. That is up 43% in one year! So how can you make sure you’re making the most the powerful and growing platform work for your brand?
Content is King
Even on Amazon, the most important element is Content. 73% of consumers cite detailed product content as a key factor when searching for and selecting products online. That means creating and optimizing your product pages is just as important (if not more) than any marketing you’re currently investing in.
What is good product content?
Good product content moves the needle and gets your products in the cart of your consumer, ideally by anticipating questions, building confidence in your products and increasing conversations.
Amazon also offers something called A+ content to all Amazon vendors. A+ content lives below the fold and lets you create a highly branded experience for your consumers (like your own mini-website) without having to leave your Amazon page. You can add more detailed item descriptions, compelling brand stories, and even videos.
Check out Fitbit’s Amazon page for an example of a brand that is really making the most of A+ content. So why would a brand spend time and money to create special content for Amazon? According to Amazon, adding A+ Content has been shown to boost sales anywhere from 3 to 10%.
Amazon is still a mystery
Much like Google, Amazon has their own, often mysterious, search algorithms and success measures. One of them is Amazon’s Choice Badge, initially introduced so customers could make easy purchases using Alexa enabled voice assistants and has since rolled out to Amazon website and mobile apps. Why does the Amazon Choice Badge matter? It is typically shown to users as a suggestion when the user is making a purchase for a specific product on Amazon for the first time. Similarly, their Best Seller Badge is like a report card that shows how many units you sold compared to others in the same category. It is globally updated every hour, and each time Amazon pushes an update, a given product’s rank can fluctuate dramatically over the course of a day, week or month.
I won’t go into the search tricks or Amazon-specific lingo that a brand needs to master, but given the size of the prize and the rate of growth, this is too big of a market for your brand to be missing out on.
Need some help figuring out how your brand can win on Amazon? Let’s Talk.