Grow Your Brand with External Marketing
January 24, 2023
What is External Traffic?
For sellers looking to stand out on the crowded Amazon marketplace, optimizing their products’ listings is essential. 75% percent of Amazon sales are generated through Amazon’s internal search engine alone.
But what about that other 25%? This “external traffic” represents customers guided to Amazon listings through outside sources, such as social media, blogs, Google search, and seller websites. Driving external traffic is crucial to giving your marketing an extra competitive touch, especially when launching a brand on Amazon.
Why Drive Traffic to Amazon Listings from External Channels?
Healthy external traffic not only expands your customer base, but also improves your listing rank within Amazon’s marketplace. Amazon promotes products that do well on external channels, making these listings more likely to become top sellers in their category.
Sellers registered under Brand Registry can benefit from the Brand Referral Bonus program, which offers payment bonuses (averaging around 10% of the sale) for purchases driven by external traffic. It also provides advertisement tools and data to understand which sources are most effective.
How to Drive External Traffic to Your Amazon Page
Creating marketing assets that showcase your product – such as blogs, videos, or websites – can be a logical first step in external outreach, as once you have a portfolio you can easily share it across networks.
If you don’t have a product website, consider creating one. Websites are a convenient information hub that can feature your marketing assets, link to social media handles, and “warm up” potential customers to your product – all of which makes them more likely to make a purchase.
Your website can also collect data, including emails, which lays the groundwork for a newsletter – an essential aspect of growing a business and capitalizing on potential and repeat customers. Newsletters can offer special discounts, advertise new products, and share your business development. Software like MailChimp and Constant Contact provide easy newsletter management tools for your website.
Remember to never collect emails without consent – which is illegal and will damage your reputation. Website viewers should be given the opportunity to join your newsletter clearly and voluntarily. Amazon doesn’t allow email collection on purchases, so it is crucial to gather this information through a website.
Search Engine Optimization
Search engines, like Google, rank search results based on the prevalence of keywords embedded in the copy of web content. Researching relevant keywords to your product and integrating these words and phrases into the copy of your content is a practice known as “search engine optimization” (SEO), which is critical for improving the search rank of your content and finding new customers.
If you are on a budget, Google provides free SEO tools through Google Analytics that can help you identify and integrate keywords into your web content. Or, if you are looking for an extra edge, there are a variety of subscription-based tools, such as Semrush or Growthbar, that can take your SEO to the next level.
Utilizing Social Media and Influencers
21% of all consumers start their search for products on social media, making it an essential avenue for businesses. Facebook Advertising is a powerful marketing tool that allows you to target special interests and demographic groups more likely to be customers. Many companies looking to advertise on social media collaborate with relevant social media influencers and leverage their pre-existing followings. The same concept applies to prominent bloggers and YouTube channels.
Exploring ways your product can be featured on their channels can be a powerful way to get your product or brand in front of a large audience quickly. Depending on the influencer, they may have access to several thousands or even millions of followers.
Amazon Sponsored Display Ads
Utilizing Amazon Sponsored Display Ads is another effective way to reach new customers through external traffic. Sponsored Display Ads are available for brand owners enrolled in Brand Registry and allow you to create display ads on and off of Amazon.
These ads target customers based on interest and shopping behaviors. Essentially, Amazon notes your product (and relevant competitor’s products) viewer history and displays Sponsored Display Ads again to these customers across Amazon pages, competitor listings, and third-party websites and apps.
How ZQUARED Can Help
Managing a holistic external marketing strategy can be a daunting prospect for many business owners, leading many to search for a partner to help with the demands of staying competitive on Amazon.
Although driving external traffic is important, it is crucial that businesses don’t forget that 75% of customers start their search on Amazon, and the majority of these customers don’t look past the first page of results on their search, making optimizing your Amazon listing paramount. Working with ZQUARED ensures that your product is optimized for conversion. ZQUARED supports fully search engine optimized listings, customized brand content for advertising, and helps you keep MAP pricing in check.
Collaborating with ZQUARED allows you to spend more time on your brand, while ZQUARED ensures your Amazon presence is professional, competitive, and easy.
For more information about how partnering with ZQUARED can help with your external marketing, request an assessment of your Amazon channel or send an email to partners@zquared.com