Are You Taking Advantage Of Amazon Posts?
It Keeps getting Better
So, you know at the end of the day it’s one of those tools where Amazon is just updating it constantly and a few weeks ago, they updated it to include carousels and they updated it to include scheduling post. So I can’t tell you how highly I encourage every attendee every client, take advantage of it I mean its rare that Amazon gives us something for free and the visibility on those posts is phenomenal. So what I’m doing with all of our clients that I’m working with is we’re looking at, okay what is our post strategy for the rest of the year and then how quickly can we get it in there so that we don’t have to think about it anymore.
Easy To Use
Now that we can schedule it ahead of time. Let’s get those posts schedule to the end of the year and then it’s not going back and having to check on it and you know double check and I have 1 client I was speaking to actually earlier today who I think is super smart in what she’s doing and she is posting a few every day and she set it up in such a way. So their social media team is literally feeding their content into her Amazon, you know administrator and then the amazon administrator is just taking it and putting in a post. So as the social media team is creating their content calendar, they’re just sharing it into Amazon. No additional operational cost no extra content creation, it’s awesome.
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How Your Customers Can Help With Advertising
Ambassador Programs
Something that I’ve seen a lot of success with indirect with consumer is really leveraging kind of Ambassador programs, getting some of your best customers your most loyal customers and honestly, if that could be an entire hour long call how that works so we’re not going to go into that long story short is having a program in place where you have an intimate relationship with some of your customers and then you can start soliciting them for high-value such as video content and I’ve seen some really really cool videos on Amazon where they are taking video testimonials from their customers and stringing them back to back to back and it’s just an amazing social proof piece. So and I’m looking at these products videos you have kind of like the infographic let’s talk about the product. You have the hey, let’s talk about the company itself. Cause some companies have some really cool names.
Embrace Who You Are
Are you made in America manufactured in America? Are you women owned? minority-owned? veteran-owned? Here’s a great place to share that story as long as it’s allowed. And then we also have kind of sharing some of these customer testimonial videos in a social proof aspect of it. So it’s not like everyone on the call, its not cut and dry. It’s not simple. It’s not like here is the one way to do it…
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Why You Need Videos On Your Amazon Product Page
See For Yourself
Videos are becoming more and more important, as you can see right here. I did an Amazon search for exercise equipment and right here. It shows videos related to your search so videos are constantly getting more and more– and these are just videos off the off the product pages. So it’s definitely worth having a video now that it’s even getting a whole entire row of real estate at this point.
The Payoff
Like they could put products here, but instead they put videos so these guys are getting double exposure now, so if they’re products here and here that these guys have two slots Now within Amazon, so it’s definitely worth having a video on your product page.
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Deep Links In Amazon Promotions
Deep Links, in the context of this article, are links that direct a user into an app instead of a webpage. For Amazon, a simple use case is when you are running external traffic. Instead of a person having their web browser open and having to log in, it opens their Amazon Shopping app where all they need to do is check out.
Some of our consultants have used a tool called URL GENIUS to accomplish this. The applications go beyond Amazon. URL GENIUS, for example, can link into other popular apps such as Spotify, Facebook, Tik Tok etc.
Deep links are something that every marketer should know how to use. As the number of mobile users now soar over desktop, we must adapt to the phone display now. When someone clicks on a link they are sent to the URL. Pretty obvious right? Well, if you are selling on Amazon, Walmart, or any other major platform like Amazon and send someone a link, then it will open in the internet browser, not the app.
Why does this matter?
The answer is that everyone that uses a phone loves apps, not websites. When you send them a link, they are not logged in their browser. This means that if you send them a link, they will need to login and authenticate their browser which creates a lot of unnecessary steps for the customer.
That’s where deep links come in to play.
Now you send them a link that will open in the app natively where they will already be logged in to purchase your product without any added steps!
Contact Prime Guidance for a free analysis of your business and learn how we can help!
Author | Sprigley Allen, Senior Consultant
- Published in Other
Our Ability to Comment on Product Ratings Will Soon Be a Thing of the Past
To comment or not to comment tis the question but Amazon has… or soon will… remove our ability to comment on Product Ratings (also known as Product Reviews). This past week many Prime Guidance clients received this notice from Amazon.
Dear seller,
You are receiving this email because you recently left a comment on a review.
While reviews and feedback are important to our customers and sellers, the comments feature on customer reviews was rarely used. As a result, we are retiring this feature on December 16, 2020.
We are committed to your continued success and will innovate and develop other opportunities for you to connect with customers.
Thank you.
– Amazon Services
As we all know, product ratings can make or break the success of the product. It is very often the first place a consumer looks when they click into a detail page and if they click deeper into the ratings, they most often look at the one and two star ratings. If they use filters like I do, they will never see an item with less than four stars.
We coach our clients to always read their product’s reviews, both the good and bad ones, but especially the bad ones. The small percentage of shoppers who give a product rating are taking time out of their busy day, knocking on your front door, and using a bullhorn to tell you their experience with your item. Most of us were brought up to say “thank you” when we are given a compliment and it may not be feasible for you to make this comment on every good review received, however, it is critical to do so when you receive a bad rating.
Often, a bad rating is given because of product confusion, a defective item (they happen to even the highest rated item), a delayed FBA shipment, or sometimes due to bad content on your detail page. If the rating is due to the first two reasons, sometimes you just need to simply say:
“We are very sorry to hear about the issue you are having with {product name} and your satisfaction is our highest priority. Please reach out to us through Amazon’s support system so we can make this right”.
It tells that customer and anyone else who reads it that they are important and that they matter. If the customer does reach out you can now fix the situation and if you do, just to their satisfaction there is a very good chance they will change the rating. If you go beyond their satisfaction, they will change the rating and tell 25 of their friends about the experience.
For anyone unaware of the ability comment it is here:
Or from your Brand Dashboard you can click on Manage Reviews in the Customer Review Section:
Thus far, the ability to comment still exists. According to the message, it was supposed to have been removed on December 16th, but I suspect it will happen soon after the holiday season.
We will continue to coach our clients to read their product ratings so they can learn about what people are saying. They may not be able to comment back, but if they can detect a pattern it may be able to be easily addressed. It could be through changes to the detail pages, fixes to the infographics, or additions or even deletion to the A+ Content. It could be through developing an insert that goes in every box or a edit to the instructions. If it was a delayed shipment by FBA Amazon, you may want to even remove the rating. There will always be learnings from the negative ratings, but there will be no way to reach out directly to the customer to fix the situation… or will there be?
Speculating to the reason why Amazon is removing this tool is just that… speculation and it does really matter. Amazon simply states that it is a tool not often used but I have also heard people say that less scrupulous sellers use it to hound consumers who have given their product a bad rating. Either may be true but Amazon goes on to say that will “innovate and develop other opportunities for you to connect with customers”.
2020 has seen more changes in Seller Central than I have seen over the last several years and maybe… just maybe… there will be a better way for us to communicate directly to the consumer to tell them that they are important to us and that we want to fix any negative experience they have with our product.
Those of you who have read my other blogs or have seen me on the Prime Guidance weekly webinar every Thursday know that I often cite the Amazon Leadership Principles, which I have learned during my time as an Amazon employee and these principles became even more important as a hiring Bar Raiser. The email sent by Amazon said they are taking this action because the tool is rarely used, but if there is more to it then they have addressed several of their Leadership Principles, first and foremost, Customer Obsession. After that, assuming they create a better tool for us, it is Ownership, Invent and Simplify, Think Big and Deliver Results. When I begin an engagement with a new client, I tell them three things: