Successful selling on Amazon is the culmination of meticulous planning, marketing, and setting up your business to gain momentum and continue making sales after launch. It requires a strong sales strategy that carefully curates every aspect of your go-to-market strategy to ensure your promotion, product, and infrastructure build a brand that customers know and want to buy from. Amazon introduced their Perfect Launch program to help sellers in that endeavor. However, it’s also important to take steps yourself.
Whether you’re new to the marketplace or already run a thriving Amazon store, the following Amazon product launch 90-day plan will prepare you to launch new products and adopt a fresh approach to your account, fulfillment, infrastructure, and product strategy. By its end, you’ll be well equipped to produce an excellent customer experience that generates good reviews and more sales moving forward.
Before your Amazon product launch (first 30 days)
The first 30 days of an Amazon product launch are about planning and preparation. That means conducting research into your target demographic so your brand has the information to make smart product, marketing, and sales decisions. (Be aware, you’ll have to adjust your research as you learn from real sales.) At the same time, ensure you have a robust launch strategy in place before your live date to support a promising start and continued growth.
Product research
Who is looking for your products? Why? What do they need? What problems are they trying to solve? If not a problem, then what itch are they trying to scratch? Knowing your consumer base gives you the information you need to tailor all parts of your campaign, from product photography and text to ads and keywords. That data will also help you differentiate your product from competitors’. Product research also means:
- Understanding what accessories work with your products
- Pinpointing complementary products
- Honing in on the specific features customers want in your product
From there, you can create product bundles, accessory kits, and other upsells that’ll increase your average order value (AOV) and drive more sales.
Keyword research
Once you know what people are looking for, you can take steps to bring awareness to your product during their searches. Amazon is a great place to start because you can look at similar offerings and the keywords in their listings. You should also check Google and see what items return on the first page of the search results.
The goal is to learn how people search for your products and what complementary items or indirect keywords are relevant to you. Research keywords to boost your ranking in direct search results, indirect search results (primarily for sponsored content), and to expand awareness of your product to people browsing for related offerings.
Competitor research
What are your competitors doing? Who are you up against specifically? What are they doing well on their Amazon pages? What are they missing or doing poorly? Could you take everything they have and do it better? Pay close attention to competitor reviews and inquiries. If people highlight the same concerns or pain points, you need to ensure your own content addresses those issues in your Amazon product launch.
Build an Own Your Aisle strategy
How does your product stand out in results pages? How do you differentiate yourself from competitors? Which “aisles” do you want to own? Develop a strategy to dominate them that includes a mix of content, good product photography and videos, and sponsored product listings. Those elements help your product gain the traction it needs on Amazon.
Amazon Product Launch
Your Amazon product launch should combine the basic steps from Amazon’s own program with some behind-the-scenes assistance on your part to ensure your brand is able to meet demand and deliver a stellar customer experience from day one. Critical Amazon product launch tasks include:
- Invest in content: Enticing product pages have high-quality photos, videos, clear product descriptions including measurements, and answers to common questions. You want content to be short but informative. Include information about your brand as well so customers see you as a separate entity from Amazon.
- Partner with influencers: Influencer strategies should start well before you release your product. Consider taking part in Amazon Vine, which helps you collect reviews, or having a partner influencer publish content on YouTube, TikTok, and other popular channels. Most consumers research products before buying, so having reviews, unboxing videos, and other content already online will ease their research (and quicken their decision to purchase).
- Join Amazon Brand Registry: Register your brand with Amazon to protect your products and your brand. This also ties your offering to your name brand and helps you connect with shoppers. To bolster your credibility and differentiate yourself, construct your own website, include inserts in your shipments, and build a solid brand presence on social media.
- Leverage a 3PL: You must ensure you can deliver products quickly and efficiently, no matter the demand. Your brand won’t have the means to build the infrastructure for that on its own though, which means you need FBA or a 3PL. Joining FBA is a good step for Amazon newcomers because customers trust the Prime badge even when they’re unfamiliar with your business. The guaranteed two-day delivery is also influential among consumers. With a 3PL or fulfillment center meanwhile, you gain confidence in making deliveries on time, every time. As a result, your customers enjoy a seamless experience with quality product packaging, fast shipping, and return options from day one.
- Launch sponsored ads: Once you list your product, you can immediately start sponsoring your items to appear in search. Think of sponsored ads as a “pay to play” strategy. Just make sure your keyword research is strong so customers actually click through to your products.
- Automate pricing: Take advantage of automation tools and real-time updates to ensure Amazon displays your products at optimal pricing within your bracket. This is especially important for products that are more commonplace (e.g., if you’re a reseller rather than a manufacturer). Pricing automation also increases your chances of securing Amazon’s Featured Offer. However, that’s less relevant if you sell unique products through your own listing.
Optimization (first 30 days after Amazon product launch)
It’s important to follow up on your strategy even after your Amazon product launch; you want to ensure you have the tools in place to continue improving both your offerings and business. That entails maximizing sales by increasing customer satisfaction and demand for the product while reducing your overhead and overall cost to do business. To maintain strong revenue generation, adopt strategies such as:
- A/B test: Experiment with your ads, sponsored products, photos, taglines, descriptions, and other content to see what resonates best with consumers. Test your customer approach, packaging, marketing keywords as well. Run these assessments regularly to ensure you stay on the right path to achieve the best results. Amazon’s Manage Your Experiments tool is specifically designed for this, or you can use a third-party solution.
- Data-driven optimization: Amazon offers real-time data analytics, the ability to adapt bid strategies, and other optimization tools, so take advantage of these features to improve your operations. That can take the form of introducing automation for pricing, adjusting sponsored product campaigns based on clicks, or updating your keywords according to searches due to your sponsored ad campaigns. By leveraging that information to tweak operations, Amazon sellers could see a 20%-30% increase in sales, depending on the alterations made
- Look for cost efficiencies: Improving cost efficiencies is an important part of profitability. That means taking steps to increase AOV while decreasing expenses, and logistics are ripe with opportunity to achieve this. Consider creating product bundles and kits, refining item prep and fulfillment, and reducing your costs for FBA or other 3PL programs. For example, sending your best-selling products to FBA and using another shipment method for large and slow-moving products can save money while boosting your FBA health.
- Boost ROI: Expand your advertising efforts into content marketing, social media, influencer programs, and more to maximize your return on investment. Determine which initiatives have an impact and which don’t to double-down on your most profitable efforts. For example, influencer strategies often yield impressive results, while a vlog might drive less traffic. Pay attention to what customers interact with and where traffic comes from, then refine your marketing to push those channels.
- Refine your customer service: Customer service is an extremely important part of an Amazon marketing and sales strategy. Being able to resolve customer problems quickly will keep them happy, as well as significantly support your Amazon account health. Consider adopting tools like AI chatbots or platforms that centralize customer queries for easy response. Including return slips in packages can also reduce the burden on your customer service team (and lower the cost of returns), which can lead to major cost savings in some industries while improving the buyer experience.
Wrapping up — Start off on the right foot with an Amazon Product Launch
An Amazon product launch is an exhausting but highly rewarding undertaking when done correctly. Whether it’s your first or your fiftieth, you need a detailed, data-backed plan to maintain a smooth timeline. The strategies discussed in this article will help boost your momentum and sales for a strong start. Then as you conduct more business, you should continually assess your operations and make adjustments to improve. A thriving Amazon business needs a solid foundation, so take your time and be diligent.