How to Launch an Amazon FBA Product - Rank First Fast & Free (New for 2022)
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Product launches are absolutely crucial to get the ball rolling on your new to market product. Lucky for us, launching on Amazon is probably one of the cheapest, and for the lack of a better word “easiest” launch you’ll ever do. On the contrary, It's not uncommon for the average brick and mortar store to spend $10,000+ on a launch by organizing and throwing a costly grand opening. The only job we have to do to launch on Amazon, is ensure everything is properly in place, then drive traffic to our listing… thats it. A full launch wont come anywhere close to 10k, and if you do it right its essentially free (paid for entirely from profits)
Whats Our Goal
Ranking! We need to get the most amount of targeted customer eyes on the listing. The purpose is to earn enough conversions over a period of time, to stick on the first page for all the major keywords for our product. For us as private labelers without an established brand name, large capital reserves, or large scale promotional resources at our fingertips - its important for us to come out of the gates aggressively and effectively. Therefore, its extremely important to strategize and have a plan of action in place. The launch should be conducted with the correct timing, in the right way, and for the least amount of invested time and capital.
What Determines Ranking?
Since the entire point of a product launch is to increase our search result ranking we need to cover the basics of what it takes to be ranked in general. Overall ranking on Amazon is mostly determined by sale volume. With individual keyword ranking similarly determined by targeted conversions. In other words a product selling 300/month will mostly rank overall next to the competitors selling 300/month for the most target keyword. Individual keyword ranking is mostly determined by the amount of conversions for that specific keyword in a set period of time (3-14 days). For example, you may be ranking #5 for the most targeted keyword “yoga mat”, but at the same time ranking #15 for what we call long-tail keyword “large yoga mat”.
To increase ranking for "large yoga mat", customers need to either organically search for “large yoga mat” on Amazon, scroll down the page to your product ranked #15, clicking, and then purchasing… OR a customer needs to click on a sponsored ad targeting the keyword “large yoga mat” then purchase the product.
Concept: The Golden Period
Amazon's goal is to sell as many quality products as possible, so it's in their best interest to “test” every new product to market in order to verify if its better than whats already available to the customer. This testing phase is what is referred to as the golden period, granting new guys a fair opportunity to compete with existing sellers with more social proof.
Organic Conversions
Every sale for a particular keyword will be weighted higher during this time, when compared to other periods. For example a couple sales for a major keyword may jump your organic ranking from page 13 to 3. Where a couple sales for the same keyword for an established competitor will have a negligible effect on ranking.
Sponsored Ads Impressions
Amazon will serve your sponsored product ads with 1000’s of impressions for a fraction of the cost during the golden period. You may get 20,000 impressions per week for a keyword with a bid of $0.25. Compared to established competitors bidding $1.00 and receiving only 500 impressions.
Necessities Before Launching
A lot of people don't realize that your launch starts before you launch. There are a few main components that must order before even thinking about driving traffic. Choosing to not do so can sink your entire launch and possibly your product as a whole.
Complete A+ Listing
We all know that first impressions are everything, and Amazon is no different. A complete and aesthetic product listing is the very first deciding factor of a customer purchasing your product. You want to make sure that your photos are clear, detailed, and informative. Including infographics, charts, and lifestyle photos of the product being used. The Ad copy in the bullet points and description should be informative and organized. Properly pitch your product, don’t just list a description.
SEO Loaded & Indexed
The listing including the title and back end search terms should be loaded with relevant keywords. You should also verify that you are indexed for all your major keywords. Not doing so will affect PPC impression delivery and overall campaign performance, as well as ranking for important keywords. You can find these keywords and verify indexing with the software tool Helium10.
Social Proof
Social proof is absolutely necessary to convert properly for a product. Potential customers need to see at least 2 or 3 five star reviews to feel comfortable purchasing your product. Theres a few ways to get those crucial first few reviews. Theres the Amazon terms of service compliant way, and then theres the hush hush way…
Compliant Way - You can sign up for Amazon’s early review program and enroll your new ASIN. For a small fee Amazon will offer a discounted product to a customer and in return agrees to give an honest review. This is a possible route, but to be honest it take a fair bit of time to get those reviews, and its important to start selling as fast as possible. Also, one low rated review and you could have some issues.
Hush Hush Way - What some sellers do is have ~5 or so people that you have no association with whatsoever buy your product. Then have 2-3 of them write a 5 star review. What is good about this is that you can have them type a keyword of your choice into the search and look for your product. Having them purchase through this channel you’ll begin to rank organically for this keyword. You can also have them write a review that includes a handful of your top keywords also improving your organic ranking.
NOTE: This is against Amazon terms of service and getting caught will get you suspended for life. If you decide to go this route be sure to research on your own how to prevent detection. **I do not condone this method - use at your own risk ;)
Main Launching Strategies
Low Competition | External Traffic | Giveaways | Internal Traffic
Low Competition
Low Competition
The concept of a low competition launch is the process of sourcing a product with such a low competition profile that we automatically end up on the first page as soon as we go live. Lets be honest, the days of finding a viable product that can be launched and ranked on the first page by simply making your listing live have ended around 2015. The process alone of verifying a product's success through competition data analysis, essentially makes this avenue almost obsolete. By the time you have enough data to prove a product's success, its likely too late.
However, its important to talk about this method while you cant just make it live and expect to be number 1 anymore, following my competition metrics you can still have a similar effect on a smaller scale. We can expect to rise in the ranks a little easier for our product compared to a more competitive one.
External Traffic
External Traffic
Driving external traffic is a very effective and plausible method for product launches. Hyping up your new launch weeks in advance to a targeted loyal audience is a massive advantage. Amazon also rewards you for bringing 3rd party traffic onto the platform even without converting a sale.
Building an Audience?
I know what youre thinking, by the nature of 3rd party private labeling, we likely don’t have an existing audience to promote the launch to, and thats ok. As i said, a targeted loyal audience is a huge asset, but building that audience is an incredible amount of work, taking a serious amount of time, capital, and resources in order to do so.
There is so much to the Amazon FBA process, you have to think about time management. In order to make the most amount of bottom line progress, you have to prioritize your time. Arbitrary speaking, if you have 100 points representing your efforts starting an Amazon FBA business, and 100 points representing bottom line returns. Building an audience for your first open brand can take over 50 effort points, with only 10 return points. In the long run, if you decide to fully develop and scale a brand around this first product, the 10 return points increase to 75.
In other words, its not worth your time to build this audience now, but recommended to wait to see how everything goes, then put in the work in and grow your personal audience. It will be one of the most valuable assets to your brand. With the ability to ask hyper targeted loyal customers for suggestions and feedback , market new products, promote relevant affiliate marketing links, and so much more!
Influencer Marketing
So how can we drive external traffic without an audience? The solution is simple, just use someone else's. This is the basis of influencer marketing, we’ll “rent” their pre-developed targeted audience, and pay for a sponsored post.
Type - The highest converting posts are ones that demonstrate the use of your product in video form. For instance a fitness influencer using your yoga mat in a new routine.
Where - Almost always, youtube will be the best platform for return, followed by tiktok and then Instagram. Usually if you book one platform you can get them to post on their other platforms as well for free, either uploading there or advertising the original ad on the other platform. Always try and get the post to be permanent, even if its slightly more expensive.
Booking - Contact through DM or email and explain you are a product owner and looking for a sponsored post/demonstration video. Ask them if they’re interested and their rate. When you get a reply, always negotiate the price down.
Cost - The cost significantly depends on the niche and follower count but you can assume it will be around $100-500 for a short video demonstration on youtube with someone with 100K-250K subs.
Timing - Set up the post to be released the day of your launch at peak time around 8PM est.
Linking - Do not include coupons or discounts because it’s believed that doing so will negatively affect your rankings. Discounts or coupons of any value wont register the ranking increases as well when compared to a customer buying at full price. When linking your product either set up an amazon affiliate account and link your own product. Or link the product using amazon.com/dp/"ASIN". NOTE: Super URLs do not work and will get you banned.
Giveaways
There are countless giveaway websites to launch new Amazon products - NONE OF THEM WORK. Giveaways used to be the most effective tactic for launching by offering a 99% off coupon in return for a product. With a couple thousand dollars to invest, you’d giveaway a hundred or so products (or more) over a weeks time, and you’re guaranteed the #1 stop. This simply is not the case anymore. A few years ago Amazon really cracked down on this and pretty much put an end to it entirely, banning anyone that uses these giveaway sites.
That being said, as we talked about before with the reviews, theres a way to do a small giveaway safely if you're smart about it. Have someone buy the product for full price using your best keyword and pay them back via paypal. However, its still just as illegal and will get you in just as much trouble (again, use at your own risk).
Internal Traffic
Saving the Best for Last
Amazon sponsored ad (PPC) launches are by far the best primary options for ranking your product. Even during the old giveaway glory days, I preferred the PPC method. Utilizing the listing golden period, it’s by far the most profitable, and most effective way to promote your new product. You’ll find that other launching methods can cost $100’s or $1000s, whereas the PPC method will essentially pay for itself.
You can give your new product every single tool to dominate the competition by not only launching through sale volume, but combined with killer sponsored product campaigns. These campaigns combined with the utilization of your listing’s golden period, you’ll see a significant performance boost and at a lower cost than if you were to scale these campaigns later down the road. You can then transition these campaigns optimally from a launch phase to a scaling phase.
The method consists of “borrowing” your competitors' top keywords and placing them in a series of low bid campaigns. Then adjusting bidding at the right times, and under the right circumstances. (I’d love to outline the method, but it would need its own full blog. If you want to dive deeper shoot me a message and let me know!)
What Launching Strategy is Right for Me?
Most people launching a product rely mainly on one method, but the secret is stacking all three. As I stated, PPC launches are the best option as of today, but that doesn't mean you can’t stack other methods to launch. Remember the more eyes on the product at the right time is the goal. So why not plan the primary PPC launch along with the other methods as a bonus?
If you’ve followed my product research technique in blog 2 then you’ve got the low competition launch sorted as best as you can for FBA in 2022. You can incorporate the giveaway launch technique to an extent while building those first few reviews as we discussed (if you decided to take the risk). Then the remaining external traffic launch can be utilized by setting up an influencer promotion for the first day of the PPC launch.
Conclusion
A well put together listing, with a proper well timed launch will skyrocket your new Amazon FBA product to the top of the search results. Then its just up to you to ride the wave of momentum! Start slow and fight, or start aggressive and coast. The choice is yours ....
If you have any questions on launching strategies, or to learn more about private consulting or professional services - click here.
Kevin - The FBA Nomad, 2022
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