If you want to be successful on the Amazon platform – as a seller or vendor – you need to put in the hours. No matter if you are newbie or seasoned seller, launching a new product on Amazon is difficult.

But why is it so hard?

Amazon Product Launch: The Catch-22

There are a few different metrics in the Amazon A9 algorithm that determine the ranking of your product. One of the most important factors is sales velocity, indicated by the click-through rate (CTR) and conversion rate (CR or CVR). They, in turn, are determined by:

• CTR: main image, reviews, title, price

• CVR: copywriting of the listing, remaining product images, price

Seems pretty straightforward: sell some product, your ranking will improve, leading to more sales and eventually your Amazon dream sets off. Unfortunately, that is not how it works in real life (even though there are loads of ‘Amazon gurus’ telling you so).

Here’s the problem: for a product to sell, it needs to rank high. And for a product to rank high, it needs to sell. So where do you start? That’s the logical conundrum of Amazon product launches – a Catch-22. Basically, it means you have to create initial sales and rank high – both at the same time.

Launching a New Product on Amazon: 3-Step Strategy

Let us warn you early on: During the launch phase of a new product, you will often have to operate at break-even point (BEP) or even accept losses. The goal is to improve ranking rather than make profits. Be prepared to spend a little.

It truly is no child’s play. But it is not impossible. Here is how you do it:

Our 3-step product launch strategy starts with generating the first few sales and encouraging your early customers to leave product reviews. Once you have collected 3-5 reviews, you drive paid traffic to your product to set off the Amazon flywheel, further push sales, and eventually start ranking on the first few pages in the search results.

Please keep in mind that our strategy assumes that you have done thorough product research and already created an SEO-optimized product listing that is ready to go live when you need it to.

1. Get the Ball Rolling: Develop an offer customers cannot refuse

Reducing the price of your product is the easiest way to increase initial demand – especially if you make people feel like they are getting a really good deal. That is why each of our proposed strategies to create sales includes a product discount.

Amazon Giveaway (US only)

You can offer your new product as part of a giveaway on Amazon itself. While the winner receives your product for free, other contestants can purchase your product at a discount. The key is to require people to watch a product video before they can enter the giveaway in the hope that it will induce participants to make the discounted purchase even if they do not win.

The disadvantage? You have to have a very good product video at hand, which is often quite expensive to produce.

Up-sell through already successful Amazon product when launching a new one

Unfortunately, simply giving a regular discount for the new product doesn’t work, as people first need to find the product to then purchase it – and you won’t be ranking well initially. You can use one of your high-ranking products to overcome this problem of visibility.

Create a discount structure where your new product is tied to one of your best sellers. People then receive a discount if they purchase the two products together. You can set this up under ‘Manage Promotions’ in the ‘Inventory’ tab of your Seller Central.

The disadvantage? This strategy only works well if the new product is complementary to one of your best sellers. Otherwise, the probability of people purchasing the two products together is very low.

You have to remember when choosing products to promote together that the shopper has to be motivated to buy both. Your strategy might be to use one product to encourage the purchase of the other, but this isn’t the same as distributing generic promotional products for brand awareness. Each product must appeal on its own merits, with the combination ideally superior to the sum of its parts.

These two approaches–giveaways and combination deals–work within the system Amazon provides you with. Success rates have been varied. In fact, online seller feedback and our own experience suggest that the best way to create the first sales is by directing outside traffic to your new Amazon listing.

Amazon Product Launch: Channel off-Amazon Traffic to Your Listing

Making initial sales on Amazon is problematic as products that rank lower than the first few pages in the search results are barely viewed by customers. The point of using external channels is, therefore, to get your Amazon product listing in front of potential customers that are willing to make the purchase.

The key is to find and connect with your target group – early adopters of your new product. This is easier if you are already selling your products on Amazon and have actively been building an audience.

Offer exclusive discount codes to your Email list

If you are running an online store off-Amazon where you’ve been collecting email addresses already, you can leverage them to your advantage. Most of the people in the list have probably either bought from you before or shown interest in your product range. Offering them an exclusive discount via an email newsletter with a link to your new product listing dramatically improves your chances of making a few sales and creating a successful product launch on Amazon.

Building an email list from scratch, however, is a lot of work – but it usually pays off in the long run. So if you are currently preparing to extend your product range and have a few months to plan the launch, building a new email list via Social Media, your online store, or a landing page could be an effective way to create external traffic to your product listing – now and for every future product launch.

Influencers

Another way to reach a suitable audience is via Influencer Marketing. You can assign a discount code to an influencer in your niche and require them to link to your product listing. This might also help in providing social proof when product reviews are spares. However, keep in mind that you are losing additional revenue as you have to often pay a hefty commission to the influencer.

Connect with your audience via Facebook

There are 3 ways you can make use of Facebook.

Depending on the product you want to sell, you can find relevant Facebook Groups with members who, based on their interest or hobby, might be the right target audience for your new product. Make sure to message the group admin and ask for permission to post a link to your listing with a corresponding discount code.

Another way to leverage the power of Facebook when launching a new product on Amazon is via advertising. Facebook allows you to fine-tune the targeting of your ads so that you can reach people that are likely to be interested in your offers. However, if you’ve never done Facebook Ads before and aren’t exactly sure what you’re doing, it can quickly bleed out your marketing budget for the launch (and beyond).

Using a Facebook Bot adds an interactive element to your Facebook promotions – and is the most effective way we know to make the first few sales. We’ve already discussed this strategy in an earlier post in the context of creating the first reviews for a product.

2. Amazon Product Launch: Create Social Proof and Get Reviews

With the first few sales comes the challenge of convincing customers to then leave a review. Customer reviews are important for two reasons:

• Conversion: a product without any reviews look suspicious. Social proof and the opinion of customers who have already tried and tested the product are influential factors in making purchase decisions for many shoppers.

• Marketing with PPC Campaigns: We’ve found that PPC campaigns for products without at least a few reviews often fail. Therefore, you should only start PPC campaigns (and thereby create more crucial sales) once a product has received a minimum of 3-5 reviews.

Here are your options for collecting your first product reviews:

Amazon Early Reviewer Programme (US only)

When it comes to reviews, Amazon is a bit of a pickle. They are very well aware of the value of reviews, and how much sellers struggle when introducing new products to the marketplace. At the same time, the E-Commerce giant has been coming down hard on anyone trying to trick the system and generate fake reviews.

To solve this pickle, Amazon has introduced the Early Reviewer Programme (sellers) and Amazon Vine (vendors) in the US.

Check out our assessment of the effectiveness of the Early Reviewer Programme.

Create Unexpected Value

On Amazon customers expect to receive a well-functioning product in a timely manner. Meeting these minimum standards of customer service will hardly get you the first few reviews. That’s why while launching a new product, you should try and create unexpected value for your customer and thereby encourage them to leave a review – for exceptional customer service.

This unexpected value might come in the form of a freebie, a discount for their next purchase order, or valuable information/online resources that complement your product. Our post on Packaging Inserts explains the concept in more detail and might give you some inspiration.

Our Strategy for Generating Reviews for New Products

Our team has devised and tested an effective (but also costly) method of generating the crucial, first reviews for a newly launched product on Amazon. We have already mentioned this strategy in the previous section on generating early sales.

A Word of Advice: Stay within Amazon’s TOS

We understand that every beginning is hard. And while you might be tempted to revert to black hat tactics to accelerate the launch, let us tell you: it is not worth it. Recently, Amazon has increasingly been cracking down on sellers using SuperURLs or showing unnaturally high sales velocities (especially as a new account). Trying to trick the algorithm is almost guaranteed to lead to account suspension.

3. Amazon Product Launch: Start a PPC Campaign for More Traction

Now, we reached the final stage of our launch strategy: pushing your product out there and making it more visible via PPC marketing.

And when we say ‘push‘, we mean push!

PPC campaigns help you overcome the problem of not ranking in the early days of a newly launched product.

If you’ve been following us for a while, you probably know our optimized PPC strategy by heart. This is what we found works best and have been preaching ever since. Check out our comprehensive Amazon PPC guide – it includes everything from finding the right keywords to setting up and optimizing your PPC campaigns.

Since a product launch creates some special circumstances, there are a few alterations we would suggest to our usual PPC strategy:

1. You will want to bid a bit more aggressively. Your goal at the start is not necessary to make a profit but to get your product out there.

2. A little while ago, Amazon introduced dynamic bidding. Since your goal is to create the maximum amount of sales (no matter the cost), you should turn off dynamic bidding and stay with fixed bids.

3. Add Amazon Product Targeting to your PPC strategy. Attaching a PPC ad to one of your more successful product listings serves two purposes: (1) you can catch the eye of customers who are already interested in one of your products and potentially upsell them, and (2) if the targeted product already has a bunch of good reviews it might serve as social proof for the new product you are advertising.

Your initial PPC efforts should be quite aggressive. They are the key to your launch and allow your product to be found by potential customers. Just make sure your campaigns are continuously optimized and cared for to avoid unnecessary dollars spend.