AMAZON TRAFFIC BLITZ 2.0 BY MIKE MCCLARY

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1 AMAZON TRAFFIC BLITZ 2.0 BY MIKE MCCLARY

2 I HAVE A BIG CHALLENGE I have to successfully do 3 things: Educate Entertain Encourage

3 I HAVE A CHALLENGE FOR YOU TOO

4 I HAVE A CHALLENGE FOR YOU TOO Every time you see this man this week, I challenge you to buy him a drink!

5 I HAVE A CONFESSION TO MAKE I tossed out my presentation this past weekend Why? You guys are too advanced I then completely redid my Amazon Traffic Blitz presentation to include more advanced topics I added in a list of my top 20 Amazon Hacks & Tips that help boost sales during and after blitzes

6 MY TOP 20 AMAZON HACKS & TIPS

7 AN IMPORTANT NOTE ABOUT THESE HACKS & TIPS

8 1. AMAZON TRAFFIC BLITZ 2.0

9 WHY 2.0? Two reasons: 1. We ve received a ton of great feedback since the course first launched 2. Amazon has released some new features that we can now incorporate and make the traffic blitz even better!

10 A LITTLE TRAFFIC BLITZ HISTORY Should actually be thought of as a Traffic & Sales Blitz Been around for decades (over 75 years) I learned about it at my very first job 25 years ago with Benjamin Moore & Company

11 WHAT IS A TRAFFIC BLITZ? When a company focuses all of its resources on a specific geographic region over a short period of time usually a few days to a week in order to dramatically increase sales Why do they do this? It works! Why does it work? During the days, weeks, and months after a Sales Blitz, both businesses and consumers have been made so aware of the product that sales for it increase exponentially as everyone is talking about or hearing about it.

12 HOW DOES THIS RELATE TO AMAZON AND THE ONLINE WORLD? The exact same strategy works incredibly well online, only your geographic region is Amazon and your sales forces are the various sources of traffic all leading to Amazon!

13 HOW WELL DOES IT WORK?

14 REALITY CHECK! While this strategy works for any product, the more competitive your product the more aggressive your Sales Blitz will have to be For example, if you are selling Garcinia Cambogia, Silicone Spatulas, or Cell Phone Cases don t expect your product to jump to the first page immediately after giving away a few dozen products There s one thing your product MUST do to continue selling well

15 SO WHAT REALLY HAPPENS DURING AN AMAZON SALES BLITZ? Traffic: Over a 4 to 7 day period you inundate your product detail page on Amazon with traffic Diversity: You get that traffic from multiple sources Social Media, Paid Traffic, News Sites, , Etc. Sales: During that traffic blitz, you also send a large number of customers to purchase your product at a steep discount This blitz of traffic, diversity of visitors, and rush of sales activate certain triggers on Amazon in order to push your product up through both the sales and search ranks, leading to continued sales even after the blitz is over***

16 WHY DOES THIS WORK? Here s my theory: 1. Amazon is a huge data aggregator and it s one of their number one assets they track everything 2. Because they process so much data, some of their ranking algorithms can t keep up with reality 3. There is also a natural delay between when a customer first visits Amazon and makes a purchase So what does this mean? Amazon s logic gets overwhelmed during bursts of intensive traffic and sales and they start making predictions about how to promote products

17 4 PHASES OF A TRAFFIC & SALES BLITZ Planning Preparation Execution Follow Up

18 PLANNING Step 1 - Get your Social Media Accounts setup Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, Instagram These will all be used during the blitz, and the longer they have been around the better

19 PLANNING, CONTINUED Step 2 Product Research A key component of a blitz is to give away a certain number of products at a large discount (80%+) over a period of 4-7 days In order to do that, you need to know approximately how many sales a day your competitors are doing Jungle Scout is a great tool

20 PLANNING, CONTINUED How many should you try to sell each day? I prefer to use the average daily sales of all products on the first page of sales results much more realistic to go for Can t afford to sell that many at a steep discount? Sell less! It still works, just not as effectively of course

21 PLANNING, CONTINUED Step 3 Determine your discount MUST be an awesome deal (80% or higher at a minimum) Do NOT make your product free!

22 PLANNING, CONTINUED Step 4 Create your promotions Create one promotion for EACH day of your blitz If you are running your blitz for 5 days, have 5 separate codes setup that each work for one 24 hour period Do NOT make your codes visible on your page! Use the Single Use Claim Codes Create an additional promotion that runs the entire time but keep it secret. This will be for people who lost their code or say it doesn t work

23 PLANNING, CONTINUED Promotion Examples: Promotion 1 Starts at midnight on Day 1 and ends at 11:59 pm of Day 1 Promotion 2 Starts at midnight on Day 2 and ends at 11:59 pm of Day 2 Promotion 3 Starts at midnight on Day 3 and ends at 11:59 pm of Day 3 Promotion 4 Starts at midnight on Day 4 and ends at 11:59 pm of Day 4 Etc.

24 PREPARATION By far the most time intensive part of the Blitz Blitzes succeed or fail based upon how well you prepare

25 PREPARATION, CONTINUED Step 1 Product Detail Page Optimization*** If your product listing is not optimized and does t convert well, no blitz nor any advertising in the world will make you successful and you will not be able to sustain your sales after Get good reviews Doesn t have to be a ton, but I shoot for 10 at a minimum Graphics need to be great Make sure your keywords are optimized Title/Bullets/Search Terms Since we are not specifically targeting any keywords during a traffic blitz, it s the keywords you are optimized for that will be the most affected by your blitz s results

26 PREPARATION, CONTINUED Product Optimization Continued Title needs to be compelling and not look keyword stuffed Product description try and use basic HTML (bold, breaks, paragraphs) Price needs to be competitive if you are charging more, why should someone want to pay more? Final Review: Ask someone you trust who does not know your product to compare your product listing to the top competitors and see if they would buy it over theirs

27 AMAZON HACKS & TIPS #1 PRODUCT PRICING OPTIMIZATION Create an FBM offer for your product and list it at MSRP price Not only will it make your FBA offer look really good, you will occasionally get a sale at that price Bonus: This can also help with price increases down the road since Amazon recently started letting you lose the buy box if you raise your FBA price too fast even if you are the ONLY seller!

28 AMAZON HACKS & TIPS #2 PRODUCT OFFER OPTIMIZATION Some of the most valuable space on your listing is in your Special Offers and Product Promotions section Create multiple tiered discounts This has multiple benefits: Increases the likelihood that the customer will buy more than one product Keeps the customer from seeing other products being advertised by Amazon These offers get indexed by Google and picked up by other deal sites

29 AMAZON HACKS & TIPS #3 PRODUCT OFFER OPTIMIZATION Create Buy One Get One (BOGO) Offers (maybe even multiple ones) This also has multiple benefits: This is a GREAT way to get your other, lesser selling products to start showing up in the Frequently Bought Together section Also keeps the customer away from other products listed below yours Contains that magical word Free that everyone loves!

30 AMAZON HACKS & TIPS #4 PRODUCT OFFER OPTIMIZATION Make use of the seldom used External Benefit offer This is FREE AD COPY For your product and company plus shows up in two places: Once on your product detail page in the Special Offers and Promotions Section Once on your checkout page at the very top Idea What if you had a Lifetime Warranty offer and at the top of your customer s checkout page it said: Important: Please be sure to register your product for full warranty details once it arrives. Details for registering are located in your instruction manual.

31 PREPARATION, CONTINUED Step 2 - Simple brand website WordPress Wix Web.com Use Fiverr.com if you don t know how to make one I prefer WordPress because it s easy and there are plugins you can use to help with your blitz

32 AMAZON HACKS & TIPS #5 WEBSITE TIP Even though you do NOT need it for a traffic blitz, there is absolutely NO reason not to have an ecommerce website setup for your business You can get a Shopify site setup for $30 on Fiverr.com Start by just copying your product listings from Amazon over, but once it s setup you want to optimize them. Remember: you do not have to follow Amazon s rules when you own the site! Once your site is setup, setup Google PLA (Product Listing Ads). The ROI for these ads is much better than normal Google paid search ads and they almost always pay for themselves. Is this the same site you use for your blitz? No.

33 PREPARATION, CONTINUED Step 3 - Get Brand Graphics & Video Intro/Outro Fiverr.com 99 Designs Look for graphic artists who can specifically create your graphics for your social media accounts (FB Cover Page, YouTube Banner, etc.) Step 4 - Start posting on your Social Media accounts Doesn t have to be anything too detailed. Just make your accounts look older than a few days!

34 PREPARATION, CONTINUED Step 5 - Gather Customers for Sales! This is the most critical, and often times most difficult, part of the blitz These are the customers that you are going to ask to purchase your product at an extreme discount How do you do this? Facebook is most popular method Create a compelling ad announcing your product launch and practically free product Target people in your niche and who buy online Send them to a landing page that captures their address and gives them their coupon code

35 AMAZON HACKS & TIPS #6 FACEBOOK TIPS Your image is the most important part of your Facebook Ad Your image gets their attention, your headline gets their click In the world of Amazon and their amazing retargeting campaigns, the click is everything Your image does not have to do anything with your product!

36 AMAZON HACKS & TIPS #6 FACEBOOK TIPS

37 PREPARATION, CONTINUED Other methods for gathering customers Current customer list If you don t have one but have been selling on Amazon, you can use an append service to build one (Manage by Stats, Melissa Data)* If you have any extra customers you captured during your Review gathering process, include them in the sale! Don t forget friends and family!

38 PREPARATION, CONTINUED Landing Page/Coupon Delivery WordPress users can use the Amz Coupon Server plugin There are several services that will now host the coupons for you and you can send traffic to them You can always do it manually if you are not tech savvy

39 PREPARATION, CONTINUED Step 6 Create and Submit Press Release Do these yourself or hire someone (Fiverr anyone?) You can link to your website, social media accounts, and video you created (if it s done but not critical) Try and schedule at least one to go out on the first day of your sales blitz. If you are feeling up to it, feel free to have a different one go out on each day of your sales blitz! Press Release Services: Webwire, PRBuzz, PRWeb, even Fiverr Don t stress about the content of these

40 EXECUTION THIS IS WHERE THE FUN STARTS! Start these steps the night before since some of the ads you will be setting up need to be approved Create Amazon Promotion Make it a good & realistic one such as 30% Let it show up on the product detail page This is NOT the promotion used for your blitz customers Google Adwords Use two to three word phrases related to your product. I like to use the broad modifier that includes the plus (+) sign in front of your keywords: +silicone +spatula Bid and budget low you don t want to capture all of the traffic...just some Send it straight to your product detail page using your most basic product link:

41 EXECUTION, CONTINUED Pinterest Create a new pin or use or use an existing one and create an ad going straight to your product detail page Bid lower than they suggest their suggestions are usually higher than they need to be Keep your campaign daily budget low - $5 - $10 max Pinterest Tip You can promote someone else s pin and send it to your listing!

42 EXECUTION, CONTINUED Facebook Easy method: create a post that you can promote using the Boost Post feature Target people who like your fan page plus their friends If that doesn t get you a big enough audience, just target your ideal customer: They are in your demographic market They shop online They have enough disposable income to buy products Tell them about your Amazon promotion you created for 20 30% off. This is a realistic sale and should get some traffic maybe even a sale

43 AMAZON HACKS & TIPS #7 FACEBOOK TIPS Don t know how to create really great images nor want to pay a lot for them? Facebook has you covered. They recently (and rather silently) launched Free Stock Images by Shutterstock that can be used for free in any Facebook Ad Pick out up to 6 images and let Facebook optimize. You ll be surprised which ones work the best!

44 AMAZON HACKS & TIPS #7 FACEBOOK TIPS

45 EXECUTION, CONTINUED Twitter If your account has been approved for ads, create a promoted tweet about the product launch and the same 20 30% off promotion If your account is not yet approved, still create a tweet about your promotion

46 EXECUTION, CONTINUED YouTube You actually use Google Adwords to run a YouTube Ad If you created any videos on Fiverr.com, promote that. If you don t have one, you can create one very easily within YouTube itself Very small budget - $5 max

47 EXECUTION, CONTINUED Instagram Since Instagram is now tied into Facebook, you can simply create an advertisement in Facebook It can just be some type of interesting photo related to your product that goes to your Amazon product

48 EXECUTION, CONTINUED Amazon Sponsored Ads Turn on auto campaigns for your product Amazon Marketing Services If you have an AMS account and your product has enough reviews, you can also setup a few low budget AMS ads and let them run during the blitz Don t have an AMS account? Check out Advanced Product Marketing on Amazon in the membership site (shameless plug)

49 AMAZON HACKS & TIPS #8 AMAZON MARKETING SERVICES The most successful AMS advertising campaigns are those that complete the Triumvirate for a specific search: 1. Your product shows up as the Headline Search ad 2. Your product shows up in the Sponsored Search results 3. Should the customer still pick a different product (blasphemy!), your product shows up on their product detail page as a Product Display ad You get three chances to get a customer, but you only pay for one click

50 AMAZON HACKS & TIPS #8 AMAZON MARKETING SERVICES

51 AMAZON HACKS & TIPS #8 AMAZON MARKETING SERVICES

52 EXECUTION, CONTINUED Last Step: Check your search and sales rankings You will want to keep track of them each day if you are not already doing so There are tools out there that can help with this, but a spreadsheet works totally fine

53 EXECUTION, LAUNCH DAY 1 Make sure that all of your ads are turned on and running Send out reminder to all of your customers who are scheduled to purchase your product today Watch your product s sales to make sure nothing is going wrong such as accidentally having one of your promotions show up on your product detail page

54 EXECUTION, LAUNCH DAY 2 Check and track rankings Send out reminder to all of your customers who are scheduled to purchase your product today

55 EXECUTION, LAUNCH DAYS 3, 4, ETC.. Repeat same steps! On Final Day, do NOT turn off all your ads (Google, FB, Pinterest, etc.). This can look unnatural to Amazon. Let them run for a few days then determine if you want to turn them off or begin optimizing them I suggest optimizing them!

56 PUTTING THE 2.0 IN THE TRAFFIC BLITZ TIPS #9, 10 & 11 Sometimes, even just a few sales scattered throughout the traffic blitz from friends or previous customers who search for your product before buying can really improve your search results Don t forget about going local! Facebook launched last year and they can be used for traffic blitzes! *Be sure to check with group admins first. If you choose to use review groups to get a few sales for your blitz, try choosing the option where a link to your product is not provided so they have to search for it

57 PUTTING THE 2.0 IN THE TRAFFIC BLITZ TIPS #12 & 13 Amazon has recently given us two awesome tools to extend and dramatically increase the results of your traffic blitz: Lightning Deals If you have the ability to schedule a lightning deal near the end of your traffic blitz, do it! This is great for relaunches of products and provides a boost of nearly full price sales Amazon Giveaways We now incorporate a giveaway into our traffic blitzes preferably the day after our Lightning Deal It s a burst of full price sales for up to 30 different customers!

58 AMAZON HACKS & TIPS #14 & 15 LIGHTNING DEALS Make your Lightning Deal price end in.00. Don t know why, but for us this seems to be working better than the typical.99 or.95 Always take the minimum number suggested for the deal even if you are tempted to try and sell more. Why? The faster is appears your deal is sold out, the faster it will sell out You can always increase the number available on the fly once you are sold out!

59 AMAZON HACKS & TIPS #16, 17, 18, 19 & 20 AMAZON GIVEAWAYS Make use of the Welcome, Winner & Loser messages to try and get your entrants to sign up to your VIP list If you are sending them to Twitter, be sure to tweet about signing up for your VIP club If you are sending them to a video, use that video to either sell them a product or get them to sign up for your VIP club Always announce/advertise your giveaway via Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest & Still not getting any takers? Tweet and mention #AmazonGiveaway in your tweet

60 AFRAID OF HIJACKERS? Afraid that Hijackers will get your discounted/giveaway products and resell them? Don t be! Amazon handles the giveaways and it would be nearly impossible for one or even just a few people to win them all Most hijackers are actually people who only have 1 or 2 of your product and will be gone shortly Every time someone resells your product that you already sold to them, your product gets credit for two sales (not just one) But, what if you really get hijacked?

61 AMAZON HACKS & TIPS #21 AMAZON HIJACKERS The only true form of hijacking that should concern us are counterfeiters Guess what: Amazon hates them too and once given the right info, via a test buy, they will get rid of them How do you take advantage of this situation? You get to buy your own product, so make it count! Before making your test buy, search for your product using your most sought after search term then make your buy from the hijacker. You ll get your money back, the hijacker will get kicked off, and you ll get a ranking boost for any search term you want!

62 WHAT DOES A SUCCESSFUL TRAFFIC BLITZ LOOK LIKE REAL RESULTS

63 WHAT DOES A SUCCESSFUL TRAFFIC BLITZ LOOK LIKE REAL RESULTS June 17 Small giveaway for reviews only

64 WHAT DOES A SUCCESSFUL TRAFFIC BLITZ LOOK LIKE REAL RESULTS June 21 Traffic Blitz Starts

65 WHAT DOES A SUCCESSFUL TRAFFIC BLITZ LOOK LIKE REAL RESULTS June 26 Traffic Blitz Ends after 5 days

66 WHAT DOES A SUCCESSFUL TRAFFIC BLITZ LOOK LIKE REAL RESULTS June 29 Another burst of sales post blitz

67 WHAT DOES A SUCCESSFUL TRAFFIC BLITZ LOOK LIKE REAL RESULTS - How many giveaways since June 29 th? Zero units in total were given away, 800 total sold. - Product now does over $12K month in sales with a 44% profit margin and very limited advertising

68 THINGS TO KEEP IN MIND If you are hesitant to spend a lot of money on a traffic blitz, try going small first. Sometimes a small traffic blitz has a better ROI than a large scale one If your traffic blitz doesn t get the results you want, you can always run one again at any point in time. Just be sure to check your product listing optimization and conversion rate. You must take into account seasonality, holidays and large sales events (i.e. doing a blitz during Prime Day is not a good idea)

69 WANT TO KNOW MORE? Check out my Amazon Traffic Blitz course on Amazing.com. Updates to include 2.0 topics coming soon! Want to protect your brand and drive more targeted traffic? Learn how to get access to Amazon Marketing Services in my Advanced Product Marketing Course. More Courses Coming Soon! Lightning Deals Amazon Giveaways Vendor University