How to Increase Sales on Amazon: The Complete Guide for 2022
For most sellers, it's hard to increase their sales on Amazon.
They don't understand that there's no magic tool to increase sales, have no clear strategy, or don't care about the quality of their Amazon product.
Moreover, they think they can grow their business without investing money.
So, if you want to know how to increase your sales on Amazon, you've come to the right place.
This post will show you the strategies to increase your sales on Amazon and grow your business in the long run.
Here are the contents of this guide:
- How Amazon's Algorithm Works
- How to Set the Foundations
- Top Strategies to Optimize Your Product Listing
- The Best Ways to Increase Sales on Amazon
Let's dive right in.
How Amazon's Algorithm Works
To better understand how you can increase sales on Amazon, you need to know how Amazon's algorithm works. Like Google, Amazon considers many criteria to determine which product ranks on the top.
However, Amazon's search engine is different from Google. Google wants to provide the most relevant information while Amazon's algorithm aims to make as many sales as possible.
Amazon algorithm first checks whether a product is 100% relevant to a given search term. If there are ten equally relevant products, they mainly take the following criteria into account to determine product rankings:
- Click-Through-Rate (CTR): Relation of clicks on a listing compared to impressions
- Conversion-Rate (CR): Relation of buyers to visitors
- Customer Reviews
Here's an overview of the process:
Also noteworthy is that your product listing will only get indexed for a keyword if you include that particular keyword into your listing.
If you don't mention a keyword in your product listing, your product won't get indexed for it.
So, first of all, make sure that your listing is 100% optimized for relevant keywords.
Here's how to do that:
1. Sign up for a free Helium 10 account.
2. Head over to Index Checker:
3. Type in your ASIN and the keywords you want to check.
4. Check if your product is indexed.
You likely discover some keywords for which Amazon doesn't index your product. The tool then shows you how to get indexed. Super useful.
You should also use Helium 10 Cerebro to discover all keywords that your competitors are ranking for.
If your product ranks on the 4th or 5th page of Amazon search results, Amazon doesn't take criteria into account, such as Click-Through-Rate (CTR) or Conversion-Rate (CR), because either way, no one sees your product.
If your Amazon product has such a bad ranking, you've to make more sales to rank higher.
If you're interested in learning how to do that, read on. We'll share some strategies with you on how to make more sales and increase your ranking.
The Flywheel Effect
Perhaps you've heard of the flywheel effect? It's uber important that you understand what it is.
The flywheel effect indicates that top-ranking products automatically generate more and more sales. In comparison, this doesn't work for low-ranking products.
Customers only take a look at the first search result page. They rarely give the second page a chance.
Top-ranking products benefit from the flywheel effect, while low-ranking products suffer from it.
How to Set the Foundations
Whenever you want to make more product sales on Amazon or any other ecommerce channel, make sure to set the foundations right.
Here are the best tips to set the foundations right and increase your sales on Amazon:
Develop a High-Quality Product
As with any ecommerce business, it's essential to develop a high-quality product with a clear USP.
If your product sucks, you'll get many negative customer reviews. Accordingly, you'll lose your ranking and nearly all your customers.
On the other hand, if you sell a great product, it'll be easier for you to outperform your competitors and make more sales in the long run.
To develop a better Amazon product than your competitors are selling, you've to understand the kano-model. It's a marketing model describing how to achieve 100% customer satisfaction.
It consists of 5 attributes:
Must-be-Attributes
Basic features that customers only become aware of when they're not fulfilled. If you can't provide these features, your customers won't be satisfied.
However, if you provide them, they either will not feel much satisfaction.
One-Dimensional-Quality-Attributes
These are known by customers. They eliminate dissatisfaction or build satisfaction.
Attractive-Quality-Attributes
When achieved, these attributes provide satisfaction but do not cause dissatisfaction when not.
Indifferent-Quality-Attributes
Indifferent-Quality-Attributes are irrelevant. Customers don't care if they're fulfilled or not.
Reverse-Quality-Attributes
Reverse-Quality-Attributes lead to dissatisfaction if present, but to customer satisfaction if absent.
Here's also a graph:
You need to focus on building Must-Be-Attributes, One-Dimensional-Quality-Attributes, and Attractive-Quality-Attributes.
While Must-be-Attributes and One-dimensional-Quality-Attributes are less problematic, it is challenging to create Attractive-Quality-Attributes.
Fortunately, you usually don't have to create a completely new product. You can easily analyze what customers criticize about other Amazon products in your niche and fix these problems with your product.
Here's a great strategy to find bad product characteristics:
1. Sign up for a free Helium 10 account
2. Download Helium 10's Chrome Extension here
3. Head over to Amazon and choose one of your competitors' products
4. Start Review Downloader
4. Set up Only Verified Purchase and only choose reviews with a three-star rating or less
5. Go through all these reviews, find all problems and fix them with your product
You can also use these insights for further optimization, e. g. for listing creation.
Get a Professional Seller Account
If you want to become an Amazon Seller, you can choose between types of seller accounts:
Individual Seller Account and Professional Seller Account.
If you choose the Individual Seller Account, you've to pay a fee of $0,99 per sale.
On the other hand, you don't have to pay a monthly flat fee of $39,99.
So, if you make less than 40 sales per month, the Individual Seller Account may be suited for you.
However, if you want to build a serious Amazon FBA business, make sure to use Amazon's Professional Seller Account.
Make Sure to Use FBA
FBA means Fulfillment by Amazon. Amazon does all the hard work for you with this service, such as storage, shipping, and managing returns.
The main advantage of Amazon FBA is that you can focus on marketing activities like Amazon advertising or SEO to drive sales.
Also, Amazon prefers FBA products – so you can get a higher SEO ranking and win the Buy Box more often.
However, keep in mind that you need to pay more Amazon fees with FBA.
It's uber important to check how many fees you have to pay and your final profit margin. You can do this with Helium 10's Profitability Calculator:
1. Sign up for a free Helium 10 account
2. Download Helium 10's Chrome Extension here
3. Head over to Amazon and choose a product
4. Check Profitability
Moreover, if you use Amazon FBA, your products will be automatically eligible for Amazon Prime.
If you really want to drive sales on Amazon, you need to sell your product via Amazon Prime.
Prime members spend an average of $1,400 per year on the Amazon marketplace, while non-Prime members only spend an average of $700 per year.
Here's an infographic with great Amazon Prime statistics:
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Top Strategies to Optimize Your Amazon Listing
If you want to increase sales on Amazon, make sure to optimize your Amazon listing.
The most important elements of your Amazon listing are the product title, product images, product description, and bullet points.
By optimizing your product listing, your CTR and CR will increase, and you will make more sales and improve your Amazon SEO.
I'm going to share a few advanced listing optimization strategies with you in this section.
First of all, you need to do extensive keyword research:
Keyword Research
Find Keywords Based on a Seed-Keyword
1. Sign up for a free Helium 10 account
3. Type in a seed-keyword
4. Get hundreds of keyword suggestions
You can read this article here to learn exactly how Helium 10 Magnet can help you find great keywords.
Find Keywords That Your Competitors Are Ranking For
1. Sign up for a free Helium 10 account
3. Type in one of your competitor's ASIN
4. See for what keywords your competitors are ranking for
You can read this article here to learn exactly how to find your competitor's keywords.
Optimize Your Title
Besides the images, the product title is the first thing potential customers see when checking out your product.
First of all, make sure that you make your product title descriptive. Tell potential customers what they will get when they click on your listing and include relevant information.
To know this information, you have to study your niche.
A great way to do this is to study all reviews of your competitors (like mentioned above):
1. Sign up for a free Helium 10 account
2. Download Helium 10's Chrome Extension here
3. Head over to Amazon and choose a product
4. Start Review Downloader
5. Sort and export thousands of reviews to gain valuable customer insights, understand pain points, and identify product problems.
You can also use these insights for further optimization, e. g. for product development, listing creation, and so on.
Optimize Your Bullet Points
Here're some advanced strategies for optimizing your bullet points:
- Focus on the value proposition
- Use all bullet points
- Use keywords within your bullets
- Improve your copywriting skills
- Include a multiple items discount bonus in your bullets
You must focus on the value proposition instead of technical details.
Customers want to hear their benefits. They "don't" care about technical details.
However, many sellers flood customers with technical details within their bullet points.
A great value proposition can give your business a massive advantage over your competitors.
According to Marketingexperiments, only 2.2 % of companies have a useful value proposition.
Optimize Your Product Description
A detailed product description helps you make more sales.
In a normal retail store, people usually can ask an employee if they have a question. On Amazon, they can't ask someone. If they don't find the information they're looking for, they will click the "x"–button.
Therefore, you should answer all questions your target audience may have on your product page.
And here's how to get the necessary information:
- Check all Q&A of your competitors
- Check all Reviews with Helium 10 Review Downloader (like mentioned above)
Optimize Product Images
75% of Online Shoppers rely on product photos when deciding on a potential purchase.
Furthermore, 22% of returns occur because the product looks different in person.
Also, here's an infographic showing the number of product images needed when shopping online by the customer's age.
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So if you have good product images, you'll not only make more sales, but you'll also get fewer returns.
But how should a great product image look?
When people want to buy a product, they look for value and quality.
So, first of all, make sure that your images are of high quality. Then, focus on these two aspects:
1. Focus on Value
When selecting product images, you should focus on benefits and not just highlight the features.
Make sure that you're not only uploading photos that show your product. Be creative and include some images that show how to use your product and what the benefits are.
2. Make dominant pictures
Do you know why Apple is so successful?
Here's what they do:
- They focus on benefits (Instead of 1GB storage, they say: 1.000 songs in your pocket)
- They make dominant product photos
- Their products have a great design
Make sure to implement these strategies to optimize your Amazon listing.
Finally, show your product from different angles and follow the Amazon Guidelines.
The Best Ways to Increase Sales on Amazon
Amazon Advertising
The most efficient way to increase your Amazon sales is to run Amazon PPC campaigns. The reason for this is pretty easy: You can get your product in front of potential customers who want to buy it.
In comparison, when you run Facebook Ads, you "push" people to buy your product. They scroll down the feed and see your push-ad, but they don't look for it by their own will.
If you run ads on Amazon, you have to pay per click (CPC). The average CPC is $0.97, while the average conversion rate is 9.47%.
This means that if 100 people click on your ad, 9.47 will buy your product. With a net profit of $15 per unit and 100 klicks on your ad, that would be a total cost of $97 for ads and a total profit of $142,05.
Even if you should achieve better results with your Amazon Advertising campaign, the main goal is improving your ranking on the search results page.
Your costs could be higher or lower. Here's a great infographic created by Adbadger showing average Amazon PPC values:
If you use Helium 10 Magnet or Helium 10 Cerebro to find great keywords, you can see how many sponsored ASINs there are for each keyword:
This is super helpful.
What you've to do is to choose relevant keywords with low competition to get the most out of your campaign.
Promotion Outside Amazon
You should not only promote your product on Amazon. Here're three effective ways to promote your product outside Amazon:
Sell Your Product to Friends
Why don't you talk to your friends and family and tell them that you're selling products on Amazon?
Sure, you should not push them to buy from you, but if they need a product that you actually sell on Amazon, they should buy yours.
Keep in mind that this isn't a long-term strategy.
However, it'll be super helpful if you want to make sales right after the launch.
If you leverage all your contacts, you should make some additional sales.
Establish a Social Media Presence
You can establish a social media presence with a nice following and consistently run ads to reach new customers.
In the long run, it will pay off, and you're going to make passive sales because you'll also get more organic visitors from social media.
In my experience, Facebook and Instagram are great channels to establish a social media presence.
To get your first followers, there's a simple strategy you can use. You have to run a campaign to get more followers, but you should not target people in an area with a high CPC.
Instead, you should target people in areas with a very low CPC.
These are mostly areas of the Middle East like Nepal, India, Bangladesh, or Pakistan. This probably sounds strange at first, but many marketing professionals use this strategy for a new page.
You'll get real followers, and that will boost the algorithm.
Remember that this is only a strategy to get your first real followers to build social proof.
If you run ads for your product, you should target people likely to buy your stuff.
Start with Content Marketing
Promoting your Amazon products through blog posts is an effective strategy to increase sales on Amazon.
It would be best if you create articles on a topic related to your product to influence the purchasing decisions of potential customers.
Then you have to place relevant links within your articles to drive traffic to your product listing.
But keep in mind that content marketing will cost you much time and will only pay off in the long run.
However, if you have established a blog with 30,000 visitors per month, you can also promote your products on this blog for future product launches.
I recommend checking out this article about the best blogging platforms to get started.
Get Customer Reviews
This is probably the most important thing if you want to increase your sales on Amazon in the long run.
Here's an infographic showing the customer satisfaction score of Amazon from 2000 to 2019.
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One thing's for sure: If you create Attractive-Quality-Attributes, your customers will be ten times more likely to leave positive feedback.
And if you continuously try to get more positive reviews, you will make even more sales in the long run.
The problem is that you first have to sell lots of products to get your first reviews.
So – first of all – make sure that you sell your product continuously.
Then, I highly recommend using Helium 10 Follow Up to get more positive reviews.
Helium 10 Follow Up is an email automation tool, and I highly recommend checking it out because you can get 50.000 emails for free here.
Also, make sure to do the following:
- Leave a message through packing slips
- Respond to buyers requests
- Solve issues
Repricing
It is not a good idea to reprice manually. However, there are many tools that automatically reprice your products, so that you can win the buy box more often.
Considering that 80% of Amazon sales go through the buy box, this could be a great opportunity to increase your Amazon sales immediately.
Influencer Marketing
You can also use Influencer Marketing to increase your Amazon sales.
Here are the most important things to keep in mind when using Influencer Marketing:
- Don't reach out to influencers with a super huge following
- Find influencers who engage with the right people
- Find influencers with an engagement rate of at least 5% on Instagram. Engagement rate means that if an influencer has 100.000 followers, the influencer should at least have 5.000 likes for one post on average
- Find influencers with an engagement rate of at least 15% on YouTube
- Avoid fake influencers
To connect with them, you've to reach out to them. Here're two guides that deal with influencer outreach:
- The Ultimate Guide to Speed Up Your Influencer Outreach Campaign
- A Step by Step Guide to Influencer Outreach
Advanced Strategies
Stay Ahead of Your Competition
Once you climbed to position #1, you've to maintain your ranking.
If you sell a high-quality product and get lots of positive reviews, that shouldn't be a big problem.
However, I highly recommend going one step further and using Helium 10 Alerts to protect your business against hijackers or sellers who sell counterfeit products.
Amazon Brand Registry
By legally registering your brand, you reduce the risk that someone sells counterfeit products under your brand name.
Here's an article on how to sign up for Amazon Brand Registry.
Go Global
The easiest way to expand your Amazon business is to go global. If you have enough budget to enter other marketplaces and quickly establish your product on these markets, this could be an excellent opportunity for you.
Create a Storefront
If you want to create a storefront, you've to register your brand via Brand Registry.
You can then promote your store via Google Ads, Facebook Ads, or other channels.
What's great is that you can track your external traffic sources via Custom Source Tags.
Here's a great guide on how to create an Amazon storefront.
Promotion to an Existing Audience
If you already have an audience, you can promote your products to this audience.
You can do this via email, posting on social channels like Facebook or Instagram, or via your blog.
If you don't have an existing audience, you should start building your audience as soon as possible.
Follow the Rules
If Amazon suspends your Amazon seller account, you can't sell anything on Amazon.
So make sure that you follow all Amazon Guidelines to be on the safe side.
Here's a detailed article about Amazon Guidelines.
Inventory Management
It will help if you manage your inventory correctly. You will lose valuable rankings and sales if you go out of stock.
Imagine that you've worked hard for months to improve your ranking but then lose everything because you're out of stock.
Use Helium 10 to manage your Amazon inventory to protect yourself from this worst-case scenario.
Conclusion
To summarize what you've learned, here're the most important things:
- The flywheel effect makes it hard for new products to rank on the top
- Amazon takes relevance, click-through-rate, conversion rate, and feedback into account to determine a product's ranking
- A high-quality product is the foundation for long-term success
- To develop a good product, you need to understand the kano-model
- It would be best if you focus on benefits when promoting your product
- Most advertising strategies require budget and time
- It's effective to run Amazon PPC campaigns
- In the long run, you should build other advertising channels like a blog or a social media presence
- It would be best if you focused on getting feedback
- If you want to grow further, you should expand your business to new marketplaces
- Manage your inventory properly
- Stick to the Amazon rules
I hope this article helped you to know how to increase your sales on Amazon and make more money in the long run.
Let me know your favorite strategy and whether I missed anything important.
