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Last updated on June 5th, 2023
Written by Mohamed Aden
The beauty of marketing lies in the fact that there is not one solid way to do it. In the context of the Amazon marketplace, an Amazon marketing agency practices and applies multiple marketing strategies to get the right mix that works best for businesses. This article explains Amazon's marketing model and introduces some tools for marketing without actually marketing.
Amazon has definitely come a long way since it was founded in 1994. What started out as an online bookstore grew into the biggest e-commerce site in the world. The secret to this growth isn't much of a secret at all. Amazon simply just focused on building an excellent customer experience by providing the best customer service they could.
Flash forward to the 2000s, where e-commerce can be done on almost every possible site. Amazon, unsurprisingly, was able to retain its crown as a market leader -- even beating out Google’s search engine function. One of the driving forces to this success is Amazon's multi-segment, adaptive, and anticipatory positioning. This marketing strategy directs Amazon to target even the most likely to buy consumers. Amazon uses dynamic, segment-specific campaigns that try to tell people what they need before they realize that they need these products.
Another success factor is the use of a consistent mix of different marketing channels. Amazon has done almost every kind of marketing possible, from print advertisements, TV commercials, email blasts, to web advertisements. They also employed different attention-grabbing deals like loyalty cards, discount coupons, and seasonal sales.
Indeed, there is so much to learn about marketing from the e-commerce giant, Amazon. Currently, Amazon offers different marketing tools and strategies for sellers to tinker with. Below are some of the services that Amazon's business model uses and offers to help small businesses succeed.
Amazon has a set in-house marketing service in the form of Pay-per-Click (PPC) advertisements to aid sellers in climbing up the search ranking and getting the Buy Box. These tools allow you to strategically allocate your money by bidding on keywords that you think are the most relevant to your business. Below is a quick guide on Amazon’s marketing service:
Sponsored products allow you to promote your products on the search results page or the product details page. The product must be registered under the Amazon Brand Registry to be eligible for this service. Upon availing of Sponsored Products, sellers can choose if they want the advertisements to be manual or automated. As the term implies, manual targeted ads need to be regularly monitored by the seller. In contrast, automated targeted ads will let Amazon do the monitoring for you and real-time adjustments based on the advertisement's performance.
Sponsored brands, or formerly known as banner-type advertisements, allow you to feature your brand's logo with caption and three of your best products. This advertisement contains a link that will lead the customers to your brand's page. All products to be featured must be registered under the Amazon Brand Registry.
Sponsored displays allow you to market your products even when the customer has already left the Amazon website. Depending on the customer's activity in the marketplace, the buyers will see your chosen product in multiple outsider sites like Facebook, Netflix, Spotify, or even Google pages.
Aside from planning, designing, implementing, and monitoring advertisements, an Amazon marketing agency can also help you with more business operation functions. These services include brand protection and generating product reviews. Although these services might not be directly considered under marketing per se, a protected brand with positive reviews can also serve as a form of marketing. After all, these factors hugely influence the buyer's decision-making process.
As unfortunate as it may sound, hijackers and counterfeiters are all over the Amazon marketplace. These exploiters steal listings, photos, and copies and compete with your products at a much lower price. This behavior is harmful to all parties involved, including thriving sellers, clueless consumers, and the marketplace itself. To address this, Amazon developed the Amazon Brand Registry and some tools to make reporting and taking down fraud listings easier.
This tool offers an intensive scanning service of the Amazon marketplace to look for listings similar to yours to take them down at the soonest time possible. Project Zero also offers a serialization service that generates unique codes to put on your product's packaging as proof of authenticity.
Similar to Project Zero, Transparency also offers a serialization service. To avail of this service, sellers must be capable of producing unique product codes and attaching them to the product's packaging. On the other hand, customers can download an app to scan the unique product codes to know if it's authentic regardless of whether they got the product straight from Amazon or through physical stores.
Product reviews are an essential part of Amazon marketing. From the customer's point of view, product reviews help their decision-making process when it comes to whether they should purchase a product. Product reviews can also help buyers determine if they can trust the seller or not.
From the seller's point of view, product reviews can increase their visibility on the Amazon marketplace and help their products climb the search ranking organically.
Amazon Vine is a review program composed of top customer reviewers called "Voices" and is chosen based on their reviews' relevancy as determined by other buyers. Sellers who want the benefit of Amazon Vine must send their products before release to be reviewed by the Voices. This program was created to help buyers in their decision-making process when shopping, consistent with Amazon's commitment to customer service.
The Voices of Amazon Vine are not paid to write reviews; however, they do receive free products. The reviews' focus and purpose are to help future shoppers decide whether the products are good enough for them or not; this is why the Voices' reviews are honored and accepted, whether they are positive or negative, as long as it abides by the community guidelines.
The Early Reviewer Program is an incentive-based mechanism where buyers are encouraged to post an honest review of a product they purchased within a given amount of time. Unlike Amazon Vine, which solicits the help of Amazon's top reviewers, participants of the Early Reviewer Program are randomly selected and are open for everyone, as long as they don't have a record of a dishonest review.
Because Amazon is after honest reviews, the incentive that the buyers will receive will not be dependent on whether the buyer gave a positive or negative review. The incentives can come in the form of small tokens like $3 gift cards. This tool is helpful for newly launched brands or products. Sellers may choose the products to be subject to the Early Review Program, but they are prohibited from influencing the customer's review.
An Amazon marketing agency can help guide sellers all throughout the processes involved in running a business on Amazon. These processes range from launching products to handling customer service, among many others.
If you want to know more about how an Amazon marketing agency can assist you, send a message to [email protected] today to get you started.
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