Why Does the Seller Need to Attract External Traffic?

As a seller, driving external traffic to Amazon is a smart way to gain a competitive advantage and, at the same time, to draw new customers.

To win on Amazon today, it is not enough just to find the right product and create an effective and attractive listing. Even if you have several positive reviews (that’s “must have” option, otherwise the product will be treated with apprehension and distrust), and the listing is already optimized, there may be much less sales. This is due to the product's low ranking in organic search results. Therefore, you just need to be able to properly attract additional traffic to the Amazon listing.

Plus, Amazon rewards those sellers (informally, of course) who bring buyers to the marketplace. And as the number of sales increases, the product's ranking in organic search results will also rise. And this, ultimately, will lead to an increase in sales on the platform itself without involving third-party channels.

Of course, all this is possible only with an optimized listing. Otherwise, attracting external traffic will only lead to loss of money. If you have already passed the optimization stage, you can safely start attracting outside traffic to Amazon. 

Here are some reasons why it is beneficial for you to attract external traffic to Amazon listing:

1. Victory over competitors;
2. Expanding brand influence and awareness;
3. Improving the position of the product in the Amazon market;
4. Sales growth;
5. The ability to collect emails for subsequent mailing (with the right approach);
6. Increasing the level of customer confidence in the brand.

A well-made technique of driving external traffic can draw sales, boost keyword rankings, get you a best seller ranking as well as help to develop long term relationships with clients. 

Do I Need to Prepare a Listing?

Optimizing your listing for organic sales must be the first thing to do. Pay close attention to the title, bullet points, description, photo, choose the right keywords.  Otherwise, even if you attract additional external traffic, customers will not buy the product.

If you bring potential buyers to the listing with an incomplete description or low-quality photos, they will simply refuse to buy the product. And this will negatively affect the work of Amazon A9 algorithm. The more buyers come to the listing due to external traffic, but do not buy the product, the worse your results will be in the end. After all, Amazon will consider your product listing to be irrelevant and may downgrade your organic search rankings.

Pros of the External Traffic

There are lots of benefits of attracting external traffic such as: 

• Access to more future clients. By using channels outside of Amazon to get traffic to your product listing, you are widening your network of potential clients. 
• An edge over competitors. Amazon selling is becoming more competitive at this point. By drawing external traffic, you gain an edge over your competitors. There is no need competing with other kinds of products on Amazon Search Engine Results. You send traffic directly to your listing. 
• Building relationships between brand and customers. If you build the right marketing strategy, you can make customers more loyal to you as a seller and to your brand.
• Building an email list to send promo, keep in touch with customers. By attracting traffic not directly to the listing, but using a landing page, you reduce the number of non-targeted visitors. Plus, it's a great opportunity to build a baseline for creating your mailing list to tell buyers about new products, etc.

Options

What are the sources of external traffic there and which ones are right for you? It is difficult to determine at first. You should explore each option and then use testing to find the sources that give you the best results. Don't forget to evaluate Amazon traffic stats as well to get a complete picture of what's going on

  Social Media. If you want to increase traffic to the listing, use social media platforms. You can use both Paid Advertising to attract specific audience, and create thematic content with links to specific products. Another option you need to keep in mind is the ability to create groups, business pages of a company or brand, from where you can also attract external traffic to the listing. You can use Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, YouTube, Reddit for this.

Another benefit of using social media is the ability to collect contact information from potential buyers. If you receive emails of such people, it will be much easier to nudge them to buy the product or turn them into loyal brand supporters using a well-structured email campaign.

You must remember that it is not always beneficial to attract people directly to the listing. This is due to the fact that some of them are so-called non-target buyers who may not be really interested in buying goods at the moment. And if there will be a lot of such people, it will damage the rating of the product. But we'll talk about this more specifically a little later.

  Affiliate/Influencer Marketing. Influencers in your market is one of the most efficient ways to reach the target audience. This type of marketing integrates content and social media to drive brands or product messages to desired clients. However, it is worthwhile. Create a list of the influencers, be it Instagrammers, bloggers, or Youtubers in your niche and reach to them and make a deal to share your product with their followers and subscribers. 

But this method also has disadvantages. One of them is the difficulty of choosing a blogger. You don't just need to find someone who is an authority in your niche, but also has live targeted followers. It is not always important to look for the person who has the maximum number of followers in the account. You need to be able to analyze his audience in order to understand how effective it will be to buy advertising from him.

  Google Ads (and Other Search Network Ads Like Bing, Yahoo). Google Ads and other search systems ads like Yahoo and Bing make Amazon products more visible to those looking online for particular products. Search systems provide Amazon sellers with a remarkable chance to increase their presence outside Amazon. You can target Ads to those looking for a specific product, and so attract buyers to the listing.

Another strategy is to drive traffic not directly to the Amazon listing, but to the landing page or website of the company. With this approach, you not only increase product sales, but you can also build a customer base. Website analytics systems will help you with this. You can also ask visitors to leave their email in exchange for a coupon or promotional code and form a customer base. In the future, it can be used for upselling or for retargeting, if for some reason the buyer did not make an order for the first time.

  Email Marketing. This might look like an old-fashioned technique, but email blasts can be a dependable traffic source. An email campaign can get you superior traffic, and at the same time helps you to develop a long-term relationship with the clients. 

Amazon does not provide user emails, realizing that this can lead to a churn of customers from the marketplace directly to sellers. With this in mind, email marketing should not be neglected as a means of driving external traffic to a listing. If you have your own customer base, use it to suggest products to your customers that might interest them. Email marketing can also increase your overall bottom line by upselling if your product line has items that can be combined with the main product and add value to the customer. Discounts, promotions, announcements of new products - you can use all this effectively driving external traffic to Amazon listing.

Using email marketing, you can build relationships with customers, increase their engagement and interest in your products, and strengthen brand confidence. An additional bonus is the diversification of sales channels. Even if for some reasons you don't  want or can't  longer sell on Amazon, you will have your own customer base. And starting a business again will be much easier.

  Blog. Getting users to go to your landing page is just one step of the massive battle. A possible buyer can leave with no converting for various reasons, second thoughts, lack of funds, and distraction. There's no efficient way of preventing users from leaving your site, but you can utilize a blog. Through blogging, they are able to know your products well.

A blog is an opportunity to show your expertise in many issues related to the correct choice of products, their features and varieties. If you create relevant content, people will want to come back to your blog again. And you can use content to convince them to buy a product, thereby attracting an already interested audience directly to the Amazon listing.

The second option is to make guest posts on influencer blogs or topic resources. An influencer's blog post with a link to your product on Amazon is also a good option. A loyal audience that trusts him is much more likely to purchase a product.

  Deals Site. By placing coupons and promotional codes for your products on special sites, you can also drive additional traffic to the listing. It is important to choose resources with a good reputation, where people interested in buying come. Therefore, the probability of a purchase is higher. People love to buy products with discounts, so this also increases the likelihood that the customer will still use the received coupon and checkout on Amazon.

Each time you launch a product, you can giveaway promo codes to make your Amazon Listing Advertising more effective.

External traffic sources may not work equally well for different products. It will take a little time to test their effectiveness and choose the best options for each particular product.

Traffic Management

No doubt, driving traffic can be advantageous for the Amazon store. On the other hand, if you do not do it in the best way possible, you will miss these benefits and affect your rankings. So, when it comes to traffic management, there are two choices available. You can direct customers to the listing on Amazon or first to the landing page and then to Amazon's listing.

It may seem to you that the fewer steps a potential buyer goes through before placing a purchase, the more likely he will complete the deal. On the one hand, this is correct. Marketing research shows that the fewer clicks a person makes before hitting the landing page and the less he fills out various fields and forms, the higher the conversion. But in the case of a listing on Amazon, it may not be right.

Why Is It Dangerous to Direct External Traffic Directly to Amazon Listing?

It doesn't matter if it is Google Ads, Social Media Ads, Blogs, or Influencer marketing; a lot of people make a mistake when driving external traffic directly to Amazon listings. There are two risks of doing so, such as:

1. Going straight for sale may sacrifice your long-term relationship with the customer.
2. Off-Amazon traffic has a lower probability to convert into internal Amazon traffic.

In order to make a purchase, people usually consider all possible options. And if they are not yet ready to place an order, when coming to the listing, clients will look at the product and simply leave. This will negatively affect the ranking of the product and may affect the ranking in organic search results.

The second point is the impossibility of building a relationship between the brand and the customer. If you send people directly to the listing, you lose the opportunity to attract their attention further. After making a one-time purchase, they leave and may not come back to you again. This is not as bad for the product and for the seller as the loss of rating, but think about it. If this can be avoided, is it worth the risk?

How to Use a Landing Page to Drive Traffic to an Amazon Listing

To take advantage of this opportunity, create a dedicated page to which you will redirect potential buyers. This page or landing can be used when you are referring people from different sources: blog, social media Ads, Google Ads, etc.

In general, the scheme looks like this. You create an Ad with a link. But this link does not lead directly to the Amazon listing, but to the landing page. When the user goes to this mini-site, offer them in exchange for contact information (for example, an email), a discount on the product, or some useful information (a book with recipes or a checklist for preparing your house for the holiday season to protect it from burglary, if you sell alarm).

Such a strategy will solve several problems at once:

1. Only people who are really interested in buying will go to the Amazon listing (otherwise why they will leave their emails if they just want to look at the product).
2. You will collect an email's base and can later use it for your marketing purposes.
3. You will collect a base for retargeting if the site has traffic monitoring and analytics systems installed (this is not difficult).

When visitors leave their contacts, you can redirect them to the Amazon listing. Don't forget to give the discount you promised (or some other bonus). Doing so will greatly increase the likelihood of making a purchase, which is ultimately your goal.

Conclusions

Regardless of the traffic source you utilize, driving it will help sellers to build a brand and edge over others. Driving external traffic to Amazon listing is a very useful and effective technique to improve rankings, boost sales, and gain lots of clients. 

Keep in mind that only testing different options will help you to find the most effective strategy. Therefore, do not expect an instant increase in orders and be prepared for the fact that it will take time to figure out which suits you best. But in the end, you’ll still win, because many of the sellers still don’t use this opportunity to grow their business on Amazon. This means that you’ll have an advantage over them.