Amazon Launch List 2022
Launching a successful product on Amazon is a process plain and simple. Research, evaluation, discovery, strategic planning, testing, optimizing and adjusting to provide the foundation and the answers necessary to launch successfully.
A successful launch entails much more than Amazon itself and varies by product and category. A thorough launch takes about two months with the live launch being the culminating event and result of all of the work up until that point.
Put the time in before launch, shorten the learning curve and ensure sales, conversions and ranking improvements begin right out of the gate. Use this guide to create a better foundation for your products. Review existing products to give them the needed boost in quality. Or use it as a reference point. It will be kept current.
How To Dominate With An Amazon Product Launch List 2022 is part of a series of posts about Dominate Amazon Products. This post is a walk-through of how to successfully launch on Amazon without the gimmicks.
Many websites and Amazon "experts" over-complicate matters by focusing on vague and ineffective tools. Without a thorough understanding of the other distinct parts of the process, tools in general are misleading. Using tools as part of the process is beneficial. However, many sellers see the tool and the popular service of the month as the quick answer to success when they are not.
Any launch list focusing primarily of promos, giveaways, paid reviews without an in-depth strategy list of other must-haves is a recipe for disaster. Google Amazon launch list and you get varying results from pathetically simple to over complicated. The steps and processes outlined below should be approached methodically. If it is overwhelming to you, I suggest you focus on one area at a time.
When I got into e-commerce back in the late 90's, I already had a fair amount of successful business launch experience in a variety of areas. Any new seller with a business background starts in e-commerce with a distinct advantage over the new seller with no background. Although, they must also resist the lure of getting rich quick shortcuts and recognize that sustained success depends on a big picture, long-range approach.
If you only focus on specific parts of this process, like competitive research along the customer journey map and how to rank on Amazon, it will give you the best clarity of direction, data to get there and opportunity to convert. Set yourself up for success by mastering what you can instead on relying on services and the effort of people you do not know.
There are expert services out there, but if you have no idea on the details of what needs to be done, then you have no basis from which to choose a service.
Product Launch Process
The remainder of this guide will layout a process modeled after traditional business, and product launch formulas practiced for decades before the internet but adjusted to apply to e-commerce.
Each of the steps below will eventually be linked to and broken out into a detailed step by step guides including process sheets and videos. They will be periodically updated and kept current.
What you will not find below are strategies that will put you at risk of violating Amazon TOS or suspension. Take a moment to consider the specificity of Amazons' TOS. It is so specific and to the point detailed, that it always leaves room for other methods wide open and unregulated.
Product Sourcing
There are many different reasons for picking specific products to sell, all with justification and merit for the most part. No one can tell you what works for you, but a standard business fundamental is you have to set your personal opinions aside.
Just because you think fuzzy dice hanging from the rear-view mirror are cool does not mean anyone else will.
If you are new to this, I recommend that you choose products in a niche that you are already passionate about. There will be a lot of work ahead, and it makes those times much easier when you chose a category you are interested in.
Keep in mind that if you are directed to source through a specific site and niche, so are all of the other students including prior and future. Success comes much quicker when you can be unique and not one of the hundreds of sellers using the same process to procure essentially the same products. Look at the businesses nearby and in your region. Think outside of the Amazon box.
Competitive Research
The essential step starts two months before going live with a deep dive into the listings of the top competing product listings. The effort put into this affects every other step to come and the success of your product. This is not a few hour process. If it is, you are only creating additional work and lengthening the learning curve.
Using your primary keyword phrase, identify the top 10 listings produced by searches performed from multiple device types., reverse engineering the listings revealing everything listed below and more. You should walk away with a thorough understanding of precisely what you need to do to compete at the top.
Profile the top sellers in multiple marketplaces. Reverse engineer the listings of the top 10 sellers for those top converting keyword phrases, revealing:
Keyword Phrase Strategy
Using the list of converting keywords that our competitive research revealed, we are then able to build those out into our main strategy. Remember this article is not about listing optimization, this is about our launch strategy. Our launch strategy for keywords begins by identifying the best converting keywords for a product.
We do not typically launch with PPC at the Amazon level because we normally launch multiple marketplaces at once and would use off-Amazon marketing. If we were only launching on Amazon and we already knew our best converting keywords to use, we would create a long tail strategy as outlined below from which we would base our PPC.
We build out an enormous detailed, long tail PPC campaign, exact match, one or two penny bids. Contrary to popular belief 95% of all sellers have no business dumping a ton of $$ into bidding on 1 and 2-word kw phrases because you cannot compete against big businesses with bottomless budgets.
Outside of Amazon, it is widely known that the money and savings are in the long tail. Amazon itself does 57% of its sales from long tail search phrases. Long tail converts better, ranks faster, costs pennies but has low search volume so you need a ton of phrases.
Long Tail List Creation
For example, tennis rackets, go to scientificseller.com and use their free keyword tool that provides Amazon buyer search terms, let it run overnight. While it is running, read their FAQ and follow their process, export your list when finished so you can get it for free.
For over 500 different marketing and design tools, see our detailed resource Marketing and Design Tools for 2022.
Your goal is upwards of a thousand 3 to 7-word keyword phrases with each subgroup becoming its own ad group, exact match, bid no more than 2 cents per phrase.
Tennis rackets right now are avg. CPC of 70 cents with a vol. of 60k searches a month and a difficulty level of .98, next to impossible to rank for. Graphite men's tennis racket right now has zero bidders, 1 penny puts you first on every search and a difficulty of ZERO.
One conversion and you will rank naturally for this phrase. Seer Interactive recently did a study that showed 83% of the converting keyword phrases convert 1 time a year and account for 8.7% of the total PPC spend. Keep your margins in your pocket with long tail
Audience Identification
While doing your research, have your Buyer Persona Worksheet handy, filing in the details as they become clear. When you have a clear image of your buyer, an avatar. It becomes easier to tailor your message to their motivations.
Make a detailed list of the best thing about each listing that stands out to you, then try to improve and optimize this into your listing. It is human nature to find all of the bad things others do. The first exercise that we give to any client is to identify what their competitors do right. You have to be better for a competitive advantage.
Listing Optimization
Start working on your actual listings weeks out (the most important part). Your listing itself will do one of two things, close the sale or drive them away.
Optimize your listing to maximize the potential of the following KPI's::
- Search: To be discover-able for relevant search queries
- Conversions: Effectively communicating your message and converting visitors to buyers
Ensure that the listing addresses the solvable pain points and motivations of your target audience. Don't even consider posting photos that are any degree less useful than the top sellers. Each picture after the first should be specific to a product benefit/main selling point. People eat with their eyes, don't lose the battle before the plate is put in front of you. Half-assed photos produce dismal results. Your listing needs to a two-sided strategic approach.
Value Bomb
Amazon sellers live and die based on Amazon Search Engine results, commonly known as A9. To master selling on Amazon, you must fully understand the direction of the driving force behind all that is Amazon itself. Pay attention to posted mission and value statements as they identify what the algorithm is currently focused on.
The following is the current statement on Results and Ranking:
"One of A9's tenets is that relevance is in the eye of the customer and we strive to get the best results for our users. Once we determine which items are good matches to the customer’s query, our ranking algorithms score them to present the most relevant results to the user.
Our ranking algorithms automatically learn to combine multiple relevance features. Our catalog’s structured data provides us with many such relevance features and we learn from past search patterns and adapt to what is important to our customers."
"One of A9's tenets is that relevance is in the eye of the customer and we strive to get the best results for our users. Once we determine which items are good matches to the customer’s query, our ranking algorithms score them to present the most relevant results to the user.
Our ranking algorithms automatically learn to combine multiple relevance features. Our catalog’s structured data provides us with many such relevance features and we learn from past search patterns and adapt to what is important to our customers."
FBA Prep
If you sell your product via FBA, make sure that it is sent in, properly received and accounted for etc....
Social Marketing
It is also the time to get yourself involved in relevant groups and with relevant influencers, contributing to their groups and causes. You need not sell, get your name out there, then leverage those relationships at launch time to drive initial traffic and reviews which results in Amazon ranking improvement.
Marketing Materials For Backlinks
During this time you should also e focusing on creating marketing collateral such as product inserts, video instructions, branded pdfs and other things you can leverage down the road to your advantage,
PPC
If you are determined to do PPC, be smart about it and don't throw away money. Get the majority of your initial know phrases from the competition, build them out to long-tail phrases and bid low. If you are also going to run an auto campaign, set it and forget it never wins any race.
List Building - Funnels - Driving Traffic
Now is the time to get your ducks in a row to drive off Amazon traffic into a funnel, so the traffic that comes out the other end and goes to Amazon is high converting traffic. The more important aspect of this part is building your list via optin. This list will be your future! More on this to follow.
Launch Day
This will get you to launch day. Launch day is the day that you pull out all stops, unleash your mailing list, trigger your communication lines to your groups, influencers, media.. whatever.
Post Launch
I've left out a ton of small details, but this cuts out the two-month learning curve post-launch that most of you never make it past Once launched, now you need to get your arse in gear developing off amazon links, social links, traffic streams, etc... It is the best way to increase long-term success and solid footing at the head of the category.
