We helped this brand get the #1 New Release badge in month 1 and reach $35,000/mo in 3 months. (Case study)

We helped this brand go from middle of page 1 to ranked #3 on page 1 their main keyword, and 10X'd their sales from $6,000/mo to $60,000/mo in just 9 months.

And helped this brand 2x sales in 3 months, while maintaining ACOS. (Case study)

As an Amazon expert for 10+ years, I've worked with tons of pets brands, and I've seen what works and what doesn't.

The first step is making sure you have a fully optimized listing - creative wise and keyword SEO wize.

Then, get your initial batch of reviews - fast.

Be sure to start at a discounted price to build traction.

Blast Sponsored Ads as much as you can to get initial sales velocity.

You've created a great product! Now you need to SELL it.

If you want to rank in the top-10, make sure that you have a Million-Dollar Listing.

What is a Million-Dollar Listing? It consists of professional Branding, Photography, Videos, Copywriting & Graphic Design.

This is how I think about creative. Think of it as a physical store in the virtual mall of Amazon. You can also think of it as your secondary website.

So I always recommend investing as much as you can into your listing because it will get millions of eyeballs – and for every 1% boost in CVR, it will make you an extra $10,000 a month, or year, for example.

If you need creative help, my creative team amazingcreative.io specializes in designing high-converting Amazon pages.

If you don't have branding yet, make sure to get million-dollar branding! It's very important to make your brand look & feel premium. The better your branding, the better chances you'll have at longterm success on Amazon. There's a lot that goes into branding, so that's for another day.

Your photoshoot will be the bedrock of your brand, your Amazon pages, and your website – for years to come. So make sure you have a professional photo shoot done. If you need a recommendation, just ask me.

You already know that videos are extremely important in e-commerce. It's very true for Amazon. This is my Videos Framework for a Million Dollar Listing – I believe you should have 3 kinds of videos.

I think of this like your commercial. Put it as video #1 on your listing, and front & center on your A+ and Storefront.

Edit the best moments from all your UGC videos. This can be short.

A thorough explanation/demo/deepdive of the product. Just get someone to talk for 5-10 minutes all about the product! And I think the best person for this is… you! The owner. You know the product better than anyone on the planet. Do this: hit record on your phone and just talk about the product as if you were talking to your best friend!

Talk briefly about why you created it, why it's different than the leading brands out there, and get into all the details of why it's awesome, how you use it, tips & tricks, and anything else that you would say to a friend. This is what shoppers want to know! Filming this on your phone today and posting on your Amazon is the highest ROI thing you can do for your Amazon business right now.

This can also be a mini infomercial, unboxing, demo, how-to, comparison to leading brands. You can also do a podcast episode about your product! 😍

Get these 3 videos and your conversion rate will skyrocket.

Video ads are an absolutely crucial part of success on Amazon.

Do this: take your 3 videos from above and have an expert video edior cut them up and make several videos for testing as video ads. The name of the game is "test test test, keep what's best."

Have an Amazon expert to edit 5-10 video cuts to test as Amazon Video Ads. Just like Facebook/Instagram ads, it's all about capturing attention in the first few seconds - so make sure to test multiple intro variations. If you need a recommendation just ask.

E.g. an infomercial, unboxing, demo, how-to, comparison to leading brands, or just someone talking all about the product for 5-10 minutes. This is something you can flim with your phone right now that will be the highest ROI for your business.

If you have existing happy customers from your website or social media, invite them to post an honest and genuine video review on what they like about it versus similar products they’ve tried and why it is the most amazing thing ever and has changed their life.

Also invite people to leave long, multi paragraph ‘love letter’ text reviews. These can be amazing for conversion.

Example of a product with all 3 types of videos: Puro

Example of a simple 90-second "From the Owner" video that you can film & edit on your phone.

Having some UGC (User Generated Content) is important. There are many ways to go about getting it.

Ideas

Have people do blind comparison tests vs the leading brands.

How do I get UGC videos?

Billo is a popular UGC video platform, around $99 per video.

Social Cat is micro-influencer platform where you can get UGC videos in exchange for just a free product. But the platform is $99/mo.

When it comes to customer videos, what we're really after is genuine, heartfelt testimonial videos. You want to find people who have actually benefitted from your product. Just like any business, these are worth their weight in gold.

How do I get genuine tesimonial videos?

Basically, try to get ahold of really happy customers. If someone leaves a raving review, either on Amazon, socials, or your website, try to get in contact with them. Thank them and offer them a gift card or free product in exchange for filling out a survey. After they submit the survey, ask if they'd be interested in another gift to film a video testimonial where they go through their survey answers.

Below are survey quesions that you can ask happy customers.

Customize this to your liking and be sure to ask any specific questions that would make sense for your product. The idea here is to capture the essense of the before-after story of the customer.

Example of a genuine testimonial video:

If you have media feature videos, put them on Amazon!

Example of a Media Feature Video

What is your USP? “Unique Selling Position”. Amazon is a comparison platform. So don’t just explain the product.

Make sure you clearly show people why are you different, unique and better than the other options – this is your "USP Sales Pitch".

This is important because it actually helps shoppers make their buying decision!

You see, Amazon is a compaison platform by nature. When people shop, they are almost ALWAYS comparing several options! So that’s why my fifth key is USP-based messaging! This means, focus your creative & copywriting on your USPs’ – Unique Selling Positions. This means helping the shopper understand why you are UNIQUE & BETTER than the competition.

Do this:

In fact, I made some comparison chart templates that you can copy & edit in Canva, link below.

Make an infographic comparing to the top 2-3 leading brands, show why you’re amazing and they stink. For the gallery and A+.

Examples of good comparison charts:

Premium A+ Content is the best! It allows you to have premium modules such as videos. So make sure to unlock it, use it, and add videos (you can add up to 3 videos)!

Have 5 regular A+ content approvals in the last 12 months.

All you have to do is this: duplicate any regular A+ content 5 times and submit them for approval.

Make sure Brand Story us activated for all ASINs!

After doing these steps, check back and we've found it usually unlocks within 7-15 days. Usually it refreshes every Friday, but as always, Seller Central can be wonky.

Premium A+ content looks like this:

Make sure to have an Amazing matching storefront as well!

Storefront best practices

When you launch on Amazon, the first thing you need to do is get your initial batch of reviews. I've found that when we get 30 reviews in the first 30 days, it tends to be a good launch.

How do I get 30 reviews in the first 30 days?

We normally enroll 20-30 units per Parent ASIN. It’s limited to 30 max per Parent ASIN.

This can be done in Jungle Scout or Helium 10. It’s a no-brainer because it increases your review rate. If you are wondering which one to go with, most advanced sellers use Helium 10.

If you want more reviews, then a site you can use is fbareviews.com. It's like a third party version of Vine, where you give free products in exchange for reviews.

Should I ask friends to leave a review?

No. This is against TOS and not worth your time.

How many reviews should I shoot for?

Just worry about getting your first batch of 30 or so reviews in the first 30 days. From there, the big milestone is hitting 1000 reviews. Using Review Request Automation and an Insert Card can help get you there faster. Other than that, you'll get there when you get there.

This is what I call a "Home Run" – 1000 reviews with a 4.3+ rating. If you can hit that, you'll be in a great place.

When launching, you want to focus on pushing for RANK and SALES VELOCITY.

In general, the lower your price, the more units you'll sell! And thus, and the faster and higher you'll rank on page 1 – and the more likely you are to get a Hot New Release in [Your Subcategory] badge.

But exactly how much of a discount should you do?

Well, this is a question that requires thought and strategy. Every business and product has a different goals and financial situation, so you need to come up with a launch sale price that makes sense for that product's goals!

Here are sales price frameworks for launch phase.

This school of thought is to lower the price as we go on so we continually have the "Lowest price in 30 days" sale badge. We start off at the regular price without a discount while we enroll in Vine reviews (and optionally fbareviews). We keep it at regular price for the first 2 weeks – we should get a few sales via PPC. Then we implement a 10% off sale price which should get us a strikethrough price. Then after another 2 weeks, we increase the discount to 15% which should retain the sale badge. We do the same thing in another 2 weeks, lowering the price to 20% off. Optionally, you can keep lowering the price again to 25% off, 30% off and so on – this depends on your goals!

In this school of thought, we start at an aggressive sale price out of the gate on day 1, and raise the price every 2 weeks.

How much of a discount should I start with?

Rule of thumb: you will need to thing about and determind the lowest sale price that you are comfortable with.

$1.00 Cheaper Rule: This school of thought says that if you can beat your top selling direct competitor by $1.00 in price, then you will get a flood of sales from price shoppers (most shoppers).

Think about competing with the top 10

Look at the top 10 ranked products on page 1 for your main target keyword. Can you compete there, price-wise?

Make sure you A/B test prices

Over time, split out different prices and adjust based on your goals. Testing prices is a must on Amazon. If you haven't tested your prices, then you haven't even played the game of Amazon.

How low should I price?

You need to do the research and come up with a plan that works for your busienss goals. In general, the lower the price, the faster you'll rank.

How long should I stay on sale?

There's no way to tell until you test. In general, slowly raise the price by 10% every 2 weeks and monitor results. Your long term goal is to find the "sweet spot price" – a balance of volume and profitability that works for your business goals.

Reviews-based pricing approach

In this approach, you increase the discount price as your reviews increase. This corresponds with waiting to have 2-5 reviews until turning on PPC, and increasing the discount as soon as you have 30 reviews, because the assumption is that the CVR will be higher with 30 reviews, and thus having even more of a discount will lead to even more sales – a snowball effect.

Week by week approach

In this approach, you basically just monitor everything on a weekly basis and make an adjustment to the price based on what makes sense for your goals.

In general, at launch, we put in a $100/day budget to start testing & gathering data, then adjust twice a week. Depending on CPCs and how competitive your target keywords are, you will know to raise or lower it.

Test, test, test, keep what’s best.

In launch phase, Top of Search is where you want to be. To us, our KPI’s there are what matter.

What is a good TACOS?

Long-term, in profit optimzation phase, 20% is great and 10% is amazing.

In launch & rank phase, you want to keep TACOS as high as you can. Basically the more you spend, the more sales you’ll get, thus the faster and higher you’ll rank.

As a rule of thumb, many Amazon-savvy brands aim for the break-even point the first year. The first year is viewed as building REVIEWS and RANKING. Then in year 2-3+, optimize for profitability by testing pricing, spend and placements.

Examples of video placements:

Fun fact: Did you know that Amazon is the largest search engine in the world after Google and YouTube?

About 70% of the clicks & sales happen in the top-20 organic ranking positions – so the big money is made there!

The first thing I look at when I'm auditing a product is it's organic ranking position. If it's not ranking in the top-20 for any target search terms, then I know exactly why it's not selling well!

Trying to rank high organically is the entire game of Amazon and it's the game we play as an Amazon PPC/SEO agency.

This pillar is all about paying attention to your organic rank, and making sure you're doing everything properly to maximize it.

First of all, SEO stands for "Search Engine Optimization", which in my mind basically refers to the whole game of trying to rank high in search engines. Then there's what I call "Keyword Optimization" (fronend & backend) which refers to making sure the proper keywords are in the fronend and backend of a page.

You're familar with Google search, right? Well, Amazon works the same. There's an algorithm that determines the order of search results based on the search term that you just searched.

How does the ranking algorithm work? Basically, Amazon wants to put the best option for the customer on top for what they just searched! Kinda makes sense.

How high you rank is basically a factor of how well you convert, and how many units you've sold in the past 180-days. So that's why you want to push hard for sales in the first 6 months.

1) Have a high conversion rate. Normallly to rank in the top-20, you need a 20%+ conversion rate. The cool thing is, the whole point of having a Million Dollar Listing, 30+ reviews, and a competitive Sale Price is is to have a high as possible conversion rate!

2) Sell a lot of units in the first 180-days. Again, everything we are doing in the first 4 pillars is geared to maximizing this!

So, all you have to do in addiiton to the first 4 pillars is make sure you are doing proper Frontend & Backend Keywords strategy. This basically means that you have the proper keywords on the listing, and in the backend.

Be sure to do keyword research to determine the most relevant keywords!

Basically, make sure the most important terms are in the title!

Basically, make sure all the most important words are in the Backend Search Terms. You get 250 characters total. No need to repeat words.

There are many ways to drive traffic to your Amazon listing. I think the easiest and most cost effective way is to list your product on a deal site / giveaway site.

It's pretty straightforward. Go to rebaid.com and sign up as a seller. Add your product info. Determine the # of daily giveaways and the rebate amount. Most sellers do 80%, 90% or 100% rebate. In most cases I recommend just doing a 100% rebate.

How do I determine the # of daily giveaways?

Look at the top 20 ranked products for your main target keyword and see how many daily units they are selling. In theory, to rank in the top 20, you'll need to sell as many daily units as them. That being said, if they are selling 50-100 units a day, you're not going to give away 50-100 units on Rebaid.

I normally recommend this strategy: start with 5 units a day for 15 days, then adjust. If you're still not ranking satisfactorily, increase it to 10 units a day for 15 days, then adjust. Repeat this process until you're ranking where you want to be. Then, slowly wane off the daily giveaways – don't just cut it off! If you're at 15/day for 15 days and ranking well, lower it to 10/day for 15 days and see what happens, and if you're still happy with the ranking, lower it to 5/day for 15 days, and if you're still happy with the ranking, cut it off to 0/day. See the stair stepper framework below.

Think of driving external traffic via Rebaid like adding fuel to the fire. The more daily sales from external traffic, the higher youi'll rank. But you don't want to spray fuel on the fire all at once, you want to make it a slow and steady burn. The algorithm likes consistent external traffic.

1) It increases your conversion rate. This is because all of the visitors from the giveaway site are buying, it increases the total pageviews/orders ratio.

2) It increaes your daily sales velocity.

Since the algo is based on CVR and daily sales, that's why it spikes you up in the ranking.

Is using Rebaid within TOS?

Although many sellers use it every day, it's a gray area. Make sure to read the updated TOS yourself and proceed at your own risk. All I know is I've used it many times, and I haven't seen any account suspensions. That said, it is known that sellers have been 'search suppressed' from using 'ranking manipulation' techniches such as giveaways. When you get search suppressed, it's not a suspension, but it prevents you from ranking in search for a period of time.

Should I use Rebaid?

Are you not ranking on page 1 after following all of the other pillars? If yes, then you may need to drive external traffic.

I think of driving external traffic as a tool that we can whip out if we need more ranking boost.

Additionally, if you have a social following or email list, it's a no-brainer to promote your Amazon launch to them.

Testing prices is a big part of the Amazon marketing game. So make sure you test different prices.

What should I make the sale price?

For launch/rank phase: keep it 20-30% off. The lower your price, the faster you will rank high.

How do I get the strikethrough price?

Ideally you have the red savings percentage aka "strikethrough" price. This is proven to boost CVR. Normally this only appears when it's the lowest price in 30 days. Ideally you have both a sale price and coupon at all times for long-term as they help conversion. But you must do the tests yourself to see what works best.

How do I determine the best possible price for my product?

It's all about testing prices around your target range to find the sweet spot. When you're trying to push for rank/sales/marketshare, keep the price lower. Then when you have a satisfactory organic ranking position on page 1 (ideally top 20), then raise the price by $1 every two weeks and monitor organic ranking position and TACOS. Your job is to monitor and adjust based on what makes sense for your company's goals. Some brands prefer a lower price with higher daily sales, but lower profit margin. Other brands prefer a higher price with lower velocity, but better margins.

What about the cost per count?

Yes, make sure to pay attention to the Cost per Count! This is important because many shoppers make their buying decisions based on the price per count!

If building your email list is important to you, then using an insert card is the most common method that Amazon seller use to gather emails. In case you didn't know, Amazon doesn't provide you with customer email addresses. So by using an insert card, you can ask customers to scan a QR code where they enter their email to get something, like a warranty, coupon, or free product.

What should I put on the insert card?

The highest converting CTA is proven to be offering a free product. Makes sense, right? People love free stuff. For example "Scan here for your free bottle"

Should I ask them for a review on the card?

This is what many brands do… It's a horrible strategy because the scan rate will be very low. People don't want to leave a review when they just opened the box! 😅 That's why you need to intice them with some other reason.

How does it work?

CTA on the insert card → they scan the QR Code → they land on a Landing Page → they put in their email Email → they get the Gift/Coupon → they get your Monthly Email Promotions.

How big should I build my email list?

Your first milestone is 1000. When you hit 10,000 emails, you can use it as a "lookalike audience" in Amazon DSP Ads which we've seen can be incredibly effective!

What should I sent to my email list?

Best practice in ecom is to send out a monthly email promotion. If you don't have this set up, do it asap as it's one of the easiet ways to increase revenue. You can push people to Amaozn or to order on your website – at the end of the day, getting subscribers on your website is the highest profit margin.

In addition to monthly promos, promote new product launches to your email list.

Here’s my insert card template in Canva so you can edit it and customize it to your brand.

Q: How much revenue can I make on Amazon?

This depends how good your product is, market demand, and market competition. Many products do over $100,000/mo in revenue. Below is a screenshot of page 1 revenues for 'dog multivitamin'.