How To Run An Efficient Ranking Campaign Without Wasting Money
One of the first lessons every Amazon seller learns is: Ranking is the name of the game. The reason why we sell on Amazon is it's enormous amount of traffic. But we can only benefit from if if our listing shows up on page one for a specific search term.
In this article I will explain my Amazon ranking strategy using a full-price-buy give away system. If you don't have a system to generate full price buys, I suggest you have a look here.
Watch the Webinar recording on the topic:
1. Decide on the Keyword to rank for
Finding the opportunity sweet spot.
Assumption: you want to rank for one or several search terms that will generate a significant amount of sales (as opposed to ranking for dozens of long-tail search terms with very little traffic which eventually add up - this is another viable ranking strategy).
In order for your ranking to stick, you need a product that makes customers happy (has a decent amount of positive reviews and converts well) and an optimised listing. But to get on page one for a specific search term in the first place, you need to match the full-price-sales numbers of your competitors.
Picking the right search term to rank will make or break you campaign success. You can rank for many search terms. But if you want your ranking to stick, you need to pick your search term wisely.
Let's say we are selling these gloves as an example for the Amazon ranking strategy. The title being:
Adult 10" Wrist Length Lycra Spandex Full Finger Stretchy Orange Short Gloves
Using tools like Helium10, ZonGuru or Zoof, we can determine the relevant Search Terms for this listing and the corresponding monthly volume. The results will look something like this:
Search Terms | Monthly Volume |
|---|---|
Wrist Length Orange Short Gloves | 120 |
Lycra Orange Short Gloves | 950 |
Orange Short Gloves | 1,500 |
Short Gloves | 9,700 |
Gloves | 87,000 |
The decision process for the search term would be as follows:
1. We want the search term to be highly relevant: our product would probably be the best choice for a customer why typed in this search term.
2. The monthly volume meets our criteria.
Let's say we want to make 10 sales per day or 300 sales per month from ranking for a search term. Assuming that the product ranking #1 gets roughly 20% of the sales. we would need a monthly volume of 1500 searches to reach that goal (300 x 5).
Applying these criteria to the list above, the best choice for our campaign would be "Orange Short Gloves"
- Very relevant: it precisely describes our product (as opposed to "Gloves" or "Short Gloves" - these are very vague).
- Sufficient volume (1500 is our minimum).
Before you decide on this search term, look at the result page on Amazon and ask yourself: "If I rank in the top 3 positions for this search term, will my ranking stick? Can it compete with the existing listings in terms of price / reviews / relevance?" If the answer is 'yes' - you're good to go.
2. Determine the daily sales needed to rank
The Seller Tools mentioned earlier will provide you with the giveaway amount needed to rank on #1 page one. If you don't have access to them, our earlier estimate (20% of the search volume) will be a close enough guess. So in this case: 20% of 1500 searches per month = 300 units per month or 10 units per day.
3. Plan your ranking campaign
One fundamental fact we use for our ranking strategy is that Amazon evaluates ranking in three-day-buckets: ranking factors like unit sales per day are monitored over three days and the result reflects on day four. Based on that, we want to follow the ‘Growing Spikes”strategy: Show increasing sales spikes with 3 day gaps in between. This simulates natural buyer behaviour for a product that becomes increasingly popular. Campaign duration: 30 days
Hence in order to save inventory (and cost) we start with small amounts of 10-20% of the target amount and increase over time until we reach the target amount around day 28. In this example it would translate to 1-2 units in the beginning and 10-11 units on day 28. The exact amount is not as important as the increasing amount over time.
If you don't have a Full-Price-Buy generating system in place - our Ranking Bot System is designed for this very purpose.
ChatBot-Based Amazon Product Launch System
4. Diversify traffic sources
Especially when your product is new and does not have organic sales, it's important to have other traffic (and sales) sources than the giveaway system in place. Because Amazon monitors where your sales come from and all sales coming from one source would rise red flags.
That's why we want to set up other sources of sales and diversify to at least 3 channels like:
5. Run campaign until you reach your target
Check on your ranking. Amazon normally updates 4 days after it detects a change in sales / conversions (so don’t be disappointed if you don’t see any changes in the first 3 days).
The ranking chart should look something like this:
6. Amazon Ranking Strategy Conclusion
The number you picked (10 daily sales to rank #1) might be off. All the numbers we work with (sales volume, sales of product ranking #1) are assumptions / estimates and change over time. So if you are seeing good results after 30 days but you're still not #1 - just keep increasing your daily giveaways until you get there. You might need 20...
If your rankings are not improving at all, there must be a bug in the system. The Super URL you're using might be not working. So take a break and check for the reasons before wasting inventory.
If you have any questions, don't hesitate to reach out to me and I'll do my best to help