When you sell products on Amazon, one of your main goals should be to direct Amazon buyers to your listings when they visit the marketplace.
But while this is important, don’t forget about the benefits of sending people to your listings from outside of Amazon.
Driving external traffic to your listings can increase your visibility significantly. You’ll reduce the need to compete against other listings because you’re sending shoppers directly to your own listings.
But how should you go about driving more external traffic to your listings? There are several techniques you can use.
In this guide, we cover the most important marketing strategies so you can start using them to drive traffic and increase sales for your own Amazon listings.
TL;DR
- Sending external traffic to Amazon can help you increase your sales and build a stronger brand.
- There are several external traffic sources including social advertising, email marketing, and influencer marketing.
- To make the most of this external traffic, ensure you optimize your listings before you start generating traffic.
Why Send External Traffic to Your Listings?
There are many reasons why you should send traffic from outside Amazon to your listings.
While the vast majority of people start their search for a product on Amazon, either on the website or using the app, many people start from outside of Amazon. You can take advantage of these potential customers.
Reduce Competition
In the Amazon marketplace, you’re competing against many other Amazon sellers. Some of them are selling similar items or the same items as you.
You have to use a wide range of strategies to take them on, from using automated repricing software to investing in Amazon advertising and optimizing your listings.
When you send traffic from outside Amazon, you bypass these competitors.
Boost Brand Awareness
Building a strong brand is a good way to enjoy long-term success on Amazon.
A strong brand can help you to distinguish your business from other sellers, but there are not many opportunities to do this on Amazon.
Apart from in stores and some kinds of ads, you’re limited in what you can say and do in your Amazon listings.
But when you go elsewhere, whether that’s your own website, social networks, email newsletters, etc., you can get more creative.
You can start to create your own distinctive brand voice and become more memorable in the eyes of your customers.
Get More Sales
Obviously, the most important reason is to get more sales, and you can do this by generating more traffic to your listings.
If you don’t rank high in Amazon search, you can drive more external traffic. This can help you increase your rankings in search at the same time as increasing sales.
This can help boost sales for your existing listings as well as when you launch new products.
Sales velocity plays a role in the A10 algorithm, so more sales can help lead to higher rankings.
Now let’s take a look at some of the best ways to drive traffic to your listings.
Related: 4 Proven Tactics to Drive Traffic to Your Amazon Listings in 2024
Social Media Marketing & Advertising
One of the best ways to get more visibility on your listings within the Amazon marketplace is via ads. And the same is true for generating external traffic.
Start with social ads, especially on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.
Billions of people use these platforms every day, and you can market your products to them via ads.
There are many ways to do this.
It starts by building up a community of followers by posting interesting and engaging content related to your niche.
Share videos, images, tips, tricks, and more, get followers involved, launch contests and promotions, and generate buzz.
When you have a large and growing audience, start advertising your products to reach more potential customers.
Advertise your discounts, special seasonal offers, new arrivals, and more. Then send them to your landing page (not directly to your listings—more on this later).
Experiment with different platforms and ad types. See how your image ads stack up to video ads, and create long-form and short-form advertising content.
When you create a Facebook ad, you have a huge range of targeting options. You can target people with an interest in specific niches, demographic groups, and lots more.
Experiment with ads, try new things, measure your results, and optimize your performance. See how your Facebook ads compare with your TikTok and Instagram ads.
Over time, you could generate a significant number of sales from social media alone, bypassing your competitors on Amazon and sending your sales rocketing.
Yes, advertising costs money, whether on social media or anywhere else. But it can be surprisingly affordable if you get your strategy right.
Learn as much about social ads as you can, and maximize the performance of your ads to boost your Amazon sales over time.
Use UGC
User-generated content (UGC) is also a part of social media marketing, and it’s one of the options you can use to promote your products on social media.
As the name suggests, this is where the users create the content and post it to their social accounts or share it with you so you can share it with your followers.
For Amazon products, a good option is to encourage your users to create their own videos showing them using your product.
These don’t have to be long or complicated; they can simply be videos shot with their phones. In fact, these are often more effective because they come across as more genuine.
As more people see the content on social media, they will be directed back to your account. You can then send them to your landing pages and listings to convert them into customers.
Related: How to Leverage TikTok for Amazon FBA 2024
Influencer Marketing
This is related to social media marketing, and there’s some overlap between them. But influencer marketing is its own strategy, and it can be a very effective one.
Social media platforms are full of influencers in all kinds of niches. Many of them have thousands or even hundreds of thousands of followers.
The basic goal with influencer marketing is to have an influencer recommend your product to their audience.
People follow influencers because they like them and trust what they have to say. When an influencer recommends something, this can have a huge impact, and you could end up with hundreds of additional sales.
Even a mention rather than a direct recommendation can be highly effective and give your Amazon business a boost.
But influencer marketing isn’t easy. It takes time and a dedicated process to get results.
First, you need to research influencers. Use different social platforms to find influencers who recommend products in your niche, and make a list of them.
There are even Amazon influencers who specialize in promoting Amazon products, or at least promote a large number of Amazon products.
Then you have to get in touch. This may involve following them and interacting with them or directly contacting them.
Find out if they’re interested in your product. If they are, they may charge a fee, or they may be interested in promoting it for affiliate marketing, which we’ll look at next.
They might then create a whole video around your product, or they might simply mention it in their video—and hopefully the sales will roll in.
Some influencers may already be in the Amazon Influencer Program, where content creators can sign up as long as they have an account on one of the big social networks.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing has been around almost as long as the internet itself.
The basic idea is that people recommend a product to their followers or communities and give them a special affiliate link. When people click that link and buy the product, the marketer makes a commission.
Amazon has its own affiliate program, Amazon Associates, and anyone can join.
If you have a blog, for example, you can recommend an Amazon product, create an affiliate link, and make a commission if one of your readers clicks on the link and makes a purchase.
Many bloggers and marketers will already be members of this.
Your job is to find these people who are in the program and encourage them to link to your product. They will earn a commission from each sale, but you’ll hopefully get more sales as a result.
They don’t have to be influencers especially; they could just be normal bloggers. If you reach out to enough people, and you have a great product, you could well generate lots of traffic and sales.
Reach out to bloggers. They may have rules about what they will and won’t promote. Some may charge to do so.
Come up with a plan that’s mutually beneficial. If they think their audience will find your product useful, you could both benefit.
If they create a blog post or social post, help them out. Spread the word, share it online, and get more interest in it. You’ll benefit as well, after all.
Email Newsletters
If you have your own eCommerce store alongside selling on Amazon, you should definitely be using email marketing.
eCommerce companies have long used email marketing to stay front-of-mind, build relationships with their customers and potential customers, and sell more products.
You can do the same.
Create a sign-up form on your website and offer a 10% discount on their first purchase or something equally tempting.
When someone signs up, you can send out an automated welcome email series. Then you can start sending regular email newsletters to them, once a week or more frequently.
Send out advanced notifications about your recent special offers, including exclusive discounts only for people on your list, and highlight your newest products on Amazon.
Send them to your listings where you can hopefully convert them into customers.
Email marketing is a very cost-effective form of marketing. Once you have got someone’s email address, sending out emails is very inexpensive.
You can send out as many emails as you want, many of which can be automated to save time.
Remember when we talked about having a strong brand at the start? This is a great way to build your brand.
Send consistent traffic back to your Amazon listings and generate more sales without relying on getting your listings to the top of the search rankings.
Related: 7 Ways to Grow Your eCommerce Business Through Email Lists
Google Ads
We’ve already looked at social advertising to generate external traffic, but don’t forget about search engine ads like Google Ads.
These are usually secondary to social ads because they’re more expensive. But they can also generate a lot of traffic for you if you set your campaigns up properly.
After all, while many people begin their searches for products on Amazon, many others will head straight to Google. Many people will begin here and then click a link to visit your landing page.
Send visitors to your eCommerce site, and from there you can get their email addresses. You can then start to send email newsletters and direct them to your Amazon listings.
Setting up a Google Ads campaign can be challenging. You’ll need to create a Google Ads account, and you may want professional help. Or you may want to jump straight in and see what happens.
It will cost money, so bear that in mind. This isn’t a free marketing strategy, and it should not be your first option, but it can definitely pay off if you get it right.
Get Active on YouTube
YouTube is one of the most popular websites in the world, and it’s also the second-largest search engine behind Google.
It makes sense to have a presence on the site. When you grow a large following, this can help you to sell more products.
How should you use YouTube to generate traffic?
Start by creating your own channel and creating content regularly that’s focused on your products.
This will be easier if you sell products in a specific niche, like pets. You can then start to create videos on a wide range of topics related to this.
Videos could provide tips for your target customers, how to use your products to get the most out of them, and more.
Make them fun and interesting, use a good camera, and edit them properly. Keep them short too.
You want people to find and share your videos, and you can also share them on your social channels to get more visibility for them.
In the description, link to your website, or directly to your listing to generate traffic and sales. Then you can send more traffic to your Amazon listings.
YouTube is a great place to build your brand. Get into the habit of releasing a new video every week or more if you can.
Where Should You Send External Traffic To?
We mentioned earlier about sending traffic to a landing page, so let’s look at that a bit more.
When it comes to advertising on Amazon, you’ll send shoppers to your listings or store. But with external traffic, things are a bit different.
Sometimes, you may want to send people directly to your listings or your Amazon store. For example, if you have already signed someone up for your email list, you could link directly to your product listing from within an email.
This would make sense. You have already sold them on it, and now you want to send them to the place where they can buy the product.
But with other types of marketing, this isn’t the best option. Instead, you’ll want to create a dedicated landing page.
Why?
With a landing page, you can gather information about your target customers. You could collect their email address, for example, or other details like their product preferences.
You want to build a long-term relationship with your customers and continue selling to them over the months and years rather than making one sale and nothing else.
For that reason, when you’re using advertising especially, send your customers to a dedicated landing page first. From there, you can send them to your listings.
You don’t want to spend time and money on your marketing efforts only to increase viewings of your listings. You want sales and conversions.
By sending potential customers to a landing page, you’re filtering them. This way, only the people who are genuinely interested in your products will be sent to your listings.
This can help to improve your conversion rates, and this can help with your visibility in Amazon’s own search results.
One Thing You Must Do Before Generating External Traffic
Generating external traffic is all well and good. It’s a great way to increase sales, boost profits, and build your brand.
But there’s one thing you must do before you even start to think about sending traffic back to Amazon: you need to optimize your listings.
If you sell private label products on Amazon, you’ll want to make sure that the traffic you send to your listings finds a compelling reason to buy your products.
Otherwise you’ll do all the hard work of generating the traffic, potentially spending significant amounts of time and money on this, all for nothing.
There are many ways to do this, but the most important include the following:
Compelling Copy
Make sure you create product listings that tempt people to buy. This means using informative and persuasive copy in the product title, bullet points, and product description.
There are rules about what you can say and where. For example, product titles should be purely informative, rather than using subjective words.
Make sure you include all the information in your product listings that customers will need to make a buying decision, including size, color, uses, dimensions, etc.
Then use the product description to persuade them to buy your product and paint a picture of what life will be like with your product.
Professional Images
The images are just as important. You need to use professional images that show that you’re a seller to be trusted and make your products look more tempting.
Use all the images you can, and use high-quality images that are large enough that people can zoom in and see the details.
Use at least one lifestyle image displaying your product in use. And clearly display the size of your product to make sure it’s obvious how large or small it is. You could even create a short video of your product.
All of these will help to create trust when people visit your listing and make them more likely to buy your product.
Lots of Positive Reviews
Finally, make sure you put a lot of effort into generating positive reviews.
No matter what you say about your products, the reviews will have a big impact on whether people buy or not.
People want to see that you’re a trusted seller and that you have happy customers who enjoy using your product. They want to know that if something goes wrong with the delivery, you’ll help them out.
Use third-party review software to manage your review requests. You could also sign up for Amazon Vine to get your first reviews.
At the end of the day, go out of your way to provide your customers with excellent service, and you’ll continue to generate positive reviews.
Don’t Forget About Internal Traffic
With all this focus on external traffic, it’s important to remember to focus on internal traffic too.
Remember, most people start their search for a product on the Amazon site or app. So even if you’re focusing on external traffic, don’t forget about improving your visibility on Amazon.
There are two main focuses: improving your organic visibility in the search results and paying for Ads.
Amazon SEO
All your activity on Amazon should go towards helping to increase your invisibility in the search results and get more organic sales.
The Amazon A10 algorithm takes many factors into account. We’ve already looked at optimizing your product listings and increasing your number of positive reviews.
But you should also work on optimizing for keywords.
Keywords play a big role in Amazon SEO. Ideally, you’ll use a keyword research tool to create a list of the most important keywords for your listing, then work them into your listing in all the right places.
This can have a big impact on your search ranking, so you appear in the results when shoppers search for your product.
In addition, generating positive reviews and having a good reputation on Amazon will help to boost your search visibility.
Amazon Ads
To generate more traffic to your listings from within Amazon, experiment with Amazon ads.
There are many options available, and you’ll probably want to start with Sponsored Product ads.
With these, you can bid for your ad to appear at the top of the search results, so more people will see it and hopefully visit your listing and buy your product.
There are other types of ads available as well, including Amazon Sponsored Display ads.
Try them out for yourself. You can start to advertise with a small budget and then scale up as you start to generate data.
If you focus on advertising, improving your Amazon SEO, and generating external traffic, you’ll have all your bases covered.
Aim to Win the Buy Box
Finally, with all this talk about traffic, don’t forget about the importance of generating sales.
The vast majority of sales on Amazon are made in the Buy Box, so your goal should always be to win this.
There are various factors to take into consideration. Some of these, like having a good reputation and lots of positive reviews, have already been covered.
But one area we still haven’t looked at in detail is pricing.
Amazon will often reward the most competitively priced products. It wants its marketplace to be somewhere shoppers can find the best prices, and while price alone isn’t the only factor that Amazon considers, it does play a big role.
For this reason, you should strongly consider using repricing software.
Repricing is where you change the price of your products to make them more competitive and increase your chances of winning the Buy Box more frequently.
Keeping an eye on your competitors’ listings and changing your prices is far too time-consuming. But when you use automated repricing software, you can simply set your rules and forget about them, and let the software do the hard work for you.
So this is another area to focus on if you want to maximize your sales and profits.
Increase Your External Traffic
Sending external traffic to your Amazon listing can be a great idea because you won’t have to depend purely on people already on Amazon.
You can bypass the competition by sending people directly to your listing rather than having them choose between yours and your competitors’ listings.
You can increase traffic and conversions, and this can have a positive impact on your Amazon presence—boosting your search rankings in Amazon and generating even more sales.
Whichever strategies you decide to focus on, make sure you’re prepared.
That means getting your Amazon listings into shape, generating reviews, and creating landing pages where necessary rather than sending traffic directly to your listings. This will help you to make the most of the time and money you invest into driving external traffic.
Don’t forget about internal traffic, either. Ideally, have two strategies in place: one to generate external traffic and one to improve your visibility in Amazon.
Then you can enjoy the best of both worlds.
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