Proven Strategies to Boost Amazon Traffic Using Google Ads, Email Marketing, and More
Welcome to the complete guide on how to increase external traffic to your Amazon Store and product listings. This is the most detailed, comprehensive guide there is on advertising your Amazon product on other channels, and features a raft of techniques that will help you grow your traffic and sales on Amazon.
This guide goes over all the steps necessary to become an ace at driving traffic to Amazon. To get straight to specific channel tactics skip ahead to our Step-by-step Instructions for Implementing Specific External Traffic-Driving Tactics.
We’ll touch on:
- What exactly we mean by external traffic
- Why traffic from other platforms is so powerful
- How to set up an sales funnel
- Different traffic sources, and how to advertise on each one
Everything you need to know to start your off-Amazon traffic strategy is covered in this guide.
What does it Mean to Increase External Traffic to Your Amazon Product Listings?
Before we get started, let’s just introduce what we mean when we say “external traffic”.
For most Amazon sellers, your primary source of traffic and sales is “internal”. This means people who search for relevant keywords on amazon.com or in the Amazon the app, and then either discover your product in the search results or click on one of your Amazon sponsored PPC ads.
External traffic is everything else. This is where, instead of waiting for someone to go to Amazon, you proactively get in front of them somewhere else online. This could be:
- Paid ads (Google Ads, website ads, etc)
- Email Campaigns or instant messenger
- Social media activations or ads
- Website referrals
- An influencer, blogger or podcaster promoting your brand
We say online, but it could even be offline sources – for example, an ad in a magazine or newspaper with a QR code or URL to your product.
This off-platform traffic generally relies on a significantly different approach to generating traffic from inside Amazon. With internal traffic, most of the time you’re optimizing for people who are searching for something to buy.
Traffic generation via other channels puts the boot on the other foot. You go out and find people, who may not know they want to buy something at this time, and convince them that your product is what they need.
Done right, external traffic is a powerful growth lever that can help you to grow your sales, improve your organic rankings, and build assets that give your business much greater stability.
Why Growing Clicks to You Amazon Product Pages is so Important
No one’s arguing that organic Amazon traffic is not valuable. In fact Amazon SEO is one of the most critical pillars all successful Amazon Sellers have mastered (More about Amazon SEO Services). But clicks originating off of Amazon are more than just the icing on the cake:
Boosting incoming traffic is a strategy you can use alongside you Amazon PPC Campaigns (Amazon PPC Services) and optimizing your product detail pages. Growing additional high-intent traffic and widening your customer base will kick-off a virtuous cycle that will improve Amazon advertising campaign efficiency (i.e. remarketing campaigns), as well as improve your organic search rankings.
Here are the biggest benefits of acquiring customers on other channels.
Increased Sales Velocity
External channels allow you to reach a whole new audience. You can reach people who may not be actively searching for your type of product, people who otherwise might click on a different product in the search results, or even people who haven’t shopped on Amazon before.
These people all represent sales that you wouldn’t have gotten if you relied only on organic search for your sales.
More sales doesn’t just mean more money in your pocket. It means faster turnaround times on stock, avoiding costly long-term storage fees, as well as being a positive signal to Amazon about the popularity of your product – leading to even more benefits.
Ranking Better in Amazon Search Results
To follow on from the previous point, external traffic is a great way to get more organic sales.
Along with reviews and conversion rate, sales velocity is one of the most important ranking factors. More people buying your product shows Amazon that it must be popular. They respond to this by giving it more visibility.
This is why clicks from external sources are great for a product launch. It’s hard to get initial traction for a new product in organic search rankings, so driving sales yourself is often enough to give you the boost in sales velocity necessary to start ranking.
The elephant in the room
Many sellers will tell you that Amazon loves external traffic. So much so that they give 3x the ranking power to sales from customers you send to their site from external sources. This makes driving external traffic even more powerful, and one of the best ways to grow your rankings on Amazon.
Building A Customer List
The other reason external traffic is so powerful is that it allows you to build a customer list.
While Amazon offers a lot of advantages for e-commerce sellers, one way stores are at a disadvantage is not owning their own customers. Everyone who buys from you on Amazon is considered Amazon’s customer – not yours. You can’t reach out to these customers, get their contact details, and build a list.
You can do this, however, if you drive traffic from outside sources. The key is to capture a prospective customer’s contact, such as an email address, before they get to Amazon. That way you don’t risk breaking Amazon’s TOS.
A list is of vital importance to any business, as it is a direct line to your customer base. Most Amazon sellers don’t have this. They get sales from Amazon search or PPC, but Amazon can shut this off at any time, if they think you’re breaking the rules, if the platform has a glitch, or even just with a small change to their algorithm.
If you don’t have a list, you’re always at risk of losing all your customers at a moment’s notice.
Ways to Drive Sales on Amazon via Off-Platform Traffic
Whether you’re a beginner or an expert, there’s something in here for you.
Never ran an inbound traffic campaign before? No problem! This guide explains why you want to do this, and gives you some examples of simple inbound traffic sales funnels. We’ll even walk you through setting up your Facebook Ads or Google Ads account.
If you’ve run a campaign or two before, there will be something for you too. We’ll touch on just about every way to drive traffic to your listing, as well as some techniques that you will find beneficial.
Feel free to skip ahead to the chapter that fits for you, or download the guide to read at your convenience.
Step-by-step Instructions for Implementing Specific External Traffic-Driving Tactics
Chapter 1: Amazon Sales Funnels That Work10 minLearn how to build a successful sales funnel for your Amazon business using external traffic.
Chapter 2: Tools Of The Trade5 minUsing the right tools can make or break your traffic campaign. Learn which tools you’ll need to successfully drive traffic to your Amazon listing.
Chapter 3: Creating Your Amazon Landing Page9 minUsing a landing page is a key element of any successful external traffic campaign. Learn a few essential features of effective landing pages, and how to build one in less than 3 minutes.
Chapter 4: Advertising Amazon Products on Facebook7 minFacebook ads are one of the most powerful external traffic sources for Amazon sellers. Learn how to set up Facebook Ads for your Amazon business.
Chapter 5: Facebook Retargeting for Amazon Products8 minLearn how to show highly effective Facebook retargeting ads to people that have previously bought from you.
Chapter 6: How to Run Google Ads for Amazon Products8 minLearn how to use Google Ads & Search Engine Marketing to grow your Amazon sales and Best Sellers Rank.
Chapter 7: Pinterest for Amazon Sellers12 minPinterest is a powerful and underutilized channel for Amazon sellers. Learn how to drive organic and paid traffic and get sales from Pinterest.
Chapter 8: Conclusion2 minDriving traffic to your Amazon listings is an essential part of building a sustainable business. Get a summary of the key benefits to external traffic and how to get started.
What’s Next? Amazon Listing Optimization
Convinced of the benefits of sending more potential shoppers to your product listings?
We hope that you found this step-by-step guide useful and that it helps you grow traffic. Once you have mastered user acquisition, the next step is to ensure that they convert and buy your products. This is where Amazon listing optimization is important. This comprises optimizing your product listing titles, bullet-point copy, images, videos and A+ content. If you want to get a head-start boosting your Amazon listing conversion rates explore Amazon listing optimization services.
