Like a great carpenter needs a hammer and nails, a great marketer needs a certain set of tools as well.
Software tools aren’t going to do all the work for you, or guarantee your campaigns will be successful. But the right tools will make marketing and building external traffic funnels significantly easier.
Read on to see what tools you should go for to build successful external traffic campaigns for Amazon. Also check out our detailed guides on:
The best way to build a sales funnel for Amazon is with a landing page. Unless you want to spend hours coding a page yourself, or spend thousands of dollars for someone to do it, you’ll want to use a software tool to produce your landing pages.
Our tool, LandingCube, is the best landing page tool out there specifically for Amazon sellers. It’s easy to use, super quick, and the page templates are conversion optimized.
LandingCube also automates distributing unique discount codes and capturing emails, making it a great way to build a list from external traffic.
All in all it’s the closest thing to a plug-and-play solution for an Amazon landing page.
Alternatively, if you want to build a more complex landing page, you can use a tool like LeadPages or Unbounce. These are more general-purpose landing page builders. They offer more features and customization, but that comes with a bigger learning curve, and more time and effort to build your landing page.
Ultimately you’re most likely going to be best off with a streamlined solution like LandingCube, which is optimized specifically for Amazon.
ManyChat
If you plan on using Messenger in your external traffic strategy, ManyChat is a must. Even if you aren’t, but you have a Facebook page for your brand/product, you should still get ManyChat and connect it with your page.
ManyChat is a tool for Facebook Messenger marketing (they’ve begun to expand to email and SMS too). It lets you set up bots, flows, automation and much more on the Messenger platform.
There’s a bunch of ways you can use ManyChat for marketing in your Amazon business, such as paid broadcasts and product launches.
While you can run Messenger funnels without ManyChat (LandingCube’s tool set includes a Messenger coupon bot), you need ManyChat connected to your page to capture people who message your page as leads.
A free account is enough to get started capturing leads, so there’s no reason not to at least sign up and connect it with your page.
Email Marketing Tools
If you’re collecting emails, then you’ll want to use an email marketing tool. An email marketing software tool lets you securely store your email list, and contact them for many different promotional and relationship-building means.
A good tool will let you segment users and create customer profiles, to better target the right people with the right content. You can also set up smart automations and send broadcasts to your list.
Here are some of the most popular tools:
MailChimp
MailChimp has been one of the go-to email marketing tools for small businesses for some time now. One of the big advantages of MailChimp is their free plan, which offers basic email marketing features, and can be used for up to 2000 contacts. That’s hard to beat for someone just starting out with email marketing.
Not only is MailChimp free to begin with, it’s incredibly easy to use. Plus as your business grows, there are more powerful plans you can move on to, which are still very affordable compared to the competition.
AWeber
AWeber is another tool that’s great for small businesses. They offer a free trial to start with, and very affordable paid plans after that, starting at $19 per month. While some other tools may be more powerful, AWeber is great for starting out, and has a large enough feature set to do the job for 99% of online businesses.
Drip
Drip is a relatively new tool, but over the last few years it’s developed a reputation for being one of the most powerful tools out there. They’ve recently pivoted the product to focus more on e-commerce, as well.
Drip has a 14 day free trial, and starts at $49 per month, going up based on the number of email subscribers you have (the number begins to go up after 2500 subscribers).
Klaviyo
Klaviyo is a favorite for high-level e-commerce businesses. It’s tailor made for e-commerce, as opposed to some others which may cater towards bloggers, or other kinds of businesses. They’re especially renowned for their integration with Shopify, so if you also have a Shopify store, Klaviyo is a great bet to improve your workflow.
These are just a few of the most popular tools, specifically tailored to e-commerce. You also won’t go wrong with tools like GetResponse, ActiveCampaign and ConvertKit.
Analytics: Google Analytics & the Facebook Pixel
One of the most valuable things about external traffic is the ability to track and gather analytics on your audience. Your ability to do this on Amazon is extremely limited.
When you run traffic to a landing page, you should embed Google Analytics and Facebook Pixel tracking code on your page. Both are free to use, and are industry staples in digital marketing.
Google Analytics lets you track user behavior on your landing page, such as where they’ve come from, how long they spend on your page, and more. It also lets you create Google AdWords retargeting audiences and track AdWords conversion with Google Analytics goals, so it’s a must if you’re running Google Ads.
The Facebook Pixel is a similar tool, more useful when you’re running or plan to run Facebook campaigns. The Pixel lets you track Facebook Ads conversions, and build Facebook audiences based on the actions people take on your page.
Another powerful analytics tool to have in your toolbox is Amazon Attribution.
If you’re a brand registered seller, you will have this available to you as a way to track detailed results from your external traffic campaigns.
By embedding an analytics tag on links your customers click from external traffic sources or landing pages, you can see how many actually bought on Amazon, added a product to their cart, or more. This makes it much, much easier to analyze and optimize your external traffic efforts.
2-Step URLs
2-step URLs are a powerful tool for ranking in competitive categories. They are a type of super URL – a link containing a keyword you want to rank for, which you use in place of the basic Amazon product link when driving external traffic.
When people make a purchase through this link, Amazon attributes it as coming from an organic search from that keyword, and thus your product gets a little boost in rankings each time.
2-step URLs are great for product launches, or for when you need a little boost to get to the top of a competitive SERP.
If you choose to send traffic directly from external sources to Amazon, as mentioned in the previous chapter, you’ll want to use a special link. Instead of using the basic link to your product (for example, this: https://www.amazon.com/Pop-Tarts-Breakfast-Toaster-Pastries-Variety/dp/B07YP3FCVH), you should use a tool that sends someone to the same place, but with a shorter and more powerful URL.
A tool like Rebrandly will take the link above and create a custom link leading to the same page. With that link, you can integrate with your Facebook Pixel (so you can retarget people who clicked on your link), track analytics data for the link (impressions, clicks etc) and customize the link to something that represents your branding.
Alternatively, you can use an Amazon link shortener to do the same thing, while easily integrating with 2-step URLs as well.
Seller Central
If you’re selling on Amazon you’ll already have access to Seller Central. But it bears mentioning as an essential part of your Amazon toolkit.
Seller Central is definitely something you need to know how to use, and will even help you get more out of external traffic, through things like:
Reports (tracking how your promotions perform, your sales, using reports to build Facebook audiences)
Using features like A+ Content to spice up your product listing
Promotions (creating percentage-off promotions, buy one get one, etc to advertise on external channels)
Using the right tools can make the difference between your campaign being a success or failure. Take our advice on the best tools for external marketing for your Amazon business, and you’ll be fast tracked on a path for success.
