11 practical tips for retailers and brands

07/23/2020, 07:39 a.m.
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Promote and sell your own products on Amazon? Performance and content marketing are essential for retailers and brands on the e-commerce platform. This German company shows you what to look out for!

Purchasing is enthusiastic about the new product – expectations of performance and sales are high. But what follows is an unpleasant realization: Even if the product makes an excellent impression in reality, it can neither be staged nor sold online. At the German e-commerce company Sellvin, they call this the Sophia effect: “Sophia was a very high-quality bedspread in our range. The quality of the blanket was much higher than that of the normal microfiber blankets, but we couldn’t get that across online. It’s an article that you have to touch, ”explains Dorothe Bakker. She is responsible for content marketing at Sellvin Hürth near Cologne.

Her colleague Patrick Müller takes care of performance marketing and advertising. Together, they have a lot of expertise when it comes to successful selling via platforms. In the Zoom interview, they both shared their five most important tips with us.

1. Unique content

“We create different content for each platform and our own shop. We don’t want our offers to cannibalize each other, ”explains Bakker. The first focus is on Amazon. Titles, bullet points, images and A + content are the main focus for Sellvin products. Products that are important for SEO are processed manually. Dorothea Bakker had all the products in hand.

2. Preliminary research

“You have to plan time for each listing” – that sounds banal, says Bakker, but you’re always tempted to shorten processes. She wants to invest half a day in each product to see what the key keywords are, how the competition is positioned – and she analyzes the data. “Brand analytics is a powerful tool,” she says.

3. Image production

First the product is classified. What ten unique selling points does it have? A photo passport is derived from this. “How can you express the USP in the picture,” asks the Cologne native. In their experience, the users no longer read the text, but also received the facts, especially about the images. You can make a size comparison by always seeing hands in the picture. “There are pictures out there that don’t work at all,” says Bakker. Sellvin has just completely rebuilt the subject of images in recent years. You let professional photographers in and stage the products in their context of use. “The picture is the be-all and end-all for the conversion and thus also for the ranking.”

4. Retail media

The competition is extremely high on Amazon and there are a lot of cheap products. “The majority of the products are barely distinguishable from ours,” says Patrick Müller. Nevertheless, advertising works best for him in the Amazon universe, simply because the purchase decision is so close and because the sheer reach is so great. “You also accept a higher CPC than on the smaller platforms.”

However, Müller does not want to rule out the possibility that smaller platforms can also play a role in advertising. The French platform Manomano is growing organically very strongly for the Cologne. There you are looking closely. But the process works like in content marketing: “First test at Amazon and then transfer it to other platforms,” ​​says Müller.

5. Instagram for awareness

It is not part of the business model at Sellvin to go to the market with inventions or previously completely unknown products. Nevertheless, Müller and Bakker clearly see that Amazon SEO will not be enough for such a product. Awareness is increasingly being addressed on other channels, for example on Instagram with short video clips that explain what is new about the product. On Amazon itself, the brand space is hardly enough. “It works better with ads than with content, because we can better address different target groups.”

6. Tools and structure

Both, both content and performance marketing, work with keyword and data tools that focus specifically on Amazon like Helium 10, Sellics and Amalyze. It is particularly important for Müller that the advertising account has a very clear structure so that it can quickly output reports and change parameters. “Sounds basic, but everyone knows that a gradually growing range will eventually become chaotic.” The line items are named according to the principle: brand, category, exact product including color and size.

7. Trend surfing

Current keyword trends are also reflected on Amazon. “In the corona crisis, we ran a back support pillow specifically for the keyword home office,” explains Müller. At the same time, content marketing also takes up such trends in the description. “Some of our ideas come from DIY areas on Instagram or Pinterest,” said the Cologne native.

8. The brand on Amazon

“No, the topic of brands is not difficult on Amazon,” Bakker argues against the critical thesis. Amazon is gradually strengthening this within the framework of the A + content, the seller account and of course when playing out the product recommendations under its own articles. “It’s also about protecting our offer from counterfeiters.” At the beginning, each product title bears the name of the brand. Brand keywords play a role in advertising in that they are cheap to advertise. With one exception: “Of course we also advertise with competitors.” But playing advertising in competition is expensive.

Brand safety is one of the important goals in advertising and at the same time serves to upsell with complementary products. “Basically, it is important to make clear beforehand what exactly the campaign should achieve,” says Patrick Müller. That also decides targeting, creatives and advertising placement. “You should use all formats and coordinate the creatives.”

9. Answer questions

“If the seller answers himself, it creates a lot of trust.” Dorothea Bakker takes care of bad reviews and criticism in order to show the next user that you are involved and looking for an exchange. In addition, the important questions and problems give rise to suggestions for optimizing the product content. However, FAQ topics do not play a major role in the search, say the Sellvin experts. Here, the “search engine Amazon” so much invoked in the past is clearly product-heavy.

10. Know the listing rules

Each category has its own Amazon laws and hardly anyone knows them. Bakker is surprised that some retailers are surprised at a ban even though they have clearly broken the rules. Rules such as the display of the term “special offer” or the application of “free shipping”. “Then comes the seller performance – also known as the Amazon police – and then your listing is closed and then it takes weeks for it to be restored,” said the Cologne native.

Additional tip: test car campaigns

Müller finds the auto campaign function particularly exciting when he is unsure about the positioning of a new product and the associated keywords. “With auto campaigns, you only give Amazon the product and Amazon controls the play itself.” After two weeks, Patrick’s team analyzes the performance and uses the learnings from Amazon AI to refine a campaign.

In conversation with the experts, it becomes very clear how exciting it can be if the “number cruncher” from performance marketing can do well with the “fine spirits” from content marketing. Müller would like even closer cooperation.

And the topic “competition at Google”? He frowns: “We rank behind Amazon with our own products, you can’t avoid it”. Above all, the fact that customers are missing from their own shop then annoys him. “We just don’t have enough data for CRM with Amazon customers.”

But Bakker classifies this tension: “We are Amazon specialists and they help us tremendously with sales. It is normal for the money to cost ”.

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