How to Use Amazon Posts to Promote Your Products
If you’re serious about digital marketing, you’ve likely spent thousands of dollars on testing, experimenting, and workshopping only to find that you simply aren’t reaching your target audience.
That’s where Amazon Posts comes in.
Amazon is doing more than just integrating social with online retail. Their Posts initiative reimagines what social media marketing could be, and it might just be the answer to some e-commerce sellers’ problems.
What Are Amazon Posts?
Amazon Posts is Amazon’s social media initiative designed to help shoppers find new products and engage with their favorite brands.
Essentially, this is Amazon’s version of Instagram. Posts allow brands to create and promote product-related content, directly linking to specific product listings. All your posts will appear on your brand’s feed.
Your content is visible to shoppers on product detail pages, related product feeds, and category-based feeds. Amazon is presenting brands and businesses with an opportunity to market directly to their audience, within Amazon itself.
As a business owner or marketer looking to expand their social media marketing (SMM) strategy, Amazon Posts offer a unique approach to content. Instead of creating content on the latest social media site and linking to an Amazon account, brands can engage with users already on the Amazon platform, driving sales and engagement.
Access to shoppers that are already engaging with Amazon is part of what makes Amazon Posts such an interesting marketing tool. That access can reduce friction, one of the most frustrating hurdles for marketers to overcome.
Why You Should Use Amazon Posts to Promote Your Products
Platforms like Amazon and social media release new features constantly. So, what are the benefits of investing in this new feature? Let’s look at why Amazon Posts matters for e-commerce brands.
Reach a Wider Audience
Amazon is the most popular buying app in the United States, reaching more than 150 million buyers every month. Amazon Posts helps your brand connect (and convert!) those buyers. Plus, unlike ads on platforms like Facebook and Instagram, Posts let you reach more buyers for free.
A wider reach for free? It’s hard to argue with that.
Reduce Buyer Friction
When we discuss friction in marketing and sales, we’re typically referencing potential sticking points and objections customers encounter in their journey from a potential sale to conversion.
That friction can become a tricky issue because just about every decision a customer makes can lead them to friction.
From a marketing standpoint, your job has two layers. The first layer involves removing as much friction from the customer journey as humanly possible. However, your business can’t remove every single friction point. Eventually, the customer is going to encounter a “yes/no” situation.
That’s why the second layer of marketing involves creating marketing experiences and content compelling enough to keep shoppers moving past the friction points you can’t eliminate.
Every form of marketing has its friction points, but Amazon Posts aims to address two of the biggest issues in marketing.
When your brand promotes its content on Amazon, you don’t have to ask shoppers to follow you to another site. They’re already where they need to be! Plus, with Amazon’s streamlined, high-level approach to the shopper experience, your brand can leverage its expertise and create compelling customer journeys.
Competitive Product Visibility
The term ‘competitor analysis’ is referenced frequently in digital marketing, and with good reason.
Your brand is probably not the only option for product X or service Y. Whether your brand has 10 competitors or 50, your brand’s priority is standing out and connecting with potential shoppers.
Savvy brands and business owners analyze the advertising channels their competitors use. How are they writing their copy? How often are they producing content? Where are their ads appearing? What keywords are on their landing page? These are the questions that drive critical analysis.
Brands ask themselves these questions for one simple reason. When you understand how your competitors think, operate, and promote themselves, hijacking their audience becomes much easier.
Promoting your content through Amazon Posts means your products can land on ‘related product’ feeds so you can directly advertise to your competitor’s audience when the shopper is primed to make a purchase!
With access to over 150M monthly users, your brand can’t afford to sit on the sidelines and let your competitors dominate the Amazon Posts space.
Who Should Use Amazon Posts to Promote Their Products?
Clearly, there are quite a few perks to using Amazon Posts, but that still leaves us with one question. How can you know if Amazon Posts is a good fit for your brand?
You wouldn’t promote exercise equipment on LinkedIn or professional SaaS business solutions on Snapchat. Every audience has a unique social media experience, and understanding how your shoppers see the world is part of building an effective marketing strategy.
Fashion brands are in a fantastic position with this platform. Promoting high-quality images of your products right next to your competitors? It’s a dream come true for most fashion brands.
Still, there are plenty of other brands that can leverage the Amazon Posts space. If your brand has tons of relevant social media content, you’ll be able to repurpose that and promote it directly to Amazon shoppers.
However, there are a few things that your brand should keep in mind before diving into the Amazon Posts ecosystem.
Your brand must actively sell products on Amazon to qualify for this initiative. Fortunately, Amazon Posts is a free platform, which means you can legitimately compete with larger brands.
If your brand has taken the time to create high-quality images, this is a perfect way to not only maximize their value but explore a unique form of consumer marketing.
How to Create Amazon Posts
Now that you’ve decided to get started, it’s time to start creating posts. This process is relatively straightforward. Start by visiting the official Amazon Posts website and signing in using your advertising console or Seller Central credentials.
Once you’ve done that, you’ll create a profile by verifying your brand name, uploading an image of your brand’s logo, and just like that, you can start creating posts on Amazon.
Each Post has five key elements: a brand name and logo, the promoted image, a ‘show product’ button, a caption, and tags. Most of those elements will sound familiar if you’ve spent time promoting on Instagram, but the implementation of tags is a bit different on Amazon.
Instead of hashtags on Instagram, which let you control where your post appears and what it’s related to, Amazon auto-tags your post and automatically determines which feeds it will display on.
Tips to Create Amazon Posts That Successfully Promote Your Products
Now that you know what Amazon Posts are, let’s talk about how to make them work for your brand. Here are three tips to make the most of this new feature.
Post Often
This is where SMM shines. Creating a post on Amazon is entirely free! Instead of having to manage an ad budget, your brand can focus on creating and sharing as much relevant content as possible.
Developing a relationship with shoppers takes time, so the sooner you get started, the better. To ensure regular content updates, schedule your posts through the platform. With scheduled posts, you can simplify your marketing efforts and consistently engage with your audience.
Daily posting is a good place to start, but if you have an extensive backlog of content, feel free to schedule more. Remember to experiment here, to make sure you aren’t overwhelming your audience!
Content Is Still King
We’ve tackled the “quantity” component, but it’s important we address the “quality” component as well.
No one, and I do mean no one, enjoys spam. Instead of overloading your audience with every single possible image, think like an art curator. Your brand is made up of dozens, maybe even hundreds of unique content pieces. Which pieces are exceptional? What kind of customer will want to engage with a particular piece of content?
Crafting remarkable pieces of content is great, but crafting memorable marketing experiences is what drives conversions. Use this platform as an opportunity to explore exactly what your brand and your content is capable of.
Monitor Campaigns and Metrics
Some brands view marketing campaigns as a mad dash for awareness. Don’t get me wrong, traffic is definitely important, but truly effective marketing is about more than just visibility.
As a marketer, I don’t just want to be seen. I demand to be heard, and when my content doesn’t drive conversions, something needs to change.
This is what makes monitoring your campaigns and metrics crucial. If you’re new to Amazon Posts, it’s not enough to simply start posting. You need to determine clear marketing objectives, campaign strategies, and content initiatives.
Social media platforms change constantly and understanding how those changes affect your campaigns makes it much easier to adapt and evolve.
Examples of Successful Promotional Amazon Posts
If you’re worried about what kind of content to create, or how to define your visual branding, take a page from an e-commerce store and just let the product speak for itself.
VIKICON offers a relatively small caption, a decent product offering, and some saturated tags. The image itself demands attention.
Bold, eye-catching visuals are a powerful way to tell your entire brand story without saying anything at all. Sometimes, less truly is more.
Likewise, KIWI Design understands the appeal of its product. Getting lost in a virtual reality world is about more than just computational capacity and frame rates. It’s about the shock and awe of diving into an immersive digital experience.
My favorite part about this image? It also sells you on the value of the ceiling pulley system! If you want to get lost in a digital experience, the last thing you want to deal with is tripping over cables.
Conclusion
Social media marketing is crucial to building a relationship between consumers and sellers. Our capacity to connect in honest, meaningful ways directly impacts how well our business does. Amazon Posts serves as a bridge between social media marketing and a straight e-commerce experience.
Amazon Posts is interesting mostly because it reduces friction and integrates so well with the Amazon platform. That being said, there are brands with dynamic visual content that are perfectly suited for this environment.
If your brand falls into that category, don’t waste any more time. Get to strategizing and see how well you can connect with shoppers on Amazon Posts.
If you want to learn about other innovative ways to promote your e-commerce company, let our agency know. We can keep you in the loop and partner with you to integrate custom digital marketing strategies.
Are you planning to leverage Amazon Posts? What results are you hoping to see?