Before you spend on Amazon ads, make sure your listing is ready to convert.
Your goal is to grow your business and get more sales. You can run Amazon ads right away, but ads work much better when your product detail page, pricing, reviews, and margins are already in good shape. Before you spend more on traffic, make sure your product is ready to convert it.
Here’s a quick checklist that we recommend you run for every product.
Build reviews that earn trust.
For many products, a small base (5+) of honest reviews is enough to reduce buyer hesitation. Review expectations vary by category, so look at the top products in your category to understand what shoppers are used to seeing. If you don’t have reviews, consider joining Amazon’s Vine program. You can ask your existing customers to write reviews on Amazon - they don’t need to have purchased from Amazon. It’s important that you not ask people to write positive reviews, as Amazon has strong policies against this and can limit your ability to sell if you do! Ask for honest reviews, never positive reviews, edited reviews, or reviews in exchange for compensation.
If your reviews are not good enough to help shoppers trust your product, figure out why and fix the root cause before you start a program like Vine or advertising.
Improve your detail page.
Your title should help shoppers find the product, your bullets should highlight key differentiators and answer objections, and your description should reinforce why the product is worth buying. Think about customers shopping for both your specific brand of product and the product category. Align your title, product bullets, and description with your core differentiation and value proposition. Amazon has robust requirements for what can go into each of these fields, so consult Amazon’s documents.
To make this easier for you, Seller Ascent generates listing suggestions aligned with Amazon’s guidelines, which you can review and publish directly in the app.
We also encourage sellers to invest in A+ detail page content (Amazon A+ Content), high quality product images, and influencer content. Shoppers engage with this content and it can be effective in answering questions or handling objections. While it has some up-front cost, it pays for itself on every detail page view whether you advertise or not. When you improve conversion rate, every future visit becomes more valuable. That means better images, stronger copy, and A+ Content can pay back over time across both organic traffic and paid traffic.
Optimize your total cost so you have enough contribution margin to advertise
Contribution margin before ads is the money left from a sale after product, fulfillment, Amazon, and return-related costs. You need to know this number before advertising, because it tells you whether paid acquisition can work.
Seller Ascent AI also ingests this data so we can help you understand your cost structure; we don’t know all of your costs, but we use your Landed Cost of Goods and the fees you pay Amazon to estimate your contribution margin on the backend.
Shipping can be especially painful for small sellers. You may find that your fulfillment costs justify signing up for Amazon’s FBA program. FBA comes with many incremental costs like inventory storage, but it also accelerates delivery to your shoppers and may be more cost effective than running it yourself.
If you are struggling with your margin, you might also consider product offering changes, such as bundling products together so that you can sell more at a higher cost but with less shipping per sale.
Price your product competitively and for growth.
Amazon has robust competitive pricing tools, but we suggest approaching this question strategically by thinking about your positioning in a segment. Boutique brands with high quality creatives, stellar reviews, fast delivery, and strong endorsements from influencers can sometimes justify a higher price than their peers. In commodity categories where shoppers can easily compare price per ounce, brands can experience substantial headwinds if they have higher-than-typical price-per-ounce costs. Similarly, if you’re selling only a large quantity that requires a high selling price, smaller pack sizes may look more accessible to shoppers because of the lower upfront price.
If your contribution margin - the money you pocket from a sale before ads - is less than what it will cost you with ads to acquire a customer, you may have to increase your price. Or, alternatively, increase the size or quantity of your sold units so that each sale to a customer has more contribution margin.
For example, a single-unit order may not leave enough margin to support ads profitably. But a two-pack or bundle can increase revenue per order while reducing shipping cost as a percentage of the sale, which can make advertising viable.
Once the basics are in place, test your ads
Amazon’s search results are heavily influenced by ads, so if you don’t advertise it will be difficult to acquire customers that don’t know about your product. In addition to search pages, ads influence detail page carousel displays, category pages, competitor pages, and even your own detail page. Just remember - ads may not work for your product on Amazon. Once your listing is ready, Seller Ascent can help you launch and manage Amazon ads more efficiently without the overhead of an agency.