5 Best Strategies To Drive External Traffic To Amazon Listings
Download Amazon Seller Guide
This guide will help you get started, understand the basics of Amazon selling, and explain in simple words how it all works.
Amazon is visited by around 2.5 billion buyers monthly, and all these shoppers generate traffic — customer visits to Amazon product pages. Buyers can search for products on Google or Bing, click your Facebook ads, or get to your listing via product links posted by social media influencers on their YouTube channels or in blog posts. All of them are your potential customers and can buy your product.
The more effectively you use these traffic sources, the more your product will sell. This post tells how external traffic can help grow sales on Amazon and the 5 best strategies to drive external traffic to your Amazon listings.
What Is External Amazon Traffic?
Customers get to your Amazon listing in two ways — by looking for your product on or off Amazon. The first type of customer is internal traffic, while the second type is external traffic.
There are different sources of external traffic. Your buyers can find your product via referrals, affiliate links, social media ads, and more.
Unlike internal traffic, external shoppers usually have a general idea about the product they want to buy. Therefore, your target is to convince them to make a purchase decision.
Selecting the right traffic source will help you with this task. That is because each traffic source has a specific target audience. For instance, there may be better ideas than advertising visually boring items like fridge thermostats or diapers on Instagram or Pinterest, where the users are attracted by creative pictures. On the contrary, an influencer advertising your ski thermals on TikTok can win many customers among younger audiences engaged in winter sports.
Related: Best Product Ideas for Amazon FBA in 2024
5 Strategies To Increase Amazon FBA Sales
How Does External Traffic Help Grow Sales?
Typically, higher traffic means increased sales. Though not all traffic converts and becomes sales, the more visitors land on your listing, the higher the chance your product will be purchased. That way, attracting external traffic helps grow sales.
Growing external traffic allows sellers:
- enhance product Best Sellers Rank (BSR) — combined with a highly convertible internal Amazon traffic, external traffic improves your sales and BSR — the product rank compared to other items in its category, given its current and historical sales;
- stay ahead of the competition — external traffic gives you a competitive advantage since it’s an unconventional way to advertise your products and attract new customer audiences;
- build up a customer base — external traffic allows you to diversify your customer audience and find new buyers due to the expansion of your marketing channels.
Related: Amazon FBA in 2024: Trends from 2023 and What We Predict for the New Year
What Are The External Traffic Sources?
The most effective external traffic sources are:
- referrals — influencers, bloggers, and other affiliates promoting your referral links;
- social media — YouTube, Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, and Instagram ads;
- email lists — your customer database for email marketing and retargeting customers;
- deal sites — online platforms where buyers search for discounted products;
- Google search — Google search engine used by your potential customers to find products.
Related: Amazon FBA Selling Tips for 2024
2024 Important Dates Amazon FBA: Key Dates for Amazon Sellers
Related: The Most Important Amazon Seller Metrics for FBA Businesses
5 Strategies to Drive External Traffic to Amazon Listings
The strategies are based on the most influential external traffic sources.
Strategy 1. Use affiliate marketing
Affiliates are influencers, bloggers, and other online marketers having consistent qualifying audiences on social media or media platforms. Affiliates influence their followers to purchase products and get compensated for that.
How does it work?
Affiliates and influencers create specific content recommending your product to their followers or subscribers. They include product links in the content. Followers trusting the influencers browse the link and purchase your product. You pay a commission or fee to the affiliate or influencer when they sell a product.
How to use affiliate marketing step by step
- Step 1. Connect with influencers, bloggers, or other marketers creating content in your Amazon product category.
- Step 2. Outline the content idea and set your requirements.
- Step 3. Discuss prices and terms.
- Step 4. Follow up on the result.
Strategy 2. Advertise on social media
The most popular social media platforms to advertise Amazon products are YouTube, Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, and Instagram. They generate the majority of external Amazon traffic.
Related: Customer Service by Amazon: All You Need to Know
Amazon Seller Compliance Documents
How does it work?
You must select the right social media traffic source since each has a specific target audience. For instance, advertising on Instagram or Pinterest must include visually attractive products, while TikTok's target audience is customers between 10 and 29 years old.
YouTube generates most of Amazon's external traffic in social media. At the same time, Facebook ads allow for a highly customizable approach to ads and audiences, making ad campaigns easy to set up.
How to use social media advertising step by step
- Step 1. Do the research and select a social media generating qualified traffic from your target audience.
- Step 2. Register and set up an account on the selected social media.
- Step 3. Create content that fits your marketing strategy and type of social media.
- Step 4. Create and set up an ad campaign.
- Step 5. Follow up on the result.
Strategy 3. Create email campaigns
Amazon gives sellers limited to no access to customer e-mails; therefore, you must create your customer email list to run email campaigns.
How does it work?
Collect your customer’s emails via different sources. One of the solutions is to create your landing page where you describe your product, collect emails in exchange for promo codes and discounts, and drive your external traffic to a landing page prior to Amazon listing.
Run email marketing campaigns, push cross-selling and up-selling, remarket your products to your former customers, and send promotional messages and special deals.
How to run email marketing step by step
- Step 1. Compile customer email lists.
- Step 2. Create a product landing page and drive traffic to it to collect customers’ emails.
- Step 3. Elaborate on email content plan, and create campaigns regularly.
- Step 4. Create content for specific email campaigns, set them up, and send them out one by one.
- Step 5. Follow up on the result.
Related: Taxes for Amazon Sellers: All You Need to Know in 2023
How Does Amazon FBA Work. Is Amazon FBA worth it?
Strategy 4. Get traffic on deal websites
Deal sites are online retail platforms where businesses sell their products at discounts. Your buyers always look for discounted products; therefore, it’s an excellent place to collect traffic.
How does it work?
There are many deal sites where you can promote your products. You can get to the website’s featured list or any front page section and collect essential traffic by featuring an attractive discount or offer. Many platforms are paid; therefore, you must carefully monitor the result.
Some examples of deal sites are Slickdeals, Honey, RetailMeNot, and Shopbrain.
How to use deal sites step by step
- Step 1. Do the research and select 2-3 most effective deal websites.
- Step 2. Enroll and partner with a deal site.
- Step 3. Create an attractive offer to get to the deal site’s featured list.
- Step 4. Follow up on the result.
Related: How to Sell Used Items on Amazon?
How to Collect Seller Feedback
Strategy 5. Collect traffic on Google ads
Though over 60% of Amazon customers search for products on the platform, many shoppers still start their searches on Google. Therefore, you can generate essential traffic by using Google Ads.
How does it work?
Google Ads are text and keyword-based, like Amazon Sponsored Products ads. Therefore, you will need to have your keywords ready. Target specific keywords or search terms, and bid for your ads to show on the search results page.
How to use Google Ads step by step
- Step 1. Create a Google Ads account.
- Step 2. Select from different ad types — choose Google search ads.
- Step 3. Select one product per campaign and relevant keywords.
- Step 4. Bid for your ads to rank your product in search results.
- Step 5. Follow up on the result.
Related: How to Scale Amazon FBA Business with Virtual Assistant
How to Add a Variation to an Existing Amazon Listing
Final Thoughts
External traffic helps grow sales on Amazon. The primary external traffic sources are referrals, social media, emails, deal sites, and Google search. Therefore, the strategies to collect external traffic and help attract customers must be based on using these traffic sources.
While growing sales is each seller’s target, selecting a profitable product to resell is equally essential. This is done through product research. Seller Assistant App is a popular new-generation tool offering an impressive portfolio of product research features. Seller Assistant Аpp is an all-in-one extension incorporating features vital for product research. Advanced IP Alerts can immediately tell you if a product has any sales restrictions or has led to problems with account health in the past. It combines an FBM&FBA profit calculator, Quick View, Stock Checker, and Restrictions Checker in one tool.