Amazon Posts offers you a way to improve your online content and contact with potential buyers, through Amazon’s own social media platform. If you think of a captive Instagram within Amazon mobile, that’s pretty much what Posts delivers.
It’s particularly potent as we estimate over a fifth of buyers start their purchase journeys on social media, whether that’s Facebook, Youtube or Instagram. If Amazon Posts delivers an equivalent performance, you could increase your sales significantly.
One of the best things about Amazon Posts it that can help you to promote your overall brand, not just individual products. You’ll need product links, but this is a great place to use lifestyle images, to talk about your brand story, and to build your brand profile. It’s a sellable feed which consumers can use to click through to your product, but it’s not as tightly focused as your product pages.
To use Posts, you’ll need to be a US based, Brand Registered seller. You’ll also need to have an Amazon Store; this is a good reason to get your storefront set up, if you don’t have one already. You should also note that Posts are only available to users on Amazon’s mobile app at the moment.
While you are in charge of posting, Amazon decides where it wants to show your posts. They’ll show up in your brand feed and in the carousel on your product pages, but may also show up in category based feeds.
A good way to get started is to select some of your best content from other social media, or from your lifestyle product photos. Sign up on posts.amazon.com using your existing credentials, and list your relevant ASINs when you create your post.
To succeed with Posts you need to have photos that make an immediate impact, and are totally authentic for your brand. Think about your photos as telling a story – how you developed the brand, how you helped a purchaser, what your new product delivers, how you made a little kid happy, helped a customer bake the perfect pizza… whatever it is, it’s a story and needs a photo that leads into it.
You also need a specific call to action in the caption. Be careful here, as general ‘buy now’ verbiage tends to upset Amazon’s editors; make it as specific as you can.
You’ll do best if you schedule regular posts, rather than just putting up ten and then relaxing for a month or two. (Amazon has a scheduling tool you can use.)
Conversion rates should be higher than with social media, since if someone’s viewing Amazon posts they’re already in the mood to buy, and the feed is planned to be shoppable. However, Amazon Posts doesn’t do some other social media tasks as well as, say, Facebook.
For instance, users can only click or follow; they can’t engage with you as they can on social media, so there are limits to how much you can build a brand community on Amazon. That said, building a group of followers is well worthwhile, particularly when you launch new products.
At least you’ll be able to see exactly what the results of your effort are. Amazon reporting will let you see total impressions, engagement, product clicks, and followers, giving you an in-depth view of how useful Posts has been. That makes it possible to run a low cost first campaign, check the numbers, and refine your marketing before you spend more money and effort.
But right now, Posts is free, so at least you don’t have to pay Amazon for the exposure. Though if you want to double its effectiveness, why not combine your Posts campaign with a PPC ad campaign at the same time?
