#also if you want to make conversations easier. then let us click thru to specific posts FROM OUR DASH AGAIN PLS

[sirotras]

“we need to make it easier to discover new blogs and creators”

ok then. fix the search. you know, the search function that has been notoriously broken for YEARS. that ppl have complained abt FOR YEARS

make it easier to follow tags, allow ppl to filter out other tags when searching thru them, or to search multiple tags at once, and make these functions EASY TO USE and widely known

give a clear guide on HOW tagging works! what will exclude a tag, etc

[portals-to-a-new-world]

Black Dresses and Back Alleys

(Butcher gif credit goes to @urban-trek-thru-middle-earth, and the edit is mine. Don’t ask why the gif is running so fast I couldn’t get it any slower. Open to suggestions lmao)

Who?: Billy Butcher x Reader

What?: Inspired by this post by @becs-bunker (thank you once again for letting me borrow the idea, love). Undercover in a night club to seduce a Vought scientist, with Butcher as your backup. What could go wrong? 

Word Count: 2.6k

Warnings: Does Butcher even need a language tag at this point? Smut. Portals? Writing smut? Why, it’s unheard of!!! Nah y’all know me this is smutty af. Specific warnings: Jealous!Butcher, Hints of Dom/sub, Public(ish) Smut, Fingering.

A/n: Hello everyone! Quick shout outs to @becs-bunker for the inspiration, and as always the illustrious @bakerstreethound for being a literal actual angel in human form, whom I thank every higher power for. I love ya. Also, shoutout to Sandmann on AO3 for helping out with some plot and general editing. You rock my dear. I wrote this with the dress in the picture above in mind, but feel free to read it as what ever sleeveless short dress you want :)

Going undercover in a night club to seduce some asshole scientist from Vought was not your ideal Saturday night. The mark was a new promotion in Vought and was more than happy to run his mouth once you got a few drinks in him. Bragging seemed to be his favorite thing to do, other than grinding like a 17-year-old boy at his first prom. It did provide a source of entertainment, though. Butcher had come as your backup, and never left your field of view for more than a minute. More than once you'd caught sight of Butcher scowling in your direction as the mark pulled you in close to whisper in your ear, or when his hand dropped a little too low while you were dancing. It finally came to a head, though, when the man led you over to a small VIP section and pulled you into his lap. You giggled and played along, trying to steer the conversation towards what he was working on for Vought. Turning all of your focus to getting him to tell you about the mysterious Compound V, you nearly jumped out of your skin when Butcher's voice cut through the noise.

"(Y/n)! Come ‘ere. I need to talk to ya." You jumped and turned to see Butcher stood just outside the ropes, glaring at the man, and his gaze sending ice through your veins. The idiot scientist didn't seem intimidated; however, he just scoffed and pulled you further into his lap.

"Sorry, mate," He said, making a terrible impression of Butcher's accent. "She's busy," You giggled and placed a hand on the man's chest, trying to salvage the situation, but you knew it was naught when you looked back over at Butcher. He was pulling what you called his 'death smirk,' and god only knew what he was planning. You recovered your composure and leaned in to speak into the mark's ear.

"I'll just be a minute." Your voice dripped with honey sweetness, but when you stood to walk away his hand shot out and grabbed your wrist.

“And how do I know you will come back, sweetcheeks?” You cringed internally but offered him a sweet smile before leaning down to kiss him quickly. Seemingly satisfied, thank god he’s too drunk to press the matter, you turned and let your hips sway as you walked towards Butcher. As you approached, Butcher turned and started into the crowd.

Surely he's not pulling me out?

You hesitated at the ropes, causing him to turn back, and you could just barely hear his growl above the music.

"Now." You suppressed the outrage at his demand and turned back to shoot the scientist a wink. It took all of your focus not to storm off after Butcher, and you only grew angrier as he led you towards a back door. You didn't even flinch as he slammed the door open.

"What in the actual fuck is wrong with you? I nearly had him!" You exclaimed once the door shut. He didn't bother turning to look back at you as you moved to catch up with him.

"Yeah, nearly had his tongue down your throat, didn't ya?" He mumbled, clearly thinking you wouldn't hear. You reached out and grabbed his arm to stop him.

"Answer me. Why the fuck did you pull me out?" He glared at you for a moment before replying.

"He wasn't gonna tell us anything we didn't already know." He said.

Liar

You scoffed and darted around in front of him when he tried to walk away. "Don't bullshit me, Butcher. I've known you for too fucking long-"

"I didn't like the way he had his hands all over you, alright?!" You stopped in place, too stunned to believe it. Suddenly everything clicked into place.

.

"So the plan is to pick him up from this club on Saturday. He's there every weekend, so we know we'll definitely be able to grab him there. Then we bring him back here and-" Hughie cut MM off.

"Oh, don't tell me we're planning to kill him too," Hughie said, dragging a hand down his face. Butcher started to speak up, but you spoke first before he could give his little speech about whatever it takes.

"Why don't I go in?" Everyone turned to look at you. You shrugged and moved forward. "You said it's a night club, right? I'll go in undercover and get it out of him my way,"

"You mean fuck it out of him." Butcher scoffed, and you gave him a side-eye before continuing. 

"It's easier that way too, he'll be too drunk to remember talking, and Vought won't be looking for the 6 stooges who kidnapped their new scientist." 

"No." Butcher spat out. You turned to look at him in confusion. He avoided your gaze and looked back up at MM. "You, me, and Frenchie will wait for him and-"

"Butcher, if she's willing to go then-"

"I said no. It's too risky."

"And since when do you give a fuck?" You demanded. He finally turned to look at you, and you raised an eyebrow in challenge. 

"You want to get yourself killed, fine. But I'm coming with you so I can wave at 'cha when Vought swoops in and drags you away."

.

Billy Butcher was jealous. So many thoughts rushed through your mind at once, and you shook your head to clear them before replying.

"And what gives you the right to pull me out when the mark gets a little handsy?" You demanded. The glare he sent you had you backing away until you were trapped between him and the wall.

"I protect what's mine." His voice was low and held a dark edge that sent chills down your spine.

"You don't own me, Butcher." The words had barely left your lips before he was slamming you back against the wall.

"No?" He asked, his face barely an inch from your own. You inhaled sharply as his hand yanked your skirt up, and he stroked two long fingers along your already dampening core. Another gasp escaped you as he leaned down to suck at your neck. "This cunt isn't mine? Sure did seem like it was the other night." You moaned as he pulled the fabric aside, circling your clit for a few moments. "That's a right shame." He growled against your ear, a finger just barely slipping inside you before he was suddenly gone, taking a step back to smirk as you whined and fell back against the wall.

"You don't get to pull this shit right now." You said, adjusting your skirt. "If you wanted me all to yourself, you should have fucking said so when you showed up at my door, begging me to help you and the boys. I told you then, no attachments. You fucked me over once already that first go around." Suddenly he was right back in front of you, tilting your head to look up at him.

"Better late than never, eh?" He growled, moving to kiss you, but he stopped right before your lips touched, waiting for you to make the final move. And, oh, how you wanted to. You'd fallen for him practically the moment you'd met him, and he'd known it. You didn't find out until too late that he could never have any affection for you. By then, he'd been fucking Susan behind your back, and you finally realized precisely the type of person he was. You'd convinced yourself after the team disbanded that you were over it, over him. Hell, even when he showed up at your door, you still almost kicked him out. And yet here you both were, after years of denial, scant inches apart, with him admitting he was jealous. Butcher pulled back slightly and tilted his head as he glared at you. "Cmon. Just admit it. Say you're mine." You glared back at him, anger and lust still pulsing through your veins. Finally, you groaned in frustration and reached up to pull him back in.

"Fuck you." You said and slammed into his lips in a harsh kiss. He matched your pace, pressing his body against you. You could feel him growing harder as you met again and again in rough and bruising kisses. A growl sounded deep in his chest as you tugged sharply on his hair. He pinned your wrists over your head with one hand before the other once again found its way beneath your skirt. You gasped and squirmed as he pulled the dress up before yanking your lacy thong down your legs. "Butcher-" He cut you off once again by slamming two fingers deep inside you, barely giving you any time to adjust before he was pumping them in and out at a brutal pace. You tugged against his hold on your wrists, trying to muffle the sounds escaping you, but he held firm and just moved to bite and suck at your neck, ignoring your pleas.

"How about I fuck you right here in this alleyway?" He growled in your ear. You whined as his thumb pressed hard against your clit. "Let the whole fucking world hear you moan for me," He continued his onslaught, driving you closer and closer to climax. Right as you were on the edge, he pulled away, leaving only his hand pinning your wrists. You bit your lip to stop from crying out and tried to focus back in. After a moment or two, you began to laugh breathlessly. "What the fuck's so funny?" He demanded.

"You say you own me, but who's the one begging to fuck me in an alleyway cause they got a little jealous when someone else played with their toy?" You said, relishing in the way his eyes flashed. Your laughter was stopped dead, though, as he leaned back in to resume sucking at your neck. You gasped as his hand slid into the top of your dress, palming your breast roughly.

"We need each other, luv." He pinched and rolled your nipple between his fingers and moved to give other the same attention as you continued to squirm. He chuckled as you stepped around awkwardly, your movements hampered by your thong still caught around your knees. "Having problems there?" You carefully dropped your head back against the wall and groaned.

"For fucks sake Butcher if you're gonna do something get on with it." You huffed. He pulled back to look at you, smug grin out in full force.

"Why? If you're not desperate for me, you can just run inside to your little twat and let him satisfy you. Ey?" He pulled your breasts free from your dress as he spoke, and you didn't have time to think before his lips were closing around a hardening peak. You moaned and arched your back into him, and he palmed and kneaded the other before switching sides.

"Butcher for the love of all that is holy-" He pulled off you, leaving his hand in place as he spoke.

"You want me to fuck you?" He smirked.

"Either that or let me go find someone who will," You yelped as he groped you hard. "FuCk! Please! I-" You screwed your eyes shut. "I need you." He finally released your wrists and slammed back into your lips. You reached down to step out of your thong, intending to just throw it somewhere, but he grabbed it from your hand and stuck it in his coat. Too far gone to care, you pulled him back in, fumbling with his pants' fastenings. Finally, you pulled his throbbing cock free, and he groaned as you gave him a few strokes. "Whose cock is this, Butch?" You said mockingly. He glared at you and pulled your hand off before reaching into his back pocket and pulling out a foil packet. He tore it open and rolled the condom on quickly before grabbing your ass and lifting you up. You wrapped your legs around him instinctively and hissed as he brushed against you.

"Whose cunt am I about to destroy?" He snarked as he moved to where the wall was taking most of your weight, freeing his hand to guide himself into you. You whined and clung to his shoulders as he filled and stretched you inch by delicious inch. Before he could move, the sound of the door slamming open had you scrambling in panic. Butcher only pushed further into you, moving in close enough to cover your exposed body with his coat as a whimper escaped you.

"(Y/fake/n)?" It was the scientist, and Butcher let out a huff at the sound of his voice. You willed the man to just go away, but his voice only drew nearer. "Hey, Brit! You scare my pussy away?"

Ah shit

Butcher made a noise akin to an animalistic growl and pulled his hips back, so only the tip remained inside you. He locked eyes with you, and you shook your head at him, but it was no use as he called over his shoulder.

"Sorry, mate," Butcher said. He slammed his hips back forward, drawing a desperate gasp from your lips. "She's busy." Your eyes slammed shut in mortification, and you could feel your cheeks heating up. Butcher smirked against your neck as his plan worked, the man cussing him out but finally leaving. As you heard the door open and close, you considered smacking the smug bastard. Right as you opened your mouth to speak though Butcher repeated his action, drawing another cry from you.

"B-butcher-" You whimpered, and he tsked before slamming into you three more times, making you claw at his shoulders and cry out.

"Nowhere near loud enough, love." He dropped his head to your neck, biting and sucking marks as he gripped your ass tighter and pounded you into the wall. "I want to hear you scream." Your fingers continued to dig into his shoulders as each thrust drove you higher and higher. "Fuck." He swore and began to pick up his pace. You gasped and whimpered incoherent syllables mixed with pleading his name as a fire started to form in your core. 

He may be a madman, but every move of his hips, every touch of his fingers, and kiss from his lips seemed to be perfectly thought out to drive you to the brink of insanity. Someone could have walked right up to the two of you, and you doubt you would have cared, too consumed with the pleasure zapping through every cell of your body like lightning. Only he had this effect on you. Only he could convince you to give in to him with barely any effort at all. Yes, Billy Butcher was crazy, but not a single part of you cared as the spark in your core ignited, and you muffled your scream in his shoulder. Butcher groaned as you clenched around him, and doubled his efforts, panting hard as you begged him to let you have a moment to recover. It was pointless though, already the coil was beginning to tighten again, and this time when you came, your whole body shook, and it took all of his strength to keep you both from falling as you squeezed his own orgasm from him. He quickly slid out of you and stood you on your feet as you both gasped for air, the aftershocks jolting you into whimpering. You eventually managed to regain your brain function, quickly fixing your dress and hair before holding your hand out towards Butcher. "What?" He asked, raising an eyebrow. You rolled your eyes and huffed.

"You know what. Give me my panties." You said indignantly. He tilted his head and grinned at you. "Ugh. Perv." His grin turned predatory as he turned to walk towards his car, reaching in his jacket to pull them out and dangle them off a finger.

"You're not gonna need them tonight, luv."

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Tags (as always if you’d like to be removed or if I forgot you feel free to yell at me. If you’d like to be added, click here):

@bakerstreethound @bookscoffeeandracoons @becs-bunker​ @lt-trick​ @billybutchersbabe @emily-strange @below-average-fangirl @brideofedoras @nora-hewlett​ @im-like-reallythirsty​ @fairytale07 @waaaaaaitwhat @rayray1463 @mblaqgi

[shoppingfeedmr-blog]

five Free WooCommerce Google Product Feed Plugins for Quality Leads

Ever visible Google Shopping commercials on Google’s seek engine outcomes pages (SERPs)?

These backed commercials assist customers discover the goods they may be seeking out easily. They have snap shots and up to date records on price, reviews, etc, for brief browsing.

As a shop proprietor, you want to put up a feed of your merchandise to Google Merchant Center after which hyperlink it together along with your Google Ads account for Google to keep in mind your merchandise for crear feed de google shopping . Unlike textual content commercials that use key phrases to healthy outcomes, Google buying commercials use the product feed which you add to randomly pick out and show merchandise.

That is why growing a Google product feed is particularly essential on your merchandise to be featured in Google Shopping commercials. In this article, we are able to supply a top level view of Google buying commercials and proportion with you some unfastened WooCommerce Google Product Feed plugins for the same.

Let’s begin.

What are the Benefits of Google Shopping Ads?

There are sure apparent benefits in showing your merchandise thru Google Shopping commercials. We will speak a number of them earlier than moving into the listing of plugins.

#1 Better visibility on your merchandise

Irrespective of the dimensions of your business, you'll discover higher visibility on your merchandise whilst featured on Google Shopping commercials. Generally, obtaining new clients is a protracted and tough method that entails numerous unique advertising and marketing campaigns. Often you want to make yourself familiar together along with your purchaser base for them to buy from you.

However, whilst Google shows your merchandise thru buying commercials, you're sincerely bypassing this exhausting method. When merchandise seem withinside the seek engine outcomes pages, clients can be obviously extra open to going in advance with a buy even if they may be now no longer acquainted together along with your brand.

#2 Reach a larger purchaser base

Most of your advertising and marketing campaigns can be distinctly focused and as a result you want to paintings on unique campaigns to get a good sized purchaser base. Google Shopping commercials will in truth assist you get to a much broader target target market who may be all people the usage of the hunt engine to discover records associated with your merchandise. Compared to textual content commercials, you'll now no longer ought to fear approximately selecting the proper key phrases. For Google buying commercials, the relevance of a show advert is decided through Google’s set of rules in preference to your sensible wager with a fixed of key phrases.

This will make certain that your merchandise are achieving a broader segment of the target target market than you focused on precise groups.

#three Get certified leads

As you could see, Google Shopping commercials are tons extra informative than textual content commercials. This is due to the fact they comprise product meta like snap shots, product price, score trends, etc., which might be vital for maximum clients. With only a look on the advert, a potential purchaser can collect pretty a variety of records approximately merchandise in addition to the alternatives. So whilst the purchaser comes to a decision to click on an advert, they may be already properly knowledgeable approximately the product and to be had options. That makes the lead extra certified and relevant.

#four Better conversions

More certified leads may even imply higher conversions on your shop. This has been a steady statement whilst Google Shopping commercials are in comparison with conventional textual content commercials. According to studies, the conversion charge of Google Shopping commercials is over 25% better than textual content-primarily based totally commercials. This method that your go back on funding can be drastically more whilst your merchandise are displayed on Google Shopping commercials.

#five Easier to manage

To be featured on Google Shopping, you want to generate a product feed out of your on-line shop. The steps you have to take as a shop proprietor are surprisingly easy in comparison to different advertising and marketing campaigns. To get your merchandise featured on Google Shopping commercials, you want to:

Create an account with Google Merchant Center.

Generate a like minded product feed record primarily based totally at the specifications.

Upload the feed to Google Merchant Center.

Link your Google Merchant Center and Google Ads accounts.

Create advert campaigns and agenda them in a focused manner.

With maximum famous eCommerce platforms, you may be capable of discover specialised equipment that will help you generate a product feed. We will speak a number of the unfastened equipment that you could use to generate a product feed out of your shop in case you are the usage of the WooCommerce platform.

How to Generate Product Feed on a WooCommerce Store?

ELEX WooCommerce Google Product Feed

This plugin will assist you immensely in getting your merchandise indexed in Google Shopping commercials. Basically, it allows you generate a product feed of your WooCommerce store, which you could add to Google Merchant Center. It helps 3 report codecs – XML, TSV and CSV. The plugin allows you generate a Google product feed through mapping your product classes with Google classes. You can use situations and regulations for characteristic mapping, to be able to be beneficial in developing extra correct feeds. Moreover, you may be capable of exclude merchandise of unique classes from being a part of the product feed. Also, the plugin gives a exceptional interface that will help you control more than one feeds.

Furthermore, you may be capable of agenda cron jobs for periodic updates of your product feed. This is vital as Google mandates everyday updates of the product feed to make sure that the displayed purchasing commercials aren't outdated.

There is likewise a top class model of ELEX Google Product feed plugin that incorporates superior capabilities consisting of aid for variable merchandise. You may also locate dependable aid and common updates with the top class model of this plugin.

Product Feed PRO for WooCommerce

This plugin allows you create Google product feed in conjunction with numerous different feeds which includes the ones for Facebook remarketing, Bing Ads, etc. It helps WooCommerce variable merchandise in conjunction with superior mapping and filtering alternatives. The plugin can be a exceptional asset to your advertising campaigns as you may be capable of control more than one merchandise feeds effectively. There is an Elite model of this plugin with extra superior capabilities.

Features

Helps you create limitless product feeds with out a limits withinside the quantity of merchandise.

Great filtering alternatives in order that you may be capable of encompass merchandise which are maximum worthwhile and relevant.

Easily map your product fields and attributes in step with the channel you're developing the feed for.

Properly encompass dependent statistics on your product feed to assist customers make an knowledgeable choice.

Helps you upload extra statistics fields as in step with Google’s requirement.

Helps you create an optimized Google product feed on the way to have higher probabilities to be featured on Google Shopping commercials.

Support for transport classes, desk rates, Google Analytics and WPML.

WooCommerce Google Feed Manager

This loose plugin withinside the WordPress repository will assist you create a product feed with as much as one hundred merchandise to your WooCommerce store. It will mechanically create a product feed in compliance with all of the necessities exact through Google Merchant Center.  In addition, you could make customization, to make sure that your product feed does now no longer pass over any extra information. The plugin gives an intuitive interface and can be a exceptional alternative for WordPress customers who aren't specialists in coding.

Moreover, the plugin allows you make sure that the feed is optimized and your merchandise get most visibility via purchasing commercials in seek engine consequences pages. And, every other standout function of this plugin is that it guarantees everyday updates of your product feed primarily based totally at the modifications which you make on your WooCommerce store. With the assist of this plugin, you may be capable of have complete manipulate over your product feed and may make sure higher visibility to your merchandise via Google Shopping commercials. If you need to keep away from regulations in phrases of the quantity of merchandise, you could test out the top class model as well.

WooCommerce Product Feed Manager

If you're seeking to combine more than one retail channels and advertising avenues on your WooCommerce retail strategy, this plugin can be of actual assist. It will assist you generate product feeds for exceptional marketplaces and contrast engines consisting of eBay, Amazon and Google Merchant Center. Please be aware the loose model of the product helps as much as 50 merchandise out of your WooCommerce store. With the assist of the top class model of the plugin, you could create feeds with limitless merchandise and provide distinct product attributes custom fields.

Features

Generate product feed for Google Merchant Feed and set a everyday agenda for automated updates.

Category mapping to fit your store’s classes to those exact through Google.

Filter merchandise through classes, tags or custom characteristic to be covered or excluded from the feed.

Option to create custom fields for Brand, GTIN, Gender, etc.

Supports more than one report-codecs consisting of CSV, XML, and TXT.

Compatible with the maximum famous WordPress themes.

WooCommerce Product Feed for Marketing Channels

This is every other famous choice withinside the WordPress repository that permits smooth era of product feed for Google Merchant Center. The unfastened model permits you to create a product feed with as much as forty merchandise out of your WooCommerce shop. However, with the top rate model of the plugin, you'll locate superior functions like no product limits and guide for variable merchandise.

Features

Upload WooCommerce shop merchandise one after the other to Google Merchant Center via an XML feed generated through the plugin.

Automatically generates service provider product forms.

Compatible handiest with the ultra-modern variations of WooCommerce.

Generate category-sensible product feed with the top rate model.

We desire you purchased an outline of Google purchasing commercials and the way the above noted WooCommerce plugins assist you to characteristic your merchandise there. Leave a remark when you have a query.

[love-rock-blog1]

Learn How Sales Funnels Help Business Development Today

Sales funnels help business development in several ways.  I grew up in the 90's, learning how to do door to door sales, and other type of sales techniques.  I know that when I first learned about sales funnels, it was more of a process that help take a certain group of prospects and move them thru a funnel towards making a sale.

With the new technology in communications and software, I believe even more that sales funnels help business development in many ways, and have taken a new shape and function in the business development world. Business development is primarily focused on building and growing a business in with the use of expanding into new markets, growing leads and sales and finding new business partnerships and strengthening them. I have felt that Sales funnels help business development for a long time, and i think that it is only going to help even more in the future.  I wanted to discuss some ways how sales funnels will help your business, no matter what type of business that you have.

Sales Funnels Help Business Development

First, i want to mention that the most complete sales funnel process that i have seen in my 20 years of being in sales,

is the customer value optimization funnel.  I first hear about this term from Ryan Deiss, and it is foundation to building a successful business.  The reason why I say it is foundation, is because it doesn’t leave out any steps that old school sales funnels incorporate.  The old school sales funnel models mostly focused on take a prospect and moving it thru the funnel to generate a sale. The Customer value optimization model helps build the relationship with the prospect before a purchase is made.  It then offers a small offer, a core offer, and then a profit maximizes and then leads the prospect back for other repeat sales or different offers, in the attempt to sale that prospect over and over again. The Key take away is that most business are afraid of marketing because of the high cost of acquiring a new client.  In old styles of sales funnels , the funnel ended with a sale, a single sale and that was it.  SO the cost of acquiring a new client needed to be at least 50% lower than the lifetime value of that customer. The new style of sales funnel with customer value optimization is extremely powerful because it’s main goal is to increase the lifetime value of each client so much, that the business can afford to outspend their competition on acquiring new customers. Not only that, it continues the relationship with that client, to the point of turning them into a lifetime client, that. Continues to spend over and over again, and also giving referrals and testimonies to the business.  This is where the big money is made.  The younger companies always try and make the money up front, but the real money is made in the follow ups, repeat business that generates referrals. So, the sales funnels help business development in many ways.  For starters, lets say that every great salesperson

has a systems or process for their sales.  They usually build rapport, uncover needs and desires, and then they tell some type of story that will get the prospective buyer open to listening to new options.  The sales person then will give some type of presentation of themselves, their company, their products, then make some offers, and if they don’t complete the sale, then they have some follow up work to do. What sales funnels do is they help perfect this process, and automate it.  In the old days, like 10-30 years ago, salesmen had call rooms, receptionists, salespeople and marketing team that helped pull these “sales funnels” together.  It was a pretty massive operation and it involved many people. The old saying, a team is only as strong as it’s weakest link” holds true to this scenario.   I’ve worked for companies in the past, high pressure sales companies, just to learn how to sale, and how not-to-sale.  What I learned was very interesting.  I learned that sales is mostly a communication and leadership thing.  A leader is usually very good at finding out problems and moving people , or “influencing them” in a way that benefits them and a large group of people. So, hang with me here, be cause I want to make a point.

Sales funnels are essential a process or system that helps move people thru a process of transformation.  That’s it.

If your daughter sets up a lemonade stand your drive way, 

and she get’s her friends to stand at the only entrance and exit of your neighborhood and hold signs and wave traffic thru,, and they stop and buy, and then she give them a coupon to save 15% off the next round of drinks next week, that is a sales funnel. So, what brings so much excitement and energy around these topics today is the fact that you have social media and a Global audience now. That lemonade stand is a Website, something that has one landing page, on offer, and one desired outcome, and then move them down the funnel.  The traffic that people focus on isn’t coming out of your neighborhood, it's all over the world. It’s also very easy to get specific on what type of traffic you target.  Imagine if your daughter's friends in this scenario only focused on sending people with new cars to the lemonade stand.  That's Targeted Traffic If the conversion rate on them were higher, and you paid her friends so much money every time they sent someone over to the stand, then you would track those conversion or closing rates, and you would also keep up with how much money you sold each customer. Then you could start scientifically figuring out how to make more profit.  Which corners to advertise on, what type of cars to target, what time of day, what day in the week, what months out of the year...  etc... SO, this is one little cute story to talk about sales funnels. It kinda makes the point of what sales funnels do.  It also gives you some perspective.  When you do sales funnels digitally, and you also have a way of keeping up with the traffic that you send, how much it costs, and how much you are converting, then you are in a position of making a life changing business.

Why Customer Value Optimization is the Best Sales Funnel Model

If you go back and look at the other blog about customer value optimization, then you will understand that the goal

of a sales funnel isn’t to make money off the initial sale.  It is I to get the initial sale to cover the cost of marketing, and then you make a more expensive offer, and another offer, and you make that. Sale repeatedly.  When you accomplish this, this is when you can achieve Financial Freedom. Warren Buffet once said that if you aren’t making money in your sleep, then you’ll never achieve financial freedom. I hate saying this, but I have to agree.  I have seen too many successful people get laid off, and even successful entrepreneurs making half a million a year, and when they retire, the money eventually runs out.  If you don’t have a way to make more money than your lifestyle needs, without you working all of the time, then you will have a hard time ever becoming financial free. Sales funnels help business development in the sense that they work while you are asleep if you build them the right way.  The way we did them in the old days worked because that was all we had.  Nowadays, you have so many great automation tools at your disposal, and at a very affordable price. IF you think click funnels or running some ads on Facebook is expensive, try hiring a canvassing team to go out in

neighborhoods and knock on doors, and send some salesmen in their homes to try and sell them something.  That is very very expensive, it’s very hard to track, hard to duplicate.  IF you have never heard of clickfunnels, You probably should check the software out, it is the most powerful sales funnels software I have seen in the last 10 years. You can checkout a Free 14 day trial here. Sales Funnels are more of a marketing and sales process than a software.  I know that sometimes Marketers get confused about this, and they think that sales funnels may be a software or an app, but remember,  Sales funnels are a Strategy and process to achieve a desired goal... SALES AND REVENUE! How does Sales Funnels Help Business Development? Before I answer this, let's first discuss what Business Development Is.   Business Development has a few different definitions. Business development is the creation of long-term value for an organization from customers, markets, and relationships. Business development can be taken to mean any activity by either a small or large organization, non-profit or for-profit enterprise which serves the purpose of 'developing' the business in some way. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_development For a Company to grow and devleop, it must create a duplicatable system that allows them to create value for the markets it serves.  Sales funnels allow businesses to create a duplicatable  system that helps them spread their sales messages far and wide.  It helps them Leverage their marketing and sales message to an audience with predictable results. The best Sales funnels in my opinion are digital.  The reason is because they are easier to track, Adjust, run Test against each other, and Scale.  I say Scale, meaning, when you find a Sales funnel that is double it's money, you basically have a money machine at that point. A lot of old school marketers and sales guys over look the power of digital sales funnels some times, and I think this is a Trend that will happen.  A lot of companies still have sales professionals, but the great benefits of sales funnels is that it allows one person to be in many places at a lot of different times, so when they do sit down on the phone or at a table with someone, that person is already warm, informed, and ready to make a decision. Back in the earlier days, I still had to go out to peoples homes, and give cold presentations.  The presentations were 2 hours long, and by the end of them, I was exausted, the prospects were exhausted, and I was instructed by my company that i worked for not to leave without an answer.  IF they said now, I had to call the office and get a sales manager to make one final attempt to close the deal. This strategy was almost 'cave man like' to me.  It was very uncomfortable.  You had to cram to much information in front of the client at one time.  Usually the client had so much information, it would make it difficult to make a decision.

Now, we have systems that are more automated with video sales letters, automated webinars, and email automation, and now we have Facebook messenger automation, where we can have a long conversation with the prospect, but we actually are just letting them consume content at a very slow and easy pace, and by the time they reach the end of the digital sales process, they are usually ready to buy.  If they aren't, they don't book a call or an appointment and you don't waste your time trying to sale something to someone that doesn't qualify. If you have question about how you can improve your current sales funnel, I would love to find out more about you and your business.  We can disucuss what systems you are currently using, and what your bigger goals are for the future and design a strategy to get you there. You can book a Free Strategy Call Here with Jeremy Coates Read the full article

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5 Ways Search and Social Work Together

One year ago Facebook reported that it had over 3 million advertisers on their system. It might not be an online search engine, but paid search marketing professionals have absolutely located value as well as ROI from advertising on Facebook. In a similar way social media sites marketing professionals have actually likewise broadened the reach of their campaigns, by applying their Facebook insights to paid search and also remarketing efforts. Combining paid search and social projects develops an advertising force to be thought with. This blog post considers 5 means marketing experts can completely recognize that incorporated advertising power!

# 1: Usage Facebook To Build Brand Awareness

There's a really clear (and obvious) distinction in between exactly what individuals use Facebook and Google for. While individuals on an online search engine are purpose-driven as well as trying to find a piece of information, individuals on a social networks network are usually there to be social. On Facebook as well as Instagram, people check on their buddies, their much-loved web pages, and also maintain up to this day on recent trends.

Users discover new points on Facebook as well as Instagram, whereas on Google individuals find something they understand they currently need. Therefore Facebook and Instagram could be made use of for brand recognition, while Google's advertising network is usually better suited for owning straight conversions. For marketing experts this distinction is crucial to unlocking the potential of both channels.

If you're an organisation that is launching a brand-new item (or a new organisation in basic), no person is mosting likely to browse for you in Google, just because they have no idea you exist. Services need to develop a target market and also a strong brand name visibility prior to the general public will use internet search engine as a way to find them (lasting natural SEO initiatives omitted).

Facebook can aid. By marketing on Facebook marketing experts can construct brand name awareness, due to the fact that ads will certainly be revealed to customers as they scroll through their newsfeed. In time users will become aware of your brand merely from the ads you have actually flowed on Facebook (as well as ideally additionally from word-of-mouth since that's exactly how good your service is!). Facebook's audience-targeting makes this even much easier, enabling you to generate need for your product/business from a particular demographic developed from many information factors. Or else referred to as "draw marketing," this technique lets you construct need as well as awareness on Facebook to ensure that users will in fact start to search for your company on Google.

# 2: Begin Facebook Projects with Browse Landing Pages

When marketing on Facebook, marketing professionals could tailor photos, headlines as well as message. Greater than personalization, there is the capacity to A/B examination personalized variables to make the most of click-through-rate. However also if the material of the advertisement itself is amazing and also appealing, there will not be any conversions if the touchdown page is dreadful. Presuming you're already running paid search projects, you can make use of the existing Pay Per Click landing web page data, rather than entering into social marketing campaign blind.

Create a Facebook advertising campaign utilizing the landing page with the greatest rate of conversion from your search campaigns. A completely enhanced ad linkeded into your best landing web page from search is a recipe for Facebook ad success, or at the minimum a fantastic place to start.

The interplay in between social media sites and online search engine isn't one-sided either. When you develop an enhanced Facebook ad, you can utilize it to notify your PPC advertisements in search!

# 3: Create a "Lookalike" Audience

Before you study pressing a marketing campaign on Facebook, it's essential to figure out who your audience is. It's ineffective to be paying for an ad that isn't mosting likely to reverberate with a particular target market. Again, here's where search projects could aid narrow your focus.

By assembling a list of customers who converted from search advertisement campaigns, marketing professionals could use that information to create a custom audience in Facebook. Considering that conversions can take different types for different services, a customized audience listing can be produced from individuals who signed up for your newsletter or a checklist of individuals who bought something from your site for instance. You might even obtain more granular and publish a list of people that quit opening your e-newsletter, and also target them on Facebook with a new as well as a lot more intriguing offer - one that will certainly make them wish to connect with your brand name once more. In the image to the right here, I am being retargeted on Facebook by a brand name with whom I have actually previously communicated with, functioning to conserve elephants. This is a fantastic instance of a brand name returning to me on Facebook with a targeted message around a minimal edition t shirt, showcasing one of my favorite celebrities as well as making me desire to connect with their cause again.

While marketers should recognize their target market size as they build a custom audience, the process is pretty structured. That is, you can download and install the list of customers from your site into a. txt or.csv documents then post that listing straight onto Facebook! But don't stop there.

Facebook is wonderful for producing what's called a "lookalike" audience. Real to it's name, this kind of target market is automatically picked by the Facebook ad platform based on just what the custom target market you submitted looks like. Consequently your custom-made audience and also lookalike audience will certainly have comparable features. Most significantly they should have some fundamental interest in your service or item. And also easily marketing experts, you have not just one, yet two separate custom-made audiences to get to with your ads!

# 4: Change From Social To Search

Now here's where search campaigns take advantage of all the work you've performed with your Facebook or Instagram ads. With all the A/B testing in addition to the custom and also lookalike target market targeting, possibilities are at least some of the target market saw your Facebook ad. When a user sees your advertisement on Facebook a type of conversion has actually happened referred to as a 'Sight Via,' a 'Sight Via,' or a 'VTR.'

One of the most powerful strategies when integrating search and also social is to take a listing of view-thru users from Facebook and use it to target people in search. Marketers could publish their view-thru list from Facebook into an AdWords project and create just what's called a Remarketing Checklist for Search Ads (RLSA). Marketing professionals see to it you keep in mind that acronym! Because you already have specificed info on the view-thru individuals from Facebook (location, gender, age, etc.), you can target this listing with a different message in search.

Let's state you were running an advertisement for beard-grooming packages on Facebook. Through various A/B examinations and various audience targeting strategies, you established that middle-aged guys in the US who like Vice transformed frequently on your most optimized advertisement. You can take the checklist of people that saw your message of brand awareness on Facebook, and after that retarget them with paid advertisements on search, offering a 40% off limited-time price cut on the sets for example.

#5: Bids You Can Bet On!

Marketers have to recognize exactly what stage in the channel a target market is before choosing on what does it cost? to bid on them. Exactly how far down the channel are they? Will they click on your ad only to contrast pricing or are they a lot more devoted? That's where truth advantage of making use of cross-campaign targeted listings comes in.

In some of the steps above we discussed the power of taking audience understandings from search and also bringing them over to social. We likewise discussed taking audience insights from social and bringing them back to look. You should bid even more to get to these audience groups since they are better down the acquiring cycle. When targeting a lookalike audience with your ads for instance, you might wish to raise your spending to get to these users because this target market is much a lot more most likely to transform compared to a basic target market. When you're presenting an AdWords project utilizing an RLSA from a previous Facebook campaign, you would likewise want to bid even more to reach this audience and more. The factor is that anytime you currently know that the customers you're targeting already interacted with your brand name (either on Facebook or Google), increasing your spend is a good idea!

Search + Social = Sweeter Results

As we have actually revealed, there's genuine worth in integrating social advertisement campaigns with search campaigns. Social media like Facebook or Instagram may be a bit various in function than an online search engine, however the data and understandings they supply are very useful. Previous search projects can inform social campaigns as well as targeted social campaigns can notify search.

Let's Recap:

# 1: Begin building your audience base in Facebook # 2: Use your highest possible converting touchdown page from search in Facebook # 3: Produce a personalized target market in Facebook with individuals who transformed from search advertisement campaigns # 4: Target Facebook view-thru individuals with a different message in search # 5: Bid even more to reach these target market groups because they are even more down the purchasing cycle

Marketers who are wise adequate making usage of the techniques defined above will certainly have a benefit over rivals that are not. As individuals are pestered with consumer messages a growing number of (and much more!), it will be up to online marketers to claim precisely the best point at the correct time to get conversions - integrating search as well as social is an effective place to start.

If you're just running search campaigns and still unsure about Facebook or Instagram projects, don't fret, Acquisio's Overview of Facebook Advertising Success describes whatever you have to know!

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How to “Easily” Add Anchor Links in WordPress (Step by Step)

We often make the most of anchor hyperlinks in our longer wordpress posts to help prospects speedy soar to the piece they’re in search of to review.

Anchor hyperlinks are on the whole frail inside the desk of narrate materials sections as a result of they support prospects cross up and down a lengthier article with out reloading the web web page. It could maybe nicely really per likelihood moreover support with web web page positioning as google might maybe nicely per likelihood additionally disguise them beneath your search listings for simple navigation (further on this later).

On this step-by-step handbook, we are able to disguise what are anchor hyperlinks and disguise you the honorable approach to with out grief add anchor hyperlinks in wordpress.

Prepared? Let’s delivery up with a keep occasion of anchor hyperlinks.

Beneath is a list of the whole matters we are able to masks on this handbook. Hurry ahead and click on on on any of those hyperlinks, and also you’ll be taken to that converse piece.

What’s an anchor hyperlink?

Easy methods to manually add anchor hyperlinks in wordpress?

Easy methods to manually add anchor hyperlinks using Primary Editor in wordpress?

Easy methods to manually add anchor hyperlinks in HTML?

Easy methods to robotically add headings as anchor hyperlinks in wordpress?

What’s an Anchor Hyperlink?

An anchor hyperlink is a originate of hyperlink on the web web page that brings you to a specific house on that equivalent web web page. It permits prospects to soar to the piece they’re most in.

Purchase a mediate about on the arresting screenshot beneath:

As that you simply simply might maybe nicely gape, clicking on the anchor hyperlink takes the particular person to the actual piece on the equivalent web web page.

Anchor hyperlinks are constantly frail in lengthier articles because the desk of narrate materials which allows prospects to speedy soar to the sections they’re in search of to review.

Why and when that you simply simply might maybe nicely per likelihood maybe additionally silent make the most of anchor hyperlinks?

A median particular person spends lower than a pair of seconds ahead of deciding inside the event that they are in search of to protect or poke away your web dwelling. You have gotten obtained excellent these few seconds to steer prospects to protect.

Mainly essentially the most elementary capability to make that’s to help them speedy gape the info they’re shopping for for.

Anchor hyperlinks invent this easier by permitting prospects to skip the rest of the narrate materials and soar straight to the piece that pursuits them. This improves particular person expertise and helps you’ve got interplay new potentialities / readers.

Anchor hyperlinks are moreover well-behaved for wordpress web web page positioning. google can disguise an anchor hyperlink inside the quest outcomes as a “soar to hyperlink”.

Most often google can moreover disguise a whole lot of hyperlinks from that web web page as soar to hyperlinks, and that is confirmed to AMPlify the click on-thru price in search outcomes. In diversified phrases, you web further web site guests to your web dwelling.

Having acknowledged that, let’s rob a mediate about on the honorable approach to with out grief add anchor hyperlinks in wordpress.

Easy methods to Manually Add Anchor Hyperlinks in wordpress

Whereas you excellent are in search of thus as so as to add a pair of anchor hyperlinks in your article, you then definately can with out grief make so manually.

Most often that you simply simply might maybe nicely per likelihood maybe additionally need in an effort so as to add two issues for an anchor textual narrate materials to work as supposed.

Develop an anchor hyperlink with a # tag ahead of the anchor textual narrate materials.

Add the id attribute to the textual narrate materials the place you may want the particular person to be taken.

Let’s delivery up with the anchor hyperlink piece.

Step 1. Creating an anchor hyperlink

First that you simply simply might maybe nicely per likelihood maybe additionally need to make a various the textual narrate materials that you simply simply actually are in search of to hyperlink after which click on on on the insert hyperlink button inside the wordpress Gutenberg editor.

This could carry up the insert hyperlink popup the place you all the time add the URL or look a put up or web web page to hyperlink.

Alternatively, for an anchor hyperlink, you’ll merely make the most of # as prefix and enter the key phrases for the piece you may want the particular person to soar to.

After that click on on on the enter button to assemble the hyperlink.

Some priceless tips on choosing what textual narrate materials to make the most of as your anchor # hyperlink:

Train the key phrases linked to the piece that you simply simply might maybe nicely per likelihood maybe even be linking to.

Don’t invent your anchor hyperlink unnecessarily prolonged or complicated.

Train hyphens to separate phrases and invent them further readable.

Chances are you may per likelihood additionally make the most of capitalization in anchor textual narrate materials to invent it further readable. As an illustration: #Most interesting-Espresso-Retailers-Ny.

Whereas you add the hyperlink, you are going to be able to gape the hyperlink that you simply simply might maybe nicely per likelihood maybe additionally possess created inside the editor. Alternatively, clicking on the hyperlink doesn’t make anything.

That’s given that browsers can now not safe the anchor hyperlink as an ID.

Let’s repair that by pointing browsers to the house, piece, or textual narrate materials that you simply simply actually are in search of to disguise when prospects click on on on the anchor hyperlink.

Step 2. Add the ID attribute to the linked piece

Throughout the narrate materials editor, scroll right down to the piece that you simply simply actually need the particular person to navigate to once they click on on on the anchor hyperlink. Most often, it’s a heading for a model new piece.

Subsequent, click on on to make a various the block after which inside the block settings click on on on the Developed tab to develop it. Chances are you may per likelihood additionally merely click on on on the ‘Developed’ tab beneath the heading block settings.

After that, that you simply simply might maybe nicely per likelihood maybe additionally need in an effort so as to add the equivalent textual narrate materials that you simply simply added because the anchor hyperlink beneath the ‘HTML Anchor’ subject. Develop certain that that you simply simply add the textual narrate materials with out the # prefix.

Chances are you may per likelihood additionally now put aside your put up and gape your anchor hyperlink in flow into by clicking on the preview tab.

What if the piece you want disguise is now not a heading however excellent a trendy paragraph or any diversified block?

If that is the case, that you simply simply might maybe nicely per likelihood maybe additionally need to click on on on the three-dot menu on the block settings and resolve ‘Edit as HTML’.

This level out that you simply simply might maybe nicely edit the HTML code for that converse block. Or not it’s important to make a various safe the HTML mark for the facet you want disguise. As an illustration,

whether or not it’s a pagraph, or

whether or not it’s a desk block, and so forth.

Now, that you simply simply might maybe nicely per likelihood maybe additionally need in an effort so as to add your anchor because the ID attribute to that mark, love the next code:

You’re going to now gape a spy that this block accommodates stunning or invalid narrate materials. Or not it’s important to click on on on the convert to HTML to abet the adjustments you made.

Easy methods to Manually Add Anchor Hyperlink in Primary Editor

Whereas that you simply simply might maybe nicely per likelihood maybe even be silent using the older elementary editor for wordpress, then proper right here is simple strategies in an effort so as to add the anchor hyperlink.

Step 1. Develop the anchor hyperlink

First, resolve the textual narrate materials that you simply simply actually are in search of to vary into the anchor hyperlink after which click on on on the ‘Insert Hyperlink’ button.

After that, that you simply simply might maybe nicely per likelihood maybe additionally need in an effort so as to add your anchor hyperlink with a # tag prefix adopted by the slug you want make the most of for the hyperlink.

Step 2. Add the ID attribute to the linked piece

The next move is to level the browsers to the piece you want disguise when prospects click on on in your anchor hyperlink.

For that, you’ll need to interchange to the ‘Textual content’ mode inside the elementary editor. After that scroll right down to the piece that you simply simply actually are in search of to disguise.

Now detect the HTML mark you want deal with. As an illustration,

,

,

, and so forth.

Or not it’s important in an effort so as to add the ID attribute to it along with your anchor hyperlink’s slug with out the # prefix, love this:

Chances are you may per likelihood additionally now put aside your adjustments and click on on on the preview button to gape your anchor hyperlink in flow into.

Easy methods to Manually Add Anchor Hyperlinks in HTML

Whereas that you simply simply might maybe nicely per likelihood maybe even be frail to writing inside the Textual content mode of the long-established Primary Editor in wordpress, then proper right here is how that you simply simply might maybe nicely per likelihood maybe manually construct an anchor hyperlink in HTML.

First, that you simply simply might maybe nicely per likelihood maybe additionally need to assemble the anchor hyperlink with a # prefix using the equivalent outdated mark, love this:

Most interesting Espresso Retailers in Ny

Subsequent, that you simply simply might maybe nicely per likelihood maybe additionally need to scroll right down to the piece that you simply simply actually are in search of to disguise when prospects click on on on the hyperlink.

Most often, this piece is a heading (h2, h3, h4, and many others.), nevertheless it indubitably might maybe nicely per likelihood even be any diversified HTML facet and even a simple paragraph

mark.

Or not it’s important in an effort so as to add the ID attribute to the HTML mark, after which add the anchor hyperlink slug with out the # prefix.

Most interesting Espresso Retailers in Ny

Chances are you may per likelihood additionally now put aside your adjustments and preview your web dwelling to try the anchor hyperlink.

Easy methods to Routinely Add Headings as Anchor Hyperlinks in wordpress

This means is aesthetic for patrons who on a trendy basis put up lengthy-originate articles and are in search of to assemble desk of contents with anchor hyperlinks.

The very very first thing that you simply simply might maybe nicely per likelihood maybe additionally need to make is about up and set off the Easy Desk of Contents plugin. For added important elements, gape our step-by-step handbook on the honorable approach to arrange a wordpress plugin.

This plugin capability that you simply simply can robotically generate a desk of contents with anchor hyperlinks. It makes use of headings to guess the narrate materials sections, and you are going to customise it absolutely to meet your desires.

Upon activation, merely poke to Settings » Desk of Contents web web page to configure plugin settings.

First, that you simply simply might maybe nicely per likelihood maybe additionally need to allow it for the put up kinds the place you may want in an effort so as to add desk of contents. By default, the plugin is enabled for pages, however that you simply simply might maybe nicely moreover allow it to your posts as well.

Chances are you may per likelihood additionally moreover allow the auto-insert choice. This allows the plugin to robotically generate the desk of contents for all articles, together with the older articles that match the necessities.

Whereas you merely are in search of to robotically generate desk of contents for explicit articles, you then definately can poke away this choice unchecked.

Subsequent, scroll down moderately to make a various the place you want disguise the desk of contents and whilst you may want it to be led to.

Chances are you may per likelihood additionally overview diversified advanced settings on the web web page and alter them as wished.

Don’t overlook to click on on on the ‘Assign Modifications’ button to retailer your settings.

Whereas you enabled the auto-insert choice, you then definately can now peek an current article with the required various of headings.

You’ll spy that the plugin will robotically disguise a desk of contents ahead of the primary heading inside the article.

Whereas you wished to manually generate desk of contents for explicit articles, you then definately might maybe nicely per likelihood additionally need to edit the article the place you want disguise a desk of contents with anchor hyperlinks.

On the put up edit disguise, scroll right down to the ‘Desk of Contents’ tab beneath the editor.

From proper right here, that you simply simply might maybe nicely check out the ‘Insert desk of contents’ choice and resolve the headings you want incorporate as anchor hyperlinks.

Chances are you may per likelihood additionally now put aside your adjustments and preview your article. The plugin will robotically disguise a list of anchor hyperlinks as your desk of contents.

For added detailed directions, gape our article on the honorable approach in an effort so as to add desk of contents in wordpress.

We hope this text helped you examine the honorable approach to with out grief add anchor hyperlinks in wordpress. Chances are you may per likelihood additionally moreover are in search of to gape our ideas concerning the honorable approach to correctly optimize your weblog posts for web web page positioning and our choose of the best wordpress web web page builder plugins.

Whereas you cherished this text, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for wordpress video tutorials. Chances are you may per likelihood additionally moreover safe us on Twitter and Fb.

The put up Easy methods to “With out issues” Add Anchor Hyperlinks in wordpress (Step by Step) appeared first on WPBeginner.

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32 Ways to Fix Your Business

When I released Become Your Own Boss in 12 Months, back in 2010, my focus was on helping entrepreneurs launch a business. But over the last few years, I’ve talked to dozens of business owners who seem to be struggling to stay in business. Some of the consistent issues I heard were about constant cash flow crunches, high staff turnover rates, feast or famine sales, and a lack of processes. I realized that most people had good business ideas, but didn’t know how to run a business, so I need help to “fix” their business.

That was the inspiration of my new book, Fix Your Business: A 90-Day Plan to Get Back Your Life and Reduce Chaos in Your Business. I wanted to help people get back on track with their businesses, including you. In honor of my book being published this week, I wanted to give you a sneak peek. Here are 32 ways you can fix what’s broken in your business right now.

Get in the Reinventing Mindset

Sometimes shifting your thoughts to being open to making changes can be the most impactful way to make change happen. If you’ve been doing things the same way for years, it can be hard to evolve. Know that reinventing is the key to revitalizing your business and taking it to the next level.

Hire help

I know so many entrepreneurs that try to do everything in their business themselves. That only works for so long! If you’re overwhelmed with the amount of work you have to do, simply hiring people can make a huge difference. Don’t spend your time doing $20 an hour work.

Develop an Onboarding Process

Once you start hiring help, you’ll quickly realize you need a process to train them. It’s best to develop a 2-4-week onboarding process to train new staff. Create documents for this so that the process can be repeated.  The more time you spend training to more likely your staff will perform to your expectations.

Establish a Company Culture

When you ask yourself: what is our company culture? What answer comes to mind?

If nothing does, you probably don’t have one. Company culture refers to the environment you want to create for your employees. Do you want a casual workplace, where people can wear informal clothes or a virtual team where everyone works from home? Think through what kind of culture you want for your business.

Develop Your Leadership Style

As you add to your team, you’ll need to learn how to develop your leadership style, to adjust as the business situations dictate. You’ll quickly learn which management styles work best, so pay attention to how your staff responds to how you lead.

Gather Your Kitchen Cabinet of Advisors

I’m a big fan of having a confidential sounding board as a business owner. You need people around you who are invested in your success. So you can bounce around ideas , and they will serve as your business mentors. Look to fellow entrepreneurs, potential customer, industry mentors, and an accountant and CPA.

Own Your Money Management

Not everyone loves dealing with money issues in their business’ cash, but it’s imperative that you get comfortable with managing cash flow in your business. Pay attention to your bill management, credit lines, accounts receivables, accounts payable, and if needed develop a collections process.

Tighten Your Accounting

If you’ve made it this far in your small business using a spreadsheet to manage your accounting, that might be part of the reason you need to fix things. You should be using accounting software to manage your monthly accounting and banking records. It is affordable, easy to use, or hire a seasoned bookkeeper or accountant to keep your records up-to-date.

Get on Top of Your Business Taxes

Taxes are a major concern for business owners.  You must make quarterly tax payments. Business taxes are due March 15th and personal taxes are due April 15th. If you have a payroll, you must manage payroll taxes unless you use a payroll service. Not managing you taxes properly is an easy way to get in trouble with the IRS. Hire a tax professional, to keep your accounting updated, provide tax planning advice, and to make sure your taxes are filed on time.

Consider Funding Options

Many businesses flounder simply because they are undercapitalized. You may have been reluctant to apply for a business line of credit or a business loan, but doing so will ensure that you are able to manage cash flow and have money to invest in your business.  Always try the bank first before pursuing alternative lenders.

Establish a Collections Process

If you struggle with clients not paying on time, it’s time to establish a collections process. Establish penalties for late payments, such as charging an additional 2% on past-due invoices, or consider discounting invoices that are paid early. Clearly communicate what your process is so clients know that they need to pay on time.

Monitor Your Profitability

If it’s been a while since you looked at your profit margin, now’s a good time. Your expenses surely have risen, so you may no longer be as profitable as you once were. Consider raising your prices gradually in the coming months to increase your profitability.

Build Your Systems and Procedures

Every business has routine tasks. You need to document how you want things done. This has two benefits: first, it helps you streamline those processes. Second, if and when you hand those tasks onto other employees, they can follow the same systems and procedures that you have established.

Stop Being the “Go-To” for Everyone

Are you someone who never delegates tasks because you have a false belief that you’re the best person for the job? If so, it’s time to let go. Your main job is to run your company and general sales. The accounting, marketing, and service should be handled by professionals you’ve hired. Delegating responsibilities frees you up to work on business strategy and stop being a bottleneck in your business.

Find the Tech Tools For Your Business

There is a tool or software for just about everything you would want to do with your business. Whether you need a way to better manage your social media marketing, your accounting, or project management, there’s a tool. Yes, some cost money, but it’s well worth the expense if it can help your business become more productive.

Stay on the Cutting Edge of Technology

If your computers or other business software is out of date, it may be holding you back from getting more done. Invest in equipment that makes your work easier.

Measure What’s Going On In Your Business

You may be struggling because you are not measuring all of the business systems and marketing efforts in your business. Now’s a great time to review metrics on your website traffic, email open rates, sales conversions, shopping cart abandonment rates, and acquisition costs, to name a few.

Know Why and How Customers Buy from You

How well do you know and understand your customers? Talk to them and survey them. Use the insight to better deliver exactly what they want. For example, what is your customer’s favorite social media channel? Find out and use it to communicate with them.

Focus on Customer Satisfaction

Within 7-10 days after a sale email and survey your customers.  They will tell you where the problems lies in your business. If they’re happy, you’ll attract more sales. If they’re dissatisfied, they may leave bad reviews on yelp, tell others, or not buy anything else. Spend your time fixing your customer service issues.

Claim Your Niche

Have you been trying to be all things to all types of customers? Quite honestly, that’s not doing your company any good. Instead, focus on the services or products that you deliver best and select a specific audience to serve. That’s your niche.

Identify Your Unique Selling Proposition

Once you’ve landed on a niche, delve into what makes your products or services better than the competition. This is called your unique selling proposition. It’s your secret sauce or your moonwalk. What is special about how you do business? How do you solve problems for your customers?

Assess if Your Product is Still Relevant

There comes a time for many businesses when they become obsolete, or close to it. As technology evolves, demand for your business may be waning. If so, it’s time to consider updating your services or extending products into new areas.

Consider Whether Your Niche Needs Updating

In addition to your products, you should also assess your niche. You may have started out serving one segment and now you need to shift your marketing focus.

Is it Time for a Brand Refresh?

If you’ve been in business a while you need to review whether you brand needs to evolve with the changing needs of the market. Does your brand currently reflect who you are as a business and who you serve? If not, it’s time for some branding update.

Are You Doing Mobile Marketing Yet?

In marketing strategy today, it’s a mobile first world. Building your brand’s online is key from social media, online ads, and content marketing. It’s also important to make sure your website looks great from a mobile device and that you are doing mobile web marketing, as it’s a new and exciting area to explore.

Is Your Social Media Marketing Working?

Once you know who your customers are and where they spend time online, you can assess your marketing efforts to determine if you’re reaching them. Start by reviewing your Google Analytics and click thru rates of your online advertising. What is your cost-per-click?

Create Your Sales Process

Do you have a “sales process?” If you don’t have one. Identify a target list of customers? Or create an ideal customer profile. And three ways to attract that customer to your brand. How do customers end up in your sales funnel? How do you nurture those leads and move them toward a sale? What is your follow-up after the sale?

Hire Your Salesperson

If you are the only person in your business that generates sales, you might be benefit from hiring a salesperson. There’s no reason you need to be doing the selling. A dedicated sales rep can help you reach more customers while you focus on high-level strategic decisions.

  Plan, Plan, Plan

Another major error entrepreneur’s make is not planning. Everything from your business plan to strategy to exit plan needs to not only be established, but updated over time. Make an effort to update your business plan or strategic plan throughout the year and then use it to run your business.

Pay Attention to Competitors and Industry Trends

Staying on top of what’s happening in your field will be your competitive advantage. Knowing how your competitors are marketing, and when they release new products can affect your own strategy. Stay on top of industry trends so that you know about technological advances that could affect your business.

Anticipate Your Customers’ Needs

Being one step ahead of your customers will help you shine. Stay tapped into customer feedback so you know the issues your customers are facing. Then use this data to shape future products and launches.

Take Your Business to the Next Level

No business is ever “fixed”. But if you make an effort to continually improve your business, you won’t reach a crisis point where things are completely overwhelming. Keep the mindset of life long learner, and your business will thrive.

If you want more in-depth instruction on how to improve your business, grab my new book Fix Your Business, 90-day Plan to Get Back Your Life and Reduce Chaos in Your Business.  I’m sure it will put you on the path to business success.

The post 32 Ways to Fix Your Business appeared first on Succeed As Your Own Boss.

from Teri Crawford Business Tips https://succeedasyourownboss.com/32-ways-fix-business/

[lxryrestate28349]

Where To Start With Amazon Marketing

Where To Start With Amazon Marketing Amazon Marketing: Why It’s Important

There are hundreds of millions of active accounts on Amazon. Moreover, nearly half of internet shoppers go directly to Amazon instead of starting with a search engine like Google when they are looking to make a purchase. Those are staggering numbers. But chances are you don’t need convincing that Amazon is a channel worth pursuing if you sell online.

The real question is how to approach it and how to succeed. Competition on Amazon is high and just posting your listing isn’t going to mean sales.

With Amazon, the name of the game is visibility. Specifically, premium visibility and how to get it. Amazon is a search engine. Just like Google, it uses an algorithm to decide who should rank and who shouldn’t for queries or particular product searches. That said, it is its own platform with its own rules defined by Amazonians, not Googlers. It absolutely needs to be treated with a different strategy to win this unique game.

But there are certainly lessons to be drawn from search engine advertising.

How do we generally produce visibility in Google search? With search engine optimization (SEO) and paid search advertising (PPC). These same broad concepts apply to Amazon.

Amazon SEO

The first step to SEO for Amazon is understanding how Amazon’s search algorithm works. That is easier said than done, but if you’re going to understand the algorithm, you need to understand what Amazon’s real goal is. It’s different than Google or Bing’s.

More traditional search engines design their algorithms as a way to, as Google puts it, “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” That’s a nice way of saying they want to rank and present pages in order of their quality and usefulness for any search so that people can find the information they need and continue searching on Google’s owned properties.

Amazon’s goal, on the other hand, is to help people find the products they need so they can buy and keep shopping on Amazon. The word “buy” is the important part here. Amazon is a shopping engine (for now). It wants its users to buy things so its sellers can sell things so Amazon can make money. Send the package ridiculously fast. Drive a review or two. Rinse and repeat. Everything facet of their algorithm considers this simple end goal of driving the sale.

So, what is Amazon looking at to help people find and buy what they want and need?

Performance and sales: The algorithm looks at things like CTR (click-thru rate) in the search results, conversion rate once users view a listing, and yes, sales.

Relevance: The algorithm looks at how well a product listing matches the query that a user types into the search bar.

Begging the more actionable question: How do I improve those ranking factors for my listing?

Keywords Are King

Much like Google in the not-too-distant past, keywords are a big part of what you can do or control to start ranking better. So, how do you know which keywords matter to Amazon and to those millions of your prospective, future customers? Keyword research.

Keyword research is a foundational part of all SEO, but Amazon keyword research is a little different. And it’s not just Amazon. This is true for all shopping engines. People search differently when they are on Amazon or in a true product-seeking mindset than they might on Google when they’re seeking early information about your category. There is likely to be some overlap, but it is important to use keyword research tools that are meant for shopping.

Here are a few keyword research tools to consider:

MerchantWords

SellerLabs

KeywordTool.io

Terapeak SEO

Once you have a strong keyword list informed by how people are actually searching on Amazon, you’ll need to figure out how to leverage that insight.

Keyword Placement Matters

Location, location, location! Your title is the prime real estate for optimizing your listing. And not just technically speaking, but for real humans scanning real results.

The next most important placement is your product description. Followed by your backend keywords, which have a strict character count. Your bullets matter too, but more for UX than for strict technical optimization.

Again, the point is to start with a good grasp on what matters most and to let that guide how your listing is constructed, with a heavy dose of common sense about writing clearly, concisely, and engagingly for real humans. There should be a method to the madness.

Amazon Marketing Requires Strong UX

Designing and writing your listing for the end-user will also directly affect your ability to rank well. Blatant keyword stuffing as a practice is thankfully still on the trash-pile of search engine history. Shoes shoes shoes, tennis shoes, shoes shoes…

Having things like high quality product images may seem obvious but it’s exactly this attention to detail and deliberately providing great product information in all forms that will earn you a click and ultimately a sale over someone else. Here’s a short list of UX related considerations:

Image quality

Image variations (different views, pictures on a model, etc)

Clear and descriptive product titles

Detailed descriptions and product specifications

High rating

Good reviews

Free shipping

Available on Prime?

Competitive pricing

Some of these things you’ll be able to control more than others, but you should do what you can to put a good foot forward and earn a shoppers’ trust as quickly as possible. This boils down to looking credible through both polish and social proof, and yes, giving them what they need to make a decision.

Amazon Visibility Isn’t Something You “Fix” – It’s Something You Work At

Just like other forms of SEO, you are never truly “done” optimizing. This kind of effort towards best-possible visibility is all about Distance from Perfect, a concept we talk about a lot at Portent.

Continue to iterate. Amazon’s algorithm will absolutely continue to change over time as they learn and improve, so make sure your marketing team or your agency is current on what’s happening to stay ahead of your competition.

Amazon PPC

As with just about everything in digital marketing these days, sometimes you need to pay to play. This is especially true for new products without a lot of historical sales to provide lift organically.

Amazon Sponsored Products are a very effective way to get people to your listing and boost sales in a targeted and cost-efficient way. Amazon’s PPC service is similar to Google AdWords in that it is keyword-driven and uses a CPC (cost per click) auction model. The ad targeting options available, combined with the “buy” mentality of Amazon users make it an easy choice for serious Amazon sellers.

Sponsored products aren’t just for new products either. Yes, it’s a great way to get products off the ground, but it can also be highly effective for seasonal campaigns and for providing an overall lift when organic sales aren’t meeting short-term revenue goals.

Can Sponsored Products Improve My Organic Ranking?

In a word: Yes. Although it’s not as simple as an ad spend “dragging” a lagging search result up the page, the visibility and extra sales from paid will mean a better organic rank in the future. Think of it as proactively creating momentum for your organic listing.

How to Run Ads on Amazon

Sponsored Products can be found and mentioned in Seller Central. As described above, Sponsored Product ads are fairly similarly to AdWords in terms of how you can manage them, For instance, you can (and very likely should) create campaigns and ad groups to target keywords with max CPC bids.

It’s worth noting that AdWords controls are more robust than Amazon’s at this point, with a several-year head start, although Amazon seems to be investing heavily to make up ground. Whatever your take on the interface, the important thing to remember here is still that keywords are king.

The keyword research you already did on the SEO side can and should influence the keywords you target with your paid ads on Amazon. You know what they’re searching, so unless it’s cost prohibitive (ad costs minus your specific margins) you know exactly where you’d ideally like to show up.

Importantly, and just like AdWords, “negative keywords” (those terms that signify a search for a product where you’re not a good fit, are also an important tool for Amazon PPC. Be sure to invest a bit of time early-on to develop a strong negative keyword list to help narrow your targeting. This will improve efficiency and prevent wasteful spending. Focus on showing up when you’re truly the best fit, and invest to make sure you’re highly visible in those moments.

Where Do Amazon Ads Show Up?

This might sound well and good, but without the context of what this ultimately looks like, it can be tough to connect the “I should…” with the real end result.

Just like Google, Amazon ads are usually given some of the most premium real-estate on the entire site. This means they will be the first thing a shopper will see.

Not only do paid or sponsored results give you a shot at the top of each search results page, they can also be seen directly on other seller’s product pages. That’s a pretty significant advantage over traditional search when it comes to merchandising, if we do say so.

Is Amazon Advertising Easy Enough To Handle Solo?

The reality here is that Amazon is a highly competitive marketplace because the upside volume is simply unmatched. Achieving high ranking and driving sales doesn’t happen by accident. Whether you’re opening a job req for an internal staffer, or looking to your agency partner, it’s generally a very good idea to have someone familiar with both SEO, paid search management, and Amazon’s platform-specifics managing your presence.

Shameless plug: if you aren’t sure whether your Amazon products and presence would benefit from professional help, contact us or read more about how Portent helps sellers on Amazon here.

http://ift.tt/2zaSxpf

[seo53703]

Where To Start With Amazon Marketing

Where To Start With Amazon Marketing Amazon Marketing: Why It’s Important

There are hundreds of millions of active accounts on Amazon. Moreover, nearly half of internet shoppers go directly to Amazon instead of starting with a search engine like Google when they are looking to make a purchase. Those are staggering numbers. But chances are you don’t need convincing that Amazon is a channel worth pursuing if you sell online.

The real question is how to approach it and how to succeed. Competition on Amazon is high and just posting your listing isn’t going to mean sales.

With Amazon, the name of the game is visibility. Specifically, premium visibility and how to get it. Amazon is a search engine. Just like Google, it uses an algorithm to decide who should rank and who shouldn’t for queries or particular product searches. That said, it is its own platform with its own rules defined by Amazonians, not Googlers. It absolutely needs to be treated with a different strategy to win this unique game.

But there are certainly lessons to be drawn from search engine advertising.

How do we generally produce visibility in Google search? With search engine optimization (SEO) and paid search advertising (PPC). These same broad concepts apply to Amazon.

Amazon SEO

The first step to SEO for Amazon is understanding how Amazon’s search algorithm works. That is easier said than done, but if you’re going to understand the algorithm, you need to understand what Amazon’s real goal is. It’s different than Google or Bing’s.

More traditional search engines design their algorithms as a way to, as Google puts it, “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” That’s a nice way of saying they want to rank and present pages in order of their quality and usefulness for any search so that people can find the information they need and continue searching on Google’s owned properties.

Amazon’s goal, on the other hand, is to help people find the products they need so they can buy and keep shopping on Amazon. The word “buy” is the important part here. Amazon is a shopping engine (for now). It wants its users to buy things so its sellers can sell things so Amazon can make money. Send the package ridiculously fast. Drive a review or two. Rinse and repeat. Everything facet of their algorithm considers this simple end goal of driving the sale.

So, what is Amazon looking at to help people find and buy what they want and need?

Performance and sales: The algorithm looks at things like CTR (click-thru rate) in the search results, conversion rate once users view a listing, and yes, sales.

Relevance: The algorithm looks at how well a product listing matches the query that a user types into the search bar.

Begging the more actionable question: How do I improve those ranking factors for my listing?

Keywords Are King

Much like Google in the not-too-distant past, keywords are a big part of what you can do or control to start ranking better. So, how do you know which keywords matter to Amazon and to those millions of your prospective, future customers? Keyword research.

Keyword research is a foundational part of all SEO, but Amazon keyword research is a little different. And it’s not just Amazon. This is true for all shopping engines. People search differently when they are on Amazon or in a true product-seeking mindset than they might on Google when they’re seeking early information about your category. There is likely to be some overlap, but it is important to use keyword research tools that are meant for shopping.

Here are a few keyword research tools to consider:

MerchantWords

SellerLabs

KeywordTool.io

Terapeak SEO

Once you have a strong keyword list informed by how people are actually searching on Amazon, you’ll need to figure out how to leverage that insight.

Keyword Placement Matters

Location, location, location! Your title is the prime real estate for optimizing your listing. And not just technically speaking, but for real humans scanning real results.

The next most important placement is your product description. Followed by your backend keywords, which have a strict character count. Your bullets matter too, but more for UX than for strict technical optimization.

Again, the point is to start with a good grasp on what matters most and to let that guide how your listing is constructed, with a heavy dose of common sense about writing clearly, concisely, and engagingly for real humans. There should be a method to the madness.

Amazon Marketing Requires Strong UX

Designing and writing your listing for the end-user will also directly affect your ability to rank well. Blatant keyword stuffing as a practice is thankfully still on the trash-pile of search engine history. Shoes shoes shoes, tennis shoes, shoes shoes…

Having things like high quality product images may seem obvious but it’s exactly this attention to detail and deliberately providing great product information in all forms that will earn you a click and ultimately a sale over someone else. Here’s a short list of UX related considerations:

Image quality

Image variations (different views, pictures on a model, etc)

Clear and descriptive product titles

Detailed descriptions and product specifications

High rating

Good reviews

Free shipping

Available on Prime?

Competitive pricing

Some of these things you’ll be able to control more than others, but you should do what you can to put a good foot forward and earn a shoppers’ trust as quickly as possible. This boils down to looking credible through both polish and social proof, and yes, giving them what they need to make a decision.

Amazon Visibility Isn’t Something You “Fix” – It’s Something You Work At

Just like other forms of SEO, you are never truly “done” optimizing. This kind of effort towards best-possible visibility is all about Distance from Perfect, a concept we talk about a lot at Portent.

Continue to iterate. Amazon’s algorithm will absolutely continue to change over time as they learn and improve, so make sure your marketing team or your agency is current on what’s happening to stay ahead of your competition.

Amazon PPC

As with just about everything in digital marketing these days, sometimes you need to pay to play. This is especially true for new products without a lot of historical sales to provide lift organically.

Amazon Sponsored Products are a very effective way to get people to your listing and boost sales in a targeted and cost-efficient way. Amazon’s PPC service is similar to Google AdWords in that it is keyword-driven and uses a CPC (cost per click) auction model. The ad targeting options available, combined with the “buy” mentality of Amazon users make it an easy choice for serious Amazon sellers.

Sponsored products aren’t just for new products either. Yes, it’s a great way to get products off the ground, but it can also be highly effective for seasonal campaigns and for providing an overall lift when organic sales aren’t meeting short-term revenue goals.

Can Sponsored Products Improve My Organic Ranking?

In a word: Yes. Although it’s not as simple as an ad spend “dragging” a lagging search result up the page, the visibility and extra sales from paid will mean a better organic rank in the future. Think of it as proactively creating momentum for your organic listing.

How to Run Ads on Amazon

Sponsored Products can be found and mentioned in Seller Central. As described above, Sponsored Product ads are fairly similarly to AdWords in terms of how you can manage them, For instance, you can (and very likely should) create campaigns and ad groups to target keywords with max CPC bids.

It’s worth noting that AdWords controls are more robust than Amazon’s at this point, with a several-year head start, although Amazon seems to be investing heavily to make up ground. Whatever your take on the interface, the important thing to remember here is still that keywords are king.

The keyword research you already did on the SEO side can and should influence the keywords you target with your paid ads on Amazon. You know what they’re searching, so unless it’s cost prohibitive (ad costs minus your specific margins) you know exactly where you’d ideally like to show up.

Importantly, and just like AdWords, “negative keywords” (those terms that signify a search for a product where you’re not a good fit, are also an important tool for Amazon PPC. Be sure to invest a bit of time early-on to develop a strong negative keyword list to help narrow your targeting. This will improve efficiency and prevent wasteful spending. Focus on showing up when you’re truly the best fit, and invest to make sure you’re highly visible in those moments.

Where Do Amazon Ads Show Up?

This might sound well and good, but without the context of what this ultimately looks like, it can be tough to connect the “I should…” with the real end result.

Just like Google, Amazon ads are usually given some of the most premium real-estate on the entire site. This means they will be the first thing a shopper will see.

Not only do paid or sponsored results give you a shot at the top of each search results page, they can also be seen directly on other seller’s product pages. That’s a pretty significant advantage over traditional search when it comes to merchandising, if we do say so.

Is Amazon Advertising Easy Enough To Handle Solo?

The reality here is that Amazon is a highly competitive marketplace because the upside volume is simply unmatched. Achieving high ranking and driving sales doesn’t happen by accident. Whether you’re opening a job req for an internal staffer, or looking to your agency partner, it’s generally a very good idea to have someone familiar with both SEO, paid search management, and Amazon’s platform-specifics managing your presence.

Shameless plug: if you aren’t sure whether your Amazon products and presence would benefit from professional help, contact us or read more about how Portent helps sellers on Amazon here.

http://ift.tt/2zaSxpf

[seo19107]

Where To Start With Amazon Marketing

Where To Start With Amazon Marketing Amazon Marketing: Why It’s Important

There are hundreds of millions of active accounts on Amazon. Moreover, nearly half of internet shoppers go directly to Amazon instead of starting with a search engine like Google when they are looking to make a purchase. Those are staggering numbers. But chances are you don’t need convincing that Amazon is a channel worth pursuing if you sell online.

The real question is how to approach it and how to succeed. Competition on Amazon is high and just posting your listing isn’t going to mean sales.

With Amazon, the name of the game is visibility. Specifically, premium visibility and how to get it. Amazon is a search engine. Just like Google, it uses an algorithm to decide who should rank and who shouldn’t for queries or particular product searches. That said, it is its own platform with its own rules defined by Amazonians, not Googlers. It absolutely needs to be treated with a different strategy to win this unique game.

But there are certainly lessons to be drawn from search engine advertising.

How do we generally produce visibility in Google search? With search engine optimization (SEO) and paid search advertising (PPC). These same broad concepts apply to Amazon.

Amazon SEO

The first step to SEO for Amazon is understanding how Amazon’s search algorithm works. That is easier said than done, but if you’re going to understand the algorithm, you need to understand what Amazon’s real goal is. It’s different than Google or Bing’s.

More traditional search engines design their algorithms as a way to, as Google puts it, “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” That’s a nice way of saying they want to rank and present pages in order of their quality and usefulness for any search so that people can find the information they need and continue searching on Google’s owned properties.

Amazon’s goal, on the other hand, is to help people find the products they need so they can buy and keep shopping on Amazon. The word “buy” is the important part here. Amazon is a shopping engine (for now). It wants its users to buy things so its sellers can sell things so Amazon can make money. Send the package ridiculously fast. Drive a review or two. Rinse and repeat. Everything facet of their algorithm considers this simple end goal of driving the sale.

So, what is Amazon looking at to help people find and buy what they want and need?

Performance and sales: The algorithm looks at things like CTR (click-thru rate) in the search results, conversion rate once users view a listing, and yes, sales.

Relevance: The algorithm looks at how well a product listing matches the query that a user types into the search bar.

Begging the more actionable question: How do I improve those ranking factors for my listing?

Keywords Are King

Much like Google in the not-too-distant past, keywords are a big part of what you can do or control to start ranking better. So, how do you know which keywords matter to Amazon and to those millions of your prospective, future customers? Keyword research.

Keyword research is a foundational part of all SEO, but Amazon keyword research is a little different. And it’s not just Amazon. This is true for all shopping engines. People search differently when they are on Amazon or in a true product-seeking mindset than they might on Google when they’re seeking early information about your category. There is likely to be some overlap, but it is important to use keyword research tools that are meant for shopping.

Here are a few keyword research tools to consider:

MerchantWords

SellerLabs

KeywordTool.io

Terapeak SEO

Once you have a strong keyword list informed by how people are actually searching on Amazon, you’ll need to figure out how to leverage that insight.

Keyword Placement Matters

Location, location, location! Your title is the prime real estate for optimizing your listing. And not just technically speaking, but for real humans scanning real results.

The next most important placement is your product description. Followed by your backend keywords, which have a strict character count. Your bullets matter too, but more for UX than for strict technical optimization.

Again, the point is to start with a good grasp on what matters most and to let that guide how your listing is constructed, with a heavy dose of common sense about writing clearly, concisely, and engagingly for real humans. There should be a method to the madness.

Amazon Marketing Requires Strong UX

Designing and writing your listing for the end-user will also directly affect your ability to rank well. Blatant keyword stuffing as a practice is thankfully still on the trash-pile of search engine history. Shoes shoes shoes, tennis shoes, shoes shoes…

Having things like high quality product images may seem obvious but it’s exactly this attention to detail and deliberately providing great product information in all forms that will earn you a click and ultimately a sale over someone else. Here’s a short list of UX related considerations:

Image quality

Image variations (different views, pictures on a model, etc)

Clear and descriptive product titles

Detailed descriptions and product specifications

High rating

Good reviews

Free shipping

Available on Prime?

Competitive pricing

Some of these things you’ll be able to control more than others, but you should do what you can to put a good foot forward and earn a shoppers’ trust as quickly as possible. This boils down to looking credible through both polish and social proof, and yes, giving them what they need to make a decision.

Amazon Visibility Isn’t Something You “Fix” – It’s Something You Work At

Just like other forms of SEO, you are never truly “done” optimizing. This kind of effort towards best-possible visibility is all about Distance from Perfect, a concept we talk about a lot at Portent.

Continue to iterate. Amazon’s algorithm will absolutely continue to change over time as they learn and improve, so make sure your marketing team or your agency is current on what’s happening to stay ahead of your competition.

Amazon PPC

As with just about everything in digital marketing these days, sometimes you need to pay to play. This is especially true for new products without a lot of historical sales to provide lift organically.

Amazon Sponsored Products are a very effective way to get people to your listing and boost sales in a targeted and cost-efficient way. Amazon’s PPC service is similar to Google AdWords in that it is keyword-driven and uses a CPC (cost per click) auction model. The ad targeting options available, combined with the “buy” mentality of Amazon users make it an easy choice for serious Amazon sellers.

Sponsored products aren’t just for new products either. Yes, it’s a great way to get products off the ground, but it can also be highly effective for seasonal campaigns and for providing an overall lift when organic sales aren’t meeting short-term revenue goals.

Can Sponsored Products Improve My Organic Ranking?

In a word: Yes. Although it’s not as simple as an ad spend “dragging” a lagging search result up the page, the visibility and extra sales from paid will mean a better organic rank in the future. Think of it as proactively creating momentum for your organic listing.

How to Run Ads on Amazon

Sponsored Products can be found and mentioned in Seller Central. As described above, Sponsored Product ads are fairly similarly to AdWords in terms of how you can manage them, For instance, you can (and very likely should) create campaigns and ad groups to target keywords with max CPC bids.

It’s worth noting that AdWords controls are more robust than Amazon’s at this point, with a several-year head start, although Amazon seems to be investing heavily to make up ground. Whatever your take on the interface, the important thing to remember here is still that keywords are king.

The keyword research you already did on the SEO side can and should influence the keywords you target with your paid ads on Amazon. You know what they’re searching, so unless it’s cost prohibitive (ad costs minus your specific margins) you know exactly where you’d ideally like to show up.

Importantly, and just like AdWords, “negative keywords” (those terms that signify a search for a product where you’re not a good fit, are also an important tool for Amazon PPC. Be sure to invest a bit of time early-on to develop a strong negative keyword list to help narrow your targeting. This will improve efficiency and prevent wasteful spending. Focus on showing up when you’re truly the best fit, and invest to make sure you’re highly visible in those moments.

Where Do Amazon Ads Show Up?

This might sound well and good, but without the context of what this ultimately looks like, it can be tough to connect the “I should…” with the real end result.

Just like Google, Amazon ads are usually given some of the most premium real-estate on the entire site. This means they will be the first thing a shopper will see.

Not only do paid or sponsored results give you a shot at the top of each search results page, they can also be seen directly on other seller’s product pages. That’s a pretty significant advantage over traditional search when it comes to merchandising, if we do say so.

Is Amazon Advertising Easy Enough To Handle Solo?

The reality here is that Amazon is a highly competitive marketplace because the upside volume is simply unmatched. Achieving high ranking and driving sales doesn’t happen by accident. Whether you’re opening a job req for an internal staffer, or looking to your agency partner, it’s generally a very good idea to have someone familiar with both SEO, paid search management, and Amazon’s platform-specifics managing your presence.

Shameless plug: if you aren’t sure whether your Amazon products and presence would benefit from professional help, contact us or read more about how Portent helps sellers on Amazon here.

http://ift.tt/2zaSxpf

[restatebrk24219]

Where To Start With Amazon Marketing

Where To Start With Amazon Marketing Amazon Marketing: Why It’s Important

There are hundreds of millions of active accounts on Amazon. Moreover, nearly half of internet shoppers go directly to Amazon instead of starting with a search engine like Google when they are looking to make a purchase. Those are staggering numbers. But chances are you don’t need convincing that Amazon is a channel worth pursuing if you sell online.

The real question is how to approach it and how to succeed. Competition on Amazon is high and just posting your listing isn’t going to mean sales.

With Amazon, the name of the game is visibility. Specifically, premium visibility and how to get it. Amazon is a search engine. Just like Google, it uses an algorithm to decide who should rank and who shouldn’t for queries or particular product searches. That said, it is its own platform with its own rules defined by Amazonians, not Googlers. It absolutely needs to be treated with a different strategy to win this unique game.

But there are certainly lessons to be drawn from search engine advertising.

How do we generally produce visibility in Google search? With search engine optimization (SEO) and paid search advertising (PPC). These same broad concepts apply to Amazon.

Amazon SEO

The first step to SEO for Amazon is understanding how Amazon’s search algorithm works. That is easier said than done, but if you’re going to understand the algorithm, you need to understand what Amazon’s real goal is. It’s different than Google or Bing’s.

More traditional search engines design their algorithms as a way to, as Google puts it, “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” That’s a nice way of saying they want to rank and present pages in order of their quality and usefulness for any search so that people can find the information they need and continue searching on Google’s owned properties.

Amazon’s goal, on the other hand, is to help people find the products they need so they can buy and keep shopping on Amazon. The word “buy” is the important part here. Amazon is a shopping engine (for now). It wants its users to buy things so its sellers can sell things so Amazon can make money. Send the package ridiculously fast. Drive a review or two. Rinse and repeat. Everything facet of their algorithm considers this simple end goal of driving the sale.

So, what is Amazon looking at to help people find and buy what they want and need?

Performance and sales: The algorithm looks at things like CTR (click-thru rate) in the search results, conversion rate once users view a listing, and yes, sales.

Relevance: The algorithm looks at how well a product listing matches the query that a user types into the search bar.

Begging the more actionable question: How do I improve those ranking factors for my listing?

Keywords Are King

Much like Google in the not-too-distant past, keywords are a big part of what you can do or control to start ranking better. So, how do you know which keywords matter to Amazon and to those millions of your prospective, future customers? Keyword research.

Keyword research is a foundational part of all SEO, but Amazon keyword research is a little different. And it’s not just Amazon. This is true for all shopping engines. People search differently when they are on Amazon or in a true product-seeking mindset than they might on Google when they’re seeking early information about your category. There is likely to be some overlap, but it is important to use keyword research tools that are meant for shopping.

Here are a few keyword research tools to consider:

MerchantWords

SellerLabs

KeywordTool.io

Terapeak SEO

Once you have a strong keyword list informed by how people are actually searching on Amazon, you’ll need to figure out how to leverage that insight.

Keyword Placement Matters

Location, location, location! Your title is the prime real estate for optimizing your listing. And not just technically speaking, but for real humans scanning real results.

The next most important placement is your product description. Followed by your backend keywords, which have a strict character count. Your bullets matter too, but more for UX than for strict technical optimization.

Again, the point is to start with a good grasp on what matters most and to let that guide how your listing is constructed, with a heavy dose of common sense about writing clearly, concisely, and engagingly for real humans. There should be a method to the madness.

Amazon Marketing Requires Strong UX

Designing and writing your listing for the end-user will also directly affect your ability to rank well. Blatant keyword stuffing as a practice is thankfully still on the trash-pile of search engine history. Shoes shoes shoes, tennis shoes, shoes shoes…

Having things like high quality product images may seem obvious but it’s exactly this attention to detail and deliberately providing great product information in all forms that will earn you a click and ultimately a sale over someone else. Here’s a short list of UX related considerations:

Image quality

Image variations (different views, pictures on a model, etc)

Clear and descriptive product titles

Detailed descriptions and product specifications

High rating

Good reviews

Free shipping

Available on Prime?

Competitive pricing

Some of these things you’ll be able to control more than others, but you should do what you can to put a good foot forward and earn a shoppers’ trust as quickly as possible. This boils down to looking credible through both polish and social proof, and yes, giving them what they need to make a decision.

Amazon Visibility Isn’t Something You “Fix” – It’s Something You Work At

Just like other forms of SEO, you are never truly “done” optimizing. This kind of effort towards best-possible visibility is all about Distance from Perfect, a concept we talk about a lot at Portent.

Continue to iterate. Amazon’s algorithm will absolutely continue to change over time as they learn and improve, so make sure your marketing team or your agency is current on what’s happening to stay ahead of your competition.

Amazon PPC

As with just about everything in digital marketing these days, sometimes you need to pay to play. This is especially true for new products without a lot of historical sales to provide lift organically.

Amazon Sponsored Products are a very effective way to get people to your listing and boost sales in a targeted and cost-efficient way. Amazon’s PPC service is similar to Google AdWords in that it is keyword-driven and uses a CPC (cost per click) auction model. The ad targeting options available, combined with the “buy” mentality of Amazon users make it an easy choice for serious Amazon sellers.

Sponsored products aren’t just for new products either. Yes, it’s a great way to get products off the ground, but it can also be highly effective for seasonal campaigns and for providing an overall lift when organic sales aren’t meeting short-term revenue goals.

Can Sponsored Products Improve My Organic Ranking?

In a word: Yes. Although it’s not as simple as an ad spend “dragging” a lagging search result up the page, the visibility and extra sales from paid will mean a better organic rank in the future. Think of it as proactively creating momentum for your organic listing.

How to Run Ads on Amazon

Sponsored Products can be found and mentioned in Seller Central. As described above, Sponsored Product ads are fairly similarly to AdWords in terms of how you can manage them, For instance, you can (and very likely should) create campaigns and ad groups to target keywords with max CPC bids.

It’s worth noting that AdWords controls are more robust than Amazon’s at this point, with a several-year head start, although Amazon seems to be investing heavily to make up ground. Whatever your take on the interface, the important thing to remember here is still that keywords are king.

The keyword research you already did on the SEO side can and should influence the keywords you target with your paid ads on Amazon. You know what they’re searching, so unless it’s cost prohibitive (ad costs minus your specific margins) you know exactly where you’d ideally like to show up.

Importantly, and just like AdWords, “negative keywords” (those terms that signify a search for a product where you’re not a good fit, are also an important tool for Amazon PPC. Be sure to invest a bit of time early-on to develop a strong negative keyword list to help narrow your targeting. This will improve efficiency and prevent wasteful spending. Focus on showing up when you’re truly the best fit, and invest to make sure you’re highly visible in those moments.

Where Do Amazon Ads Show Up?

This might sound well and good, but without the context of what this ultimately looks like, it can be tough to connect the “I should…” with the real end result.

Just like Google, Amazon ads are usually given some of the most premium real-estate on the entire site. This means they will be the first thing a shopper will see.

Not only do paid or sponsored results give you a shot at the top of each search results page, they can also be seen directly on other seller’s product pages. That’s a pretty significant advantage over traditional search when it comes to merchandising, if we do say so.

Is Amazon Advertising Easy Enough To Handle Solo?

The reality here is that Amazon is a highly competitive marketplace because the upside volume is simply unmatched. Achieving high ranking and driving sales doesn’t happen by accident. Whether you’re opening a job req for an internal staffer, or looking to your agency partner, it’s generally a very good idea to have someone familiar with both SEO, paid search management, and Amazon’s platform-specifics managing your presence.

Shameless plug: if you aren’t sure whether your Amazon products and presence would benefit from professional help, contact us or read more about how Portent helps sellers on Amazon here.

http://ift.tt/2zaSxpf

[realtor10036]

Where To Start With Amazon Marketing

Where To Start With Amazon Marketing Amazon Marketing: Why It’s Important

There are hundreds of millions of active accounts on Amazon. Moreover, nearly half of internet shoppers go directly to Amazon instead of starting with a search engine like Google when they are looking to make a purchase. Those are staggering numbers. But chances are you don’t need convincing that Amazon is a channel worth pursuing if you sell online.

The real question is how to approach it and how to succeed. Competition on Amazon is high and just posting your listing isn’t going to mean sales.

With Amazon, the name of the game is visibility. Specifically, premium visibility and how to get it. Amazon is a search engine. Just like Google, it uses an algorithm to decide who should rank and who shouldn’t for queries or particular product searches. That said, it is its own platform with its own rules defined by Amazonians, not Googlers. It absolutely needs to be treated with a different strategy to win this unique game.

But there are certainly lessons to be drawn from search engine advertising.

How do we generally produce visibility in Google search? With search engine optimization (SEO) and paid search advertising (PPC). These same broad concepts apply to Amazon.

Amazon SEO

The first step to SEO for Amazon is understanding how Amazon’s search algorithm works. That is easier said than done, but if you’re going to understand the algorithm, you need to understand what Amazon’s real goal is. It’s different than Google or Bing’s.

More traditional search engines design their algorithms as a way to, as Google puts it, “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” That’s a nice way of saying they want to rank and present pages in order of their quality and usefulness for any search so that people can find the information they need and continue searching on Google’s owned properties.

Amazon’s goal, on the other hand, is to help people find the products they need so they can buy and keep shopping on Amazon. The word “buy” is the important part here. Amazon is a shopping engine (for now). It wants its users to buy things so its sellers can sell things so Amazon can make money. Send the package ridiculously fast. Drive a review or two. Rinse and repeat. Everything facet of their algorithm considers this simple end goal of driving the sale.

So, what is Amazon looking at to help people find and buy what they want and need?

Performance and sales: The algorithm looks at things like CTR (click-thru rate) in the search results, conversion rate once users view a listing, and yes, sales.

Relevance: The algorithm looks at how well a product listing matches the query that a user types into the search bar.

Begging the more actionable question: How do I improve those ranking factors for my listing?

Keywords Are King

Much like Google in the not-too-distant past, keywords are a big part of what you can do or control to start ranking better. So, how do you know which keywords matter to Amazon and to those millions of your prospective, future customers? Keyword research.

Keyword research is a foundational part of all SEO, but Amazon keyword research is a little different. And it’s not just Amazon. This is true for all shopping engines. People search differently when they are on Amazon or in a true product-seeking mindset than they might on Google when they’re seeking early information about your category. There is likely to be some overlap, but it is important to use keyword research tools that are meant for shopping.

Here are a few keyword research tools to consider:

MerchantWords

SellerLabs

KeywordTool.io

Terapeak SEO

Once you have a strong keyword list informed by how people are actually searching on Amazon, you’ll need to figure out how to leverage that insight.

Keyword Placement Matters

Location, location, location! Your title is the prime real estate for optimizing your listing. And not just technically speaking, but for real humans scanning real results.

The next most important placement is your product description. Followed by your backend keywords, which have a strict character count. Your bullets matter too, but more for UX than for strict technical optimization.

Again, the point is to start with a good grasp on what matters most and to let that guide how your listing is constructed, with a heavy dose of common sense about writing clearly, concisely, and engagingly for real humans. There should be a method to the madness.

Amazon Marketing Requires Strong UX

Designing and writing your listing for the end-user will also directly affect your ability to rank well. Blatant keyword stuffing as a practice is thankfully still on the trash-pile of search engine history. Shoes shoes shoes, tennis shoes, shoes shoes…

Having things like high quality product images may seem obvious but it’s exactly this attention to detail and deliberately providing great product information in all forms that will earn you a click and ultimately a sale over someone else. Here’s a short list of UX related considerations:

Image quality

Image variations (different views, pictures on a model, etc)

Clear and descriptive product titles

Detailed descriptions and product specifications

High rating

Good reviews

Free shipping

Available on Prime?

Competitive pricing

Some of these things you’ll be able to control more than others, but you should do what you can to put a good foot forward and earn a shoppers’ trust as quickly as possible. This boils down to looking credible through both polish and social proof, and yes, giving them what they need to make a decision.

Amazon Visibility Isn’t Something You “Fix” – It’s Something You Work At

Just like other forms of SEO, you are never truly “done” optimizing. This kind of effort towards best-possible visibility is all about Distance from Perfect, a concept we talk about a lot at Portent.

Continue to iterate. Amazon’s algorithm will absolutely continue to change over time as they learn and improve, so make sure your marketing team or your agency is current on what’s happening to stay ahead of your competition.

Amazon PPC

As with just about everything in digital marketing these days, sometimes you need to pay to play. This is especially true for new products without a lot of historical sales to provide lift organically.

Amazon Sponsored Products are a very effective way to get people to your listing and boost sales in a targeted and cost-efficient way. Amazon’s PPC service is similar to Google AdWords in that it is keyword-driven and uses a CPC (cost per click) auction model. The ad targeting options available, combined with the “buy” mentality of Amazon users make it an easy choice for serious Amazon sellers.

Sponsored products aren’t just for new products either. Yes, it’s a great way to get products off the ground, but it can also be highly effective for seasonal campaigns and for providing an overall lift when organic sales aren’t meeting short-term revenue goals.

Can Sponsored Products Improve My Organic Ranking?

In a word: Yes. Although it’s not as simple as an ad spend “dragging” a lagging search result up the page, the visibility and extra sales from paid will mean a better organic rank in the future. Think of it as proactively creating momentum for your organic listing.

How to Run Ads on Amazon

Sponsored Products can be found and mentioned in Seller Central. As described above, Sponsored Product ads are fairly similarly to AdWords in terms of how you can manage them, For instance, you can (and very likely should) create campaigns and ad groups to target keywords with max CPC bids.

It’s worth noting that AdWords controls are more robust than Amazon’s at this point, with a several-year head start, although Amazon seems to be investing heavily to make up ground. Whatever your take on the interface, the important thing to remember here is still that keywords are king.

The keyword research you already did on the SEO side can and should influence the keywords you target with your paid ads on Amazon. You know what they’re searching, so unless it’s cost prohibitive (ad costs minus your specific margins) you know exactly where you’d ideally like to show up.

Importantly, and just like AdWords, “negative keywords” (those terms that signify a search for a product where you’re not a good fit, are also an important tool for Amazon PPC. Be sure to invest a bit of time early-on to develop a strong negative keyword list to help narrow your targeting. This will improve efficiency and prevent wasteful spending. Focus on showing up when you’re truly the best fit, and invest to make sure you’re highly visible in those moments.

Where Do Amazon Ads Show Up?

This might sound well and good, but without the context of what this ultimately looks like, it can be tough to connect the “I should…” with the real end result.

Just like Google, Amazon ads are usually given some of the most premium real-estate on the entire site. This means they will be the first thing a shopper will see.

Not only do paid or sponsored results give you a shot at the top of each search results page, they can also be seen directly on other seller’s product pages. That’s a pretty significant advantage over traditional search when it comes to merchandising, if we do say so.

Is Amazon Advertising Easy Enough To Handle Solo?

The reality here is that Amazon is a highly competitive marketplace because the upside volume is simply unmatched. Achieving high ranking and driving sales doesn’t happen by accident. Whether you’re opening a job req for an internal staffer, or looking to your agency partner, it’s generally a very good idea to have someone familiar with both SEO, paid search management, and Amazon’s platform-specifics managing your presence.

Shameless plug: if you aren’t sure whether your Amazon products and presence would benefit from professional help, contact us or read more about how Portent helps sellers on Amazon here.

http://ift.tt/2zaSxpf

[repumktg61602]

Where To Start With Amazon Marketing

Where To Start With Amazon Marketing Amazon Marketing: Why It’s Important

There are hundreds of millions of active accounts on Amazon. Moreover, nearly half of internet shoppers go directly to Amazon instead of starting with a search engine like Google when they are looking to make a purchase. Those are staggering numbers. But chances are you don’t need convincing that Amazon is a channel worth pursuing if you sell online.

The real question is how to approach it and how to succeed. Competition on Amazon is high and just posting your listing isn’t going to mean sales.

With Amazon, the name of the game is visibility. Specifically, premium visibility and how to get it. Amazon is a search engine. Just like Google, it uses an algorithm to decide who should rank and who shouldn’t for queries or particular product searches. That said, it is its own platform with its own rules defined by Amazonians, not Googlers. It absolutely needs to be treated with a different strategy to win this unique game.

But there are certainly lessons to be drawn from search engine advertising.

How do we generally produce visibility in Google search? With search engine optimization (SEO) and paid search advertising (PPC). These same broad concepts apply to Amazon.

Amazon SEO

The first step to SEO for Amazon is understanding how Amazon’s search algorithm works. That is easier said than done, but if you’re going to understand the algorithm, you need to understand what Amazon’s real goal is. It’s different than Google or Bing’s.

More traditional search engines design their algorithms as a way to, as Google puts it, “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” That’s a nice way of saying they want to rank and present pages in order of their quality and usefulness for any search so that people can find the information they need and continue searching on Google’s owned properties.

Amazon’s goal, on the other hand, is to help people find the products they need so they can buy and keep shopping on Amazon. The word “buy” is the important part here. Amazon is a shopping engine (for now). It wants its users to buy things so its sellers can sell things so Amazon can make money. Send the package ridiculously fast. Drive a review or two. Rinse and repeat. Everything facet of their algorithm considers this simple end goal of driving the sale.

So, what is Amazon looking at to help people find and buy what they want and need?

Performance and sales: The algorithm looks at things like CTR (click-thru rate) in the search results, conversion rate once users view a listing, and yes, sales.

Relevance: The algorithm looks at how well a product listing matches the query that a user types into the search bar.

Begging the more actionable question: How do I improve those ranking factors for my listing?

Keywords Are King

Much like Google in the not-too-distant past, keywords are a big part of what you can do or control to start ranking better. So, how do you know which keywords matter to Amazon and to those millions of your prospective, future customers? Keyword research.

Keyword research is a foundational part of all SEO, but Amazon keyword research is a little different. And it’s not just Amazon. This is true for all shopping engines. People search differently when they are on Amazon or in a true product-seeking mindset than they might on Google when they’re seeking early information about your category. There is likely to be some overlap, but it is important to use keyword research tools that are meant for shopping.

Here are a few keyword research tools to consider:

MerchantWords

SellerLabs

KeywordTool.io

Terapeak SEO

Once you have a strong keyword list informed by how people are actually searching on Amazon, you’ll need to figure out how to leverage that insight.

Keyword Placement Matters

Location, location, location! Your title is the prime real estate for optimizing your listing. And not just technically speaking, but for real humans scanning real results.

The next most important placement is your product description. Followed by your backend keywords, which have a strict character count. Your bullets matter too, but more for UX than for strict technical optimization.

Again, the point is to start with a good grasp on what matters most and to let that guide how your listing is constructed, with a heavy dose of common sense about writing clearly, concisely, and engagingly for real humans. There should be a method to the madness.

Amazon Marketing Requires Strong UX

Designing and writing your listing for the end-user will also directly affect your ability to rank well. Blatant keyword stuffing as a practice is thankfully still on the trash-pile of search engine history. Shoes shoes shoes, tennis shoes, shoes shoes…

Having things like high quality product images may seem obvious but it’s exactly this attention to detail and deliberately providing great product information in all forms that will earn you a click and ultimately a sale over someone else. Here’s a short list of UX related considerations:

Image quality

Image variations (different views, pictures on a model, etc)

Clear and descriptive product titles

Detailed descriptions and product specifications

High rating

Good reviews

Free shipping

Available on Prime?

Competitive pricing

Some of these things you’ll be able to control more than others, but you should do what you can to put a good foot forward and earn a shoppers’ trust as quickly as possible. This boils down to looking credible through both polish and social proof, and yes, giving them what they need to make a decision.

Amazon Visibility Isn’t Something You “Fix” – It’s Something You Work At

Just like other forms of SEO, you are never truly “done” optimizing. This kind of effort towards best-possible visibility is all about Distance from Perfect, a concept we talk about a lot at Portent.

Continue to iterate. Amazon’s algorithm will absolutely continue to change over time as they learn and improve, so make sure your marketing team or your agency is current on what’s happening to stay ahead of your competition.

Amazon PPC

As with just about everything in digital marketing these days, sometimes you need to pay to play. This is especially true for new products without a lot of historical sales to provide lift organically.

Amazon Sponsored Products are a very effective way to get people to your listing and boost sales in a targeted and cost-efficient way. Amazon’s PPC service is similar to Google AdWords in that it is keyword-driven and uses a CPC (cost per click) auction model. The ad targeting options available, combined with the “buy” mentality of Amazon users make it an easy choice for serious Amazon sellers.

Sponsored products aren’t just for new products either. Yes, it’s a great way to get products off the ground, but it can also be highly effective for seasonal campaigns and for providing an overall lift when organic sales aren’t meeting short-term revenue goals.

Can Sponsored Products Improve My Organic Ranking?

In a word: Yes. Although it’s not as simple as an ad spend “dragging” a lagging search result up the page, the visibility and extra sales from paid will mean a better organic rank in the future. Think of it as proactively creating momentum for your organic listing.

How to Run Ads on Amazon

Sponsored Products can be found and mentioned in Seller Central. As described above, Sponsored Product ads are fairly similarly to AdWords in terms of how you can manage them, For instance, you can (and very likely should) create campaigns and ad groups to target keywords with max CPC bids.

It’s worth noting that AdWords controls are more robust than Amazon’s at this point, with a several-year head start, although Amazon seems to be investing heavily to make up ground. Whatever your take on the interface, the important thing to remember here is still that keywords are king.

The keyword research you already did on the SEO side can and should influence the keywords you target with your paid ads on Amazon. You know what they’re searching, so unless it’s cost prohibitive (ad costs minus your specific margins) you know exactly where you’d ideally like to show up.

Importantly, and just like AdWords, “negative keywords” (those terms that signify a search for a product where you’re not a good fit, are also an important tool for Amazon PPC. Be sure to invest a bit of time early-on to develop a strong negative keyword list to help narrow your targeting. This will improve efficiency and prevent wasteful spending. Focus on showing up when you’re truly the best fit, and invest to make sure you’re highly visible in those moments.

Where Do Amazon Ads Show Up?

This might sound well and good, but without the context of what this ultimately looks like, it can be tough to connect the “I should…” with the real end result.

Just like Google, Amazon ads are usually given some of the most premium real-estate on the entire site. This means they will be the first thing a shopper will see.

Not only do paid or sponsored results give you a shot at the top of each search results page, they can also be seen directly on other seller’s product pages. That’s a pretty significant advantage over traditional search when it comes to merchandising, if we do say so.

Is Amazon Advertising Easy Enough To Handle Solo?

The reality here is that Amazon is a highly competitive marketplace because the upside volume is simply unmatched. Achieving high ranking and driving sales doesn’t happen by accident. Whether you’re opening a job req for an internal staffer, or looking to your agency partner, it’s generally a very good idea to have someone familiar with both SEO, paid search management, and Amazon’s platform-specifics managing your presence.

Shameless plug: if you aren’t sure whether your Amazon products and presence would benefit from professional help, contact us or read more about how Portent helps sellers on Amazon here.

http://ift.tt/2zaSxpf

[realestate63141]

Where To Start With Amazon Marketing

Where To Start With Amazon Marketing Amazon Marketing: Why It’s Important

There are hundreds of millions of active accounts on Amazon. Moreover, nearly half of internet shoppers go directly to Amazon instead of starting with a search engine like Google when they are looking to make a purchase. Those are staggering numbers. But chances are you don’t need convincing that Amazon is a channel worth pursuing if you sell online.

The real question is how to approach it and how to succeed. Competition on Amazon is high and just posting your listing isn’t going to mean sales.

With Amazon, the name of the game is visibility. Specifically, premium visibility and how to get it. Amazon is a search engine. Just like Google, it uses an algorithm to decide who should rank and who shouldn’t for queries or particular product searches. That said, it is its own platform with its own rules defined by Amazonians, not Googlers. It absolutely needs to be treated with a different strategy to win this unique game.

But there are certainly lessons to be drawn from search engine advertising.

How do we generally produce visibility in Google search? With search engine optimization (SEO) and paid search advertising (PPC). These same broad concepts apply to Amazon.

Amazon SEO

The first step to SEO for Amazon is understanding how Amazon’s search algorithm works. That is easier said than done, but if you’re going to understand the algorithm, you need to understand what Amazon’s real goal is. It’s different than Google or Bing’s.

More traditional search engines design their algorithms as a way to, as Google puts it, “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” That’s a nice way of saying they want to rank and present pages in order of their quality and usefulness for any search so that people can find the information they need and continue searching on Google’s owned properties.

Amazon’s goal, on the other hand, is to help people find the products they need so they can buy and keep shopping on Amazon. The word “buy” is the important part here. Amazon is a shopping engine (for now). It wants its users to buy things so its sellers can sell things so Amazon can make money. Send the package ridiculously fast. Drive a review or two. Rinse and repeat. Everything facet of their algorithm considers this simple end goal of driving the sale.

So, what is Amazon looking at to help people find and buy what they want and need?

Performance and sales: The algorithm looks at things like CTR (click-thru rate) in the search results, conversion rate once users view a listing, and yes, sales.

Relevance: The algorithm looks at how well a product listing matches the query that a user types into the search bar.

Begging the more actionable question: How do I improve those ranking factors for my listing?

Keywords Are King

Much like Google in the not-too-distant past, keywords are a big part of what you can do or control to start ranking better. So, how do you know which keywords matter to Amazon and to those millions of your prospective, future customers? Keyword research.

Keyword research is a foundational part of all SEO, but Amazon keyword research is a little different. And it’s not just Amazon. This is true for all shopping engines. People search differently when they are on Amazon or in a true product-seeking mindset than they might on Google when they’re seeking early information about your category. There is likely to be some overlap, but it is important to use keyword research tools that are meant for shopping.

Here are a few keyword research tools to consider:

MerchantWords

SellerLabs

KeywordTool.io

Terapeak SEO

Once you have a strong keyword list informed by how people are actually searching on Amazon, you’ll need to figure out how to leverage that insight.

Keyword Placement Matters

Location, location, location! Your title is the prime real estate for optimizing your listing. And not just technically speaking, but for real humans scanning real results.

The next most important placement is your product description. Followed by your backend keywords, which have a strict character count. Your bullets matter too, but more for UX than for strict technical optimization.

Again, the point is to start with a good grasp on what matters most and to let that guide how your listing is constructed, with a heavy dose of common sense about writing clearly, concisely, and engagingly for real humans. There should be a method to the madness.

Amazon Marketing Requires Strong UX

Designing and writing your listing for the end-user will also directly affect your ability to rank well. Blatant keyword stuffing as a practice is thankfully still on the trash-pile of search engine history. Shoes shoes shoes, tennis shoes, shoes shoes…

Having things like high quality product images may seem obvious but it’s exactly this attention to detail and deliberately providing great product information in all forms that will earn you a click and ultimately a sale over someone else. Here’s a short list of UX related considerations:

Image quality

Image variations (different views, pictures on a model, etc)

Clear and descriptive product titles

Detailed descriptions and product specifications

High rating

Good reviews

Free shipping

Available on Prime?

Competitive pricing

Some of these things you’ll be able to control more than others, but you should do what you can to put a good foot forward and earn a shoppers’ trust as quickly as possible. This boils down to looking credible through both polish and social proof, and yes, giving them what they need to make a decision.

Amazon Visibility Isn’t Something You “Fix” – It’s Something You Work At

Just like other forms of SEO, you are never truly “done” optimizing. This kind of effort towards best-possible visibility is all about Distance from Perfect, a concept we talk about a lot at Portent.

Continue to iterate. Amazon’s algorithm will absolutely continue to change over time as they learn and improve, so make sure your marketing team or your agency is current on what’s happening to stay ahead of your competition.

Amazon PPC

As with just about everything in digital marketing these days, sometimes you need to pay to play. This is especially true for new products without a lot of historical sales to provide lift organically.

Amazon Sponsored Products are a very effective way to get people to your listing and boost sales in a targeted and cost-efficient way. Amazon’s PPC service is similar to Google AdWords in that it is keyword-driven and uses a CPC (cost per click) auction model. The ad targeting options available, combined with the “buy” mentality of Amazon users make it an easy choice for serious Amazon sellers.

Sponsored products aren’t just for new products either. Yes, it’s a great way to get products off the ground, but it can also be highly effective for seasonal campaigns and for providing an overall lift when organic sales aren’t meeting short-term revenue goals.

Can Sponsored Products Improve My Organic Ranking?

In a word: Yes. Although it’s not as simple as an ad spend “dragging” a lagging search result up the page, the visibility and extra sales from paid will mean a better organic rank in the future. Think of it as proactively creating momentum for your organic listing.

How to Run Ads on Amazon

Sponsored Products can be found and mentioned in Seller Central. As described above, Sponsored Product ads are fairly similarly to AdWords in terms of how you can manage them, For instance, you can (and very likely should) create campaigns and ad groups to target keywords with max CPC bids.

It’s worth noting that AdWords controls are more robust than Amazon’s at this point, with a several-year head start, although Amazon seems to be investing heavily to make up ground. Whatever your take on the interface, the important thing to remember here is still that keywords are king.

The keyword research you already did on the SEO side can and should influence the keywords you target with your paid ads on Amazon. You know what they’re searching, so unless it’s cost prohibitive (ad costs minus your specific margins) you know exactly where you’d ideally like to show up.

Importantly, and just like AdWords, “negative keywords” (those terms that signify a search for a product where you’re not a good fit, are also an important tool for Amazon PPC. Be sure to invest a bit of time early-on to develop a strong negative keyword list to help narrow your targeting. This will improve efficiency and prevent wasteful spending. Focus on showing up when you’re truly the best fit, and invest to make sure you’re highly visible in those moments.

Where Do Amazon Ads Show Up?

This might sound well and good, but without the context of what this ultimately looks like, it can be tough to connect the “I should…” with the real end result.

Just like Google, Amazon ads are usually given some of the most premium real-estate on the entire site. This means they will be the first thing a shopper will see.

Not only do paid or sponsored results give you a shot at the top of each search results page, they can also be seen directly on other seller’s product pages. That’s a pretty significant advantage over traditional search when it comes to merchandising, if we do say so.

Is Amazon Advertising Easy Enough To Handle Solo?

The reality here is that Amazon is a highly competitive marketplace because the upside volume is simply unmatched. Achieving high ranking and driving sales doesn’t happen by accident. Whether you’re opening a job req for an internal staffer, or looking to your agency partner, it’s generally a very good idea to have someone familiar with both SEO, paid search management, and Amazon’s platform-specifics managing your presence.

Shameless plug: if you aren’t sure whether your Amazon products and presence would benefit from professional help, contact us or read more about how Portent helps sellers on Amazon here.

http://ift.tt/2zaSxpf

[inetmrktng75247]

Where To Start With Amazon Marketing

Where To Start With Amazon Marketing Amazon Marketing: Why It’s Important

There are hundreds of millions of active accounts on Amazon. Moreover, nearly half of internet shoppers go directly to Amazon instead of starting with a search engine like Google when they are looking to make a purchase. Those are staggering numbers. But chances are you don’t need convincing that Amazon is a channel worth pursuing if you sell online.

The real question is how to approach it and how to succeed. Competition on Amazon is high and just posting your listing isn’t going to mean sales.

With Amazon, the name of the game is visibility. Specifically, premium visibility and how to get it. Amazon is a search engine. Just like Google, it uses an algorithm to decide who should rank and who shouldn’t for queries or particular product searches. That said, it is its own platform with its own rules defined by Amazonians, not Googlers. It absolutely needs to be treated with a different strategy to win this unique game.

But there are certainly lessons to be drawn from search engine advertising.

How do we generally produce visibility in Google search? With search engine optimization (SEO) and paid search advertising (PPC). These same broad concepts apply to Amazon.

Amazon SEO

The first step to SEO for Amazon is understanding how Amazon’s search algorithm works. That is easier said than done, but if you’re going to understand the algorithm, you need to understand what Amazon’s real goal is. It’s different than Google or Bing’s.

More traditional search engines design their algorithms as a way to, as Google puts it, “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” That’s a nice way of saying they want to rank and present pages in order of their quality and usefulness for any search so that people can find the information they need and continue searching on Google’s owned properties.

Amazon’s goal, on the other hand, is to help people find the products they need so they can buy and keep shopping on Amazon. The word “buy” is the important part here. Amazon is a shopping engine (for now). It wants its users to buy things so its sellers can sell things so Amazon can make money. Send the package ridiculously fast. Drive a review or two. Rinse and repeat. Everything facet of their algorithm considers this simple end goal of driving the sale.

So, what is Amazon looking at to help people find and buy what they want and need?

Performance and sales: The algorithm looks at things like CTR (click-thru rate) in the search results, conversion rate once users view a listing, and yes, sales.

Relevance: The algorithm looks at how well a product listing matches the query that a user types into the search bar.

Begging the more actionable question: How do I improve those ranking factors for my listing?

Keywords Are King

Much like Google in the not-too-distant past, keywords are a big part of what you can do or control to start ranking better. So, how do you know which keywords matter to Amazon and to those millions of your prospective, future customers? Keyword research.

Keyword research is a foundational part of all SEO, but Amazon keyword research is a little different. And it’s not just Amazon. This is true for all shopping engines. People search differently when they are on Amazon or in a true product-seeking mindset than they might on Google when they’re seeking early information about your category. There is likely to be some overlap, but it is important to use keyword research tools that are meant for shopping.

Here are a few keyword research tools to consider:

MerchantWords

SellerLabs

KeywordTool.io

Terapeak SEO

Once you have a strong keyword list informed by how people are actually searching on Amazon, you’ll need to figure out how to leverage that insight.

Keyword Placement Matters

Location, location, location! Your title is the prime real estate for optimizing your listing. And not just technically speaking, but for real humans scanning real results.

The next most important placement is your product description. Followed by your backend keywords, which have a strict character count. Your bullets matter too, but more for UX than for strict technical optimization.

Again, the point is to start with a good grasp on what matters most and to let that guide how your listing is constructed, with a heavy dose of common sense about writing clearly, concisely, and engagingly for real humans. There should be a method to the madness.

Amazon Marketing Requires Strong UX

Designing and writing your listing for the end-user will also directly affect your ability to rank well. Blatant keyword stuffing as a practice is thankfully still on the trash-pile of search engine history. Shoes shoes shoes, tennis shoes, shoes shoes…

Having things like high quality product images may seem obvious but it’s exactly this attention to detail and deliberately providing great product information in all forms that will earn you a click and ultimately a sale over someone else. Here’s a short list of UX related considerations:

Image quality

Image variations (different views, pictures on a model, etc)

Clear and descriptive product titles

Detailed descriptions and product specifications

High rating

Good reviews

Free shipping

Available on Prime?

Competitive pricing

Some of these things you’ll be able to control more than others, but you should do what you can to put a good foot forward and earn a shoppers’ trust as quickly as possible. This boils down to looking credible through both polish and social proof, and yes, giving them what they need to make a decision.

Amazon Visibility Isn’t Something You “Fix” – It’s Something You Work At

Just like other forms of SEO, you are never truly “done” optimizing. This kind of effort towards best-possible visibility is all about Distance from Perfect, a concept we talk about a lot at Portent.

Continue to iterate. Amazon’s algorithm will absolutely continue to change over time as they learn and improve, so make sure your marketing team or your agency is current on what’s happening to stay ahead of your competition.

Amazon PPC

As with just about everything in digital marketing these days, sometimes you need to pay to play. This is especially true for new products without a lot of historical sales to provide lift organically.

Amazon Sponsored Products are a very effective way to get people to your listing and boost sales in a targeted and cost-efficient way. Amazon’s PPC service is similar to Google AdWords in that it is keyword-driven and uses a CPC (cost per click) auction model. The ad targeting options available, combined with the “buy” mentality of Amazon users make it an easy choice for serious Amazon sellers.

Sponsored products aren’t just for new products either. Yes, it’s a great way to get products off the ground, but it can also be highly effective for seasonal campaigns and for providing an overall lift when organic sales aren’t meeting short-term revenue goals.

Can Sponsored Products Improve My Organic Ranking?

In a word: Yes. Although it’s not as simple as an ad spend “dragging” a lagging search result up the page, the visibility and extra sales from paid will mean a better organic rank in the future. Think of it as proactively creating momentum for your organic listing.

How to Run Ads on Amazon

Sponsored Products can be found and mentioned in Seller Central. As described above, Sponsored Product ads are fairly similarly to AdWords in terms of how you can manage them, For instance, you can (and very likely should) create campaigns and ad groups to target keywords with max CPC bids.

It’s worth noting that AdWords controls are more robust than Amazon’s at this point, with a several-year head start, although Amazon seems to be investing heavily to make up ground. Whatever your take on the interface, the important thing to remember here is still that keywords are king.

The keyword research you already did on the SEO side can and should influence the keywords you target with your paid ads on Amazon. You know what they’re searching, so unless it’s cost prohibitive (ad costs minus your specific margins) you know exactly where you’d ideally like to show up.

Importantly, and just like AdWords, “negative keywords” (those terms that signify a search for a product where you’re not a good fit, are also an important tool for Amazon PPC. Be sure to invest a bit of time early-on to develop a strong negative keyword list to help narrow your targeting. This will improve efficiency and prevent wasteful spending. Focus on showing up when you’re truly the best fit, and invest to make sure you’re highly visible in those moments.

Where Do Amazon Ads Show Up?

This might sound well and good, but without the context of what this ultimately looks like, it can be tough to connect the “I should…” with the real end result.

Just like Google, Amazon ads are usually given some of the most premium real-estate on the entire site. This means they will be the first thing a shopper will see.

Not only do paid or sponsored results give you a shot at the top of each search results page, they can also be seen directly on other seller’s product pages. That’s a pretty significant advantage over traditional search when it comes to merchandising, if we do say so.

Is Amazon Advertising Easy Enough To Handle Solo?

The reality here is that Amazon is a highly competitive marketplace because the upside volume is simply unmatched. Achieving high ranking and driving sales doesn’t happen by accident. Whether you’re opening a job req for an internal staffer, or looking to your agency partner, it’s generally a very good idea to have someone familiar with both SEO, paid search management, and Amazon’s platform-specifics managing your presence.

Shameless plug: if you aren’t sure whether your Amazon products and presence would benefit from professional help, contact us or read more about how Portent helps sellers on Amazon here.

http://ift.tt/2zaSxpf

[seo75074]

Where To Start With Amazon Marketing

Where To Start With Amazon Marketing Amazon Marketing: Why It’s Important

There are hundreds of millions of active accounts on Amazon. Moreover, nearly half of internet shoppers go directly to Amazon instead of starting with a search engine like Google when they are looking to make a purchase. Those are staggering numbers. But chances are you don’t need convincing that Amazon is a channel worth pursuing if you sell online.

The real question is how to approach it and how to succeed. Competition on Amazon is high and just posting your listing isn’t going to mean sales.

With Amazon, the name of the game is visibility. Specifically, premium visibility and how to get it. Amazon is a search engine. Just like Google, it uses an algorithm to decide who should rank and who shouldn’t for queries or particular product searches. That said, it is its own platform with its own rules defined by Amazonians, not Googlers. It absolutely needs to be treated with a different strategy to win this unique game.

But there are certainly lessons to be drawn from search engine advertising.

How do we generally produce visibility in Google search? With search engine optimization (SEO) and paid search advertising (PPC). These same broad concepts apply to Amazon.

Amazon SEO

The first step to SEO for Amazon is understanding how Amazon’s search algorithm works. That is easier said than done, but if you’re going to understand the algorithm, you need to understand what Amazon’s real goal is. It’s different than Google or Bing’s.

More traditional search engines design their algorithms as a way to, as Google puts it, “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” That’s a nice way of saying they want to rank and present pages in order of their quality and usefulness for any search so that people can find the information they need and continue searching on Google’s owned properties.

Amazon’s goal, on the other hand, is to help people find the products they need so they can buy and keep shopping on Amazon. The word “buy” is the important part here. Amazon is a shopping engine (for now). It wants its users to buy things so its sellers can sell things so Amazon can make money. Send the package ridiculously fast. Drive a review or two. Rinse and repeat. Everything facet of their algorithm considers this simple end goal of driving the sale.

So, what is Amazon looking at to help people find and buy what they want and need?

Performance and sales: The algorithm looks at things like CTR (click-thru rate) in the search results, conversion rate once users view a listing, and yes, sales.

Relevance: The algorithm looks at how well a product listing matches the query that a user types into the search bar.

Begging the more actionable question: How do I improve those ranking factors for my listing?

Keywords Are King

Much like Google in the not-too-distant past, keywords are a big part of what you can do or control to start ranking better. So, how do you know which keywords matter to Amazon and to those millions of your prospective, future customers? Keyword research.

Keyword research is a foundational part of all SEO, but Amazon keyword research is a little different. And it’s not just Amazon. This is true for all shopping engines. People search differently when they are on Amazon or in a true product-seeking mindset than they might on Google when they’re seeking early information about your category. There is likely to be some overlap, but it is important to use keyword research tools that are meant for shopping.

Here are a few keyword research tools to consider:

MerchantWords

SellerLabs

KeywordTool.io

Terapeak SEO

Once you have a strong keyword list informed by how people are actually searching on Amazon, you’ll need to figure out how to leverage that insight.

Keyword Placement Matters

Location, location, location! Your title is the prime real estate for optimizing your listing. And not just technically speaking, but for real humans scanning real results.

The next most important placement is your product description. Followed by your backend keywords, which have a strict character count. Your bullets matter too, but more for UX than for strict technical optimization.

Again, the point is to start with a good grasp on what matters most and to let that guide how your listing is constructed, with a heavy dose of common sense about writing clearly, concisely, and engagingly for real humans. There should be a method to the madness.

Amazon Marketing Requires Strong UX

Designing and writing your listing for the end-user will also directly affect your ability to rank well. Blatant keyword stuffing as a practice is thankfully still on the trash-pile of search engine history. Shoes shoes shoes, tennis shoes, shoes shoes…

Having things like high quality product images may seem obvious but it’s exactly this attention to detail and deliberately providing great product information in all forms that will earn you a click and ultimately a sale over someone else. Here’s a short list of UX related considerations:

Image quality

Image variations (different views, pictures on a model, etc)

Clear and descriptive product titles

Detailed descriptions and product specifications

High rating

Good reviews

Free shipping

Available on Prime?

Competitive pricing

Some of these things you’ll be able to control more than others, but you should do what you can to put a good foot forward and earn a shoppers’ trust as quickly as possible. This boils down to looking credible through both polish and social proof, and yes, giving them what they need to make a decision.

Amazon Visibility Isn’t Something You “Fix” – It’s Something You Work At

Just like other forms of SEO, you are never truly “done” optimizing. This kind of effort towards best-possible visibility is all about Distance from Perfect, a concept we talk about a lot at Portent.

Continue to iterate. Amazon’s algorithm will absolutely continue to change over time as they learn and improve, so make sure your marketing team or your agency is current on what’s happening to stay ahead of your competition.

Amazon PPC

As with just about everything in digital marketing these days, sometimes you need to pay to play. This is especially true for new products without a lot of historical sales to provide lift organically.

Amazon Sponsored Products are a very effective way to get people to your listing and boost sales in a targeted and cost-efficient way. Amazon’s PPC service is similar to Google AdWords in that it is keyword-driven and uses a CPC (cost per click) auction model. The ad targeting options available, combined with the “buy” mentality of Amazon users make it an easy choice for serious Amazon sellers.

Sponsored products aren’t just for new products either. Yes, it’s a great way to get products off the ground, but it can also be highly effective for seasonal campaigns and for providing an overall lift when organic sales aren’t meeting short-term revenue goals.

Can Sponsored Products Improve My Organic Ranking?

In a word: Yes. Although it’s not as simple as an ad spend “dragging” a lagging search result up the page, the visibility and extra sales from paid will mean a better organic rank in the future. Think of it as proactively creating momentum for your organic listing.

How to Run Ads on Amazon

Sponsored Products can be found and mentioned in Seller Central. As described above, Sponsored Product ads are fairly similarly to AdWords in terms of how you can manage them, For instance, you can (and very likely should) create campaigns and ad groups to target keywords with max CPC bids.

It’s worth noting that AdWords controls are more robust than Amazon’s at this point, with a several-year head start, although Amazon seems to be investing heavily to make up ground. Whatever your take on the interface, the important thing to remember here is still that keywords are king.

The keyword research you already did on the SEO side can and should influence the keywords you target with your paid ads on Amazon. You know what they’re searching, so unless it’s cost prohibitive (ad costs minus your specific margins) you know exactly where you’d ideally like to show up.

Importantly, and just like AdWords, “negative keywords” (those terms that signify a search for a product where you’re not a good fit, are also an important tool for Amazon PPC. Be sure to invest a bit of time early-on to develop a strong negative keyword list to help narrow your targeting. This will improve efficiency and prevent wasteful spending. Focus on showing up when you’re truly the best fit, and invest to make sure you’re highly visible in those moments.

Where Do Amazon Ads Show Up?

This might sound well and good, but without the context of what this ultimately looks like, it can be tough to connect the “I should…” with the real end result.

Just like Google, Amazon ads are usually given some of the most premium real-estate on the entire site. This means they will be the first thing a shopper will see.

Not only do paid or sponsored results give you a shot at the top of each search results page, they can also be seen directly on other seller’s product pages. That’s a pretty significant advantage over traditional search when it comes to merchandising, if we do say so.

Is Amazon Advertising Easy Enough To Handle Solo?

The reality here is that Amazon is a highly competitive marketplace because the upside volume is simply unmatched. Achieving high ranking and driving sales doesn’t happen by accident. Whether you’re opening a job req for an internal staffer, or looking to your agency partner, it’s generally a very good idea to have someone familiar with both SEO, paid search management, and Amazon’s platform-specifics managing your presence.

Shameless plug: if you aren’t sure whether your Amazon products and presence would benefit from professional help, contact us or read more about how Portent helps sellers on Amazon here.

http://ift.tt/2zaSxpf