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Cartograph's Weekly Tips and Tricks for Selling on #Amazon 📜 SEARCH RESULTS | REVIEW OMISSIONS If you’ve been surfing Amazon and noticed that search results are missing reviews and ratings, you aren’t alone. Its real. Based on the LinkedIn post by Judah Bergman, here are the key points summarized in 4 bullets: 1) Amazon is omitting star ratings and reviews from many search results on their app, requiring consumers to rely on alternative signals like "2k bought in the last month" or Amazon's choice/best seller tags. 2) Reviews are now only visible on the product page after the item is clicked, leading to questions about whether Amazon is moving away from reviews as a key shopping signal. 3) Experts have mixed views - some see this as a temporary test, while others believe Amazon is adapting the display of reviews to balance the influence of potentially fake reviews and improve the shopping experience. 4) The change could impact click-through rates, conversion rates, and advertising costs for sellers, as consumers may have to do more "window shopping" without the immediate star rating signal. See Link: https://lnkd.in/d9q775gN ♻ RETURNS | TO RESELL OR TO NOT RESELL Amazon has launched an interesting beta feature for returns. You can update it HERE: https://lnkd.in/d8sKhisE The options are as follows: 1) Default Evaluation: Typically, Amazon evaluates all customer-returned items to determine if they’re sellable. If deemed new, they go right back into your inventory. 2) Selective Evaluation: You can choose to have only certain ASINs evaluated. Just upload a list, and Amazon will check these returns for sellability. Items not on the list will be considered defective and unfulfillable. 3) Disable Evaluation: You can opt out entirely. All returned items will be marked as defective and unfulfillable, bypassing any chance for reimbursement if damaged. See more info HERE: https://lnkd.in/d3rQGFn5 📊 SPONSORED DISPLAY | LOW REVIEW PRODUCT VISIBILITY If you have a product with low reviews, use SD to get content in front of customers. 1) If you do logo+custom image+tagline, reviews are left off the ads. Pair it up a promo (LD featured in that screenshot) to stand out and let your price point appeal to customers. 2) PSA to not let review count or price point stand in the way of getting customers to your detail pages. get creative with how you position yourself in front of customers. 3) ALWAYS be improving your CTR, which requires innovation in how you advertise or structure your title/hero images. 4) Supporting data to back this up, most NTB customers on Amazon are buying after seeing a combo of ads, with SD as the final path to purchase most of the time. [Screenshot] #digitalmarketing #advertisingandmarketing #amazonmarketing

Cartograph's Weekly Tips and Tricks for Selling on #Amazon ⚖ INVENTORY | LOOKING AHEAD - Q4 - Place Q4 orders in August, last chance for delivery by September before capacity limits in October. - Inventory must arrive at Amazon by October 19 to guarantee Prime status by Black Friday. - Expect reduced FBA check-in times in November and December, with inventory potentially not checked in until 2025. - Amazon has eliminated overage fees for exceeding capacity limits but recommend sending Q4 inventory in August/September. 🐕 DSP | RUFUS FOR NEW AUDIENCES Use Amazon's AI assistant, Rufus, to create DSP Audiences. - A recent experiment involved asking Amazon's Rufus "What are the best premium cat food brands?" - From these results created an audience for my OLV goal that targeted consumers who had looked at the top ASINs from those brand and excluded anyone who purchased from the competitors in the past 2 weeks and had purchased from a premium cat food brand in the last year. - There is a 43 cent ROAS on the Rufus Audience compared to a 17 cent ROAS targeting top brands converting against in PPC Campaigns. Both audiences have nearly the same DPV Rate and it's more than double that of our IM and lifestyle audiences that are prebuilt for cat shoppers. - The Rufus audience in this particular experiment has about a 2% higher VCR. 🔮 ADS FUTURE COMPLEXION | AI TO CHANGE THE FUTURE OF ADS - Amazon's Cosmo and AI-powered algorithms are enabling "sponsored product retargeting" where ads are personalized based on a user's browsing and purchase history, potentially reducing broad product discovery on Amazon. - This could lead to decreased overall traffic to brands as Amazon niches down personalization, but potentially increased conversion rates as ads are better aligned with individual customers. - Brands will need to focus more on driving awareness and education off the Amazon platform, as personalized sponsored ads may level the playing field and make it harder for new products to be discovered. #digitalmarketing #advertisingandmarketing #amazonmarketing

Cartograph's Weekly Tips and Tricks for Selling on #Amazon 👩⚖️ LEGISLATION | FEDERAL LAWS FOR HAZARDOUS PRODUCTS ON AMAZON The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) has found Amazon responsible for hazardous products sold by third-party sellers on its platform and has ordered the company to take actions to notify consumers and remove the unsafe products from the market. This recent CPSC decision shifts more responsibility for product safety onto Amazon and its third-party sellers, which could have significant implications for how sellers operate on the Amazon marketplace going forward. - CPSC found Amazon responsible as a "distributor" for hazardous products sold by third-party sellers on Amazon.com. - CPSC ordered Amazon to notify consumers and the public and remove hazardous products like faulty detectors and unsafe children's sleepwear. - CPSC rejected Amazon's claim it wasn't responsible, finding its actions inadequate to protect public safety. Link: https://lnkd.in/e7pHzNaS   🤑 REIMBURSEMENTS | TIME TO FILE A CLAIM REDUCING A fulfillment center operations claim for an item that is lost or damaged in the fulfillment center must be submitted no later than 60 days after the item was reported lost or damaged. - Currently this is at 18 months but will officially change on 9/1/2024 per this article found on seller central. - Be sure to submit all your claims during Aug so you don’t have to miss out. Link: https://lnkd.in/epaanVwk 💸 PED | NEW FEES Prime Big Deal Days PED's will become available to be entered on 8/14. NEW this year is that each PED will be charged a $50 fee! #digitalmarketing #advertisingandmarketing #amazonmarketing

Cartograph's Weekly Tips and Tricks for Selling on #Amazon 🤖 AMAZON AI | RUFUS BETA Amazon introduced a new customer-facing AI - "Rufus" (still in Beta). Rufus is asking questions about how a customer might be looking for different products that could be viewed as similar. Important questions to ask yourself are: 1) What questions are auto populating for your brand? 2) How can you make adjustments to ensure the questions are answered properly? We've noticed 1 great answer about 'Vegan Product', but have also noticed that when it comes to flavors, Rufus answer's incorrectly - However, all Flavors have been added to the back-end. [See Screenshot] 🎁 VIRTUAL BUNDLES | BRAND DEFENSE APPROACH Defending your own branded slots can be tricky especially when the cost per click starts becoming more and more expensive. What is another effective way to accomplish brand defense without flexing your ad budget? 1) Virtual Bundles only targeting branded search are a great way to defend your branded search and drive up customer AOVs. 2) You also get to move x2 or more products at once, driving up rank. 📲 MANAGE INVENTORY PAGE || DISCONTINUED 8/29 Starting 8/29 the manage inventory page on Seller Central as you know it will be discontinued! 1) You can check it out by clicking on the "explore new experience" button on the current version. 2) Start using the new one and gain familiarity to avoid whiplash on 8/29! [See Screenshot] #digitalmarketing #advertisingandmarketing #amazonmarketing

Cartograph's Weekly Tips and Tricks for Selling on #Amazon 📮 SPONSORED BRAND ADS | WHY UTILIZE POSTS INTO ADS? The new "Boost" button in the Post Manager takes advertisers to the Sponsored Brands campaign builder, with the creative elements automatically populated. Advertise your posts on Amazon using Sponsored Brands - Identify your top posts: Look for image and video Posts that are already getting good traction with your audience. - Boost with a click: In the Posts manager, simply click the "Boost" button next to your chosen Post. - Seamless setup: Amazon will automatically populate the Sponsored Brand campaign builder with your Post's creative content. - Go live: Review your campaign settings and launch your Sponsored Brand Ad to reach more potential customers. This can help to: - Boost brand awareness: Get your brand name and products in front of a larger audience on Amazon in a different way. - Test your creatives: See how your existing content performs as an ad, helping you refine your future marketing strategies. - Gain insights: Track the performance of your Sponsored Brand Ads to understand what resonates with your customers. - Budget friendly: Amazon Posts are still free to use. This feature simply leverages your organic success for paid advertising. 🎟 BRAND TAILORED PROMOTIONS | EXCLUDING PRODUCTS You can now exclude products from catalog-wide Brand Tailored Promotions! - The new ASIN Exclusion feature in Brand Tailored Promotions enables you to exclude up to 100 parent ASINs from a catalog-wide promotion for greater control over your sales strategies. - ASINs can’t be retroactively excluded from promotions that are "running" or "scheduled." - To exclude ASINs from a promotion, do the following: - Select the brand you want to promote and the audience you want to engage. - At the product selection step, you can either choose 'Add all products' to select your entire brand catalog or 'Exclude specific products' to exclude up to 100 ASINs. Enter a parent ASIN to exclude all related child ASINs from the promotion. You can also exclude individual child ASINs. - Enter any other promotion details and submit the promotion. 💲PRICE INCREASES | MAINTAINING THE FEATURED OFFER It’s a known secret that if you increase your price too much, too quickly, Amazon may penalize you for seemingly “bad behavior” by removing you from the buy box. But what if you actually need to raise your price? - Increasing price while avoiding a high pricing error BB suppression. maximum of 10% increase at a time, with a weekly cadence seems to be the ticket. - While working through price testing, we found anything over 10% will remove you from the featured offer. Potentially, you could push the cadence to ~5-7 days, but weekly definitely has been fine! #digitalmarketing #advertisingandmarketing #amazonmarketing

Cartograph's Weekly Tips and Tricks for Selling on #Amazon 📣 CARTOGRAPH LIVE PRIME DAY WEBINAR: Today (July 11th) at 1pm ET Chris Moe (Cartograph) and Chris McCabe (ecommerceChris) are hosting a live webinar on LinkedIn to discuss Strategies for Winning on Prime Day! Topics include: - Setting yourself up for success on Prime Day. - How to adjust mid-Prime Day if results aren't as expected. - How to parlay Prime Day success into continued Amazon success. - And more! Bring your Prime Day Questions -- there will be a Q&A! 🤖 HIGH QUALITY LISTINGS | AI TO ASSIST IN NEW LISTINGS How can Amazon's built-in AI help you create high-quality listings, faster? Amazon's AI is built into the List Your Product page -- and will auto-fill many of the attributes. Using this link: https://lnkd.in/e5uyCu7E | Go to List Your Products and use one of the following options: - Enter a few keywords to describe your product in the Keywords tab and then click Create a new listing from the search results page. - Click the Product image tab to upload a product image from your device. - Click the Blank form tab to access Generate Listing Content, and directly enter a few keywords or upload a product image. - The tool will then generate the product title, bullet point, and description attribute content that you can review and edit. - Be sure to thoroughly review everything before you submit! We've seen cases of forbidden keywords, or wrong product information being created by the AI. 🏫 BACK TO SCHOOL DEALS | AMAZON SUGGESTIONS ON SEASONAL CADENCE As we enter the back-half of summer, back-to-school season is right around the corner. This is a massive opportunity to increase sales. If you have a SAS rep, be sure to ask them for specific dates by category but use this as a general time frame: - Back to School: Last weekend of July - Mid September. - Categories Include: Backpacks, electronics, school supplies, apparel, lunch supplies, and late savings. - Off to campus: First week of August - Mid September - Categories Include: Electronics, dorm essentials, apparel, daily routine, and late savings. 📨 SNS | FBM COMPATIBILITY Amazon has officially launched Subscribe and Save (SnS) on FBM orders starting June 27th. To set your default enrollment discount or opt out, follow these steps: 1) Go to Growth, and select Explore Programs. 2) Click Increase conversion. 3) Under Subscribe & Save, click Learn more to see your Performance Dashboard which you can see in this link: https://lnkd.in/ec2G6Ktv #digitalmarketing #advertisingandmarketing #amazonmarketing

Cartograph's Weekly Tips and Tricks for Selling on #Amazon ⏲ PRIME DAY | LEAD OUT TIME PERIOD INVENTORY Prime Day is going to be here and gone in the blink of an eye- what happens next? Thinking about life after Prime Day is often overlooked with all the excitement around the event. We recommend thinking about the future now! Consider doing the following: 1) Send your inventory in ASAP especially if you’re estimating a LARGE prime day 2) Expect to see 3–5-week transit times for LTL shipments now through post Prime Day 🌟 PRIME DAY | PED REQUIREMENTS 4+ star ratings are required for Prime Day PEDs. Rating is on a parent ASIN level, so all child ASINs in that twist are impacted. If your product(s) is missing this requirement you can also leverage the event using: 1) Brand tailored promotions 2) Creator connections 3) Drive traffic from off-Amazon advertising; such as social media & e-mail during the event 🎃 OCTOBER PRIME DAY AKA PRIME BIG DEAL DAY | LIGHTNING DEAL AND PRIME EXCLUSIVE BIG DEALS OFFICIALLY OPEN Start looking at what's happening in a few months. Start getting prepared now for the upcoming holiday season! For Prime Big Deals Day, sourcing runs until August 9. For Black Friday/Cyber Monday, sourcing is open until September 6. 1) Visit Deals in SC. 2) Select “Create a new deal”. 3)Review ASINs that are eligible for a deal. Look for “Prime Big Deal Day” and “Black Friday & Cyber Monday” in the Eligible Events column. These PEDs refresh weekly, so if you don't see one you want now then keep looking as we continue to approach the event. #digitalmarketing #advertisingandmarketing #amazonmarketing

Cartograph's Weekly Tips and Tricks for Selling on #Amazon ⏳ PRIME DAY | AD STRATEGIES Prime day is so close now, and everything you've done through the year is leading up. If this is your first prime day what is your starting point in building your strategy? After discussing with an AE, here are some ideas to stay grounded throughout the prime day event: Depending on where we are in the event [before/during/after] this will shift how you should target the different ad types. - Lead Up- Target broad category & brand targets to drive relevancy and own top of search placements. - During- Maximizing sales, reaching brand aware or adjacent audiences and leveraging deals/deal messaging. - Lead Out- Drive cross-sell/up-sell and loyalty re-engaging audiences. Having a game plan to strive for content that will hit these perspectives will allow you to be the most successful this prime day! After you've developed your thought process around each, you should definitely start thinking about contingencies such as inventory issues, sales being slower or faster than normal, back up content...etc. 💸 RETURN FEES | CHECK YOUR CATEGORIES Have you been getting penalty fees on return rates above category average? What if I'm getting overcharged? - Some brands have been getting return fees in categories where they have no product. - Return fees are based on a categorical average which will effect whether or not you are even charged to begin with. - Check this link to confirm you are not getting over charged: https://lnkd.in/gaD-t5Qe What if you ARE being overcharged? Open a support case with Amazon and include the following verbiage: "The Fee Category on ASIN ##### is incorrect. Currently, the Fee Category for ASIN ##### is _______. The correct Fee Category is ________. Please update the Fee Category on ASIN #### to ________. Please also reimburse this account for any fees that may have been applied while this ASIN was in the incorrect Fee Category." 🎫 COUPONS | NOW REQUIRES A REFERENCE PRICE Coupons will now require a reference price (aka 30 day sales history) to run. - This has always been the case for PEDs/deals, but previously, coupons did not require it. - This is noteworthy for folks planning to include new(er) launches in promo planning for big events>> such as Prime Day. - You could still drop price/sale price but it will likely NOT include a strike thru or other badging. #digitalmarketing #advertisingandmarketing #amazonmarketing

Cartograph's Weekly Tips and Tricks for Selling on #Amazon 📈 PRIME DAY | AD BUDGET INCREASE RECOMMENDATIONS Cartograph's recommendation for Prime Day ad budget increases from past Prime Days around lead-up, week of event, and lead-out time frame. How much should your ad budget increase during this time that will put your brand in a position to succeed? -Lead-up [2-4 weeks out] - +20% -Prime Day week - +35% -Lead-out [2+ weeks following Prime Day week] - +15% 📰 NEW POSTS FEATURE | TURN YOUR POSTS INTO ADS Amazon has launched a new feature that allows advertisers to easily boost their top-performing Amazon Posts directly into Sponsored Brands ad campaigns: - The new "Boost" button in the Post Manager takes advertisers to the Sponsored Brands campaign builder, with the creative elements automatically populated. - This integration allows advertisers to leverage successful organic Amazon Posts as Sponsored Ads, helping raise brand awareness and gain insights on effective creatives. - The feature also includes the ability to use generative AI to upscale Post images that don't meet the Sponsored Brands ad resolution requirements, increasing the eligibility of boosted content. 🍵 SIPP | AUTO ENROLL Amazon is auto enrolling some product to ship without a box or additional packaging. -Amazon has been auto enrolling ASINs into SIPP. -Many products do not have packaging sturdy enough to survive SIPP. -Request to remove any products you would like shipped in an additional box or mailer. -Review this link to check your brands: https://lnkd.in/gaD-t5Qe #digitalmarketing #advertisingandmarketing #amazonmarketing

Cartograph's Weekly Tips and Tricks for Selling on #Amazon 📸 A+ CONTENT | COMPLIMENTARY PRODUCT SET -Amazon now gives sellers more options to merchandise their product detail pages, allowing for additional upsell opportunities and more control over products advertised on PDPs. -This new A+ content module in beta to feature complimentary products. -See this post from Liran Hirschkorn for more information: https://lnkd.in/eYnVwy97 ⚗ A/B TESTING | SIMULTANEOUS EXPERIMENTS Manage Your Experiments allows you to test multiple experiment types for a single ASIN under one experiment. Why use Simultaneous Experiments? -This experimentation option can save you a whole lot of time by letting you A/B test various experiment types (title, images, bullet points, A+ Content) under one experiment! -Test multiple attributes without running separate tests, for example, test the effect of adding your brand name through a Title experiment, while also adding your brand logo in an image, and making changes to your A+ Content. 🏬 AMAZON STOREFRONT | NEW FEATURES Amazon Storefront is adding a few Analytics features that can be leveraged for page optimization. New Metrics: -Avg. Dwell Time: A visitor's average time engaged with the store or page. -Average Bounce Rate: The percentage of visitors who came to your store but left without interacting with it. -New-To-Store Visitors: First-time visitors, within the last 12 months. Quality Rating & Recommendations: -Amazon will provide you with a quality rating & a list of recommendations for your storefront. -The recommendations list is available for export via the ‘insights’ tab. [screenshots] #digitalmarketing #advertisingandmarketing #amazonmarketing