Amazon Seller Central Coupons are a great way to stand out from the competition and grab a customer’s attention on Amazon. Adding a coupon to your Amazon listing can engage and incentivize new customers, reward existing customers, and so much more. However, without an effective strategy in place, your coupons may go unnoticed. In this blog, we will discuss:
- Establishing Clear Goals for Amazon Coupons
- Effective Strategies for Using Amazon Coupons
- Benefits of Running a Sponsored Product Campaign with Amazon Coupons
- A Short List of Disadvantages to Using Coupons
Need help with the basics? Learn more about coupons on our blog, How to Create Amazon Coupons on Seller Central.
Establishing Clear Goals for Amazon Coupons
Coupons can be used for a variety of reasons on the Amazon platform. Before you start discounting your products haphazardly, we recommend clearly defining your goals. Here are a few goals to consider:
- Increasing Sales: Coupons create a halo effect when it comes to increasing sales—they indirectly increase sales by improving other metrics. They help boost click-thru rates, conversion rates, and eventually improve product ranking over time.
- Improving Brand Awareness: Coupons draw attention to your product detail pages, which ultimately drives more traffic to them and increases your brand awareness. Not to mention, products with the best discounts also appear on Amazon’s coupon page—a highly trafficked page.
- Differentiating Your Listings From Others: While scrolling through many search result pages, your products need to stand out from competitors. By displaying the green coupon badge and pricing lower than the competition, your products and brand will stand out.
- Selling Through Excess Inventory or Nearly Expired Inventory: Consider coupons a form of paid advertising for your excess inventory and nearly expired goods. PPC advertising can be expensive if you don’t have experience with it or haven’t optimized your campaigns—coupons are a simple alternative.
Effective Strategies for Using Amazon Coupons
If you establish clear goals for your coupons, stick to your budget, and use an effective strategy, you will maximize all the benefits coupons have to offer while avoiding any pitfalls. Check out our simple strategies for success:
LISTING OPTIMIZATION
If you are going to draw additional attention to your product listings with coupons, you’re going to want to ensure they are fully optimized. This means showcasing the best features of your products. Use high-resolution images, informative and compelling graphics, A+ content as well as keyword-rich titles, bullet points, and product descriptions to increase conversion rates. Bring your products and brand to life online like you would in any Brick ‘n’ Mortar store.
INVENTORY LEVELS
Running out of inventory is the worst thing an Amazon seller can do. It’s especially important when you are running a promotion or discount—unless the goal is to get rid of excess inventory. Always check your inventory levels to ensure you have enough to account for the increase in sales. Look at your historical data and see how your products have performed in the past. If you forecast correctly, you’ll have enough inventory for your discount duration and the rest of the month.
DISCOUNT AMOUNT
This strategy will offer multiple tips in one section! First, we recommend selecting “Money Off” as your preferred discount type. It’s the easiest way to calculate the discount amount for Amazon customers—no calculator required. Percentages only confuse your customers and may turn them off to your deal. Second, create a bigger coupon than your competitors as a way to stand out since Amazon wants to give its customers the best deals possible. If you offer a bigger discount, you have a pretty good chance of your listing getting displayed on the designated coupon page. More exposure means more sales! Finally, make sure you have wide margins before you discount. Sellers with the highest margins on their discounted products reap the most benefits. Do the math so that you don’t loose out.
PROMOTE ON SOCIAL MEDIA OR OTHER SITES
This one is simple—cast a wider net! The more you promote your discount, the more exposure for your products and brand, which ultimately leads to more sales. Social media is especially important because it’s an excellent way to utilitize your coupons and get the most out of them. By promoting them on social media, or other sites, you will drive more traffic to your listings from a bigger audience to increase discoverability. Cast a wider net to catch more fish.
AMAZON ADVERTISING
Most importantly, coupling your coupons with an advertising campaign can greatly improve your ASINs performance. Using pay-per-click (PPC) advertisements that promote individual product listings, like a Sponsored Product Campaign, can make the advertisements more attractive when customers see a coupon attached—and, vice versa.
- Increase Brand Awareness & Discoverability: With PPC advertisements, you can boost your brand and product visibility immediately. Advertising will place your discounted products directly in front of customers on the search results pages. Thus, making conversion easier.
- Increase Sales: Amazon advertising can help reach and target customers who are searching for products like yours or using search terms relevant to yours—helping increase sales.
- Control Costs: Control your costs by setting a budget for your coupons and your advertising campaign that is right for you—and stick to it!
PRO TIP: Coupons and Amazon advertising campaigns run completely independent of each other. If you have no intention of keeping your ad campaigns running after your coupons have expired or run out of budget, don’t forget to turn them off as Amazon will not do this for you.
- Amazon charges a $0.60 redemption fee per redeemed coupon, this can be a turn off as you are responsible for the fee and the discount amount.
- If your margins for selling a couponed product are too small, it’s possible you may lose money.
- By investing in coupons and a Sponsored Ad Campaign, you may spend more than you originally intended—plan accordingly.
The good news: coupons are easy to set up and easy use. Using Amazon Coupons can potentially boost your sales and cost very little. With clearly defined goals and an effective strategy in place, they’re easy to implement and can be incredibly effective. Consider coupons a paid form of advertising and you’ll quickly realize how cost-effective they are for increasing your products and brands exposure on the Amazon platform.
Need help with your Amazon Coupon strategy?
Contact WishingUWell today—our experts are here to help you with all-things Amazon!
