RYB 839: Using Facebook Ads To Grow Your Amazon Sales Without Losing Your Shirt with Chris Shaffer

Today my good friend Chris Shaffer and I are talking about how to drive traffic to your Amazon products using Facebook Ads, and we’ll give our honest opinion about when it can be valuable and when it might not be beneficial. Let’s dive right in.

 

Are Facebook Ads Worth It?

This conversation will be focused on talking about making Facebook ads to sell products within the Amazon eco-system.

 

Note: Don’t utilize Facebook ads until you’ve made sure to maximize the resources that Amazon has already provided to you. You’ll end up getting more bang for your buck by taking advantage of using Amazon advertising.

 

When people are on Amazon, they’re on the search to buy something. So when you spend your advertising dollars there, you have more of a chance to make a sale. Whereas people on Facebook aren’t necessarily looking to buy something and it might be difficult to convince them to buy your product from an ad if they’re not actively looking to buy a similar product.

 

There may be times that you can’t make the pay per click platform on Amazon work for you or if you’re at the “point of no return” and have spent all you can advertising on Amazon and it’s no longer leading to sales it might be a good time to look at how you can get external traffic.

 

Keep in mind that Amazon doesn’t necessarily prefer external traffic. It actually converts at a much lower rate if you’re not already optimized within Amazon, and it will negatively affect how you rank organically if you’re conversion is really low from external traffic.

 

Use Facebook Ads As a Secondary Marketing Tool

However, there is something to be said about being on the same playing field as your competition. If everyone is selling on Amazon and using the same strategy and set of resources and tools, it might be hard to stand out. When you add the external side and learn how to incorporate it and make it work, you might just be able to get a leg up from your competition and leverage your rankings.

 

The key is that it’s an addictive piece of marketing. You need to make sure that you have a solid foundation first. The most qualified traffic does exist on Amazon, so exhaust all your efforts there first before paying for additional traffic. You can also use your email list or other free sources, but just don’t pay for any more traffic until you’ve all you can internally first.

 

 

 

Two Ways to Drive Traffic From Facebook to Amazon

There are two main ways that you can bring people to your Amazon product by using Facebook Ads. Although we strongly recommend the second option we’ll cover both.

Sending Ad Traffic Directly to Your Amazon Ad

 

This is usually not a recommended method for three mani reasons.

 

1. Driving people who are looking at say cat videos to go and buy cat liter can be a tough sell since they weren’t planning to make a similar purchase. This creates a low conversation rate.

 

1. You’ll never have a chance to talk to any of the people you advertise to again or if they end up going to Amazon and abandon their carts before they make a purchase you have no way of getting in front of them again unless they happen to see your ad for a second time.

 

1. It’s hard to track what traffic and sales you’re getting from Facebook and where they are coming from. We can look at it from a correlation point of view, but it’ll be hard to see the cost of each sale. If you create a storefront on Amazon, you can create custom URLs and can track how many people purchase your product from the Facebook link. This makes it easier to track conversation rates.

Create Your Own Landing Page

 

ConvertKiit has a great landing page feature, and Giveaway Boost works great too. You can run Facebook Ad for your product and can visitors to a custom landing page. This way, you’ll be able to collect their email address and now have a targetable audience you can reach out to in the future. The goal is to make it as easy as possible for people to do the task that you want them to complete.

 

By creating a landing page, you’re able to take advantage of all the cool features inside Facebook ads like conversion optimization, which is the secret sauce behind the most successful Facebook ad campaigns. You’ll choose the targeted audience that you’re looking for. You can’t do that if you drive traffic directly to Amazon. You can also go back later and see what other types of products people who bought your product be interested in.

Does It Make Sense to Use Facebook Ads For a Single Product

 

If you only have one product to sell it might not be worth doing Facebook ads. You’ll lose money If you only have one product to sell, it might not be worth doing Facebook ads. You’ll lose money or break even to get data, and it’s a lot of planning to get it to where your product is profitable. Paid traffic makes it hard if you’re just selling one product.

 

If you have a reorder product, it makes more sense to advertise on Facebook or if you have multiple products. You can always send out emails or create ads that feature your additional products for those who have already purchased it with you before. If you lose money on a reorder product during the first sale, chances are you’ll make more when that person purchases again because you’re not paying to get their business the second time around.

 

Note: Always maximize your advertising efforts on Amazon before creating Facebook Ads for your products.

 

You also need to have a good grasp on Amazon pay per click before you move on to Facebook ads. If, for some reason, that isn’t going to work or it’s not doable in your category, then go to Facebook ads. It’s an easier conversion because people are already there looking for things to buy, and there are fewer moving parts you need to worry about.

Learn the Game to Drive More Sales

 

First and foremost, you have to figure out how to market your products on Amazon if you want to make sales. This is the most important part of your business.

 

We always talk about building an email list and creating content because if you can get good at that part of the process, you’ll be in a good position. Your product needs traffic for you to sell. You can drive traffic fast with Facebook ads, but that doesn’t mean that you’ll convert that traffic.

 

You may not make money on your first sale, but if you create content, you’ll be able to make a profit much quicker. Always look at the big picture and analyze what other products or services your customers need and how you can create additional offerings to help them out.

 

The goal is to drive people to a piece of content or product that you can control. Giveaway Boost is a great plugin and gives you the formula to make this successful. You can create a page with an offer that you can control. It’s easy for people to signup and get a coupon code once they have. The best part is you can target those people later and create an email list and communicate.

What to Ask Before Creating Your Facebook Ad

There are a few things you should take into consideration before moving forward with creating your Facebook Ads. Let’s review those now.

How Do You Want to Run the Ads

The most successful approach is to create your own landing page. You’ll also need to establish who your target audience is and decide what offer you’ll give when they come to your landing page. You need to have this all figured out before you can set up your ad and get it ready to go.

 

You could also consider leading the Facebook ad with an informational freebie like a checklist, download, or guide related to your product niche. On your thank you page, you could have a discount for your product. This way, you’re giving something valuable before asking them to buy something. It's an effective marketing tool.

 

Who Do You Want to See Your Ads

If you want to target existing customers, you can download your customer list from Amazon. If you go this route giving a coupon can be effective since they’ve already purchased from you. If you’re not using existing customers and go into broad targeting, it makes more sense to use a giveaway or to provide something an informational freebie and then make the sale on the backend once you’ve cultivated and built the relationship. Always test it to see which works best for your market and brand before making a final decision of what works best in the long run,

 

If you don’t have a business with multiple revenue streams, it’ll be harder to make ads work. You can also offer promotions if they buy more of your product to bring in additional sales. Or start to make content related to your product niche.

 

Amazon Is the Unicorn of Online Sales Platforms

Amazon has made it so easy to put your product on there and start to make money, but it’s not always that easy, especially with Facebook Ads. They do give you lots of features, but it’s not easy to turn it into revenue. Generally, you need to plan for the worst and work towards the best when you’re advertising your new product.

 

You need to work on creating a real business for Facebook Ads to work. You don’t have to create content to create an email list, but we highly recommend it. You need to build your business and not just sell a product to make it a channel that works best for your business. When you have additional people, you can reach out to it’s beneficial and will make it much easier to scale in the long run.

 

 

You can drive as much traffic to amazon as you want, but how do you scale that in a profitable way? Have a bunch of other products or provide visitors wit ha place where they are paying you back with ads or affiliate links that you have on your site.

 

Use the Brand Creators PlayBook to Get Started

If you want to build out a site that has useful content and drives traffic over time, check out our playbook that helps you identify your market on the traffic side and how monetization your business in ways you may not have considered before. To get your copy head over to brandcreatorsbook.com, if you’re just starting this your foundation, it is a great tool to get you started.

 

Be sure to check out the full blog post going over Facebook Ads that Chris has laid out to help you out! Thanks so much for joining us today!

 

As always I am here for you, I believe in you and am rooting for you.

 

Now it’s time for you to take action and go rock your brand!

5 Take-Aways From Today’s Episode

1. Are Facebook Ads Worth It? (3:57)
2. Two Ways to Drive Traffic From Facebook to Amazon (10:35)
3. Does It Make Sense to Use Facebook Ads For a Single Product (17:33)
4. Learn The Game to Get More Sales (22:53)
5. What to Ask Before Creating Your Facebook Ad (30:04)

 

Quote:  Always maximize your advertising efforts on Amazon before creating Facebook Ads for your products.