Creating an Amazon Bestseller in less than 6 months
The Zeepy Sleep Training Clock was designed to be an Amazon Best Seller. Taking what we had learned from helping baby brands reach their potential on Amazon we saw an opportunity in the sleep training clock category and set about on a mission to launch and become the best selling clock in 6 months.
There were four key pillars we needed to optimise and dominate:
Price - Amazon is relentlessly price conscious. We needed to design a product to hit the right price, and we needed a promotional strategy to ride the wave to no.1.
Product - The product had to be outstanding and to improve on what came before it. Poor reviews kill a product.
Positioning - We needed a high converting listing content, a keyword & product targeting strategy to get the product in front of high intent consumers, and an off-Amazon strategy to back up the product’s credentials.
Profit - Knowing what profit you’re taking out of Amazon is vital. Amazon doesn’t make this easy so we use third party tools to give us a clear picture.
This is our 10 step playbook to No.1 :
1. Category Research
We started as we start with any client on Amazon - with in-depth category research to answer 5 key questions:
What product is currently dominating?
What are they doing right?
What are they sleeping on?
What are competitor reviews saying?
What price points are working?
This exercise also helped us understand the price point we needed to target to succeed. Closest competitors were priced at £29.99, with the bestseller at £39.99 - we needed to be £29.99.
2. Product Selection
We found a manufacturer and designed a product to improve on the functionality of the competitors in the market based on what we learnt from the research phase.
Usually a client will come to us with an existing catalogue of products and we’re not designing a product from scratch but more often than not the research will uncover an opportunity for a product in their catalogue that might not be their main focus.
3. Keyword Research
Understanding what people are searching for on Amazon is key, and it's not always about targeting the obvious high volume search phrases as these can often be the highest cost.
There are hundreds of different phrases consumers use when searching for a sleep trainer clock and it’s easier and cheaper to target, and rank organically for multiple low search volume key phrases than one high volume search keyword phrase.
We built a keyword strategy that focused on our key competitor, and lower search ‘long tail’ keywords related to kids sleep training clocks.
4. Listing Design
We split listing design into two aspects:
SEO Copy
We took a strategic approach to what keywords we put in our title, and listing copy. Lower competition keywords will be easier to rank highly when you’re starting from scratch, so we put a focus on targeting long-tail keywords in our title, but still ensuring we had our core high volume keywords covered in the listing.
Visual Content
The listing content was designed for the customer journey.
The main image is vital to drive traffic to your listing and we knew we needed outstanding hero product photography, as well as a way to showcase the key feature of our clock.
Supplemental listing images then needed to tell a story about our product. First and foremost you need to communicate your key point of difference:
Then we sell the benefits your product will bring, before you sell the features.
And finally, an us vs them image helps to communicate how Zeepy stands above our key competitor
Beyond that, we created a video that communicates all the above succinctly, and A+ content that dives deeper into the benefits the product brings, and the brand story.
5. Launch
We employed a tried and tested strategy to launch Zeepy into Amazon. Launching a product needs a detailed plan to capitalise on the increased visibility and benefits Amazon gives new FBA products.
Stock Quantity - Strong stock availability, and inventory volume helps to ensure your product is distributed widely across Amazon Fulfilment Centre network. And that means faster delivery times for customers, which means higher conversion rates, and higher profit.
Reviews - Amazon provides a service called Amazon Vine to obtain initial reviews and it’s generally very difficult to launch a product on Amazon without it as reviews are so important.
Promotion - You need to maximise the chance for conversions on a new product. Low reviews are going to make a potential customer reluctant to purchase, so promoting on price helped make choosing Zeepy over a competitor an easier choice.
Off-Amazon Activity - Driving traffic to Amazon straight from the start was the best way to help us hit the ground running. So we started our influencer marketing activity before we launched to ensure there were people talking about Zeepy from the get-go.
6. Dealing with Curve Balls
The path to an Amazon bestseller is never smooth and Amazon will always throw curveballs at you.
For Zeepy, we pushed the limits on our product inserts and Amazon decided we had pushed too far.
The result: we had to remove stock from FBA, remove the inserts and re-send the stock in in.
It was a costly and time-consuming challenge but being familiar with Amazon’s curveballs meant we knew how to remain cool-headed and work through the problem to a resolution.
A week later, stock was back in FBA and we were selling again.
7. Promotional Strategy
The single most effective strategy to get Zeepy to No.1 was price promotions. We knew that we needed to create a ‘wave’ to push Zeepy’s exposure higher on Amazon, that we could then ride to higher sales, higher visibility and ultimately no.1 in the category.
The below graph illustrates how your promotional strategy creates a wave of sales that you can ride to an increase in overall sales.
Not every drop in price led to an increase in sales. Amazon gives you multiple ways to discount - Best Deals, Prime Discounts, Lightning Deals, Sales, Vouchers - and it’s important to test them and varying levels of discount.
What was clear to us was that there was a specific discount % and type that boosted our conversion rate, so our advertising cost dropped, and our net profit increased to a higher level than when selling at full price.
8. Traffic Strategy
Without driving traffic to your listings, there are no sales. So there were multiple strategies we employed to get potential customers shopping for Zeepy.
Amazon Advertising
Amazon Ads are the backbone of your traffic strategy - and at a basic level a strong sponsored product keyword and product targeting presence is important for any Amazon Seller.
On top of basic sponsored product campaigns, we used Sponsored Brand and Display campaigns to deliver more dynamic creative to our targets.
Influencer Marketing
Influencer Marketing is becoming increasingly important for Amazon Sellers and it has been an effective way for us to increase branded search for Zeepy. We have been seeding products to our target influencer base and have seen our brand search steadily increased over the course of the last six months resulting in cheaper conversions.
Off-Amazon Ads
Meta, Tiktok & Google Ads have been an important part of our brand building strategy and we have been testing multiple strategies to drive traffic directly to Amazon, and indirectly by driving traffic to our DTC store.
9. Customer Service
Inevitably product problems come up that can affect review score and it’s vital the reviews are managed. Amazon provides you with tools to reach out to customers that have had a negative experience and leave a poor review and this strategy has repeatedly helped us turn a negative review into a positive.
10. Track, Test, Optimise
Continuous monitoring and optimisation are key to maintaining performance and profitability on Amazon. We used Sellerboard to track profitability and conducted continuous A/B testing on titles, bullets, and images to refine our listing content. These efforts ensured we were always optimizing for better results. Regularly reviewing and adjusting our strategies based on performance metrics helped us stay ahead of the competition and maintain our top position.
Conclusion
By following this 10-step playbook, we successfully navigated the challenges of launching on Amazon and achieved the No.1 spot in the sleep training clock category within six months. Zeepy’s success story highlights the importance of meticulous planning, constant optimization, and the ability to adapt to unexpected challenges in the fast-paced world of e-commerce.
Get in touch to learn how we can help you grow your brand on Amazon.
