1.What is Off-site promotion?

When many sellers hear about off-site promotion for the first time, they may think of off-site inventory clearance or Facebook groups. Most of their understanding of off-site promotion is still at the stage of group big discount drainage.

So what exactly is off-site promotion? In fact, the concept of off-site promotion is for third-party platform sellers, like the Amazon sellers we are most familiar with, through off-site to on-site ordering, so we can understand him as a promotion method for third-party platform.

First of all, to understand off-site promotion, we must first familiarize ourselves with Amazon affiliates, which is one of the larger affiliate marketing programs. The Amazon Affiliate Program helps content creators, publishers, and bloggers monetize their traffic. With millions of products on Amazon, affiliates can use simple link building tools to direct their audience to the products they recommend and earn money from qualifying purchases — this is Amazon Associates

In the associates, sellers provide products, Amazon provides a platform, and alliance influencers provide traffic. These three were purchased into the Amazon Alliance.

So off-site promotion is: the seller directly goes to the affiliate celebrity to buy traffic through the Amazon affiliate. In the early days, the main source of profit for alliance influencers was platform rebates. Sellers paid commissions to the platform, and the platform paid part of the commission to alliance influencers. However, with the concept of off-site promotion or the maturity of this industry, sellers directly found alliance influencers. Afterwards, affiliate influencers received double commissions. For example, the seller paid $10 for affiliate customers to help post a post. After the product was placed, the affiliate customers then went to Amazon to ask for a commission, usually 2%-10% of the sales. %. So in the final analysis, the two commissions are paid by the seller.

2. What are the channels for off-site promotion?

You may be familiar with Facebook groups and Deal sites, such as Slickdeals and Dealnews, which are also affiliate channels.

We can divide off-site promotion into two parts,

Traffic promotion:

1) Facebook group

Facebook group is a kind of group that can post discount information established by the initial alliance celebrities. The development of the group needs a certain period of cultivation. Normally, a 10W group will take at least 1-2 years to develop. As alliance celebrities invite more and more buyers to join, they also need to meet more and more product needs, so more and more posts are posted. When the number of posts reaches a certain number, the previous posts will be heavy. Therefore, only a part of the posts can be seen by most sellers, which is why some posts are good and some are not.

Group is the most mature and earliest form of alliance. The group is characterized by quick results and short time. Generally, Beijing time is set during the day, and it is given to the group administrator at night, and the order may be blown up the next morning. However, as more and more sellers began to do off-site in 21 and 22, the development speed of the group could not keep up with the speed of the growth of sellers, and the overall effect of the group was not as good as before, so now it is mainly attracted by big discounts, 50% Even more, coupled with the browsing mechanism of group posts, usually the posts will not be seen for 1-2 days, resulting in a short duration of effect.

If the main demand of the seller is the order quantity, the group is still the best way. The premise is that the discount is large enough and the product is enough to attract fans to stay and pay attention.

2) Facebook Page

Some Facebook homepages are dedicated to serving groups, but there are also some bloggers who only attract fans through their homepages. We call them FB bloggers. These FB bloggers basically only do deals. The product is to attract fans’ attention by selecting and sharing products with different discounts for fans. This type of blogger has a limited number of posts per day, and often interacts with fans to collect fans’ needs, so fans are very sticky and active. The popularity is very good, so the quality of tas is generally much better than that of the same fan group.

If there is a long-term demand for product promotion, you can try more FB promotion.

3) Deal station

We are more familiar, such as Slickdeals and Dealnews

Deal is a website specially built by early affiliate celebrities, in order to attract traffic to the website, and then share Amazon affiliate discount information on the website. With slow development, there are relatively successful Deal stations such as SD and DN. Because the website has a relatively large number of visits, generally the website with the same fans has better effect than FB, but the price is also more expensive.

If you want to clear the inventory, you can try the Deal website, but the price is expensive and you may not place many orders

Brand Promotion:

For traffic promotion, on channels like Facebook and Deal, most sellers pay more attention to the immediate effect, the order volume that can be seen in the short term.

In fact, especially in the past two years, for Amazon, it has been a highly competitive platform, and the era of platform traffic dividends has passed: first, the growth rate of platform traffic cannot keep up with the growth rate of sellers, and second, the platform has begun to harvest traffic, which means It means that sellers need to spend more money on in-site advertisements to buy traffic from the platform.

With the end of the traffic bonus era, where is the way out for Amazon sellers?

The answer is the brand bonus

Going forward, the traffic will only become more and more expensive. If you only rely on the model of buying traffic, there is no way to cover your own profits. Only brands are the source of free traffic. In the past few years, due to the epidemic situation, the competition has been accelerated, and all walks of life are very difficult, but some brands in each industry are still living very well. When the general environment deteriorates, the first to be affected are those with serious homogeneity. For products, everyone started to roll wildly, then most people left the market, and finally reached a new equilibrium point, and so on. But the brand has indeed remained in this industry.

First of all, the brand has a high proportion of its own traffic, and the brand is continuous free traffic; second, the conversion rate, popularity and awareness of the brand are high, that is, if you advertise on the site, the conversion rate of the brand may be three times that of others. times, five times…; third, its high premium ability, on any platform, the brand must make money.

Return on Marketing Investment

Kantar, the world’s largest research institution, has conducted research on return on marketing investment (ROMI) that shows that for a healthy brand, 70% of sales come from brand equity, and 30% of sales come from short-term promotions and traffic conversion. However, most people put 90% of their energy into promotion and traffic with visible results. Traffic advertising may allow us to achieve short-term sales goals, but going forward, especially in the past two years, Amazon’s advertising fees have increased significantly, so everyone is focusing on researching Amazon advertising, whether it can really be achieved What about your sales target?

Everyone knows that as a platform, on a platform like Amazon, 30% of the seller’s traffic comes from Amazon’s advertising traffic, and 70% of the traffic comes from Amazon’s natural ranking traffic. But now this trend is slowly changing. Maybe within 3-5 years, Amazon will become 70% of advertising traffic and 30% of organic traffic. This is also a normal development trend of a platform.

So instead of spending so much time and money on Amazon’s traffic advertising, it’s better to promote your own brand from outside the site, build up the brand awareness of this category, and occupy the minds of users in this category.

So I think the more important long-term off-site promotion method should be brand promotion.

1). KOL (social media celebrity opinion leader)

YouTube

Youtube is an old-fashioned social media. From its early establishment to the present, its users cover different age groups. In addition, Youtube is the largest video platform in the world. Users can better understand their favorite celebrities and products through videos. Youtube features are:

• The video retention rate is high, and you can easily find videos from a few years ago.
• Video exposure is cumulative, and video exposure is growing all the time.
• Many users will go to Youtube to search before placing an order on Amazon, especially some complicated ones.
• Users have strong purchasing power.
• Platform users are sticky.

Youtube is a more suitable platform for combining brand promotion and product effects . Due to these characteristics, influencers charge more expensive than other platforms.

Celebrity Reference Price (USD):

• 1K-10K Proprietary Video 0-$500
• 10K-100K Proprietary video $100-$2000
• 100K-1000K Proprietary video $1000-$20000

Instagram

Instagram is mainly partial to pictures. Although Ins launched Stories, users are still accustomed to its picture function. Instagram is owned by Facebook, and the overlap between users and Facebook will be more serious. Ins was founded earlier than Youtube, so Ins is popular People’s growth rate is faster than Youtube. Due to the image style of Ins, people’s exposure and perception of the brand/product promoted above is not as strong as that of Youtube. Ins is more suitable for well-known brands, so it is recommended for new brands to invest less in Ins than Youtube.

Reference price of Ins celebrities (US dollars):

• 1K-10K Post 0-$200
• 10K-100K Post $100-$500
• 100K-1000K Post $200-$10000

Tiktok

Tiktok is the platform that everyone listens to the most. Because Tiktok users are younger, their purchasing power is not strong, and their fans are more sticky and traffic is relatively general. At present, branding or product promotion on TK is more of an attempt. However, TK is recognized by most as a platform with the most potential and the cheapest traffic. Now is the opportunity to enter. First cut in, you can slowly screen and cultivate users.

Basically, 99% of people follow these social media platforms, and KOLs of different categories are often well-known, also known as opinion leaders. Users mainly read content on these platforms, and no one will read advertisements, so how to make content well through these opinion leaders is the way for our brand to stand out.

2). PR

Including broad media public relations, soft articles, product reviews, etc., so as to achieve the effect of product publicity.

At present, the commonly used PR promotion in the industry is to publish press releases in professional and authoritative organizations or magazines in the industry, and endorse the brand to increase brand awareness and influence.

Do a good job in media public relations, make a good topic, and after the content is done, we also need hot things to spread the content better.

3). Brand advertising

Brand advertising and online conversion are mainly concentrated in some industry magazines, professional organization websites, etc. For now, because the entire promotion cost is relatively high, it is still only suitable for some big sellers.

Are Amazon sellers suitable for brands?

When most Amazon sellers mention brands, they may say: Do you think I don’t know how to be a brand? Do you know how much it costs to promote a brand? Do you know how many died on the way of the brand?

Just like Professor Daniel Kahneman’s “Thinking Fast and Slow”, the human brain is divided into two systems: one is called the fast system, which is the intuitive response system, and the other is called the slow system, which is the rational thinking system. 95% of our life and work use the fast system, and 5% are the slow system. So when most people hear the word brand promotion, the first thing they think of is high cost and high failure rate.

So can we do it at low cost? In fact, many influencers can replace products for free. The current premise is that your product is good. Many influencers and even some PR editors will help you promote it for free with the purpose of acquiring your products or increasing fans.

Don’t do brand advertising first, do KOL first social mediaTo grow grass, if you have less funds, you should focus on breaking things first, such as focusing on Youtube first, or first gaining popularity in your own segmented fields.

So can we have brand thinking? When developing products, can you do some low-cost differentiation? Can you make a main image to embed brand awareness? ….

What’s more, now that the Amazon platform has entered a fierce competition, is there any other way out besides the brand?

How does off-site promotion help Amazon?

1) Link unit weight

Order volume is a very important algorithm weight. Amazon’s brand rebates can reach up to 10%, which shows that Amazon attaches great importance to off-site traffic. As long as you attract an order from outside the site, Amazon will not only acquire a user, but also earn commissions for this order. . It is a win-win for both the platform and the seller.

2) Activation link

When our new products are first launched, we don’t place many orders. At this time, we can activate the link by placing an order outside the website.

3) Cooperate with flash sales and other activities

Amazon’s algorithmic logic supports whoever can make money for him. Of course, it refers to making money for a long time, not a short-lived link, so try to keep the order quantity stable, so that it is easier to push the product and make it easier. Do off-site before the seckill, first pull up the ranking, the effect of the seckill will be better, and then do the off-site to extend the high order volume after the seckill.

4) FBT: Frequently Bought Together

FBT is also called buying together, that is, two products are often purchased by the same buyers together. This is a very good traffic portal. When your product can be bound with a complementary Best Seller, then your traffic will be very large. of. So how can it be bound together? Advertising ASINs? Of course not, this is a complementary product, and using ASIN will make your traffic miss. So the best way is to promote outside the site. Research which channels complementary products are often put on. You also invest in these channels. There is a high probability that these audiences are the same. Buying complementary products will basically have demand for your products. In this way, together Buying is easy to do FBT.

5) Request a review

The price outside the website is generally much cheaper than the natural price on the website. Many buyers feel that they have found a bargain when they buy the product. At this time, we go to ask for reviews, and the probability of getting a good review is higher, and the feedback rate is much higher than that on the website.

6) Clear inventory

For Amazon sellers, the inventory determines the profit. Many sellers often complain that they have earned an inventory all year round, so if we can clear out these unsalable inventory outside the site and reserve the inventory for products with better sales, will there be profits? up?

7) Ton storage capacity

Amazon is limiting inventory again.peak seasonThe storage fee has started to increase again.

8) Build your brand

Current status and future direction of off-site promotion:

1) Only focus on short-term transformation or effect

At present, no matter whether it is an Amazon seller or a service provider, everyone puts most of their resources, time and energy into the group. It often takes several years to establish a group. However, as more and more sellers do off-site promotion, the group The group effect is also slowly getting worse.

2) Few Amazon sellers pay attention to brand promotion.

What everyone cares about is the short-term visible effect, and few Amazon sellers pay attention to brand promotion. We can find celebrities with vertical fans to promote our brand and products. Influencer fans are very accurate, Amazon needs high-quality buyers, and these accurate buyers can be converted into fans of our brand.

Assuming that we are engaged in maternal and infant products, the brand’s maternal and infant audience may be around 10 million. If we can find 10 maternal and infant bloggers with 10W followers to cooperate, it means that 10% of the people in the entire market have seen my brand or A small part of my products can be converted in a short period of time, but most of them will search our brand and find our products when there is demand, or when we advertise on Amazon, you have already used influencers to advertise Exposure, at this time your on-site advertising conversion rate can be greatly improved.

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