Copy to Cash: How to Create Great Amazon Listings

Posted on 27 July 2021

Amazon Listing Marketing

Developing the perfect Amazon Business is as much an art as it is a science. It takes both beautiful brush strokes and calculated precision. But ultimately, the true secret to viral sales is in creating magnificent copy. Since writing result-oriented copy is both complex and poetic, a great deal of work should go into crafting the perfect story for your brand, especially in a space as competitive as e-commerce.

Whether you’re selling locally or focusing on international expansion, the exciting thing about a platform like Amazon is its large and captive audience. But, with thousands of options for any one product, how can you set yours apart?  

Let’s consider the fundamental devices you should use to craft the ultimate product listing copy and build a winning brand.

Know your target audience

For starters, knowing your customer is one of the most critical pieces of information you need as it is the building block for everything else in your marketing strategy. Ultimately if you don’t know who you are talking to, you can’t communicate what you need to say effectively. Use resources such as similar product reviews to ascertain your customer’s lifestyles, gender, income, and hobbies. These differ from country to country and culture to culture. Since these are so culture-specific you should do your research if you are considering expanding into new markets.  

Simple details such as visibility, demographics, and even the consumer’s mood can be the difference between a listing that sells and one that sinks. Your final output should also grab your audience and convince them that they must have what you are offering.  

Next, it’s best to position your product to show how it is helpful and how it benefits the customer you have identified. Explore lifestyle situations that can make your customers’ lives better or help your purchaser imagine using your product in their everyday life. In the end, the more you know your customer, the better you can appeal to what they want.  

One of the biggest mistakes you can make when crafting your product listing is to purely address the product functions rather than build a relationship with your shoppers by getting to know precisely what makes them tick.  

Shop on Amazon yourself

Use a computer, app, and smartphone to understand how the platform functions on multiple levels. The better you know the platform’s functionality from a user perspective, the easier it will be for you to tailor content for it. Put yourself in the position of a consumer and view other competitor listings critically. Pick out both positives and negatives in these examples.

Analyzing competitor listings should include scanning through reviews to understand where they are falling short and how you can directly limit those shortfalls. Similarly, with positive reviews, identify a common benefit of your product that customers are talking about and specifically mention this in your listing as a key feature. Amend your listings to avoid bad practices you notice in your personal experiences and utilize details that you believe are particularly effective in winning you over.  

The best part about your Amazon listings is that they are dynamic, so you can and should make constant adjustments to them to keep improving them.  

It’s all in your HEAD-line.

The title is another of the most critical features of an Amazon listing. It tells people what your product is, and a clever headline can make you stand out among the thousands of other similar products.  

The truth is, consumers are constantly bombarded with information, so you have to catch them in a sea of noise. An excellent technique for grabbing attention is a brilliantly crafted headline. Here you have between 150-250 characters to create something meaningful. A title that catches your eye or tickles your brain is an ideal place to start. This is also a place where keywords can and should be included to assist your product with ranking for commonly searched terms.  

Ultimately, layer your creative intention with your core message, and you have the first step towards conversion-intended copy. Specific details to include in your title are:  

Give them FOMO

The Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) is a big deal for consumers, so why not use that to your advantage? Nobody wants to be left behind a trend or miss out on a great deal. Use this to your advantage and create the sense that they will be left behind since the audience doesn’t have what you are offering. In this instance, what would the consumer gain by using your product or service? For example,  limited offers and limited-edition products provide a sense of exclusivity, making consumers feel like they would lose out if they don’t snap up the opportunity. This is an old favorite for advertisers and is rooted in psychology – which is the base of any good advertising strategy. Remember, depending on where in the world you are targeting, your strategy will be different.  

Include emotional triggers

Once again, using emotional triggers is a strategy entrenched in psychology and has a sometimes surprising efficiency level. While visitors may not be looking for your product, you can convince the shopper they shouldn’t leave the listing without your product successfully added to their shopping basket if you craft a listing with enough punch. To prepare emotive copy, you should answer four questions:  

Emotional appeal helps the audience to connect to the content beyond functionality. The more you layer your content with the psychological appeal, the more you set your product apart from your competition.  

It’s all about Image  

Another emotional recognition tool is the use of visual aids such as images and videos. A well-chosen image or video is a powerful instrument because it requires minimal effort to digest on the part of the customer. The use of great visuals can capture the buyer and get them to your product page. It’s essential that you use high-quality images and videos to represent your product.

Using videos in your amazon listings is a great way to increase conversions. When selecting a video for your listing, opt for videos highlighting product features and benefits and showing its uses. Amazon requires that images be a minimum of 1,000 pixels x 1,000 pixels to take advantage of its zoom feature, allowing buyers to scroll over an image to enlarge it.

Amazon also has several main image parameters. They include:  

While your main image must be against a plain, white background, Amazon allows other image types on secondary images. Wherever possible, you should try to include additional images for clarity. Pictures of the product from different angles, product labels, images on your product functioning, informational images, text charts, and size references can all add to the value of your listing.  

Focus on what really matters  

For consumers that are still not sold by your title and images, you have another opportunity to convert them with your bullet point descriptions. These are relatively straightforward, offering five spaces for short bullet points. What you include here is entirely up to you.

Just remember, grabbing the consumer’s attention isn’t enough. You must also keep that attention for at least a few seconds. This is where your benefits come into play, limited-time offers or a product description can set your offer apart from the others.

Next, get into why your product can change the experience of your consumer. For example, with a can opener, you are selling safe and easy access to the contents of a can, while with a warranty, you are selling peace of mind. Ultimately it equates to the same thing – your buyer always has to have something to gain!

In the end, all good advertising copy is comprised of the same essential elements; a catchy headline, a compelling image, detailed description, and benefit-driven advertising. Master the ability to build excellent copy by balancing these elements, and you will have a winning product, no matter what you sell.

There are plenty of mechanisms that will help grow your business successfully. Writing excellent copy gives you a chance for conversion rate wins. What about selling into international markets? If you are looking for a way to expand your e-commerce business into new foreign regions, Zee offers complete IOR, import and logistics solutions.

Contact the zee Team!