How to Launch Products and Maximize Your Listing on Amazon Europe

The Importance Of The Launch Period

While you won’t find it written anywhere by Amazon, it’s generally accepted by the Amazon FBA seller community that new products are given a ranking boost when they first launch.

This lasts about 2 weeks and offers sellers an opportunity to gain initial sales and reviews for their new products. It also benefits Amazon, as they gain valuable information and data on the popularity of your product:

Do customers like this new product?
Are customers more likely to click on and buy this product or a competitor product?

Performance in this period can have a big impact on your ranking going forward, and thus the success or failure of your product.

In this article, I’ll outline:

Essential launch tactics - the most important things to do when launching a product on Amazon Europe
Recommended launch tactics - less important than the essentials, but doing these things will improve your performance

Essential Launch Tactics

Before I launch into the most important things to do when launching a product on Amazon Europe, it’s important to emphasize one thing.

Optimize Your Product Listings

Most US sellers spend a long time researching keywords and fine-tuning sales copy for their products on Amazon.com – all to maximize traffic, conversion and sales.

But, for non-English listings (Amazon Germany, France, Italy and Spain), many sellers opt to hire a freelancer online to translate their listings.

No keyword research, no copywriting. Two big mistakes.

The goal is not just to get a listing that is translated accurately. You need a sales asset that will entice customers in that market to buy your products.

Localization

Localization is the key to this! It’s a combination of translation and copywriting, which produces sales copy that’s tailored to the local culture and encourages buying behaviour. The focus is on conversion, not just translation.

Keyword Research

It’s also essential that keyword research is performed in each language before launching a new product on Amazon Europe. This will ensure you identify and target the best keywords for your products in each language.

Failing to do keyword research and identifying the top keywords is one of the biggest reasons why sellers struggle when moving to Amazon’s non-English speaking marketplaces.

Keyword research should be done prior to localization, as the top keywords identified should be prioritized when localizing your sales copy.

Need help with this?

Our team has optimized hundreds of EU listings to date and you can learn more about our service at this link.

It’s best practice to localize the other parts of your product offering too. By translating ebooks, instruction manuals and product packaging, it offers more value to your customers and improves your chances of getting a positive review.

It can also reduce frustration and questions from customers post sale, who can’t read materials provided with your product.

Run Amazon PPC From Day 1

Manual Campaigns

I recommend beginning PPC immediately when launching a new product - perform keyword research to identify your top potential keywords and include these in a manual campaign.

If you work with us to optimize your listings, you can use the suggested PPC terms we provide with each listing.

As always, monitor performance over time and focus your PPC spend on strong performing keywords to make your campaigns more profitable. Remove or reduce your bid on loss-making keywords.

Auto Campaign

It’s also advisable to run an automatic PPC campaign too when launching a new product, at least for a while. It’s a great way to find new keywords.

You can download the search terms report from Seller Central and identify the keywords that are converting well for you. These can be added to your manual campaign(s) and listing to drive further sales.

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Top Quality Product Photos

First Impressions Count

When your listing is presented in search amongst several other similar products, having a top-quality main image is key.

This will be the biggest factor in whether a potential customer clicks on your listing or a competitor.

It’s a simple formula.

Better main image than the competition => more visitors => more sales!!

How To Create An Alluring Main Image

Here are my tips for your main image:

Ensure it is high resolution (1,000 px minimum in height or width)
Present your product at a different angle than your competitors - this will help it stand out
Feature any extras or bonuses provided with your offering e.g. a carry bag or user guide
If you have high quality packaging, show this in your main image
Follow Amazon’s rules - in summary, your main image should be on a pure white background and your product should fill 85% or more of the image

Secondary Images

If you have a top quality main image, you’ll get more clicks and traffic for sure!
However, your other images are important too - they allow you to showcase more features and benefits of your product. Make sure to take full advantage of this opportunity, as listings with more images tend to convert better.

Up to 8 other images are allowed and my advice is to add as many high-quality images as possible.

Here are some ideas for your secondary images:

Show your product at a different angle than the main image
Show your product up close with zoom
Highlight the scale / size of your product
Show your product in use (lifestyle shot)
Provide a size guide for your product (if applicable)
Show the freebies included with your product e.g. ebooks, instruction manuals, carry bags, recipe books
Highlight important features / benefits in an infographic

Professional Product Photography

All of your photos should be of professional quality, professionally edited and touched up. Otherwise, you risk undermining your offering and making a bad impression to your potential customers.

We recommend Virtuous Graphics - very good quality and affordable too. I have worked with them personally and was very impressed with their work and customer service.

Recommended Launch Tactics

Split Testing

For Amazon Sellers, Split Testing (also known as “A/B Testing”) can help determine what works best in product listings, and ultimately generates more profit over the long term.

In simple terms, it involves deriving two or more options and determining which one performs best on Amazon.

Here are the 2 most important tests to perform on a new product:

Pricing – test 2 or 3 different prices and see which one maximizes your profit.
Main image – will an alternative image bring more traffic and sales to your listing?

Splitly is the best software solution for Amazon Sellers to perform split tests - it automatically adjusts your listing, provides a detailed analysis on the performance of options you tested and ultimately presents the winner.

Email Sequences

A good post-purchase email sequence is critical to get more reviews for your products. It’s also good for engaging with customers and building your brand - a follow-up sequence of emails shows customers you are professional and place value on their satisfaction, which may encourage them to buy other products from you in the future.

You can use a tool like FeedbackZ, which functions with Amazon.com and Amazon Europe, to automate this business process.

We also offer customized email sequences for your products, which are available in English, French, Italian and Spanish.

We don’t offer this service in German as we are aware of a few Sellers that have run into legal issues from sending email sequences in Germany. Something to bear in mind.

How about giveaways?

This refers to selling your product at a large discount or even for free (a “giveaway”) in order to generate a strong sales history for your product on Amazon and boots its organic ranking.

Since incentivized reviews were banned by Amazon, the effectiveness of giveaways has come into question.

However, some argue that it’s still a good strategy when launching a new product on Amazon, although I haven’t seen any data to back this up.

I have heard 7-figure seller Ben Cummings state that he believes an organic / full-priced sale on Amazon is currently worth 6 to 7 discounted sales in Amazon's algorithm. Based on this, I’d much rather put my promotional / marketing budget into paid advertising channels like Amazon PPC and Facebook ads.

Final Thoughts

The quality of the product you’re offering will have a massive impact on the success or failure of your launch.

If you have an excellent product, these tactics will work very well. If not, launch tactics may artificially inflate your performance for a while, but it will not be sustainable if your competitors are offering a better product.

In other words, before you launch, work hard to create the best product you can.

How To Launch Products On Amazon EU [Successfully]