Generating leads and making sales can be challenging when you’re a small business owner. There are all kinds of high-cost, energy consuming ways to try to get more leads, but unfortunately, many strategies simply don’t work that well. Rather than spending money and wasting time on potentially unreliable marketing strategies, leverage the power of Amazon to increase your sales.
Wondering how small businesses can benefit from working with Amazon? Then, keep reading for a look at the details.
Why Your Business Needs Amazon
As a mom-and-pop business owner, you may be hesitant about working with one of the biggest companies in the world. However, your business needs Amazon and working with them has the potential to benefit your business significantly.
The Secret to Amazon Success
Your customers are on the Amazon site, and they trust that brand. In fact, online shoppers spend more time on Amazon’s website than they do on the next top 10 e-commerce sites combined. In December 2017, shoppers spent 22.6 billion minutes on Amazon. In contrast, they only logged 6.2 billion minutes on eBay, 3 billion minutes on Walmart, and 1.8 billion on Wish.
Beyond that, customers shop for a wide variety of items on Amazon. Regardless of the type of product you sell, someone is likely to be looking for it on Amazon, and shoppers don’t just look for products. They also buy books on every topic under the sun from pirate romance to plumbing to marketing and all points in between. But with so many products on Amazon, how do you get shoppers interested in your offerings? The answer is simple. You frustrate them.
Frustration may not sound like a positive emotion, but frustration drives people to take action. To explain, consider this relatively common approach to sales. Let’s say you run a marketing company, you create an ebook on Amazon and you put a link to a download for more information about your services in the book.
Although this is a fairly standard approach, it usually doesn’t work. Readers see the link to the download as a helpful extra or an optional add-on. In most cases, the following happens:
- Most readers don’t have any strong motivation to follow the link, get the download, or contact your business so they don’t.
- A few readers are interested, and they think about taking action, but they don’t.
- 4. A smaller group of readers take the time to get the download after reading your ebook, but they never end up contacting your business.
- An even smaller group of people read the ebook, get the download, and contact your business.
In other words, you went through all the trouble to create an ebook to generate leads, but your call to action didn’t work. Your potential leads weren’t frustrated enough to take action and contact you.
Frustration Fuels Desire in Customers
The idea of frustration leading to desire in customers is not just an opinion. This concept is rooted in a variety of scientific studies. In the study “Bad Is Stronger than Good” Roy F. Baumiester et al outlined the idea that bad events, fears, and frustrations tend to have more impact on people than positive events and emotions. A variety of other studies including “Positive-Negative Asymmetry or When the Heart Needs a Reason” by Maria Lewicka and Janusz Czapinski and “Negativity Bias, Negativity Dominance, and Contagion” by Paul Rozin and Edward B. Royzman also highlight this concept.
To illustrate how this works, check out the verbiage in these two pitches.
Offer A “If you want help with small business marketing, download my DIY 5-point strategy now”
Offer B “Most small businesses waste 10% of their revenue and 20 hours per week on marketing strategies that don’t work. Download these free checklists, and I’ll show you small business marketing strategies that increase sales by 20%.”
For most readers, the second offer is more compelling. The first offer outlines a potential problem that a customer may have, while the second offer clearly identifies an actual problem as well as the solution.
Frustrating Amazon Customers Isn’t Enough
Effective use of frustration requires several different layers. To be a quality pitch, keep these tips and examples in mind.
- Build Urgency: Act now. This download is only available to the first 100 people who sign up.
- Use Genuine Scarcity: Only 100 people get the free download because after this free offer, we’re selling this product for $89.
- Be Specific About the Customer’s Problem: Your business is losing 10% of its revenues.
- Show Value: This product saves you time and money.
- Do a Risk Reversal: If these tips don’t work, you get your money back.
As you create pitches, work these different elements into your marketing in different places. In addition to using them on Amazon, you can use this strategy on Facebook and Google ads.
At this point, you may still be wondering why you should use Amazon and not just Google or Facebook. The reason is that Amazon shoppers are well qualified. They bought your ebook indicating they really want to learn about your services, and as an added bonus, you can use the funds generated from selling the ebook to cover the time you put into your Amazon marketing campaigns. The leads you get from Amazon tend to be a lot more qualified than leads from other marketing channels and as a result, you can charge more for well crafted follow-up offers.
Your Business Has Amazon, There’s No Need to Starve
Is your business starved for leads? Do you want more customers? Are you looking for a better way to sell your product or market your services? Amazon can help your business with all these issues.
But in addition to using Amazon, you also have to remember to leverage frustration. Use the tips above to build frustration into your marketing campaign, and don’t forget to be urgent, specific, and use a risk reversal proposition.