Are you just getting started with selling on Amazon? Well then, you should be aware of the fact that Amazon has recently become much more stringent when it comes to collecting reviews for your products.
There are many factors that you should manage when it comes to having a successful product launch like doing market research, finding a good supplier and optimizing your listing.
These are only the initial few steps of a successful launch. Even if you manage to do them right, unless you’re able to quickly gather reviews for your product, your sales will slowly start to drop off (if there are any).
So, gathering reviews is undoubtedly one of the most important pieces of the Amazon FBA puzzle. And you should know how to get high-quality original reviews without breaking Amazon’s rules. In this article, we will cover the old method (2017 and before) and the new method (2018 and after) for gathering reviews.
The Old Method (2017 and before)
Using review exchange groups
This was a viable method back in the day but with the recent Amazon changes, it is bound to be nothing but a waste of time and money on your behalf. Basically this technique involves you finding various “amazon review exchange” Facebook groups and giving your product away for free in exchange for a review. The problem now with this technique is that Amazon is able to track the reviewers who are getting these free products and deleting their reviews.
90% OFF coupon codes
This technique is basically about giving away your product at a heavily discounted price to people in exchange for their honest reviews. According to the latest Amazon policy, you are not advised to solicit reviews from customers in exchange for a discounted product because that may bias the review. Amazon has been known to heavily cut down on such kind of reviews requested by discounting the product price. We would suggest that if you choose this method, despite being aware of the possible downsides, you should at least give your product to those people who might actually be impacted by your product and potentially become a “raving fan” that will generate word-of-mouth traffic to your product and brand. And also, you might want to try using coupons that offer somewhere around 50% OFF and not anything more because they will have a higher chance of getting flagged by Amazon.
Purchase reviews
This is straight-up against the Amazon’s terms. Because Amazon wants to be a fair marketplace, it doesn’t want sellers with money to bias the product rankings. Only high-quality products that are targeted specifically to the customer will be rewarded in rankings according to Amazon’s algorithm. So even if you find someone who offers to sell Amazon reviews, you should stay away from this kind of ranking manipulation techniques.
The New Method (2018 and beyond)
If you’re someone who believes that doing the hard work and building an actual business is effective over the long term, you will have a better time with the new method. Don’t get into a ‘get-rich-quick’ mindset. Your job is to build a loyal fanbase that craves for your product so that you can eventually take your business outside Amazon if need be. As such, the new method may involve a bit more work and clever marketing but it is bound to give you sustained results and honest organic reviews that don’t get deleted by Amazon.
During a product launch on Amazon, you are faced with two challenges.
- Getting a few initial reviews right off the bat.
- Leveraging those initial reviews to explode your sales and generate even more reviews.
Let’s look into these two challenges and how we can solve them.
The Struggle Period – Getting initial 10 reviews (social proof)
Get your friends, family and colleagues to buy and review your product. This is an easy way to get a few reviews up without having to pay too much. Tip: Do not have them purchase & review from the same IP address as yours.
Amazon Top Reviewers: These are Amazon’s most trusted reviewers. Their reviews carry a lot of weight, credibility and will not be deleted. You can find their e-mail-ID and send them an e-mail with your product link. Just make sure to make it authentic and not demanding. Check this Fiverr gig for a list of e-mail IDs of top Amazon reviewers.
Contact Influencers. Find someone who has sufficient following and more importantly the relevant following. Negotiate a deal where the influencer agrees to promote your product multiple times in a week or two. This is a great way to get a few initial sales/reviews and also build awareness for your brand.
Facebook groups: Promote your product in relevant and other social media platforms like Quora or Pinterest. Ask the question “Where are my target audience hanging out?”. Reverse-engineer your ideal customer. And then put your product in front of them.
E-Mail Lists: Send the product to your e-mail list. Ideally, you should’ve setup a landing page offering people something of value related to your niche in return for their e-mail ID. To get traffic, you can run Facebook ads to this landing page. Once you have a few members in your list, you can setup an e-mail sequence and warm them up to purchase and review your product. Hopefully, a few of them will proceed to leave a review and that will be enough to get the ball rolling.
Update: now that coupon code orders can’t post reviews… how else to give away discounted product for a launch? Check out these 5 Ideas to Get Quick Amazon FBA Reviews in 2018
The Scaling Period – Leveraging initial reviews to get more
- Feedback genius – This is a nice little service that lets you automate your amazon feedback management process. You can send emails to customers who bought your product and inform them about the expected delivery date or ask for feedback or contact you if anything goes wrong. It makes it easy for customers who bought your product to leave a review. You can also choose to send a reminder e-mail to customers who bought your product but didn’t leave a review. This will also help you reduce the number of possible negative reviews by prompting customers in case anything goes wrong.
- Insert Cards – As we’ve already discussed in the brand building post, insert cards are extra cards you can have your supplier send along with your actual product. You can use this insert card to offer customers something of value in return for their e-mail ID. This value can be offered with a 1-year guarantee or discount on other related products or just some instructional videos.
- JumpSend – This is another e-mail automation service developed by the creators of JungleScout. It lets you manage e-mail communication with customers who bought your product so that you can ask them for feedback about the product and potentially get a review up on Amazon.
- Running PPC campaigns – If you have enough marketing budget and a few reviews up already, this is a great strategy to boost sales to your product. Basically, you select a list of keywords and a click-price for your product and Amazon will direct customers searching for that keyword to your product. For every click, you will be charged that click-price (provided it exceeds a certain bid amount). With the right set of keywords and optimal bid price, you can create insanely profitable campaigns and generate a ton of sales for your product. We will cover more on the art of creating profitable Amazon PPC campaigns in the future. Stay tuned!
Hopefully, you’ve gained a lot of valuable insights and strategies to gather reviews for amazon products in 2018 from this blog post. If you want a step-by-step guide that covers all the essentials of starting your own amazon FBA business, you should check out the Amazon Secrets 3.0 free training and full course. It’s currently the best, most beautiful, most comprehensive Amazon private label selling course I’ve seen.
It covers all the latest tips, tricks and strategies to find, launch and market successful products on Amazon. We also have an active Facebook group to answer all your questions and you can find a lot of testimonials from people who made their first $1000 with Amazon FBA using the Amazon FBA Private Label Selling Full Course.
