Amazon Seller Tip: Driving Traffic To Your Listings- Pinterest

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Pinterest Could Be Driving Traffic to Your Listings

Driving Traffic To Your ListingsDid you know that you could be driving traffic to your listings using Pinterest?  Well you can! (And it isn’t hard.)

Amazon is a sea of buyers.  We all know that.  Getting those buyers to YOUR Listing pages and getting them to buy is the trick.  You don’t want customers to “buy on Amazon.”  You want them to “Buy YOUR products on Amazon.”  Pretty obvious isn’t it? Let’s look deeper….

If you are a typical seller, you often spend your time working to improve your rankings inside the Amazon Search Engine.  I’ve talked about the importance of keywords before. (Click here to see an article on Amazon and Keywords.)  As you work with Amazon we learn that 1) Sales and 2) Reviews are the key elements to improving your ranking within a category and for a specified keyword.  Sometimes we forget that there are other ways to make sales.  Finding customers and driving traffic to your Listings will do it and Pinterest is known to be a hot bed of buyers.

The literature on Pinterest is full of references to the statistic that people who come to a product Listing Page from Pinterest tend to buy more than people coming from Facebook or other sites.  This is traffic that we really shouldn’t just ignore.  Here are some of the statistics:

 

  • Know the Demographics of Pinterest (80% female, mostly in the 25 to 44 year old range – according to Google DoubleClick Ad Planner) Women like fashion. Males like sports terms. Tailor your terms to your audience. For example a Remote Controlled Toy Car would be seen by women 25-44 as a gift for their child, not something they would use themselves. Sooooo – talk about the Toy Car as a gift.
  • Neilson data show that 93% of Pinterest users have shopped using Pinterest in the last six months.
  • Wayfair.com says that Pinners spend 50% more on average than other social channels. Pinners also spend 20% more than people referred from non-social channels, including search.
  • Realize that Google spiders Pinterest so your efforts are doing double duty.  You could end up in a Google Searches as well.

 

Pinning the images from your Amazon Listing Pages is fairly easy, but there are certainly several things you need think about that aren’t obvious.

  1. Use your own images where possible
  2. SEO is critical – if people on Pinterest don’t find your image, they certainly can’t click on the link to your page. This means you must include keywords in your description. An image name P332144.jpg with no description has no search value at all. As always with keywords you want to figure out 1) What is my product good for? 2) Who will be looking for exactly this product? 3) What keywords will they use to search for my product?  Be sure to include these words in your description. Don’t make the mistake of just putting one phrase. For example: I sell Dog Tug Toys; however on Amazon there are far more searches for “Tug of War Dog Toy.” Just using “Tug Toy” would miss out on most of my possible customers.  I can also use “Pull Toy.”
  3. Buying Phrases like “Gift for Mom” and Call To Action Phrases like “Click the Image to Buy Now!” are marketing staples. Don’t forget them.
  4. Since we are working with Amazon there are a few specific things we need to be aware of here:
    1. You really need to include your Seller ID to your link. If more than one person is selling an item using the same Listing page, most links go to the person with the Buy Box. You want all of the links to go to YOUR page.  You will need to be sure your Seller ID is on the link.
    2. Amazon gives extra credit for a keyword phrase when a buyer uses that phrase and they buys. It is worthwhile to put keywords into our link. They help inside Amazon AND they are keywords in the Pinterest Description that help pinners find your image.
    3. Multiple Images – You have more than one image on your Amazon Listing page– it makes sense to pin more than one image.

 

Vancouver Pinterest consultant Anna Cadiz Bennett of White Glove Social media says it this way: 

“Selecting the correct keywords and applying proper SEO tactics are critical for getting the high organic search rankings necessary for driving large volumes of traffic to your website.”

http://www.whiteglovesocialmedia.com/social-media-marketing-keyword-mistakes-that-will-ruin-your-business-pinterest-page/

If I seem to be harping on keywords and SEO, it is because I am!

Before I get into the steps here is one more useful link

 How to Make Images Stand Out on Pinterest [INFOGRAPHIC]

 http://mashable.com/2012/03/26/optimize-images-pinterest/

 

Here are the Steps to Drive Traffic to Your  Listing

Before you start

I would add the Pin It extension to your browser. Pinterest has one or you can click on settings and add one to your browser that way. I use Firefox for the most part and it was as simple as clicking on the 3 horizontal bar tab in the upper right corner, clicking of Add-ons and searching for the Pinterest Pin It Button. I clicked on Enable and a new Red P icon appeared in the upper right tool bar.

The Steps

  1. Log in to Pinterest first – It makes things much easier the first time. (If you don’t have a Products Board in Pinterest, you may want to create one now.)
  2. Log in to your Amazon SellerCentral Account and click on the Inventory Tab–> Manage Inventory page. Scroll down your products until your find one where you are not the only seller. Click on the highlighted link (2nd column) which redirects you to the Amazon product page for that product.  (Note the &m=xxxxxx in the URL.  That is YOUR Seller ID.  You need to store this somewhere.  You will need it anytime you send a link to your Listing Pages.  Imagine sending a link to your best friend and they buy from a competitor or find that your discount code doesn’t work and never tell you.)
  3. Now comes the fun part (Thanks Cindy!) Select your seller name from the product page and you will get a thumbnail list of all of your active inventory. It’s much easier to work from this page as you can work thru your products in a sequential manner…and the URL contains both the ASIN and your Seller #.

Two Ways To Pin Images From Your Listings to Pinterest

I’m going to go through two ways to Pin your images. One is Pinterest’s way (which I really prefer) and one is Amazon’s way (which does work – for one image).

Pinterest’s Way To Pin Your Product and Drive Traffic to Your Listings

    1. Copy the Title and Bullet Points to your clipboard.   Be thinking about what the primary keywords for this product are.
    2. Click on the Pin It button in the upper bar of your browser.
    3. A screen showing all the images on the page will appear. Click on the one you want.
    4. A Pinterest Screen will pop up. (The first time you need to select the board you are going to use. Pinterest will default to that board after that).
        1. The link contains your Seller Id so that part is taken care of, but there are NO Keywords.  The pin is basically useless left this way.First Image – You Can’t See it but the Title Was There – With NO Link
          Pinerest  Driving Traffic To Your Listings - Pin It Screen
          #1 – The title was there and I’ve added text, rich with keywords, from the bullet points.
          #2 – This is the link provided by Pinterest.
          http://www.amazon.com/Double-Fur-Area-Sheepskin-grey-Pink/dp/B00OH4KZLE/ref=aag_m_pw_dp?ie=UTF8&m=A2YHCF9IFD95NS
          I will modify it to look like this.
          http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OH4KZLE/ref=&m=A2YHCF9IFD95NS&keywords=Dog+Tug+of+war+toyNote:  The first image you Pin with the Pin-It Button will have the title from the Amazon listing.  The second and third ones will have a link, but no title.  The URL inside Pinterest (the one we have to edit to see) will be there in both cases.
                                                                                                                                 Second Image – No Title – Just the Long URL – Replace with Description
          Pinterest Driving Traffic to Your listing - Second Image from a Listing

      Pinterest Page After I Pressed F5 Both Images are there.
      4=Pinterest Page

 

  1. I like to paste the title and bullet points I copied into a Word Document and fiddle there. You need something short (You have a 500 character limit, but Pinners don’t like long descriptions.) You should be trying to put the best keywords into the description.
  2. Remember that bullet points and the description field that you can see on Amazon are not indexed for keywords. If you did your work correctly when you created the listing page (assuming it is a listing your created) the additional keywords are in the five hidden search fields.   You may need to go back to your Manage Products Page in SellerCentral and edit the product in order to remind yourself what those “other keywords” were.
  3. Double check that you have no misspelled words and paste your description into the Pinterest Screen.
  4. Advanced Option – to really go all-out add this to the end of the URL Pinterest supplied “/ref=&keywords=<keyworrd1>+<keyword2>” You can use several words in the word 1 + word 2 + word 3 list. These should make up a keyword phrase. In the example I gave it might be /ref=?keywords=dog+tug+of+war+toy This gives you extra credit if the person arrives on Amazon and buys. If you do this, you will need to Edit the Pin and add this same phrase to a second URL inside Pinterest.)
  5. Save your work.
  6. Test your link by clicking on the Image. See if it goes to your listing page for the right product.
  7. If your were on a screen that let your edit the ‘Source:”, then you are done.  If not, you will need to Edit the Pin and change the URL in the source field.  You can have a window open with Pinterest in it.  If you press F5 the page will refresh and show you your new Pin so that your can edit it.
  8. Go back to the page in your browser that is displaying your Product Listing.
  9. Click on the Pin It Button and repeat the process if you want to pin a second image for the same product.
  10. When you are done, go to the browser screen that shows the product you just pinned, click on the back button in your browser. You will go back to the list of all your products and you want start to work on the next Product..
  11. Rinse and Repeat

NOTE:  When using the Chrome browser adding the Pinterest Pin-it button was the same.  In this browser I didn’t get a grid this all of the images.  By default I just got one (perhaps repeated a couple of times).  If you click on one of the images and open the window in Amazon that shows you all of the images in a large format, then you will get several images to chose from when you click the P for Pin-it at the top of your Browser.  In all cases I needed a second window open to Pinterest.  I would switch to that window, press F5 to refresh the screen and edit the image I just pinned.  Usually all I needed to do was add the &keywords=word1+word2+word3

 

The Amazon Way of Pinning – Only One Image is Available

    1. Once you have arrived at your Product Listing Page, copy the “&m=xxxxxxxxxx” You will need this later.  (You can put that somewhere easy to copy from since you need it again and again.)  I like to copy the bullet points now.
    2. Above the “Buy Box” is a Pinterest “Pin It” button…select that button. When the item opens in Pinterest, it will contain a good bit of the Title from your Listing Page – there are some good keywords in there.  The URL given however is the one for whoever has the “Buy Box” It will look something like this: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007IIZHEQ/ref=cm_sw_r_pi_dp_Z-7Gub163FN2E Note that this URL does NOT have your Seller Id which looks like &m=xxxx  Unmodified, the URL that Amazon supplies will send someone to the Amazon Listing Page for whomever currently has the Buy Box. This is NOT what you want.
      Erase everything from “ref=….” And replace it with you “&m=xxxxxxxxx”    Be sure that you get the “&” and the “/”. Your finished URL should look like this. http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007IIZHEQ/ &m=xxxx   where xxxx is your Seller IDAmazon’s Pinterest Pin-It Screen
      Pinterest -Amazon Screen
      This is the Screen that Amazon put’s up.  It has the Title and a Link visible.  The visible link does NOT have your Seller Id and should be edited.  The URL that is only visible when you edit the Pin contains the same URL.

 

  1. Just like with the Pinterest way of doing things.  I paste e bullets into a Word Document and try to create a short, pithy description that has lots of keywords.in it.
  2. Add some descriptive info (heavy with the keywords that aren’t already in the Description from the Title that Pinterest copied) into the description and then Pin It.
  3. Advanced Option – to really go all-out add this to the end of the URL Pinterest supplied “&keywords=<keyworrd1>+<keyword2>” You can use several words in the word 1 + word 2 + word 3 list. These should make up a keyword phrase. In the example I gave it might be ?keywords=dog+tug+of+war+toy This gives you extra credit if the person arrives on Amazon and buys.
  4. You will see the successful Pin. You are NOT done. The product URL will appear in Pinterest in two different places, but you can only see one of the URL’s from the initial window.  You haven’t changed the one that really counts yet.
  5. Click on the Edit Button at the top, you need to change the second URL. You will see that in the middle of the edit screen. Fix that one that same way the first one was fixed.   Save your work.
  6. Click on the Pinned Image to test your link (You do test don’t you?)
  7. Go back to the Amazon Screen that shows the product you just pinned. Click the back arrow on your browser and you should be back on the page showing all of your products.
  8. Rinse and Repeat.

Later you can go to analytics.pinterest.com and see which images are driving traffic to your listings.

Don’t forget these Pins.  If a product goes away, you might want to remove the Pin.

Suggestion:   You can create a Promotion Code in Amazon that applies to all of the listings you Pin and provide Pinterest Pinners with that code.  This will drive traffic to your listings and increase sales AND give you information about what sales came from Pinterest. Note that while you lose a little profit you gain in several ways: 1) The ranking on your product goes up, 2) you get a chance for another review – that also raises your product’s ranking and 3) you get a cookie on the customer’s computer that gives you a small commission on anything the customer buys for the next 30 days (as long as they go straight to Amazon.com).  You can see and article on Creating Promotion Codes here.

Advanced Tip:   You can use a link shortener like Bit.ly and create a short link that you put into Pinterest.  You put the longer link (the one with your ASIN and your Seller ID into Bit.ly.   Bit.ly will give you a short link to use.  (We often use these in places like Twitter where every character counts.)  Now you can go to Bit.ly and see how many clicks your got on each Pin.  

Here is a link I created by inserting the URL   http://www.amazon.com/dp/0963266764/ref=&m=A2YHCF9IFD95NS   into Bit.Ly (Don’t buy this book from me!!  The price is high to keep the listing live!)

Bil.ly gave me the link.    amzn.to/1GSgw9S    If I insert this into the Pinterest Page I can come back to bit.ly and see how many times the link was clicked.  It is hard to see but the yellow box contains a zero.  That tells me that this link hasn’t been clicked.  (Not surprising since I created it for this post 🙂 )

Note:  You can create a free account on Bit.ly and that makes it easy to “browse your links” and see all of your counts.  

Bit.ly link

 

 

There you have it – how to Drive Traffic to your Listings on Amazon using Pinterest.  Happy Selling!

 

Until Next time, you have a Great Day!  Oh Hale Yes!

↓ ↓ If this post gave you some ideas – Go ahead & comment below.  ↓ ↓

Hale Pringle

Hale Pringle Ed. D.

Hale Pringle – Hale Yes!

 

Skype hale.pringle

Email:  Hale@HalePringle.com

 

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P.S. If you are working to move your business online and it all seems overwhelming, I can help! My team and I are currently working with best “Earn Money Quickly From Home” Program I’ve ever seen (and I’ve seen them ALL!) I strongly urge you to take a look at http://HalePringle.com/ds. You can also take a look around http://HalePringle.com, especially the resources menu option. You will see that I specialize in list building, am a Certified Trainer with Ann Sieg and am an award winning blogger. I’ve also written three books on AWeber (AWeber: Quick Start) and over 20 others. You can email me or give me a Skype call. I’ll give you the benefit of my years of experience and many thousands of dollars in training and searching the rabbit hole called Internet Marketing and especially selling physical products online.

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