Amazon Attribution: Pilot Traffic to Your Listings
One of the biggest challenges in determining how much presence your Amazon listings are getting is tracking traffic. It’s important to put processes in place – especially through Amazon attribution – to make sure you’re capturing all of the traffic coming to your listings on and off-Amazon.
- What Is Amazon Attribution?
- Who Can Use Amazon Attribution?
- Why Is It Important to Drive External Traffic to My Amazon Listings?
- The “Why” of Driving Traffic to Your Amazon Listings
- How Does Amazon Attribution Work?
- What is an Amazon Attribution Tag?
- What is the Value in Using Amazon Attribution?
What Is Amazon Attribution?
When you have these insights, it’s easier to figure out where the best opportunities are away from Amazon to drive traffic back to your Amazon listings to increase sales. It’s also easier to optimize what’s working and improve what isn’t. And to make decisions on marketing channels that are going to be worth your attention in the long-run.
There are a few steps to take before you’re able to use Amazon Attribution to see how all of your marketing channels are performing.
Who Can Use Amazon Attribution?
At this time, Amazon Attribution is available to people in a select number of countries, including:
* United States
* Canada
* Spain
* France
* Italy
* Denmark, and
* The United Kingdom
People in several other countries can apply for the Brand Registry, but access to Attribution is currently limited to the countries listed above.
You can access the Registry through the self-service console on the Amazon website. Or using an API integration on your website or eCommerce portal provided by one of Amazon Advertising’s approved partners. Diving into Amazon Attribution and applying for the Brand Registry is only necessary if you’re already driving external traffic to your Amazon listings. If you aren’t driving traffic yet to listings from external sources, you’re putting the cart before the horse.
In case you are missing out on the great benefits Brand Registry offers, here’s a quick guide on Amazon Brand Registry.
Why Is It Important to Drive External Traffic to My Amazon Listings?
There’s far too much competition out there for any of the products in your mix. So you have to be proactive to earn the attention your listing deserves.
It’s harder than ever to separate yourself from the competition with so many people entering the Amazon marketplace, so you have to be creative in the ways you drive traffic to your listings from off-Amazon sources.
There are several ways to drive traffic to your listings, but it’s important not to get caught up in “shiny new object syndrome” and try all of them at once. Or, be too quick to abandon one method for another before it’s been given a chance to perform.
The “Why” of Driving Traffic to Your Amazon Listings
How you drive traffic to your listings isn’t as important as the plan you have to make that traffic matter. You need to have a funnel in mind that drives potential customers towards purchasing your products. Very few customers will go straight from a piece of content that mentions your brand to buy a product. It happens from time to time. But most people who don’t know your brand will need several touchpoints before they trust you enough to make a purchase.
So, accordingly, your content has to lead them toward a funnel. Once they’ve entered that funnel, you nurture them toward a sale. One of the most effective marketing methods is building an email list. It would be best if you always were working to capture emails from existing and potential customers. Then, sending a weekly email about your products, discounts, or deals, which will entice them to come back to visit.
The best thing about an email list is you own the list. It’s not on a platform that could fail, and then you’re left holding the bag. Social media is another option. The goal of posting content on social media shouldn’t be to get people to buy immediately. Very few people immediately buy a product they see on a social media share. When people are on social media, they’re in a “casual browsing” mindset. They may occasionally make an impulse purchase, but that’s the exception to the rule.
How Does Amazon Attribution Work?
Amazon Attribution helps you track where traffic is coming from to your landing pages. These sources are commonly referred to as off-Amazon traffic sources. You no longer have to guess where your sales are coming from. With Amazon Attribution, you know exactly where they’re coming from.
It’s nice to have the raw numbers from this tracking, including how many visits you’re receiving from different off-Amazon traffic sources, how these visitors behave when they arrive on your product listings, and most importantly, how many of them make a purchase. But just as importantly, it allows you to determine which of your marketing efforts are driving a solid ROI and which you need to consider ditching or restructuring.
Making these tough decisions was much more difficult before it wasn’t possible to get granular about how certain marketing tactics worked. Specifically, Amazon allows you to track the following metrics from off-Amazon traffic:
* Impressions – how many times your content shows up in feeds
* Clicks – how often people click on a piece of content
* Detail page views (on Amazon)
* Add to carts
* Purchase rate, and
* Sales
Hopefully, in the future, this will be expanded to have a longer-term view. But for now, these statistics are collected on a 14-day attribution window. This means you have data from the past 14 days of activity to consider as you decide what’s working well for you and what isn’t. Amazon attribution tags make this possible.
Vendors can sign up with this form, while brand registered Seller Central users can register from within Seller Central.
What is an Amazon Attribution Tag?
Amazon attribution tags are URLs with special coding that measure when people click on your links. These tags also measure if people purchase during these visits.
All you have to do to use Amazon attribution tags is create one in your Amazon Attribution account and add the tag to all of the content you share off-Amazon. These shares could be ads (like Facebook or Instagram ads), blog posts, or anywhere else where you want to track traffic. You can check out statistics generated from clicks on these special URLs within one of three native Amazon dashboards. Or you can use a variety of third-party tools to track and interpret the data.
The value of using Amazon Attribution to track how all of your content is performing is massive. If you aren’t using it, you’re missing out on a ton of important information that could help you streamline your marketing spend. And make sure you’re getting the best return on that to spend possible.
What is the Value in Using Amazon Attribution?
As that pipeline continues, from clicks to purchases, you develop a clear picture of “content that converts.” Once you understand what this content is, why would you want to create anything else? Better yet, when you see how platforms compare against one another, it’s much easier to target your converting content and focus on platforms that drive results.
Once you understand the relationship of this pipeline, you can double-down on what works well. And completely back away from content and platforms that are causing you to burn money.
That’s what we all want as Amazon sellers. Simplicity leading to a solid return on investment.
DataHawk helps you continue to work through the bigger picture of your Amazon business with our library of Amazon FBA tools designed to make your life easier. From Amazon keyword ranking tool to Amazon PPC, and even listing hijack alerts, there’s no reason for you to leave our platform when doing your daily work.
