Amazon Posts 101

Everything You Need to Know About the New Social Feature 

Amazon advertising is constantly evolving. A significant trend within Amazon advertising is a movement from product-focused ads to brand promotion. The Amazon advertising workhorse, Sponsored Products, has for years successfully reached customers with specific buying intent. But customers are not always shopping for specifics, and Amazon has only so many product-related listings to shift.

Offerings such as Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Display, and Amazon OTT (that run on the Amazon DSP platform) are aimed at extending brand advertising reach and opportunity. Amazon Posts is one of these offerings, and, for the moment at least, Amazon Posts is free. But, you do need to be registered with Amazon Brand Registry, and you need an Amazon Store.

Although it has been in Beta testing since October 2019 in the US, there is still no indication when or if it will be launched officially. But, it is always best to be prepared. So, here we uncover why you would want to use Amazon Posts and what best practices are emerging. 

A whistle-stop tour of everything Amazon Posts 

With Posts, the intention is to provide a new way for Amazon shoppers to discover a brand or help existing customers see your brand in a different, more accessible way. By leading with lifestyle imagery, the aim is to inspire and educate shoppers to explore your products and Store more generally — and crucially, keep coming back.

1. What is it?

Although it looks like Instagram, Amazon Posts isn’t really social media. There are no likes or interactions — it serves up static image-based inserts to help shoppers both engage with your brand and find new products.

There is no limit to how often you can post. But, we recommend adding content often, with a similar frequency to any social media you may be doing. Plus, cross-posting your products across a range of social platforms, as well as Amazon, is a great way to boost your brand exposure. 

Your content will be visible to shoppers on — 

• Product detail pages: Displayed between the Recommended and Questions section, Amazon Posts can help shoppers discover your brand’s other products.
• Related product feeds: Posts for products Amazon thinks are related.
• Category-based feeds: Posts for products tagged similar by Amazon.

This has several benefits. For example, you can — 

• Build your brand using lifestyle imagery.
• Create and promote product-related content specifically for product listings.
• Market products directly to your audiences, within Amazon itself.

2. Who uses it? 

Posts obviously add value, but how do you know if it will be fruitful for your brand?

The feature is aimed at curating marketing experiences and compelling content rather than product detail. Although being Amazon, the end-sale or conversion will always be the destination. The more you can profile your audiences to tap into their unique experiences, the more you can understand how your customers react to your brand. Thoroughly investigating your customers will afford you the capacity to effectively use Posts and build your Amazon marketing strategy. You will only have one visual within your post to grab attention — so obvious brand candidates for Posts are sectors that are familiar with creating such impact — either visually or emotionally, and sometimes both. 

We can quickly identify a few good candidates — 

• Fashion
• Health
• Parent and Child
• Sports and Lifestyle
• Home and Garden

But, one of the critical areas of differentiation on Amazon is doing what your competitors aren’t. Knowing and understanding your customer personas and buying journeys can present exciting opportunities to leverage. 

So don’t write off Posts because you are not in an obvious social media-friendly category. Even from the long US Beta, it is not yet clear the ideal way of using Posts — so if you have a strong view of your target customer and their preferences, you can be free to experiment and be creative.

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3. How do you use it? 

Here is a quick, practical step by step you can use to get going on Posts — 

1. Sign in with your Seller Central credentials on Amazon Posts 
2. Set up a profile by verifying brand name and uploading your logo
3. Create posts by uploading images, writing captions and tagging related products.

Your post will be made up of several components (only some of which are provided by you): 

You don’t choose where your posts appear — and the category tag is set by Amazon, not by you — so no clever hashtags here. You also won’t be able to choose which feed your posts appear. Amazon decides that for you, although the category tags attached to you will help influence the final destination.

Why use Amazon Posts? 

Here are four reasons why most Amazon Sellers should be considering Posts — 

• It’s free: Apart from the resources you need to manage the posts and create quality images and professional content.

• Brand differentiation: It is another way to help differentiate and effectively build your brand.

• Simple: It’s reasonably straightforward to use. If you already have social media expertise/success — reuse and repurpose.

• Content-focused: Using visually engaging content can attract shoppers compared to Amazon’s usually heavy product content.
• Analytics: Amazon offers you insight into what’s working and what’s not about your Posts strategy — including impressions, clicks, and click-through rates for each of your posts to see which are proving the results you want.

Sellers will find creating Amazon posts can make a lot of sense. And there are real benefits associated with using them — 

• Increase your audience: Position your posts against your competitors.
• Check what works: Test new product stories and presentations.
• Reduce buyer friction: You could use Posts to overcome known objections.
• Increase customer engagement: Drive customers to your Store.

Tips for getting going with Amazon Posts

If you want to thrive on Posts, some top tips are emerging that you should consider. First, you have to ask yourself a few questions — 

• Who are the customer types who use this product?
• Do they use it in specific ways or for different reasons?
• What features do buyers really go for?
• Is there a unique way of using the product?
• What helps the product to stand out from the competition?

At Nozzle, we can help you dig deeper into Amazon data to get these answers. Amazon data is vast and siloed, but the answers are there. You need a third-party platform such as Nozzle to come up with the right insights. Once you have answers and a clear understanding of what you hope to achieve — you can move on to the “when and how”. Here are a few practical points — 

• Customer analysis: This feeds into customer lifetime value (CLV) — analytics platforms can help you to understand the intricacies of your customers as they relate to customer acquisition, retention, and profit margins. These metrics will influence the way you interact with Posts, ensuring all collateral is designed for your customers, always.  
• Product analysis: The analytics tool can help you to understand the intricacies of customer behaviors as they interact with your products. Leaving you best placed to prioritize the products that will be the most effective in bringing traffic to your store and expanding your brand on Amazon. 
• Allocate resources to do this: If you have a social media team, lean on them to get involved.
• Be creative with your approach: For example, use teasers and questions to set up a dialogue rather than selling products straight away.
• Experiment and test: Once you’ve been posting for a while, check your metrics. There is a lot to learn and tweak — pictures, headlines, copy, and length of copy will have an impact.

The Posts path is data-driven

Ultimately the success of Posts will be governed by whether Amazon shoppers engage with the whole thing in the first place. Even so, every retailer has to have a position on the use of Amazon Posts if it comes into general availability. At the moment, it does have vast and seemingly limitless potential. It is one of those features that could give you an exciting advantage if used wisely as part of a broader marketing campaign.

But you cannot use Posts effectively without harnessing sophisticated analytics software, and we at Nozzle can help you do exactly that. We’ve pioneered the data-driven optimization of Amazon’s eCommerce ecosystem and so we’re best-placed to help you get started today. Here are some of the areas Nozzle is already helping drive Amazon advertising — 

• Identify wasted ad spend and missed revenue opportunities
• 80% time savings with AI-based automation
• Continually optimizing activity towards product sales or ad metrics (ACoS/RoAS)
• Carrying out deep retail analytics back to a minimum of two years
• Sophisticated reporting, beyond standard Amazon dashboards

These advanced analyses and insights have to be brought to all Amazon advertising vehicles. Marketing decisions have to stem from a deep understanding of customers, how their preferences change over time and how their behavior evolves with their choices. Posts won’t be applied successfully without knowing the intricacies of Amazon metrics such as repeat purchases, market basket comparison, customer lifetime value (LTV), and geo hotspot — get in touch, Nozzle can help.