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Your Go-to Amazon Posts Guide: How to Launch & Leverage Posts to Drive Sales

SupplyKick
May 28, 2021 12:31:07 PM

Amazon Posts Guide for Amazon Advertising & Community Building

Over the last few years, Amazon’s placed a strong emphasis on branded visuals and storytelling within the platform. From expanded A+ Content capabilities to interactive Amazon Storefronts, they continue to roll out features that enable brands to creatively share their unique value with marketplace shoppers.

With Amazon Advertising's rollout of Amazon Posts and other community-building features, it seems they’re taking some serious notes from social channels turned online shopping hubs like Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook. The look and feel of Posts is very similar to what you’d find on social media and acts as a way to share content, engage customers, and drive discovery. 

If you’re wondering how to launch and leverage Amazon Posts (and whether or not it’s worth your time to engage customers “socially” on Amazon at all), you’ve come to the right place…

  

What are Amazon Posts?

Simply put, if Instagram and Amazon had a baby, it would be Amazon Posts. Brand-registered sellers can now create content and publish it to a shoppable feed directly on the platform.

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Amazon Posts offer sellers a new way to drive product awareness and engagement through image-based browsing. Posts show up in a brand’s feed on Amazon, and they function very similarly to something you’d see on social media. Each Post features product or lifestyle imagery, a short caption, and links back to a product detail page. Just like following a social media account, customers can also choose to “follow” a brand by selecting the Follow button on a brand’s Post or Store page—this allows shoppers to see more of your content on Amazon.

Amazon Posts is currently in beta, meaning certain access and features are limited and can change in the future. As of now, Posts are only available to vendors or sellers in the U.S. who are enrolled in the Amazon Brand Registry program. Posts are also only available on the Amazon mobile shopping app (iOS and Android) and on mobile web.

  

Who can participate in Posts?

To qualify for Amazon Posts, you must be:

  • A U.S. seller or vendor
  • Enrolled in Amazon Brand Registry
  • Signed into a Seller Central or Amazon Advertising account
  • Have a Store on Amazon
  • Ensure your brand’s byline on your detail pages is linked to your Store

If you meet all of the above criteria, you can launch and leverage Amazon Posts for free on the marketplace. 

 

Where do Amazon Posts show up on Amazon?

Your Amazon Posts can show up in a number of places on the platform—but it’s up to Amazon’s algorithm to decide whether Posts will appear in places other than your brand feed (where each Post is originally published).  

Here’s a quick breakdown of where your Posts may appear on the marketplace:

  • Product Detail Page: Amazon Posts show on relevant product listings above the “Customer Questions” section. They will appear in a carousel format.
  • Posts Feed: When a shopper taps an Amazon Post or a product category within the Post, relevant Amazon Posts from other brands (ahem, competitors) show in a feed.
  • Brand Feed: When a shopper clicks the brand’s logo located in the header of a Post, all of the brand’s Amazon Posts show in a feed.
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Product Detail Page Posts Feed Brand Feed

 

How do I sign up and get started with Posts?

The process to sign up is pretty straightforward, but be sure to read through Amazon’s Posts Content Guidelines and Acceptance Policies before you begin:

  1. Sign in at posts.amazon.com
  2. Create a brand profile (verify brand name and your logo)
  3. Begin posting (upload images, captions, and tag related products—Amazon tags related categories automatically)

Pro Tip: You’ll want to have a solid “social” schedule and brand marketing (lifestyle and product imagery, creative, messaging, etc.) in place before taking advantage of Amazon Posts—or you’ll be wasting your time. More best practices below.

  

What are the best practices for Amazon Posts?

Understand the anatomy of an Amazon Post: First, master the basics. An Amazon Post consists of:

  • the profile banner (brand name and logo)
  • a custom image
  • a “show product” icon (which will reveal more info about the product featured, including review stars and price) 
  • caption text
  • category tags (Amazon will auto-tag these to relevant product categories)

Professional product and lifestyle photography: Posts are entirely dependent on your imagery. Shoppers scroll through feeds and product listings quickly, so your graphics should be authentic enough to stop them in their tracks and cohesive with the rest of your content and branding.

Build a solid brand marketing strategy: Just like social media, don’t dive headfirst into Amazon Posts without understanding your audience, brand differentiators, and competition. This will ensure you’re crafting content that reflects your unique value and connects with exactly the right customers.

Consistency is key: Posts are somewhat evergreen since there isn’t a true timeline. If you make 10 Posts and never post again, you will get engagements in perpetuity—but in our tests, we have seen that Amazon gives more placements to brands who post consistently. So if you only have the bandwidth to Post one month, it’s better than nothing, but you’ll see a much better ROI if you post regularly. Similarly to a standard social strategy, it’s better to post fewer Posts consistently than post a bunch of Posts inconsistently.

Aim for short, relatable, actionable copy. Amazon encourages quick, concise copy (and most social users prefer it!). Keep your Amazon Posts short and in-line with your brand voice. Captions and image text can use hashtags, emojis, and abbreviations—but hashtags show as plain text in a Post and aren’t clickable (yet) like on other social channels. Be sure to use a specific call-to-action, because general “click here” CTA verbiage isn’t allowed by Amazon.

Leverage your existing assets and social content: You don’t have to start from scratch! Leverage your existing lifestyle and product imagery and Amazon graphics in your Posts. Also, pull messaging and content from your other social media channels to keep from having to reinvent the wheel.

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What reporting is currently available for Posts?

Through Amazon Posts Publisher found within the advertising console, Amazon offers brands insights related to Amazon Posts including:

  • Impressions: # of unique shoppers who stopped on a post for more than one second
  • Engagement: # of shoppers who clicked or engaged with the post in some way
  • Product clicks: # of shoppers who actually clicked the product link or ASIN
  • Reach: develops over time, based on overall rolling average of Impressions
  • Followers: how many shoppers follow your brand’s feed using the “Follow” button

  

Can Amazon Posts really help me drive engagement and sales?

The SupplyKick team has tested Amazon Posts for our brand partners over the past year—and even more recently as newer features and reporting metrics have been added—to prove whether or not Posts have the potential to increase product sales. In a nutshell: Yes they do. 

Posts aren’t necessarily the first or even third feature a brand should invest in, but if you have solid creative, content, and brand marketing elsewhere on Amazon, there’s no reason not to start building a brand following on the platform. We recommend proactively launching a strategy around them if you want to build performance insights early and stand out to your customers on the marketplace. If you need help with Amazon Posts strategy and management, let’s talk.

Here are a few reasons why Amazon Posts should be on your radar:

  1. Amazon’s placement of Posts on the platform is increasing, and they’re likely going to continue to emphasize this feature. The growing industry hype around Posts is for a good reason, especially as Amazon continues to give brands, advertisers, and sellers more avenues to drive product discovery, re-engage customers, and build brand loyalty.
  2. Stores, Posts, Follows, and Amazon’s new(ish) Manage Your Customer Engagement tool (email marketing) are all working together to help brands create a sense of community and more targeted connections directly on the platform. For example, by building followers through your Posts, you can then take advantage of Amazon's Manage Your Customer Engagement tool to send email campaigns to Amazon shoppers who have purchased products from you—including product launch announcements, offer promotions, repeat purchase emails, and more. This is huge!

  3. Posts are beneficial for brands in large categories. If you have a larger category on Amazon, that means the more shoppers and impressions you’re going to get on your Posts.
  4. Be aware that stockouts negatively impact Post performance. Amazon will suppress the Post that has the ASIN linked if your product goes out of stock—and you’ll lose your reach. As long as you’re forecasting your inventory correctly, Amazon Posts will work in your favor.
  5. Amazon Sponsored Ads and Sponsored Video, Storefront, A+ Content, etc. have proven to have more sales-driving power than Posts, but only time will tell. As Amazon continues to expand and develop social-inspired features, and as customers continue to get used to seeing Posts on Amazon, you’ll want to be ahead of the game and ahead of competitors.

Curious about Amazon Posts and how to excel your brand marketing and sales on the marketplace? Download our Amazon Brand Marketing Lookbook and connect with our team to learn more about our Agency & Wholesale partnerships.

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