Amazon is the most popular e-commerce marketplace in the world. It is the first place many of us think of when we think of online shopping. With over 300 million registered customers from all around the globe, if you have a product that you want to sell internationally, you cannot afford not to be on Amazon.
Selling on Amazon is a relatively safe and easy way of expanding into international markets. You do not need to go through the time, expense and hassle of building a whole new website; instead, you can simply upload your products to Amazon and go from there. It can also be a great way to sell directly to your customers, rather than having to go through third-party distributers.
However, trying to reach an international audience has its challenges. As well as the regular challenge of trying to get your product front and centre when users search for relevant terms, you have the added complication of the language barrier.
This is where it can be useful to get some help and advice from an established international marketing agency who navigates these tricky waters every day – and that is why we are sharing our expertise in this blog post.
Get ready to learn some Amazon marketing best practice that will help your brand reach an international audience.
1. Conduct keyword research in the target language to discover what Amazon users are searching for
It is important to know the words that your audience actually searches for on Amazon when they are looking for products like yours. By knowing these “keywords”, you will be able to optimise your listings for these words, meaning that your products have a higher chance of appearing when people search for those words on Amazon.
When you are targeting an international market that uses a different language to your home market, it is important to do this keyword research from scratch in the local language. Do not be tempted to just use the keywords from your home market or to put them through a machine translation tool. That method will not tell you the best keywords to use in your new market, because the terms people use will be different, rooted in the local language and culture, and cannot be unearthed through translation.
The only way you can find out the keywords that your international audience uses in their market is to get a native speaker of the local language to conduct keyword research on Amazon from scratch. We can help with Amazon keyword research, if you do not have a native linguist with experience of keyword research in your company.
2. Translate your Amazon listings into the local language
If you are targeting France with Amazon listings written in English, you will not succeed. You must translate your Amazon listings into the local language of your target market. This is because this is the language your target audience will be searching in. You must produce localised listings so that the shoppers are able to understand what you are selling, and so that the listings themselves appear when shoppers type in their keywords.
If you have done keyword research in the local language (as described above), you can provide these keywords to your translator so that they can seamlessly work them into the translation as they translate your listings. This will result in keyword-optimised Amazon listings in the local language that flow naturally and are of a high quality.
Again, make sure to use a professional translator who is a native speaker of the target language. Putting your listings through a machine translation tool like Google Translate will result in low-quality content with strange phrasing and grammatical mistakes, and will give a bad impression of your brand. Opting for a professional translation will cost you more money upfront, but will result in a much greater return-on-investment as your high-quality translated content will attract and convert many more customers. It is well worth the investment.
We offer Amazon listing translation in over 140 languages, if you are looking for a trusted translation provider.
3. Optimise your Amazon listings with relevant keywords
Amazon works like a search engine, allowing users to search for keywords and then bringing up the most relevant listings for that search query. If you want to maximise your chances of appearing near the top of Amazon’s search results and generating sales, it is important to optimise your Amazon listings.
The first step is to conduct keyword research in the target language (as described in section 1, above). Then you need to write (or edit, if they already exist) keyword-rich titles and descriptions for your Amazon listings.
It is important to get a native speaker of your target language to do this, as only a native will have a strong enough understanding of the language to be able to work in the keywords in a way that sounds natural and has good linguistic flow. You should also be aware that there is a delicate balance between optimising your content and “keyword stuffing”, the latter of which looks spammy and reads clunkily – so make sure not to over-do it.
Our team of SEO-trained linguists can optimise your Amazon listings (titles, descriptions and bullet points), if you need help with this.
4. Upload your listings to Amazon
Once you have written/translated and optimised your Amazon listings in the target language, you are ready to upload these to your Amazon online shop. To upload your listings, you will need to have the following information to hand:
- list of products and their titles
- product category
- product details
- product description
- original price
- promotional price (if applicable)
- end date for the promotional price (if applicable)
- offer for Amazon Prime members
- images
- shipping and delivery information (country, price, date)
- payment information
- currency
- the numbers under the product’s bar code
- any other relevant information to do with the product
If you need help uploading or updating your Amazon listings, we can help with that.
5. Consider running an advertising campaign on Amazon
If you are a relatively unknown brand in your target market, or if you are simply not seeing the number of sales you would like, you may want to consider boosting your visibility on Amazon by running an advertising campaign.
Amazon offers a range of advertising options, whereby you can bid on keywords so that your ads show up in the search results and on product pages when users search for those keywords. By advertising on Amazon, you can boost your brand awareness, increase traffic to your product pages and ultimately improve your sales on Amazon.
We can help you set up an advertising campaign on Amazon or provide you with more information on the options available, so if you have any questions, please reach out and we will do our best to help.
6. Make sure your Amazon ads are written in the local language of your target market
If you decide to run an advertising campaign on Amazon, as described in the section above, you must make sure that your ads are written in the correct language. Just like your listings, it is important that your ads are written in the local language of each target market, so that shoppers understand your message and so that there is consistency between your ads and where they point to.
When creating text ads in different languages, it is essential that the copy includes popular keywords, reflects the local culture, includes a relevant call-to-action and is grammatically accurate. To ensure this, your ads should be created by a professional linguist who is experienced in writing compelling ads for e-commerce – and who is, of course, a native speaker of your target language.
Our team of trained linguists can create compelling Amazon ads in over 140 languages, so get in touch with us if you need help with this.
Conclusion
I hope this blog post has given you a useful insight into Amazon marketing best practice for brands wanting to sell internationally. Key to success in international markets is having high-quality content in the local language, created and optimised by professional native speakers. If you have any questions or need help with your Amazon marketing efforts, get in touch with us today!
Elin Box
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