How LandingCube Helped This Seller Launch — WITHOUT High-Value Discounts

TLDR; LandingCube is a powerful tool for product launches. Driving traffic with landing pages allows you to grow a list, and own your audience. Doing so gives you an asset that can be used over and over for effective, low-cost launches.

I like to spend a little time undercover in the Amazon seller community.

When I’m there, I often see people in the community asking… does LandingCube work?

Of course, my answer is yes. Our team wouldn’t do as much work as we do building, improving and promoting something that doesn’t work. But it’s hard to take us at our word.

So that’s why we decided to connect with a seller who uses LandingCube successfully, to give you an actual example of how LandingCube can be used as part of an effective launch strategy.

Dave Huss is well-known in the seller community, having run a successful e-commerce store, as well as a PPC agency for e-commerce businesses. He’s also given talks at conferences all around Southeast Asia, on a variety of topics.

We sat down with Dave for a cup of coffee and asked him about how he used LandingCube to rank his product and get the “Amazon’s Choice” badge, all without spending a bunch of money on high-value discounts and PPC.

You can see a short video of Dave explaining his process and results below. Continue reading after as we break down how he did it, and how LandingCube helps you do the same.

First… a little background

First, a little primer on Dave’s business, so we can put his method and results into context.

Initially, he ran his business only on Shopify. His store made over $1 million in sales, before he decided to transition and launch on Amazon.

This gave him much more leverage than most Amazon sellers launching from scratch, as Dave had a list of buyers from his time on Shopify.

The launch covered in this case study is actually Dave’s second attempt at launching this particular product. After his first launch, they became aware of a quality control issue from the manufacturer, which led to a product defect and a number of negative reviews.

After fixing the quality issue, Dave decided to just close the listing and open a new one, re-launching with zero reviews/sales.

Dave’s products are not “sexy” — most of us would say they’re quite boring, in fact. However, as part of promoting and growing his Shopify store, he grew a Facebook community of more than 100,000 people centered around his niche.

The quality control problem wasn’t the only one. After Dave decided to close his listing, he ended up with a bunch of copycat sellers to contend with.

The Copycats

There’s no secret that Amazon sellers keep their products a closely guarded secret, in order to avoid copycats and hijackers.

Unfortunately, someone got caught on to what he was selling, made an almost exact knockoff, and launched in competition. Then more sellers did the same.

There were more than 22 knockoff products on Amazon by the time he made the decision to close his first listing.

The copycats used the exact same pictures from Dave’s listing, essentially creating an exact copy of both the listing and the product.

This presented a big potential roadblock for the launch and made it time-sensitive to rank again for their important keywords. However, Dave still had the advantage of an engaged customer list, which the copycats did not.

So, to summarize the key points:

• Fairly unexciting product in arts & crafts supplies
• Re-launching product on Amazon, with a strong sales history on Shopify
• Has an email list & an active Facebook community
• Had to fight off more than 20 copycats after closing his listing the first time

The Launch & Ranking Method

Dave’s initial launch was fairly successful. He utilized his email list, sending people to a landing page, then to the Amazon listing, with no discount. He then had a tiered ManyChat sequence, which would offer a discount if a customer didn’t click through and buy at full price.

This launch got him to page 1 for his main keyword, though it took several months.

Launch number 2 he employed a slightly different strategy. The main source of traffic was again his email list, however, he used a LandingCube promotion with a 15% discount, redirected through a 2-step storefront URL.

The idea was to quickly target their highest-traffic keyword, as well as test the effectiveness of 2-step URLs for keyword rankings.

They offered a discount this time, to try and speed up the ranking process before the copycats were able to get a foothold. However, they kept the discount low, to preserve ranking strength (Amazon gives less power to heavily discounted sales), as well as remaining profitable (Dave didn’t want to be thousands of dollars out of pocket from the launch).

On one final point, Dave did not run any Amazon PPC during the launch period. In part, to test the effectiveness of this specific launch strategy, as well as to keep costs down (we all know how easy it is to bleed money on PPC).

In summary:

• The launch was done by sending a LandingCube promotion to Dave’s email list
• The promotion was a 15% discount
• Traffic went through a LandingCube page, then through a 2-step storefront URL with the target keyword
• No Amazon PPC campaigns running during the launch period

The Results

With this launch method, Dave was able to rank on page 1 for his main keyword in two weeks.

In this time, Dave got 30 sales from his LandingCube promotion. This was enough to boost his listing to the first page for the targeted keyword, despite the increased competition from copycat sellers.

Additionally, his product was featured #1 in Amazon’s New Releases in its category, as well as getting the “Amazon’s Choice” badge for his main keyword.

After the 30 day launch period, Dave stopped promoting to his email list, and turned on Amazon PPC again to maintain the sales. His product held its sales velocity, as well as the Amazon’s Choice badge.

In summary:

• 30 sales in 2 weeks via email list > LandingCube promotion > 2-step URL
• Ranked on the first page for target keyword within 2 weeks
• Scored the #1 post in Amazon Hot New Releases
• Listing received “Amazon’s Choice” badge for the primary search term
• Sales velocity & Amazon Choice badge remained after the promotion period (30 days)

Takeaways from Dave’s Launch

Of course, these results won’t necessarily be the same for every launch. Different products and categories will have different levels of competition.

However, there are some things that can be taken away from Dave’s example.

An email list is a powerful tool

Much of the success of this launch is due to a large, engaged email list.

There’s little question that launching is far easier, and cheaper when you have an email list. For a number of reasons.

First, you have a cheap, low-effort source of traffic at your disposal. Facebook Ads, Google Ads and others are powerful, no doubt. But they take effort to get right and come at a cost.

With email, it’s cheap and easy to reach a lot of people very quickly.

There’s an upfront cost in building your list in the first place, but once you’ve done that, it costs almost nothing to rinse and repeat future promotions.

Secondly, sellers have believed for a long time that Amazon favors sales from external traffic. It makes sense, as it benefits Amazon if you send them customers from elsewhere on the web. And the results back that up, with a relatively low sales velocity used to launch and rank very quickly.

Finally, an email list provides insurance against hijackers, copycats, and bad actors, as you can see here. A bunch of sellers got a hold of Dave’s product and produced an exact copy. However, with a customer list, you’ll always be a step ahead of these people.

They can copy your product, but they can’t copy your audience.

That’s why it’s so important to build a brand and build a relationship with your audience. This is what the copycats aren’t doing, and what they can’t replicate so easily.

2-Step URLs work for targeting specific keywords

2-step URLs are one of the latest methods talked about for ranking, but there’s not a lot of real evidence out there as to whether or not they actually work.

Indeed, that’s one of the reasons Dave used this launch method, isolating 2-step URLs from Amazon PPC to provide answers on how effective they are for ranking.

This single case isn’t definitive, and to say you can rank on the first page 100% of the time through 2-step URLs would be short-sighted. But it does give a positive indication. Especially in regards to the way Dave was able to get recognition with features like Amazon’s Choice and Hot New Releases.

From what we can observe here, it’s a good thing to have in your toolbox, particularly if there is a specific valuable keyword that you want to target.

A big sales spike is not always best

Your product doesn’t need to sell like hotcakes, right from the word go. In fact, it might be a negative if you have a really high spike in sales straight away, as Amazon sees this sales pattern as unnatural.

Instead, a sustained, consistent sales pattern is better. This is a much better signal of popularity for your product. Sure, there’s nothing wrong with selling a lot, but it’s not going to have as big an impact if you have a strong spike of sales which drops off shortly after.

Consider this if you’re running promotions. Space your promotions out instead of making one big push to launch straight away.

If you’re doing paid ads such as Facebook or Google Ads, manage your budget so it doesn’t get used up right away. If you’re doing email, split up your list and email a chunk of your list each day, rather than all in one blast.

You don’t need high-value discounts to launch

Launching doesn’t have to be a huge cost. For a long time, the prevailing opinion was that you needed to give away a ton of products, and/or pay big amounts to launch services to rank your products.

For super-competitive categories, you may still need to pay a lot to launch. But Dave did two launches and didn’t make a loss on either. His first launch took a couple of months but was done almost completely with full-price sales.

The second was done with a 15% discount, which is quite small, and for a lot of products, still enough to make a small profit from each sale.

The only caveat for this is that you need warm traffic. That is, an engaged email list or community, that you know has an interest in what you’re trying to sell. Launching with a low discount to a cold audience, on Facebook Ads for example, is going to take a while and eat up your ad spend.

This means you may need to spend big to grow your list, by running giveaways or high-value discounts on Facebook or Google Ads. However, you’ll only need to do this once, as long as you capture your customers’ emails. Once you do, your future launches can be done with low discounts, low cpc, and essentially with the click of a button.

How LandingCube Helps You Launch Profitably

LandingCube helps you craft an effective, profitable launch strategy in several ways.

First, the core of this strategy is to have an email list. This is the #1 reason we built LandingCube. An email list (or a Messenger list) gives you control over your customers, and as an extension, your business. Compared to relying exclusively on organic Amazon sales, which can drop off at any time.

You need an effective way to entice people to join your email list, which LandingCube helps you do, with promo codes as incentives.

Second, our landing pages help you convert a higher percentage of your external traffic into sales. They allow you to show off your product, its images and benefits better than you can in a Facebook post or an email.

You need to give as much information as possible to your potential customers, for them to decide to click through and buy. Especially when you don’t have a juicy high-value discount to offer. The main selling point is your product, and you can present it much more effectively with a landing page.

As an added bonus, a landing page provides a barrier for non-buying customers from reaching your listing. Since most of them will make the decision to buy or not on your landing page, a higher percentage of impressions on your listing turn into actual sales, which is a powerful ranking signal with Amazon’s algorithm.

LandingCube campaigns can also help you space out your sales, by enabling a daily coupon limit, so you don’t give out all your discounts in one day. Instead, you can set a limit (for example, 10 coupons per day), which refreshes each day and gives you a steady, prolonged sales pattern.

Finally, the ease with which you can create a campaign, distribute it to your list and distribute coupon codes means you can set up future launches and promotions with very little effort or time expenditure. This gives you a quick, low-effort way to launch, or re-launch (as Dave was able to do in our case study).

How to Start Launching New Products Easily and Cheaply

Launching doesn’t have to be hard, and it doesn’t have to be expensive. But if you continue to rely on one-off launch services, it will be.

Here are a few steps to creating a sustainable launch method for future products.

• Start building your list. LandingCube landing pages with single-use promo codes are a great way to collect email subscribers.
• Engage your list. Don’t just build a list and never email your subscribers. Small, non-promotional emails every now and then, with content related to your niche is a good way to build customer relationships and keep your list engaged.
• When it comes time to launch, create a landing page with a small discount, and gradually send the promotion out to your list.

Originally published at https://landingcube.com on October 20, 2019.