CATEGORY: Brand Monkey News, Selling on Amazon
Jackanapes: A plan to grow sales on Amazon and Shopify
POSTED ON June 12th, 2024
by Holly Lucas
Social Media
As we had already decided on which social media channels we were going to use, our graphic designer began working on our social posts. Before going live on Amazon, we started teasing our new brand and products on each platform.
These were our first posts on TikTok, Instagram and Facebook. We created a number of posts on each platform in the 3 weeks leading up to the launch date to gain initial traction. We really wanted to create a buzz around the product before going live, particularly as chilli challenges are popular video content on TikTok. This is a similar method that we’ve used on our successful crowdfunding campaigns in the past.
We also created a newsletter signup via our Shopify website, encouraging our social media viewers to sign up to receive unique discounts and offers. Although this would be an ongoing newsletter, our posts were specifically targeted towards the launch. We wanted to know what potential sales we could be making before we’d gone live.
Alas, things don’t always work out how you think they might. We’re not here to sugarcoat everything and pretend it was perfect! People don’t hand over their details easily when signing up for newsletters (we all have strong opinions about website popups!). Whilst we did get some sign-ups, a lot of them were people we knew. Such lovely, supportive friends and family, but shouldn’t that be the way with small businesses?
Instead, we changed the tactic to concentrate on what would be a fair exchange for details. So, we introduced campaigns that would offer free products for customers to try in exchange for their details, followed by running regular competitions for people to win one of everything we make. This way we could notify customers about new competitions. As it stands, this has grown our email audience to over 1000 and growing quickly.
Reviews
Whilst we were invading social media, we also knew we needed to start getting reviews. It’s tricky convincing a potential new customer to buy your product when there’s no evidence of other sales. It’s no secret that having reviews on Amazon can not only improve sales but also help boost your ranking in the search results.
- Reviews by someone with a financial interest in the company
- A review by someone with a close personal relationship to the owner/company
- Fake reviews left by the owner posing as a shopper
- A review in exchange for a monetary gift
The VINE Programme
Amazon offers a programme where businesses can submit products for review by trusted Amazon customers. It’s potentially risky as the reviews you receive can be positive or negative, but customers prefer honesty. Vine users have their own shopping area where they can claim products and then they have 90 days to leave a review.
Enrolment in the VINE programme costs £140 per SKU, regardless of the number of units. As Jackanapes was being run cashless, we decided to enter one product at a time as and when the sales covered the costs. What better product to start with than the Carolina Reaper Hot Sauce. This was the product we thought would be the most popular, particularly as a chilli challenge, so wanted to get it off the ground as soon as possible.
As a reminder, this series of blogs highlights what’s needed to grow a brand on Amazon, helping you understand some of the costs, especially if you’re a start-up business. The VINE program, whilst powerful, can be expensive to the uninitiated and those just starting out. For example, if we entered all 7 products into the maximum price tier, this would set us back £980 plus the cost of 210 products, which would be greater than £600. That would total over £1500 before we really begin!
As such, we opted for a more structured approach by working on the most popular products. We selected these following our research, feeding the proceeds from sales back into the VINE program so we could enter more products over time.
The VINE results
We started by entering 30 bottles of Carolina Reaper Hot Sauce. Within 3 weeks, 27 of those products were claimed with 14 reviews given. As users have 90 days to submit a review, it does mean there can be a bit of a wait for feedback. Another niggle we found was that if people claimed a product then decided to cancel, those products couldn’t get reclaimed. So although we had submitted 30 hot sauces, three did not go out.
Given that we had taste-tested our products and researched what we believed customers were searching for, we were excited to see that the research had paid off. The reviews coming in were positive and constructive for potential buyers.
With a mixture of four and five stars, these were exactly the types of reviews that would work for us making sales on Amazon. By gaining feedback, we could certainly see the benefit the Carolina Reaper Hot Sauce had over the other products.
From June to August, the reaper had sold 4.5x more than the other products. Yes, 30 of those products had gone through VINE, but in a crowded category such as hot sauce, the reviews are an incredibly important tool to boost us in the search results. We’re currently sitting on page 3 of the search for hot sauce. Our aim is to reach page 1.
Here’s a graph showing how our ranking drastically improved following its participation in the VINE program from June to August. As you can see, there was a huge increase in August once the reviews started rolling in.
Launch discount codes
As we hadn’t had much success with initial newsletter signups, we decided to include our discount code for the launch in our social media posts. This was actually much more effective. When we did go live, we then had a number of customers using the launch discount with their purchase. It’s all trial and error folks!
We’ve continued posting regularly on social media since going live, trialling different graphics, copy and videos. That’s a story for another blog…
One thing we were super pleased about was our launch date TikTok video, which had over 10.5K views!
@jackanapes.shop Available to buy on #Amazon UK now! Bag yourself one of our #hotsauces that uses the #hottest #chilli 🌶️ in the world 😱 #jackanapes #buynow #viral #challenge #chillichallenge
♬ original sound - Jackanapes
Short and sweet, don’t you think? Check out our next blog to see how we tackled social media in more detail…