How To Promote FBA Products Without Using Amazon Ads

Your go-to option for promoting your FBA products is, of course, using Amazon’s very own built-in ads platform. But have you considered advertising your products from outside of Amazon?

Amazon ads are highly competitive and expensive to run in many product categories. So to make a success of your FBA business, you may be forced to broaden your horizons by exploring a different approach.

Here’s how I promote my FBA products from outside of Amazon.

1. Create A Third Party Blog

My favourite (and most effective) technique for promoting my Amazon products is to create a ‘third party’ blog outside of my brand website. I’ll explain.

---

An Example Product

Let’s suppose the product you’re selling on Amazon is an electric hedge trimmer for the garden.

Assuming your brand itself has its own dedicated website (a storefront), you could simultaneously run an independent blog involving general aspects of gardening — mowing the lawn, shed projects, ornaments, building ponds etc. The blog would either be an extension of your existing site, or an entirely new domain. I prefer the latter.

---

Why Create A Separate ‘Third Party’ Site?

I like to separate the brand from the blog for several reasons:

1. There’s scope to promote products that you don’t sell. A brand website is expected to sell only it’s own products, whereas a general blog can recommend all kinds of brands. So it offers a lot more earning potential; especially if you use the Amazon Associates program.
2. It’s more trustworthy than a branded site. A third party blog is the perfect platform to voice opinions — both positive and negative — about anything relevant topics (e.g. best grass seed). Site visitors are likely to take notice of your views when you’re not tied to one specific brand.
3. You can break ‘character’. Most brands have a particular style and tone that needs to maintained throughout all content. A third party blog, however, means you’re unshackled: say what you want, how you want.
4. Google may detect branded content. I’m pretty sure Google can identify heavily branded written content. In theory, articles hosted on a brand site could perform poorly compared to those from an ‘impartial’ site.

Social media accounts (e.g. Twitter, Instagram, YouTube) can be bolted onto your third party site to provide additional platforms for same ‘message’ you’re putting out.

The obvious downside to this approach is that it requires a lot of work.

2. Publish Social Media Content

Using social media to promote FBA products is the go-to approach for many Amazon Sellers. The great thing about social media is that you can get going immediately at no cost.

Sellers use platforms like Instagram, Facebook and Twitter in the following ways:

• Showing their products in action. Images and videos bring your product to life. This can attract buyers; especially if you link to your Amazon listing.
• Sharing relevant content. There’s a limit to the amount of content you can produce yourself. So it’s important to follow other accounts, in order to share relevant content from your industry. For example, information about upcoming events.
• Telling the story of the business. Potential customers enjoy discovering more about brands and how they came to the fore. It helps to bring your business to life.

There’s also community-based platforms, such as Reddit and Quora (or even highly specialised sites) that can be used to promote your products. Just think: your product belongs in a broader category that people are likely to have many questions about. You can provide advice, recommending your products where fit.

For example if your FBA product is a PC gaming palm rest, then you could offer all kinds of posture/performance gaming tips.

The snag to this approach is that you’ve got to be careful not to break the rules of each platform. Don’t spam.

3. Create Videos & Vlogs

Written material is not the only format you can use to promote your products; some FBA Sellers take to YouTube instead.

Here’s some formats you could publish your videos in:

• Product demonstrations: a straightforward branded presentation of the product and its key features. Try to present your product as a solution to a problem.
• Vlog series: a collection of videos relating to your products. For example, a series of baking tutorials would be suitable if you’re selling cake making utensils through Amazon FBA.

It’s worth mentioning that one of my FBA businesses — Palio ETT — enormously benefited from a Vlog series named ‘Expert In A Year‘. The Vlog concept was simple: to become a ranked table tennis player in one year of intensive play.

The series was followed by many table tennis fans over the world, but soared in popularity when a compilation video went viral, reaching almost 13 million views. Although not a brand video per se, one of our products was heavily featured in the video and was proven to be an asset throughout the challenge.

---

4. Obtain Third Party Reviews

We’ve discussed using Blogs, Vlogs and Social Media to publish content relating to your products. How about just handing your products over to existing content creators to review?

A lot of FBA Sellers give out their products for free to sources outside of Amazon, in return for a review. There’s usually an additional fee charged. The idea is to increase increase the exposure of your FBA products.

Here’s who you you could contact:

• Well-ranked Blogs: contact websites with easy-to-find relevant articles that you would like your product to be featured on.
• Social Media Influencers: look for relevant accounts with a large number of (genuine) followers (I can’t stress relevant enough!).
• Popular YouTube Accounts: contact Vloggers with a lot of subscribers/likes and ask for a video review.

Reviews often carry a (hefty) fee. And you’ll be ignored/rejected a lot. But if you’re able to strike a reasonable deal, it will give your FBA product some much-needed exposure.

5. Improve Your SEO

Search Engine Optimisation will increase exposure to your FBA products. It’s hardly an overnight solution — but in the long-term it may have the biggest impact.

Personally, I aim to apply every known SEO technique to increase the rankings of my website product pages and blog content — which both drive traffic to my Amazon listings. As a result, the Amazon product URL begins to feature in Google searches, too.

There’s various ways to go about improving SEO. Here’s where to start:

• Top 10 SEO Tips For Beginners
• How to Write SEO Friendly Content

Can I Remain Ethical In Promoting My FBA Products?

Naturally, third party content and reviews you publish, or pay for, are likely to be ever-so-slightly biased. Is it ethical?

My stance is this:

---

---

There’s nothing wrong in promoting your own brand so long as it adds value to the customer. If you sell a great product, then you have nothing to feel guilty about. Don’t sell junk, full stop.

However, to remain fully transparent you should state in your content which products are yours and why they deserve exposure on your blog/vlog/channel. You can even request that paid for reviews clearly state sponsorship.

There’s always respectable — and equally despicable — ways of going about business. In the case of promoting your FBA products confidence, without the sleazy undertones, is always the best approach.

---