As with all product launch or keyword ranking methods there are specific actions and steps that are required to achieve the end goal of an increase in rank. Beyond the technical steps, there are also the principles and nuances that move you from taking action, to taking action correctly and effectively.
This article provides the step by step actions required to setup a promotion and distribute single use coupon codes through AMZ Coupon Server, a WordPress Plugin for your very own website.
List of Tools and Skills Involved in the process
Before you start, the tools we’ll be using are:
- Your own WordPress Website
- AMZ Coupon Server Plugin
- Amazon Seller Central > Promotions > Single Use Coupon Codes
- Facebook Ads Manager
- Graphic Design Tool (Canva.com)
- Bit.ly link shortener
You need the skill and ability to:
- Setup a Promotion in Amazon Seller Central
- Create a Facebook Ad
- Write copy for a Facebook Ad
- Design an image for a Facebook Ad
- Basic CSS Knowledge (Optional)
Step 1 – Setting up a promotion in Amazon Seller Central
Here’s a video by Chris Shaffer on how to setup a promotion on Amazon. It’s pretty straightforward, but there’s some nuance explained along the way.
Most importantly:
- We’re setting up a “Percentage Off” promotion
- We’re going to select the exact product that we want to promote, not a group of products
- We’re going to select “Single Use” under the heading “Claim Code”
- We do this FIRST as it takes about 6 hours for the promotion to “go live” meaning codes won’t work until 6 hours after you click “submit”
Tips and Nuance:
- The end date of your promotion is not of concern right now, you can extend or shorten at some point in the future.
- Even if you set your end date out a month in the future, we’re still going to be telling people who claim a code that it only works for 24 hours. This is a calculated risk.
Coupon Codes in Hand we can head on to Step 2.
Step 2 – We Create Our 2 Step Storefront URL With a Target Keyword
You can get a quick explanation of how to do this in one of our other articles. Click here to learn how to create a 2 Step Storefront URL with only one product displaying
Here’s a quick video from the Helium10 Blog on how to create the 2-step storefront URL, but it doesn’t explain everything.
How to Create a Custom 2-Step Storefront URL for Top Product Ranking – Helium 10
In order to display only 1 product on the storefront page you must add;
&field-asin=XXXXXXXXXX
to the end of the URL you created in the above video. (Obviously replacing the X’s with the ASIN of the product you want to show up on the page.
Step 3 – Create a Bit.ly link from your 2 step storefront URL
Bitly is simply a link shortening service. You paste in your long messy amazon storefront URL which has symbols, numbers and letters into the text bar at Bitly.com and it provides you with a short and sexy link. You can see this in the image below.
Now you have your shortened 2 step storefront URL you can head on over to Step 4.
Step 4 – Create a new Campaign in AMZ Coupon Server
For this step you head on over to your website and login to the back end of WordPress. Once logged in, you want to head to the tab on the left that says “AMZ”, this opens your AMZ Coupon Server Dashboard.
Once in the AMZ Coupon Server Dashboard, Click “Create New Campaign” and then fill in the one-page form as in the video below.
Some nuances:
- We customise the email to include the Bit.ly Link you created in Step 3 (we delete the shortcode [[Link]] from the standard email template)
- We send the customer to a “Thank You” page (memorise this URL for now)
- We don’t connect to Mailchimp, as the API is currently broken (as of September 2018)
- We do not paste in the Amazon Coupon Codes yet – we put in 2 made up codes, such as “TESTCODE1” and “TESTCODE2”
- We always use a percentage off discount
- We untick “Add name field to submission form”
- We leave “Allow one promo code per email address” and “Allow one promo code per IP Address” ticked
Before you click “Update and Save” make note of your “Embed Code” it will look something like this:
[AMZ id=’1′ /]
Step 5 – Create Your Offer Landing Page
Your offer landing page is where you’re going to embed the AMZ Coupon Server form which is used to collect the visitors email address.
These are the basic steps using our theme and page builder, but these will have slightly different steps depending on your configuration.
- Create a new page in WordPress
- Call your page something user and manager friendly i.e. <[Product Name] [percentage off] [marketplace] [month] [year]>
- Paste your Embed Shortcode into the page (either into a text module of your page builder, or directly into the WordPress standard page builder)
- Change your page template to one that doesn’t have a header and ideally, a minimised footer. (This prevents there from being any other distractions on the page when people land on it)
- (Optional) Style the form with in-line CSS to make sure the form looks how you want it to.
NOTE: Once you’ve setup one campaign with an offer landing page you can just duplicate that page and change the “AMZ ID” within the raw HTML of the page. That might sound scary, but it’s REALLY easy.
In the screenshot below you’ll see the raw HTML, within that HTML you’ll see a grey highlighted area. This is where you make your edit.
Where it says;
value=”3″
is where the campaign is referenced. If you remember, your “Embed Code” had a number in it and looked something like this;
[AMZ id=’1′ /]
The number “1” in the above Embed Code can be pasted into the raw HTML to change the campaign. So in this example, the existing page in the HTML screenshot was referencing Campaign “3”, but you could change this for number “1” and the landing page is now for a completely different campaign. Campaign 1.
Step 5.1 – Bonus Step – Prevent Unwanted Styling Issues
Sometimes, with the AMZ Coupon Server plugin installed, you may experience some changes to the styling of other unrelated areas of your site.
If this happens, simply go to the WordPress Customizer and find the “Additional CSS” tab, you can then add some CSS which will prevent the AMZ Coupon Server Style Sheet from interacting with the underlying styling of the site.
Example code that we use:
.amzcs_submit {
background-color: #f4498d!important;
border: none !important;
color: white !important;
padding: 16px 32px !important;
text-align: center !important;
font-size: 16px !important;
margin: 4px 2px !important;
transition: 0.3s !important;
display: inline-block !important;
text-decoration: none !important;
cursor: pointer !important;
}
.amzcs_submit:hover {background-color: #1425e2 !important;}
.flavr-button {
background-color: #f4498d!important;
color: white !important;
}
.flavr-outer {
background-color: #000000!important;
}
Step 6 – Create Your Thank You Page
Once again, as page design will be specific to your website the high level steps are as follows;
- Create new page in WordPress
- Call your page something user and manager friendly i.e. <Thank You Here’s Your Discount Code [SKU] [Marketplace]>
- Style your page how you wish
- Paste in Discount Code Short Code to show the Discount Code to the visitor once they land on this page (the code will also get emailed to them)
- Insert a button (or multiple buttons) with the link URL being the 2-step storefront URL
Some tips and nuance:
- Make sure the button you create prompts a new window to open, leaving the discount code on display for the user
- Display product images on the thank you page to act as a last convincer
- Embed a countdown timer to create a sense of urgency, 24 hours is always a good starting point, but 1 hour might work even better
- Even though the coupon codes do not expire in this time, it doesn’t matter. This is a measured risk.
Step 7 – Test Your AMZ Coupon Server Setup
At this point, it’s worth testing your setup. Very simply that means you follow the steps below;
- Go to your offer landing page
- Enter an email address (not an email address with the same domain as the landing page)
- Check that you land on the Thank You Page
- Check that the “TESTCODE1” test code actually displays on the page
- Click on the button(s) on the thank you page and check that your 2 step storefront URL displays with the keywords at the end of it in the URL bar of your browser
- Check that you receive an email with the “TESTCODE1” included
- Click the link in the email and check that your 2 step storefront URL displays with the keywords at the end of it in the URL bar of your browser
That’s the deliverability and links tested, now to test the distribution limiters. i.e. one code per email address, one code per IP address.
Firstly to test 1 code per IP Address;
- Go to your offer landing page in the same browser as you did the previous test
- Enter a different email address (not an email address with the same domain as the landing page)
- Check that the warning message appears and prevents you from getting another code
Now to test 1 code per Email Address;
- Go to your offer landing page on a different device, not connected to the same WiFi network
- Enter the same email address as you did in the first part of the testing
- Check that the warning message appears and prevents you from getting another code
And voila, your testing is about as complete as it needs to be for now.
Step 8 – Design Your Facebook Ad Image
Use Canva to create yourself a kick ass Ad image.
Step 9 – Setup Your Facebook Ad – Do NOT Activate
See alternative approach to using Facebook Ads at end of article.
Setup a Facebook Ad Campaign, Ad Set and Ad.
- Pay per impression
- The goal is clicks
- Provide an enticing headline
- Change call to action to “Get Offer”
- Write relatable Ad text for your audience
- DO NOT ACTIVATE – Save as Draft
Step 10 – Paste In Your Coupon Codes To Your AMZ Coupon Server Campaign
Go back to your Amazon Promotion, click “Manage Claim Codes” and create yourself a number of claim codes.
Download the claim codes, open the text file and cut and paste these claim codes into the AMZ Coupon Server Campaign you created.
NOTE: AMZ Coupon Server doesn’t allow you to set a daily limit of the number of codes it gives out. Therefore to maintain control of this, only paste in the number of coupon codes you want to give out in a single day.
This means you need to copy and paste new codes into your campaign every day, but this isn’t all that time consuming. The key is aligning this process with the running of your Facebook Ad. More on this is step 13.
Step 11 – Limit the Maximum Order Quantity Of Your Amazon Product Listing
Even though the coupon code is a single use coupon code, a buyer on Amazon could still buy ALL of your stock at the discounted rate using 1 code.
To prevent this from happening (and you losing a LOT of money) simply limit the maximum order quantity of the product that you’re offering at a discount.
To limit the maximum order quantity of a single product listing do this:
- Go to the “Manage Inventory” tab in seller central
- Find the product that you are going to promote
- Click “Edit” on the right hand side of the page to edit the listing
- Go to the “Offer” tab in the listing editor
- Where it says “Maximum Order Quantity” enter “3”
- Click “Save and Close”
Your inventory should now be protected.
If you want to check that this saved properly (which you should), follow steps 1-4 again and check that in the “Maximum Order Quantity” field it says “3”.
Step 12 – Switch On Your Facebook Ad
Simply activate your Facebook Ad
Step 13 – Monitor Number of Codes Remaining vs Facebook Ad Budget Spend
As there are no daily limits on the number of coupons that can be claimed via your offer landing page, the only way to impose a limit is to only paste in the number of codes you want to give away in a single day.
If you manage it this way, you’ll also want to make sure that once all the coupon codes have been claimed, you stop running the Facebook Ad. This is simply wasted budget, and you can start getting negative comments on your Ad when lots of people are turned away and told there are no more codes.
This takes monitoring throughout the day, but as Facebook Ads can literally be turned off with the swipe of a finger on an iPhone, this is no big deal.
Step 9a – THE ALTERNATIVE TO FB ADS – Setup Amazon Product Giveaway and Direct traffic to “offer page”
By clicking on any product listing on Amazon, you can create a giveaway. Basically people take the action required to be in with a chance of winning the product you have bought to giveaway.
This is pretty cheap traffic – easily 5,000-6,000 page views for about $50 (depends on the price of the product).
And you don’t have to giveaway your product, you can giveaway a competitor’s product, or a related product.
The only slight issue is that there could be too much traffic. If you only want to run a promotion on an extra 10-20 units, that’s like 0.2-0.4% of the traffic converting – you’re likely to run out of codes!
And think about it. This traffic should convert! They’re on Amazon. They’re looking at your product, or a related product with purchasing in mind. If the conversion rate for that traffic isn’t above 1-3% I do not know what sort of traffic you would need. Put another way. This isn’t cold Facebook Ad traffic that’s going to ditch you quicker than look at you!