Hello, toy enthusiasts! This February 2025 masterclass focuses on the “Toy Launch Formula” — a comprehensive guide to taking new toy and game products from concept to Amazon success. We also hint at exciting upcoming changes to our webinar format for more interactive sessions.
Episode Highlight
- 00:00 Introduction and Special Guest Introduction
- 01:04 The Story Behind Play-A-Maze
- 01:43 The Fascination with Mazes and Mechanics
- 03:16 Developing Affordable STEM Toys
- 04:43 Demonstrating the Puzzle Maze
- 08:12 Challenges and Market Strategies
- 09:28 Crowdfunding Experience
- 11:43 E-commerce and Distribution Challenges
- 14:53 Creative Process and Product Development
- 17:00 Feedback and Testing with Children
- 19:46 Special Needs and Educational Benefits
- 24:37 Final Thoughts and Advice for Toy Entrepreneurs
- 25:46 Conclusion and Contact Information
Webinar Goals
Today’s goal is to equip you with strategies for effective inventory management, listing optimization, and impactful marketing strategies. Whether you’re launching a new product or seeking more traction for an existing one, these steps are crucial.
Meet Jason Hsieh
Jason Hsieh, your guide today, delves into his personal journey in the toy industry, catalyzed by the needs of his son diagnosed with autism. From creating a toy brand to managing multiple businesses, Jason shares insights developed over years of mastering digital marketing for toys.
Toy Marketing Essentials
Our three-principle system targets conversion optimization, profit margin understanding, and ongoing SEO improvements. Let’s break these down:
- Conversion Optimization: Ensure Amazon visitors understand and convert on your product detail pages.
- Profit Optimization: Target a minimum contribution margin of 25% after Amazon fees.
- Ongoing Optimization: Continuously refine listings and advertising based on updated data and trends.
Five Phases of Amazon Product Launches
- Explore External Traffic: Utilize social media, influencer partnerships, and email outreach.
- Fully Optimize Listings: Use professional images, videos, and A+ content.
- Gather Reviews: Secure at least 10 reviews to build credibility.
- Set Competitive Pricing: Perform competitor analysis to find the sweet spot.
- Initiate Advertising: Choose effective PPC strategies.
Amazon Launch Cycle Stages
- Launch Phase (First 30 Days): Leverage the honeymoon period where Amazon favors new products.
- Growth Phase (Months 2-3): Optimize advertising and manage wasteful spending.
- Profitability Phase (Month 4+): Focus on maximizing profits by refining strategies.
Legal and Compliance Essentials
Compliance is critical in the toy and game categories. Secure children’s product certifications to meet federal safety standards and avoid costly Amazon listing suspensions.
Market and Competitor Analysis
Conduct thorough market research and use tools like Helium 10 for competitor analysis. This informs your strategies and ensures your product stands out.
Branding and Listing Creation
Craft listings that reflect your brand identity and highlight key selling points. Create a compelling Amazon storefront and optimize product detail pages to maximize engagement and conversions.
Utilizing Enhanced Brand Content
Incorporating A+ content enhances your product’s appeal. Use visuals that communicate benefits and unique features effectively.
Review Strategies and Market Entry Calculations
Enrolling in Amazon Vine, ambassador programs, and leveraging software like Helium 10 helps gather initial reviews. Additionally, calculate your expected profit margins to ensure sustainable growth.
Advertising and Traffic Generation
Tailor your advertising strategies across various Amazon campaigns and incorporate external traffic drivers in your promotional plans.
Inventory Management: The Silent Success Factor
Efficient logistics and inventory planning are crucial to prevent stockouts and support your launch timeline effectively.
Conclusion
This comprehensive guide highlights the multifaceted approach needed for successful Amazon launches. Thank you for joining this month’s webinar. We look forward to seeing you at next month’s session and are always here to help you navigate your toy business journey on Amazon.
To stay updated with the latest episodes of Toy Business Unboxed and embark on your own journey into the toy business, don’t forget to subscribe and follow the podcast. If you found this episode insightful, please leave a rating and review, and share the podcast with fellow toy enthusiasts. Let’s embrace the world of toys together, staying curious and continuing to innovate.
Contact Information and Scheduling
For a free audit or to discuss your specific needs, feel free to schedule a time with us at www.toy-launch.com/schedule. You can also reach out via email if you have any questions or require further assistance.
Transcript
02-FEB-25_Webinar
Intro: [00:00:00] Welcome to Toy Business Unboxed, your gateway to the secrets of the toy industry. Here, Jason Hsieh, a toy entrepreneur and expert in the field. “Every product we develop is really inspired by some of the real life experience that we have with our son.” “60 percent of all toys last year were sold on Amazon.”
“Be passionate about it. Because it’s a road. It’s a journey.” “Like when you have an idea that you think is gonna somewhat change the world, make things better, I’d say go for it.“
Jason Hsieh: Hello, welcome to our February 2025 masterclass. This month we’ll discussing about the toy launch formula, how to take the new toys and games from zero to hero on Amazon. And also we’re considering changing some of our webinar format this year, we will be switching to a more [00:01:00] interactive format next month. So for those of you that’s watching and participating, thank you so much for participating in this month’s webinar. And also feel free to comment in our live stream. If you have any questions about any of the topic that we will be discussing today. So first of all, the webinar goal today is to learn the initial step, how to effectively manage inventory, optimize your listing and develop an impactful marketing strategy to ensure a successful Amazon product launch. And this apply to a brand new product that’s about to launch on Amazon. And this also apply to existing product that you already have, and that’s already selling on Amazon. but you’re not getting enough traction this is some of the steps that we’ll be discussing today. You can also apply to the existing product as well.
And we’ll be also talking about advertising and talking about some high level step different things that you can implement for your toys and game brand as you’re trying to scale up your sales on Amazon. Today’s agenda [00:02:00] first is to outline the key step and strategy to ensure a smooth launch on Amazon and we’ll talk about different type of marketing strategy you can look out for. And also have a talk about strategy on collecting reviews on Amazon to build credibility and trust, and also share some of the experiences of some case study of a different brand that we have worked with in the past. First of all, let me reintroduce myself again. My name is Jason Hsieh, and I also have been a toy entrepreneur since 2017. I stumbled into the toy industry back in 2017, to make the long story short, in 2013, our son was diagnosed with autism and ADHD while we were living in Japan. And we decided to move to the United States in 2015 because it was really hard for us to find the help and resources in Japan. Shortly after we moved to the States, we realized how hard it is for the medical insurance system here in the United States. And it doesn’t cover a lot of the [00:03:00] therapy that we needed for our son. And that’s why I started to decided to create my own toy brand on top of my corporate career back in 2017.
And that’s how I got into the toy industry and also how I got into doing digital marketing for my own brand. And since then I was able to slowly scale my brand over the year. And in early 2022 I decided to quit my full-time career and went full-time with running my toy businesses. And also in 2022, I started the second business, which is what we have as of today, which is toy launch is our digital marketing company, which we currently partner and manage about 20 different toys and game brands with their digital marketing, either on and off Amazon. So a little bit more about toy launch. We’re not just a digital marketing company. We also partner with a lot of different toys and game, and we specialize in the toys and game industry because that’s our core focus. And obviously we are also partner [00:04:00] with Shopify, Amazon. We are also part of Astra, which is one of the toy associations and also we’re a partner of with woman in toys and also United inventor association. And besides the business, we also run a podcast called toy business unbox podcast, which we interview various of different expert and people we in the toys and game industry over the year. So feel free to check out our podcast. If you have a chance.
Let me first talk about the three principle of our toys and games marketing system. One of the principle is about conversion optimization, which this is something we will be also discussing in doing the webinar today to talk about how we can optimize our listing on Amazon, especially the product detail page to ensure the people that’s visiting our product on Amazon can understand the product really quickly and make that informed buying decision. And second is profit optimization. It is important to sell on Amazon and other platform, but it’s also very [00:05:00] important for you to understand your numbers. So at the end of the day, it’s usually one of the benchmark we’re looking is for the contribution margin on Amazon. You want to make sure your brand can be operating at least 25 percent or higher in contribution margin, that means you’re selling price minus all the different Amazon fee, including Amazon referral fee, Amazon FBA fee, Amazon storage fee. You should have at least 25 percent or higher in margin in order for you to scale on Amazon, which is very, important. And last but not least is also, you need to work on ongoing optimization because Amazon is a search engine that is a lot of different things that you need to do in order to be successful on Amazon. And one of the things you want to do is also ongoing SEO optimization means you are switching and swapping and updating your keywords in your listing. You are updating your advertising strategy, your update, your images. So those are all part of the ongoing optimization that you should be doing for your brands on Amazon [00:06:00] on the ongoing basis to ensure you have the success that you want to have for your brand. And those are the five phases that we recommend for you to go through either for brand new product launches or for relaunches.
First, you want to make sure your Amazon listing is fully optimized, including you want to have the professional images, videos, and also A plus content. And during today’s webinar, I will also give some example and show some example of what it look like for a fully optimized Amazon listing. And second phase is you want to make sure you get the reviews for your Amazon product detail page, which is also very important because review is one of the major like factor that the Amazon consumer is looking at before they made that buying decision about your product. And then the third part is you also want to set sales price that’s competitive to the rest of your competitor on Amazon by looking and doing a competition analysis to see where is everyone’s price at and make sure you set a price that is reasonable, [00:07:00] not too high and not too low compared to the rest of your competitor in order for you to gain traction and gain the sales velocity that you’re looking for on Amazon. And then number four is going to be, after you finish the grading and listing, getting a review and set the reason of price, and then it’s a time for you to turn on advertising, which is a PPC on Amazon, which is pay per click, which we’ll also talk a little bit about today and the last but not least is then you need to work on if you have the bandwidth to also do outside traffic. This is optional, but it helped a lot. If you also have social media filing, you have an email list, you have an influencer you’re working with, or you have been working with any kind of creator on Tik TOK. Those are the time to bring some additional traffic from outside of Amazon into Amazon, especially during the launch process that will really help you to gain the traction that you deserve for your brand.
So one more thing I want to also illustrate as far as product launch goes, there’s about three different stages in the typical [00:08:00] Amazon product launch cycle, including launch phase, growth phase, and profitability phase. For the launch phase usually is the first 30 days is often referred to in within the Amazon industry as honeymoon period means during the first 30 days, Amazon is going to rank your product higher, give you a product, more visibilities, more like traction than the typical product, because Amazon is also testing to see if your product and your brand can make them more money. Essentially, that’s what they are looking for is can this new product I’ll sell all the other existing product that has been around on the Amazon platform for a while. So during the first 30 days, it is really critical for you to prove to Amazon that your product have the potential, your brand have the potential to outsell some of your competitors. And so that during that first 30 days, you also want to make sure you get as many reviews as soon as possible, getting to at least 10 plus review is going to be a very important benchmark. And one of the strategy you can do [00:09:00] is to use Amazon buying program to try to get that initial review as soon as you can.
And then during the first month, you want to be more aggressive on your advertising strategy to bring as many traffic to your product detail page as possible to really gain that initial traction, and also you want to make sure you’re using the right keyword, which is something we’ll be also covering.
Then phase two is a growth phase, during this phase, which usually is amongst two and three. You want to make sure you are also optimizing your advertising efforts, and you’re also optimizing for your conversion rate. You’re also optimizing for your impression clicks and also make sure you manage the wasted aspen and you don’t overspend on advertising. And also that’s where the ongoing optimization really come in place in doing the months two and three, because those are the time that you need to look at all the data and make the informed business decision to make the optimization that you need to do for your brand on Amazon. Then on the month four and beyond, that’s where you can focus a little bit [00:10:00] more on profitability because now you are gaining the traction both organically and also on the paid traffic side, you are getting more, you’re getting a higher rank on different keywords that you want to rank for. And you are also getting more visibility in the Amazon platform. So usually in months four and beyond, this is where you can. further optimize your advertising, further optimize your listing to, to really improve and increase the profitability for your brand on the ongoing basis. And next, I’m going
to talk about all the different scenes you want to look out for that’s new to the Amazon platform. First of all, the most important part is legal and compliance. You want to make sure you understand the Amazon policy. Amazon guideline depends on the category. For the category we are mostly discussing is toys and games, there is some specific Amazon compliance requirements regarding about toys and games. In the toys and games categories, the most common compliance is children product certifications. This is a legal required document to certify the toys and games that you’re selling complies with the federal [00:11:00] safety standard for children product. This is very important, especially for those of you selling in the United States. This is actually a federal U. S. law that you need to have this particular certificate for your product. And. This is also something Amazon will be requesting for you to submit. And some of the key requirement for the children product certification, you want to make sure you have the model number, you have a detailed descriptions, and you also have this down all the different safety standard that has been met for, with your product. And you also want to make sure you include the manufacturer and importer details, and also need to included the lab information as well. If you, need help on finding a reputable lab, we also have a referral that we can send out for those of you that’s looking for getting additional CPC or children product certificate for your toys and game product. And this is a very important step to get it right. Because if your document is not fully in place and Amazon rejected, it take a very long time. Sometimes up to a few months [00:12:00] even if to go back and forth with amazon’s team, because Amazon is saying that, oh, it’s missing one of the items they’re looking for, and they will reject your product. And actually, they will suspend your product listing altogether if your document is not meeting the Amazon standard. So this is a very critical initial part for those of you that’s considering launching or selling on Amazon to get the children product certificate and to get the rest of the test fully in compliance before you start selling on Amazon. This is also a very tedious and very long process. So I usually recommend the people I’m talking to, to work with a reputable company. And we also have different partner that we work with over the years. So for those of you that is looking for partner for getting this kind of test, just reach out and we can send you the referral for it. And here is also how to submit your CPC to Amazon. You want to make sure you upload your CPC or Chosen Product Certificate using in your Seller Central under the product compliance request and make sure all the details match with your product [00:13:00] listing as well that you’re creating and be prepared to appeal for any kind of rejection because sometimes Amazon will be asking for very tiny changes or tiny modifications and common mistake to avoid is make sure you have the right information in the report you’re submitting and make sure your document is also up to date. Amazon will be asking the document, the certificate to be within the last 12 months usually. So you want to make sure that it’s also up to date and submitted to Amazon in a timely manner.
So the next step you want to look into and consider is really market analysis. So you want to do a market research and identify your potential customer segment for the type of customer that you want to sell your product to on Amazon, then you can also create a post like a buyer personnel and really validate the buyer that you want to speak with, that you want to engage on Amazon. So one of the example that I want to show, it’s called a story brand script. This is a branding [00:14:00] exercise that we have done in the past for one of our brand so this exercise is going through and try to understand who exactly is the ideal customer. What do the idea of customer look like, what kind of problem they have, and how can we position ourselves as a guide to their problem? And how is we as a brand owner, as a manufacturer, how can we give them the marketing? How can we give them the plan and provide them with a call to actions? And what is the character transformation? They will go through if they do decide to engage with us and purchase one of our product. What is the character transformation they will go from before they purchase the product and what are some of the success they will experience after they purchase our product. And if they, and what kind of success and what kind of failure the customer will experience is by engaging and using the product we’re providing. This is a, very useful branding exercise that you can also do for your own brand.
Then on the competitor analysis on [00:15:00] Amazon, there’s a lot of different tools that you can use. One of the tool we recommend is a Helium 10. And we’ll also make sure we include our affiliate link we have a discount with Helium 10. If you haven’t used them before, you get a 20 percent off on their software. Using Helium 10, you can also identify some of your top competitor and you can conduct more in depth analysis to review your competitor’s listing, their price and their review and also assess the overall, like how competitive the marketplace is for the product that you are planning to sell, which is also very important before you start selling on Amazon or if you’re already selling on Amazon, this is something you also want to take a look at on a regular basis. Usually we recommend to look at it at least once a quarter. You look at any, who are the new competitor that’s coming into the space and what kind of product do they have, how many reviews they have so far. How much traction they have and where is their price point for some of the new competitor. This is also very important to understand. And this is an example of what a competitive [00:16:00] analysis will look like using Helium 10. So you can see, you can choose some of the key competitor and you can see data like what is their price point? How much amongst these sales they are currently doing right now and how many review they have and what is their rating? So those are all very, important data to take a look at when you are making the decision on your marketing strategy on Amazon by looking directly at your competitors. One of the things I also want to mention when you’re doing this competitor analysis is make sure you also look at their review because that is a goldmine of information, especially the negative review, because by looking and analyzing some of the negative reviews from your closest competitor, you can tell like what that is all the other customer saying about your competitor’s product. And you can make improvement based on some of those insight for your own product. So for the next version, two, version three of your own product, you can make an ongoing improvement and make a better version based on some of the customer review. And [00:17:00] this is also another really good way to look at Amazon data.
Going back to the branding strategy and design you want to make sure the branding and the listing you’re creating is reflecting your overall brand identity and highlight some of the key selling point. I’m also going to give some example of what it will look like on Amazon as well. So for example first of all Amazon have two main things. There is a product detail page and there’s also a Amazon storefront. Those are two different assets that you can have on Amazon. So the storefront is just like any other e commerce storefront you can create, but under the Amazon ecosystem, you can create an Amazon storefront that holds all your product together and you can showcase multiple products on the same page and you make a easier way shopping experience for your potential customer on Amazon. So having a well optimized Amazon storefront is also very important for your ongoing success on the platform and besides the storefront one thing that’s even more important than your storefront [00:18:00] is your Amazon product detail page, because majority of the Amazon shopper, I would say 70 or 80 percent of the shoppers, they just go to the product detail page. They actually don’t always go to your store. A very small, like a much smaller number of the customer actually visit your store. But almost everyone that click on your product detail page will see your product listing. So here are some of the steps that you want to consider when you’re creating or optimizing your new or existing Amazon product detail page and your product listing.
First, you want to make sure you have a spreadsheet was all the information that was all the different product. It depends on how many product you have in your catalog. You want to categorize and include all the key information. We usually refer to as Amazon listing master of all the information, the dimension, the price and usually in our version, we also include our costs and our lending costs and the Amazon referral fee and Amazon FBA fee. So in this spreadsheet, we can also see [00:19:00] what is our product margin for every single product? We’re selling Amazon. This is very important to understand our margin, understand our number before we dive in and start creating the Amazon product listing. Second is you can create a skeleton listing before you finish the fully optimized listing that way you have a kind of like a placeholder on the Amazon system. So you can create a listing using the UPC code and then you can do and do the ongoing optimization and finalize your listing later on. The third step you will also want to create is a creative guideline for your brand and for all the different product you have under your brand. A creative guideline usually include your font, the font size, the colors how you want your brand to look like and feel like on Amazon. And then on the fourth step is you want to create a SEO optimized listing by doing in depth SEO researches about what are the keywords that will be relevant for your product on Amazon. How much search volume do they have? Does my competitor also [00:20:00] being ranked on those keyword I want to optimize for. That is also a very critical step because Amazon, again, it’s a search engine. So including the right keyword in your title, bullet points and product description is one of the critical way for your potential buyer to find you and find your product on Amazon. If you don’t include some of the right keyword, it will be almost near impossible for your potential customer to find you because you don’t have the right keyword. Then step number five is to make sure you are also creating the optimized listing images, which I’ll show you some of the example on what does the optimized Amazon listing images usually look like. One of the key thing you want to keep in mind is majority of the Amazon buyer when they shop on the platform. They do not read as much as they just they are more of a visual. A lot of the shopper is more visual. So they will look at the images. They’ll maybe look at the videos, but they will not read every single bullet point that you write and they usually won’t read every single thing you write in the product description as much as [00:21:00] well. So you want to make sure you’re listing is very visually appealing to your potential customer. And you also want to prepare a high quality product video, which is very essential for conversion on Amazon is to have a short video. As far as the video format, usually we suggest to keep it under a minute. For product listing video, if you want to use a video to run advertising on Amazon, usually we’ll experiment with 15 second, 30 second, and 45 second video to run different type of video ads on Amazon. Then step number seven, you also want to set up is enhanced brand content, which I’ll give you some example on what does the enhanced brand content look like. This is what in the product description section of the Amazon with all the additional like banners and additional images that you can showcase your product even better is called enhanced brand content. Some people also refer to it as A+ content, but it’s referring to the same component. Then step eight is you want to update all your listing with your final images and the videos based on after you [00:22:00] finish doing all the work. Then depends on your stages of the product launches you also want to include an Amazon coupon too. So you encourage more people to buy especially for a brand new product launch. And if you have more than one product, this is also where you can set up virtual bundle. Which you can combine different product within the similar category together to encourage people buying like multiple products on your brand, instead of just a single product, then the final step is you want to create a master keyword list of all the main keyword that you want to be optimizing for on Amazon for your product. And that master keyword list is something you want to update and revisit on an ongoing basis as well. Because the keywords also change because the keyword search volume, sometimes the trend of the keyword also change. For us and for our team, this is something we also look at on a monthly basis to make sure we have a master keyword list for all the products that we’re managing and we’re updating it and making optimization accordingly based on the data we are seeing on [00:23:00] Amazon.
Here are some of the example of different enhanced brand content or is also referred to as premium A plus. Let me share a different screen that’s a little bit bigger. So GoChuckle is one of the client that we currently working with, and this is the, this is what our team created for their brand. So as you can see, this is usually showing up in the product description sessions. So you want to make sure you have a really like colorful banner talk about for the car game you want to tell the buyer what is inside the box, how many cards do they have, and how many players, and you also want to talk about the age group of your product, obviously, and especially for card game and board game, you also want to mention like how long does a typical game usually take, you want to mention about, Oh, this game usually take about 30 minutes to complete. And then you can also really highlight different unique feature. For example, this is a special feature in Amazon where you can have like a slide show that talk about different major benefit about the product for example, just promote creativities [00:24:00] and strategy sinkings. And it’s also ideal for a small group or big gathering. Then if you have any reward that you have gotten this is also a place to highlight it in your product descriptions and that you can also do hover over functions. So when people hover over, you can see there’s additional information about a different component for example, they have in ingredients cards and they have also a recipe card. And then you can also talk about how the gameplay you can have a very quick, easy explanation of how the gameplay of the card games or the board game, or even the toys that you are selling on Amazon. So this is an example of what premium A plus or enhanced brand content could look like on Amazon if you do the optimization correctly. And here are some additional example of other optimization we have done in the past. For example, on the right, this is the listing images for listing images is very important to have different infographic of the product. It’s very important to have infographic means you [00:25:00] don’t just have the images, but you also have the text to explain what the customer is looking at. And you want to include product feature and product benefit in your infographic. For example, we also usually like to use different icon to indicate a special skill the toys or the game that can also help the kids with, for example, this game, it can help to improve motor skills or foster tactical sinkings. What does it look like and what is some of the major feature and major benefit. Like I mentioned, majority of the customer on Amazon, they don’t read, they just swipe swipe, And they look at all the images and they made that instant decision on whether or not they want to buy this product or not. So in your images, you want to make sure you include all the additional information. So for those visual buyer, they can also make the buying decision that way. And going back to enhance brand content, there’s different design element in the enhanced brand content you can consider. The one I show earlier is it’s called premium a plus. This is a [00:26:00] traditional a plus the one I’m showing right now is a traditional a plus content format. So for a traditional format, you can have logo on top following by a banner. We will recommend to use a four by four grid means you use four images and talk about four major feature, then you talk about four major benefit of your product. So you have four images, four explanation, then followed by four more icon and four more explanation. So this, is the layout that we have been testing that work really well for Amazon. Then you have additional banner on the bottom of your product description to explain the major benefit of the product even further. Here are more example of other things that we have done in the past. Again the comments right here is you want to make sure that listing images is colorful, and it’s also including all the additional information that you really want to explain to your potential buyers on the image itself and on the EBC also want to make sure you have all the layout so you [00:27:00] can explain to the potential customer in a very timely manner so they can, make the informed buying decision.
Next, I want to transition to talk about the initial review strategy. Right now in 2025 for Amazon, the most common way to get review is to enroll in Amazon Vine, that will be the most compliance way to get reviews for Amazon Vine currently, of course they do change their program from time to time. Currently can enroll up 30, a unit for Amazon Vine per asin. So for every single Amazon product ASIN, you can enroll up to 30 unit for review and for 30 unit amazon charge you $200 to enroll into their program. Then they will send your product to their Amazon Vine reviewers. Then the vine reviewer will receive your product and if they like it, they will leave you a review based on the product they receive or if you have your own. Internal email list. You can also consider to run an ambassador program to engage with your existing list. If you have a [00:28:00] existing email list that you communicate with and you can just say, Oh, hi, ambassador, we have a new product that we’re launching on Amazon. Will you be interested to purchase one and give us an honest opinion about like our product on Amazon as well. So that’s that’s another strategy you can use, and also there’s different software our partner, helium 10, with a software you can also set up auto review requests through Amazon’s platform. So for every single buyers that’s buying the software can trigger a review request directly to the Amazon buyer to get more review as well. So those are the three common strategy to get a review on Amazon right now.
Next thing I want to talk about, this is something I also mentioned earlier is to make sure you understand your profit margin. You want to understand is your current profit margin or contribution margin for your Amazon listing is you should be aiming for at least 25 percent or higher. One of the tool you can use, you can Google Amazon revenue calculator and Amazon have like an inter online portal that you can use by entering your product [00:29:00] dimension, entering your weight and entering your selling price. The Amazon is going to calculate and it’s going to show you after all the Amazon feed, how much profit will you still have after selling on Amazon, Amazon taking all the feed, you want to make sure you have at least 25 percent or higher in your profit margin in order to be successful Amazon, because that’s also other fee for example, you still need to run advertising. So there’s still other additional costs that you want to consider, especially if you want to scale on Amazon.
Next, like I already mentioned, you want to also determine the initial sales price. You want to set the price that is reasonable so you can compete with some of your top seller or some of your top competitor. You can also adjust the price as your ranking grows. You can slowly raise the price as you have a higher ranking, as you have more and more review and you can also slowly adjust your price over time. But it is very important initially to set a reasonable price so you can stay competitive with the other competitions on Amazon. [00:30:00] So that’s why you need to understand your margin first based on your margin. Then you understand, okay, I have 30 or 40 percent margin, so maybe I can lower my price by a dollar or 2 and I still have enough margin to grow and still have a margin to gain that initial traction and velocity on Amazon. So determining that initial selling and selling price is also very important for your long term success on the Amazon platform.
After you finish the listing optimization, the reviews and get all your compliance in line. You want to come up with a advertising strategy and advertising plan by researching relevant keywords for PPC or pay per click advertising, you also want to set up keyword tracking, and then you also want to create custom images for Amazon headline ads. For Amazon ad platform, there’s a couple of different major common ad type that usually we use there’s sponsored product. Sponsor brand and sponsor display. So sponsor product is the most commonly used advertising type. And there’s [00:31:00] also sponsor brand Then this is where you can have headline images and you can also have video ads under the sponsor, a brand ad type. And you also want to make sure you segment your advertising strategy into different categories, depends on who are you trying to target. For example, you can set up auto campaign, which is targeting user based on the Amazon algorithm. And the auto campaign will actually, the Amazon system will read your entire listing, all the keywords that you already included in your initial listing, and it’s going to auto identify potential customer based on what you already provide to Amazon. That’s why the initial listing optimization is so important because if you don’t do the initial keyword research correctly, Amazon system is not able to really recognize what your product really is about. That is going to have impact on every single other element when you come to selling Amazon as well. So besides the auto campaign, you also want to set up category campaigns, which are targeting user use based on [00:32:00] the search term, especially different search term within your product categories. You can set up category campaign to target different keywords using broad match, phrase match, or exact match. Then the third type of strategy you can also do is to target user that’s searching for your competitor’s brand name or your competitor’s product. You can set up a competitor’s campaign as well that’s going after the competitor. The fourth type of advertising segmentation you can also do is to, it’s called branded campaign means you are targeting user that’s searching for your own brand and so you want to make sure your competitor is when people are searching for your brand, your competitor doesn’t show up. You can make sure you show up for your own brand. So that’s also very important. So those are the four main strategy you can do on Amazon advertising segmentation, but that’s a lot more other, more in depth strategy. But for the sake of today’s webinar, I’m just going to talk about some high level, like the most common one that we usually use when we are managing and helping toys and [00:33:00] game brands launching on Amazon.
And as far as external traffic and promotional plan, one of the most common strategy you can consider is to partner with influencer outside of Amazon or doing some kind of email marketing during the product launch. Those a few of the most common strategy that a lot of the brand that we work with also use. You can do social media promotions and social media campaign, or when you have a new product launch. You can also create a promotional strategy to make sure you can really highlight and promote your product in the timely manners. Like I mentioned, the first 30 days, which is the honeymoon period is critical for your long term success on Amazon. So you want to bring and drive as many traffic as you can. If you have the resource to do you should definitely consider doing email marketing or SMS marketing. If you have a SMS list that you can do for SMS marketing, and then you can also partner with a influencer and really try to drive more attention to your product on Amazon.
The next [00:34:00] component, now you have the listing finish, you have the advertising, you have the sales price, you have the review. One more component you really want to consider is inventory management. How can you create an inbound shipment? How do you coordinate the inventory? And how do you plan your launch timeline so you have enough inventory at Amazon so it doesn’t run out of stock which is also very important in your long term planning. You also want to see how are you going to, what is your logistics choices, how do you bring the product, if either you, if you’re manufacturing overseas, how do you bring the product to Amazon in the timely and the cost effective manner so you can launch on Amazon in time.
So, those are some of the high level I talk about really quickly on all the different scenes and all the different components you want to consider when you’re launching Amazon. For those of you that have additional questions feel free to put some of your question in the chat and let us know. Also let us know some of the struggle that you’re still facing with your Amazon channel. We are more than happy to help you [00:35:00] with some of your questions that you might still have.
What we also do for free is if you only have a toys and game brand, we also do a free audit for your brand. We actually will do the free competition audit, profitability audit, and also advertising audit for your brand. All you need to do just schedule a time with us using our schedule link. So you can go to http://www.toy-launch.com/schedule to schedule a time to speak with myself. And then our team can facilitate and do those three in depth audit for your brand and for your product on Amazon. Schedule a time with myself and we can have a discussions so we can understand your current needs and some of the challenges that you are facing with your company, we are here to help you grow on Amazon.
Thank you again for participating in this month’s webinar, and thank you so much for showing up, we’ll see you soon again in our webinar next month in March. And feel free to schedule a time with us or send us an email if you have any questions. Have a wonderful day and I’ll talk to everyone soon.

