Kris and Dustin discuss Amazon Choice and the Best Seller Badges. Learn how to obtain these on your products and the massive increase in sales they can have.
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– Hello everyone. And welcome to episode 31 of Two Amazon sellers And A Microphone. With me, today as always, is Chris Graham Mutch. What’s up, Kris?
– Not much, Dustin, how are you? I’m good. Kind of a rainy day here in Kansas City. Think winter is working.
– Yeah, we’re getting ready for the winter. So it’s gonna be a, it’s gonna be a dark winter.
– Yes, but today we’re gonna be talking about something exciting. Something that I’ll tell you what, we did a little research on this topic before the show. And I learned a lot. We’re gonna be talking about Amazon Choice and the Best Seller Badges and how you can get them on your listing. And you know, this, these badges are great. Both of you and have had these badges on our listings in the past and it’s like, we talk about them all the time. Anything that you can get on your listing to help conversions is a win. And these definitely help conversions.
– These things are great. Like you don’t, you may not even know it but one day you’ll wake up and your sales will just be flying off the scales. And it could be because you achieved an Amazon’s Choice Badge or you got an Amazon Best Seller badge. And these things will just help your conversions, will help your ads. You’ll rank higher, you’ll get more reviews. So it’s just, it’s nice when you get these.
– Absolutely. Yeah and so today what we’re gonna try to do is we’re gonna talk about what these badges are, what the criteria are to get them. And then, you know steps you can take actionable steps you can take to try to attain these badges. Because we just, we want, we wanna use up every bit of that real estate on that listing to help us out. But these are, these are badges that you earn. There’s, there’s no tricks to this. I mean, these are, you get a Best Seller Badge because you’re the best seller. You get an Amazon’s Choice. Cause you’re, you’re selling a lot on keywords. And so let’s break this down. Let’s just go over real quick the differences between the two badges and how Amazon assigns them to you. So the Amazon’s Choice Badge is based on the keyword that the customer types in. So interestingly, I learned this today and I thought this was fascinating. The Amazon’s Choice is it’s a newer badge than the Best Seller Badge. Amazon’s Choice came out around 2015. Best Seller Badge has been around for a long, long long time since probably the beginning of Amazon. But the Amazon’s Choice Badge was Amazon actually designed it for the Amazon Echo. When shoppers, they opened it up so shoppers could order via voice. They had to have a way to sort of sifting through the thousands and thousands of possible options the customer is talking about. So they created the algorithm for the Amazon’s Choice. So if you say something like I need a dog leash, then the best performing product for that keyword dog leash is what is coming your way. So it’s really fascinating. And then Amazon then gave it the badge on the listing as well. So really interesting sort of birth to that badge but it’s also so powerful when you get it. So to sum it up, the Amazon’s Choice Badge is based on the keyword that you type in or say or however you’re searching on Amazon. So it’s gonna, Amazon’s algorithm is just putting that badge on the best performing. So you basically the highest sales velocity for that keyword at that particular time. Another thing before we jump into the Best Seller Badge is both of these badges get awarded every hour. So there’s a lot of fluctuation. You can get it, lose it. And, but you have basically 24-time slots per day that are open for winning this badge. And it sure would be nice to know that algorithm.
– Well, yeah, well this is to the point where like you wanna be running your PPC aggressive on some of your keywords. You can achieve this Amazon’s Choice. I’ve used it in the past, just like when purchasing and what’s nice is it puts it in your cart. Like so I don’t have to it’ll add the item to my cart and then I can go back and see what it is. And when people usually add it to the cart, the conversion rate is really, really high. So I would imagine that you know, this is gonna obviously help with your conversion rate. But yeah if you focus on these keywords in your PPC campaigns, it’s gonna take some time, obviously, but you can achieve this Amazon’s Choice for your product. And in the long run, I think it makes sense. Cause you’re gonna get more conversions organically. When people see this badge on your listing.
– Exactly, now to talk about the Best Seller Badge. Again, this badge has been around for a long time and it’s pretty, self-explanatory, you’re the best seller but it’s not based on keywords. It’s based on the category you’re in. So there’s actually tons of opportunities to get the Best Seller Badge. A category like sports and outdoors can have hundreds and hundreds of Best Seller Badges within it because you can narrow it down to the smaller and smaller category. And again, as it’s based on the category it’s the best selling products, sales velocity at that moment, based on Amazon’s algorithm for that category. There’s obviously other factors involved. At one point Amazon had these listed what their criteria was a long time ago. They obviously don’t list that anymore, but it’s everything. I mean, it’s the price. So they don’t want something that’s absurdly priced for that category. Even if it is maybe the best seller to show up there you know, your shipping times if it’s long shipping if you’re FBM and then it takes forever. Obviously, you might, that might limit you from getting that badge. There’s a lot of other factors. Feedback is another factor that would hinder it. But the majority of it is sales velocity based on your category. Early on, there were a lot of people who were able to manipulate this. You could take a product you might be selling for the purposes of this. Well, this show we’ll use the word dog leash and with the product dog leash. But you might be selling a dog leash and there’s 10 thousand of them. So it’s impossible to become the number one bestseller in that category, but you could move it to something else like dog accessories or something some smaller category where your sales velocity will go up. Now that’s you don’t wanna do that, that’s manipulation. But people were doing that. I know when I first started selling 2013, 14, that was time and people were picking obscure categories to launch the product. And Amazon is kinda shut down on that now.
– Yeah, you’ll lose indexing. It’ll de-index you for your keywords. It can really hurt you in the long run. They obviously caught on to that little hack. So, you know, when you pick your category when you’re creating your listing, just pick the category that the product belongs in. Because it’s gonna help you in the long run. As far as like indexing for all your keywords, making sure your product shows up when somebody types in a search term. Don’t try to throw it around in different categories because that can really hurt the listing.
– Yeah, no doubt about it. So just to really, just to show the highlight the differences again between these badges. Amazon’s Choice Badge, keyword-based. The Best Seller Badge, category-based. And it’s all sales listings. Listen, it’s not a badge that you can pay for or buy or do things to earn, other than be the best seller for keywords and categories. So there’s lots of strategies. Obviously, we’ll talk about some of those to make sure that happens. But to highlight this. We did a little Amazon search for the word dog leash. Okay, so we can scroll. If you’re listening, I’ll talk, we’ll walk you through this. We search dog leash. And as you scroll down, one of the sponsored products has a Best Seller Badge. If you hover over the best-seller badge it’ll tell you the category, it’s the best seller. And so this first one is the best seller in stranded dog leashes. If you continue down, you’ll see other Best Seller Badges which highlights that it’s category based. It’s not keyword based. Because you could do one search and see multiple Best Seller Badges. So you can see further down there’s a best seller in standard dog leashes. There’s a best seller and retract dog retractable leashes. So you can see there’s a bestseller opportunity in each one of these subcategories for the main category. Additionally, you, we see the Amazon’s Choice Badge. And if you hover over that, it’s showing the keyword dog leash which is what we typed in. So this highlights when you do these searches are highlights what these badges represent and how you get them. So the Best Seller Badge there’s opportunities to have multiple on a search, but the Amazon’s Choice badge is usually just one. And what’s interesting in this one is the Amazon’s Choice Badge came upon the third organic listing. Which means that right now this hour that third organic listing has the highest sales velocity of all of the products on this search term, dog leash. So it’s really interesting to look at that and mess around with it. It also gives you good ideas when you’re doing product research or looking to launch a product. Looking, you know this is why we talk about, you know finding less competitive niches because you want to be in a space where you can, it’s achievable to get these badges without spending a fortune.
– Yeah, ’cause you don’t wanna be throwing a lot of money at something that you’re not gonna get ranking for. So yeah, these are good. These will help. To the Amazon’s Choice though, I’ve been looking up here on my phone. When you type a name, when you type in like dog brush on mobile they will show other search terms that have Amazon’s Choices on that search on that results page. So like if I typed in dog brush they’ll say customers also shopped for Amazon’s Choice for like dog brush for short hair dogs or dog brush for long hair dogs. So you can, when you get an Amazon’s Choice Badge your product will also show up for similar search terms for other products. So, you’re gonna see this you’ll see your conversions go up but this is why it’s nice to have those long-tail keywords. Cause the competition now is not gonna be as much as it is on those really highly searched ones.
– The other fascinating thing about this and what really dawned on me when I discovered this about the Amazon’s Choice badge, being born as a part of the Echo program for driving sales of voices. We’ve talked about this recently how I forgot what the number is 2% of prime members have purchased via voice on Echo or through Alexa. It’s unbelievably small right now and it’s such a growing segment. But just imagine if you have that Amazon’s Choice Badge for a keyword that people are buying via voice. I mean that’s unbelievable because they’re not seeing your competitors.
– Yeah.
– They’re just talking, I need a toothbrush. I need this or that. And it’s adding it like you said, to their cart. That’s gonna be a really powerful badge in the future. As that voice orders grows.
– Yes, people become more familiar with this and they get more comfortable with it. And it’s only gonna get better. I would imagine, imagine Amazon’s really gonna dial this and make sure they get the right product in your cart. It’s gonna get more, more lucrative for sellers. People are gonna get comfortable. And rather than going on their phone and typing something in, they’re gonna put their trust in Amazon. And if it’s something they don’t like, Amazon has made it so easy to return something, that you can just return it. So, yeah, it’s super easy. And I would imagine this is gonna grow, especially coming on.
– Oh, for sure, all right. So now let’s talk about steps you can take to get these badges. And it’s interesting because of the way that they are, what the differences they have about being category based and being keyword based. It’s easier to get the Amazon’s Choice Badge for certain keywords, especially long-tail keywords. I was talking to you before the show, Chris, I mean I have the Amazon’s Choice Badge for my brand name permanently. It’s like it never goes away because of some, that’s where I’m getting. I would get the majority of the sales from my brand name. So I retain that badge. And so the Amazon’s Choice Badge for long-tail keywords is easier to get. The Best Seller Badge, you just gotta be the best seller in your category. So it’s sales in general. It doesn’t matter what keyword you got it or how the traffic came. So talking about just sales in general with best, obviously, there’s PPC. We’ll talk about that. Cause PPC is even more relevant to the Amazon Choice Badge where it’s keyword-based. But one thing that every time I run a lightning deal on my product, I typically get the Best Seller Badge for that product for a little limited amount of time. For the next couple of hours as long as I can sustain that velocity because you’re getting such a big boost in that time period. So those kinds of things to generate sales across the board lightning deals, coupons, lowering your price, all the kinds of same tactics you use in a launch phase can get you that Best Seller Badge. Or just hopefully you just have the best seller in your category. That’s fantastic. So that’s would be just generating more sales in general in a short amount of time can help get that Best Seller Badge.
– Yeah, and if you have a consumable product you should be running lightning deals, coupons all the time.
– Uh-huh.
– Just because people gonna come back and reorder and trying to get repeat purchases. We talk about this all the time, but you wanna get, you wanna get those people coming back. So yeah, if you have the opportunity to run yours, definitely do it because it’s an investment for the long-term plan.
– I essentially run them every time they’re offered to me.
– Me too. And I know Amazon tracks that. So like, if you, if you don’t use them I’m sure they have a log of that. Or if you, if you schedule them and then you cancel them, you may not get any deals. You may not get any deals in the future. So anytime I get an offer like I scheduled one all the way up until January of this year or next, I would sort to start adding deals up just because I wanna show Amazon I’m willing to pay the 150 bucks you know, promote, promote, promote. Hopefully, this pays off in the long run.
– Absolutely, now talking about ways to get the Amazon’s Choice Badge. And we talked about this is sales velocity based on the keyword. This is where basically PPC can make a difference. And we talk about these as launch strategies. A lot of times where we’re selecting just a few keywords we’d like to try to rank for and spending all of our advertising budget on those keywords. That’s how you can get that Amazon’s Choice Badge. You can be the number one seller for a certain keyword. And there’s lots of strategies involved in that. And you know, I, for me, I try to stay away from the most competitive keyword. Spend my money on some longer tail keywords and rank there if you can get them. The nice thing about the Amazon’s Choice Badge is you can have a bunch of them for the same product. You can have many, many, many keywords as opposed to the Best Seller Badge. You either have it or you don’t have it, in general for your product. So there can be lots of strategies where you can just run PPC on keywords you’re targeting and see what it takes to get that badge. And, you know, you can, you can run those promotions like that as well.
– Yeah, this in, Amazon Choice is probably gonna be a little bit easier to obtain because there’s so many different keywords you can go after. Whereas the best-sellers are category-based. But the Amazon’s Choice Badge, it’s gonna, first, you need to be, you need to be doing FBA. You’re not gonna, you’re not gonna get a choice badge if you’re not doing FBA. So you definitely wanna be doing Fulfill by Amazon. The second thing is your product needs to have really good quality. It can’t be like a three and a half or three-star. It’s gotta be at least a four-star rating. So that’s another criteria where we talk about like making sure you, we’ve talked about this before like have a good product, make sure your listing is optimized. Make sure you’re doing FBA. Those three things are gonna help you gain more Amazon Choice Badges. And then to end this, the listing. I touched on that briefly. But you wanna make sure your listing has the search terms or keywords that you’re going after and the title and the bullet points and description so that you can gain those badges for all your search terms. So if you’re not getting badges or you’re not getting any, you know you’re seeing sales decline and maybe because you’re not FBA, you need to join FBA. If you have a bad product, you need to improve your product. If your title is too short and you don’t have any really good bullet points you need to add more keywords to your titles and your bullet points. Because this is gonna help you achieve again, getting that badge for your product.
– Yeah, I mean, I think that pretty much sums it up. What these badges are and the importance of them and the steps you can take to get them. Like we just talked about advertising is a major factor in ranking your products and having the ability to get these badges. That’s where a tool like Sellozo can be extremely helpful. Sellozo fully automates and optimizes your Amazon PPC. Both Chris and I are available to talk with you about your campaigns and show you the Sellozo platform. You can go to https://www.sellozzo.com and click ‘request a demo. When you do, it’ll be just luck of the draw. You’re gonna get you their main recruits. So you never know who you’re gonna get but it’s gonna be one of us. If you click on that request demo, but we’re excited. We would love to spend 30 minutes talking to you about strategies. What your goals are. Are you trying to rank? Are you trying to get these badges and then show you how Sellozo can help you do that, all at the same time as optimizing your campaigns to those goals. So please reach out to us if you’re watching this live right now. There’s a link to book a demo with us on there. If you’re on Facebook live, which if you’re not you should be going to the Sellozo Facebook page and liking it. So that you will get notifications of when we go live. That way you just don’t hear us. You get to see us, you get to see us.
– And you can ask questions. You can ask questions.
– Absolutely, we’d love to love to have you jump in and ask questions, live. So also I’m gonna put this I’m gonna attempt to never done it before. I’m gonna attempt to put the link in the podcast description. So if you see it, it worked. If you don’t- Then apparently we can’t do that. So we’ll figure that out after this episode when I do the post-production on it and we’ll have the link hopefully in the notes. But Chris, that was fun. Again, I love doing this. We learned something new. I mean, I had no idea to Amazon’s Choice was designed for the Echo.
– That’s part of the game, always learning.
– Yep, all right, everybody, we will be back at this tomorrow. Have a great day.