How third-party Amazon sellers can adjust o Amazon's recent terms of service (TOS) update and implement a process for consistently harvesting product feedback

1. How to Generate Product Reviews
on Amazon
Proven Strategies for Growing Third-Party Sellers
R E T A I L A D V E R T I S E R C O U R S E

2. Jeff Coleman
Director of Account Management
 Amazon Specialist
 Google AdWords Qualified Professional
 Over 7+ Years Experience With Retail Search

3. Before We Get Started
Session Recordings Will Be Sent Next Week
Q&A Following the Presentation
Submit Questions In the Chat Box to the Right
Logistics Speakers
Jeff Coleman
Director of Account Management
CPC Strategy
Keith O’Brien
CEO
iLoveToReview

4. • Founded in 2007
• Over 300 active retail clients
• Top 50 fastest growing company in San Diego 3 years running
• Recognized as an Official Google Shopping Partner
• Custom-built retail search technology platform, CAPx
Solutions
 Retail-focused Paid Search (PPC)
 Google Shopping Management
 Shopping Channel Management
 Amazon Sales Acceleration
CPC STRATEGY HAS BEEN FEATURED ON
DELIVERING LASTING RESULTS FOR OUR CLIENTS
VISIT CPCSTRATEGY.COM

6. Poll Question
Do you solicit product feedback from customers?
o Yes
o No

7. Amazon TOS Update: The Spirit of the Law
www. C P C S t r a t e g y. c o m | 6 1 9 . 5 0 1 . 6 1 3 8 | c o n t a c t @ c p c s t r a t e g y. c o m
TOS Update Intentionally Vague
• Allows Amazon state their primary objective without identifying every possible way
an advertiser might get around it.
• Allows Amazon to continuously adapt to the arms race
Spirit Of The Law: Provide value to Amazon’s customers
Ask yourself 2 simple questions:
• What’s in the customer’s best interest?
• Am I deceiving Amazon or the customer?

8. Google Panda
www. C P C S t r a t e g y. c o m | 6 1 9 . 5 0 1 . 6 1 3 8 | c o n t a c t @ c p c s t r a t e g y. c o m
Cracked Down On
• Link farms: Intentionally deceived Google’s algorithm
• Duplicate content: Provided no value to the customer
Perfect Execution?
• Absolutely not
• Many legitimate businesses used these practices & they were
hurt as well.

9. Paid Positive Reviews & Super URLs
www. C P C S t r a t e g y. c o m | 6 1 9 . 5 0 1 . 6 1 3 8 | c o n t a c t @ c p c s t r a t e g y. c o m
2 Affected Strategies
1) Paid Positive Reviews
• Extension of Amazon’s continued scrutiny of product reviews
• Clearly an attempt to deceive the customer (or future customers)
• There are plenty of ways to solicit feedback honestly
2) Super URLs
• Obvious attempt to deceive Amazon’s ranking algorithm
• Still seems to be a viable strategy
• Only a matter of time before Amazon closes this loophole for good, & possibly penalizes retailers
for using them

10. Welcome you to...
REVIEWS, RANKING,
CONVERSION RATE & TOS
UPDATES

11. WHO IS TALKING?
• Keith O’Brien - CEO, iLoveToReview
• Father, Entrepreneur, 20+ years in Marketing &
Leadership Development
• Prior to iLoveToReview, Keith has been on the marketing,
training and sales end of a number of multi-million
dollar companies & campaigns
• iLoveToReview has worked with 100’s of Amazon Sellers
helping them launch, ramp up and expand sales through
strategic review campaigns
• We’ve generated 10’s of thousands of reviews for clients
- 32,401 since May 15 to be exact.

12. THE FACTS
• Reviews are an essential part of Amazon’s business
model
• Providing a product in exchange for an unbiased
review is clearly outlined within their Terms of
Service
• Organic reviews from general
customers come in at an
average of 1/2% - 2%
• Reviews (social proof) are one
of the biggest influences on
consumer buying behavior

13. SALES IS THE NAME OF THE
GAME
Sales = Traffic + Conversion Rate
Traffic
Organic Ranking
Paid Ads
Existing Customers
External Traffic
Conversion Rate
Price
Title
Bullet Points
Image
Description
Keyword Targeting
REVIEWS
Seller Feedback
Organic Rank
Price
Daily Sales
Conversion Rate
Seller Feedback

14. New Amazon
TOS Updates

15. PROHIBITED SELLER ACTIVIES

16. PROHIBITED SELLER ACTIVIES

17. The Big Questions:
• What does “excessive number of free or discounted
products” mean?
• Does that mean that giveaway campaigns for reviews
are no longer within TOS?
• What about using Super URL’s?
• What else may be a violation of the new TOS?

18. Examples
• Sellers are having single buyers purchase multiple
units of the same product at a discount or free (using
coupon codes) to drive sales rank
• Sellers are setting up fake accounts acting as real
buyers - making purchases using coupon codes and
canceling orders…
• Sellers are offering buyers additional product to
change bad reviews into good ones

19. Our Conclusions
About The TOS Updates:
• The intention of the updates is to mitigate fraudulent
behavior from sellers trying to manipulate the system
• Providing buyers free or discounted product in
exchange for unbiased reviews is within TOS with
specific guidelines of what is necessary to remain
compliant (re: disclosure statement)
• Remove terms from your headline and bullet points
that promote rankings. Ex: #1 Best Seller, Best Selling,
etc.
• We are still researching and reviewing use of
SuperURL’s

20. WHY REVIEWS MATTER
• Social Proof is one
of the biggest
influencers of
consumer buying
• All things being equal…
those with more/better
reviews often wins
• High Reviews and
Rating can sway
decisions over higher
ranking products

21. HOW TO GAIN MORE COMPLIANT
REVIEWS ON YOUR PRODUCTS
• Follow up emails - autoresponder email series designed to engage
your customer to leave a review or seller feedback or both.
– Benefits - can raise organic review rate, fairly simple to use.
Recommend for all sellers
• DIY / Manual Method - Hunt down individual reviewers, find their email or connect through
Amazon, reach out to them personally, ask if they would be willing to review your product.
Follow up with everyone to make sure it happens.
• Benefits - free (other than time), can target reviewers
• Review Service - Companies that have done the legwork for you to build database of
consumers and systems for coupon distribution and potentially systems to enforce review
follow through and TOS.
• Benefits - Takes almost no time, customer service, potentially very high review rate
(85%+), increases sales velocity & conversion rate

22. EFFECTIVE STRATEGIES FOR
REVIEW CAMPAIGNS
• New Products
Solid Performers
Leading Products
– Drive needed reviews to
create social proof (new)
– Drive daily sales
– Increase conversion rate
– Stay ahead of competition

23. DAILY SALES AVERAGE &
CONVERSION RATE
# of visitors Sales
Conversion
Rate
Oct 1
100 15 15%
Oct 2 105 19 18%
Oct 3 104 22 21%
Oct 4 280 191
68%
5
Oct 5 175 90 51%
Oct 6 115 27 23%
Oct 7 112 25 22%
Daily
Average
56 31%

24. REMEMBER THESE GUYS?
• 100% organic reviews
• New competitor has taken over
#1 position and has 350+
reviews in a short amount of time
• This seller must get more
aggressive as competition enters the marketplace
• You can play the Price War Game = Everyone Loses
• Or you can out-market them (PPC, Optimize, Reviews)
We could drive 254 new reviews in about 3 weeks
• This is true in any industry and on any sales platform

25. WHAT TO LOOK FOR IF
CHOOSING A REVIEW SERVICE
• Reviews & Volume
How many reviews have they actually generated?
Do they even know?
Can they handle volume?
• Compliance
Do they guarantee reviews or star rating?
Do they say they will put reviewers in touch with you if they
have a problem with the product?
• Public vs. Private
Do you want your sale priced or free product open for everyone to see?
• Full Service vs. DIY
Do you want to spend staff time on managing this part of your business?

26. NEXT STEPS
• Review your products & run a comparison vs your
main competition
• Decide if you are going to get reviews through
email follow ups, manually or with a review service
(most sellers use a combination of these)
• Decide what you will need to do to reach your
goals - how much, how fast?
• Create a plan and take action

27. Questions for Jeff or Keith?
Session Recordings Will Be Sent Next Week
Submit Questions In the Chat Box to the Right
Logistics Speakers
Jeff Coleman
Director of Account Management
CPC Strategy
Keith O’Brien
CEO
iLoveToReview