How to Write Effective Amazon Copy for Grocery Brands

Copy Won’t Single-Handedly Convert a Sale

Good Amazon copy is crucial for a natural food brand in the same way that operations are crucial. It might not be the thing that catches a customer’s eye, and in some cases may not even register as a part of the buying experience, but when done right it allows for a seamless buying experience.

There is professionalism to good copy. An implied assurance. Questions preempted, certifications, and dietary information laid out. A well-written Amazon listing makes it easy for someone to buy on two levels. On the one hand, the copy will tell shoppers everything they need to know about the product, while at the same time signifying and reassuring them that they are dealing with a brand that knows what they are talking about. 

But It Can Lose You a Sale

It doesn’t matter how good your imagery is or how competitive your pricing if customers find themselves wading through unclear language or accosted with nonsensical keywords then they may keep shopping in search of a brand that can communicate. Your copy should be as simple as possible. Read the sentences aloud to get a fuller sense of how they sound outside of your head, you will be amazed at how often this simple trick can improve your editing and your listing.

How to Identify the Best Keywords for Your Product

If your copy won’t in and of itself convert the sale, it can play an outsized role in putting your listing in the conversation. Amazon is a search engine, and anytime a customer uses the search bar, the marketplace is honing them in on those products most in line with what it thinks they are looking for. By knowing what keywords your target audience is apt to use, you will know how to make sure you come out on the other side of the algorithm.

There are online resources available that can help you key in on what words and phrases are searched in relation to your product, your niche. The best of these tools tend to cost money, but if used properly they can pay for themselves in impressions and sales. 

On the other hand, free avenues to strong keywords do exist. They require more time and may yield less exact results, but for the savvy brand, it can be a good exercise. Combing competitors’ listings allow you to see what phrases are commonly used and what words tend to be given prominent placements in listing titles and in the top bullet points. Additionally, customer reviews allow you to see the language that shoppers themselves use to describe products, and may offer insight into what they value and how they search. Surveys of friends or loyal consumers can be a vital piece of market research. By compiling responses to questions about product benefits, uses, and brand identity, you might be able to get a sense of the words your users most commonly employed to describe what it is you do.

Balancing Search Efficiency with Messaging

It’s a tricky business and always has been, to communicate efficiently without sounding robotic. Now, though, selling in a marketplace like Amazon, that balancing act is amplified. Your listing’s copy now has to relate to your human shoppers as filtered through a computer algorithm. 

You’ll of course want to rely on keywords. If Amazon is a search engine then you should always be focused on optimizing your presence. But those keywords should for the most part be implemented in a way that sounds natural, in a way that provides shoppers with the information they need for a simple buying experience. 

A big part of writing good copy on Amazon is knowing which sections of your listing have the greatest effect on ranking. From there you can see about building around the phrases and words which will have the most effect.

The Four Places Keywords Live in a Listing

(1) Title

In previous posts, we have talked about how Amazon’s search bar is a more dynamic extension of the grocery shelves to what natural food brands are used. As much as good imagery and great prices drive sales, the first step toward success on Amazon is to eliminate competitors from the virtual shelf. This is done through the search bar, by implementing relevant long-tail keywords in your listing’s title.

There is an argument to be made in defense of forgoing subtlety in the title for the sake of ranking well. Squeezing in every certification, every noteworthy ingredient, no keywords left behind. If shoppers on Amazon have short attention spans, then they won’t necessarily be reading a listing’s title anyway, they’ll be scanning main images, prices, and quantities. It’s possible that any given title will be drowned out by the noise, so why not focus the title on getting you on the page rather than trying to be heard.

This is the time when you should know which keywords matter the most. Because if a shopper might not look at your title at all, then they certainly won’t be looking at the tenth word in the title. If there are two aspects of your product that consumers need to know about then put those right up top with the brand name.

(2) Bullets

The bullet points are where customers will go to learn more about the particulars of the product. If an ingredient or benefit caught their eye in the title, then the bullets are an opportunity to expand on that attention, to work those keywords into informational phrases and sentences.

Here again, you will want to factor in the importance of each keyword. The most productive terms should find their way into the top bullet, and from there be rolled out in descending order.

Amazon has length limits for the bullets, and, because they can, these limits are measured in bytes rather than characters. Of course, most writing interfaces don’t allow you to track how many bytes have been used. As a general rule of thumb, you will be safe by keeping the copy in this section between 150-200 characters per bullet.

(3) Product Description

Out of these four sections, the listing’s product description will have the least effect on how you rank. This is really the part of the listing when a brand’s personality should come through. Try to be conversational about why this product will improve somebody’s life.

If keywords are not quite as important here as in the title or bullets, they do still matter for how they might catch a reader’s attention. On Amazon’s smartphone interface the product listing will appear above the bullets, so this copy will get plenty of traffic. Use the keywords most apt to highlight those product features which set your listing apart. Do this more naturally than you might in the other sections of your listing, with an awareness of user experience.

(4) Backend

The backend is nothing but keywords. It is pure ranking. The keywords entered here will appear nowhere on your listing and are used solely to optimize the search functionality.

A good approach to the backend keywords is to include common misspellings or translations of your best terms in relevant languages such as Spanish. Because these words and phrases won’t be seen by Amazon shoppers there is no need for pretense or poetry. Backend keywords are there to help your ranking and nothing else, so use them smartly.

Writing Copy for A+ Pages

The A+ page is a feature available to professional sellers on Amazon and will have no effect on search ranking. That being said, it can still convert sales and re-enforce a brand’s overall impression.

If it is available to you, then you should certainly take advantage. Treat the A+ page as an extension of the product description section, one in which you are able to cross-promote products and drive impressions from a single listing onto the full range of your offerings.

As with the rest of your copy and the rest of your listing, the A+ page is a chance to reflect professionalism. Indicate on a subconscious level that the quality of your product must be as good as the quality of your online presence. If a shopper doesn’t have to stop to wonder whether you actually know what you’re talking about, then they are one step closer to buying the product and letting it speak for itself.

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