How to Master Amazon Ranking: Essential Tips to Sell Big - BM430

Susan Friedmann [00:00:30]:
Welcome to Book Marketing Mentors, the weekly podcast where you learn proven strategies, tools, ideas, and tips from the masters. Every week, I introduce you to a marketing master who will share their expertise to help you market and sell more books. Today, my special guest is Leslie Hensel. Leslie has been an Amazon seller for more than a decade. She's also the co-founder of Riverbend Consulting, whose 85-plus employees solve problems for ecommerce sellers. She has personally helped thousands of sellers get suspended Amazon accounts and ASIN numbers up and running. Her most important job is being the mother of 2 almost grown boys, and in her spare time, Leslie invests in causes that serve the pediatric cancer community. Leslie, it's an absolute honor to welcome you to the show, and thank you for being this week's guest expert and mentor.

Lesley Hensell [00:01:33]:
Thank you so much, Susan. I'm excited to be here.

Susan Friedmann [00:01:36]:
Well, what I didn't say in the intro, and we should have, is that you are the author of The Amazon Incubator. And that's an incredible book helping online entrepreneurs build a successful business through Amazon. As you know, you and I had a little chat before we went on the air and talked about the fact that our audience is mainly nonfiction authors, and their number one order call when they publish the book is to post their book on Amazon, and then they think, That's it. They can just sit back and wait for the results to come pouring in. I'll let you take it from there, Leslie.

Lesley Hensell [00:02:28]:
Well and that is a misconception for people with all kinds of products on Amazon, not just books. They think it's like the field of dreams. If you build it, they will come. You post a product and the sales will start pouring in, as you said. And, unfortunately, it's not that simple. Amazon has built this enormous marketplace with 100 of millions of repeat customers who have Prime memberships, and they do look to Amazon to buy things as their first search a lot of the time. But that doesn't mean that they're magically going to find your book or your product. It does take a lot more work than just posting it there and getting that detail page up to actually make the cash register start to ring.

Susan Friedmann [00:03:17]:
As we talk about this as it relates to nonfiction authors, let's talk about some effective strategies that authors could use to increase that visibility on Amazon.

Lesley Hensell [00:03:31]:
Most folks who have a nonfiction book, they've been writing about something for a long time. Before I wrote my book, I have written hundreds of blogs for Amazon sellers, as an example, and put a lot of posts on social media, out on LinkedIn, out on Facebook, out on my personal pages, my company pages, even just starting there with a small audience that you've already built and driving them to Amazon is so important. Amazon is all about the algorithm. They want to know what people are searching for and hook that buyer up with the product that best fits their search terms. But first, Amazon has to learn why you should be served up for specific search terms. So if you can drive traffic to Amazon and drive traffic to your book, to your link, Amazon will start to learn what the keywords are that those people care about, what that audience is about, and what they're looking for, what is driving them to that book. You would be absolutely amazed at the back end systems of Amazon's algorithm and how quickly it learns about specific products. So anything an author can do to drive traffic to their Amazon listing is going to help Amazon learn their book and learn who to serve it up to in the future.

Susan Friedmann [00:05:04]:
One of the things that Amazon does so well and it's enticing, is that your book is up there, and then they say, and readers also liked books, and then they give you suggestions of other titles that are similar or in the same genre as yours. How does that happen?

Lesley Hensell [00:05:29]:
That is just a miraculous algorithm, and I think it really serves us all well if we use it properly. You might notice when you go on Amazon and search for a product, you come back later, and it will show you again the products that you looked at but you didn't buy, it is storing search history for everyone who searches on Amazon, and it aggregates those results. It also knows your household and your demographics. And over time, it builds profiles of what kind of buyer cares about certain categories. It knows that I buy a lot of books. It knows that my 16 year old son doesn't buy a lot of books. He buys a completely different category of products. It serves suggestions up differently to him than it does to me.

Lesley Hensell [00:06:23]:
Here's where this matters to you as a writer. If you will look at the other books that people bought, even if it's your own potential readers, your own traffic that you sent to your listing but they may not have bought the book, you're going to learn their characteristics by looking at the other books that they did purchase. So if you search those other books, you're gonna find keywords. The Amazon algorithm thrives on keywords. It assigns keywords and it reads your listing detail page for keywords. So if you were to find that there are specific keywords, important topics, and ideas that come up repetitively in these other books that people bought that also looked at your listing detail page. You can improve your own listing detail page, your description of your book, the back end keywords, and make sure that it has the terms that are converting into sales.

Susan Friedmann [00:07:28]:
That's really important. I love that you brought that up. So you would put the keywords into the description of the book. Is that correct? When you list or are there other places that you would be putting information about the book?

Lesley Hensell [00:07:44]:
There are bullet points on the listing detail page where you can put bullet points about the content or the benefits of reading the book. Getting the keywords into those is really important. And then you can also, depending on where you're listing the book, which Amazon tool you're using to list the book, you typically have access to back end keywords. It will ask for descriptors about the book, and you can put holidays in there. I mean, people have a mother's day book. They have something that would be a good gift for mother's day. You can say mother's day gift. If it's a book about children and families, there are so many different keywords you can put about children and families and conflict and strategies for raising children.

Lesley Hensell [00:08:33]:
You can do long tail keywords, all of that in the keyword section of the listing. And that gets searched by Amazon Spiders, which then serves it up to people searching for that kind of content in a book.

Susan Friedmann [00:08:49]:
That's brilliant. Now talk to us about the genres, the categories, because I know that they used to be you could put up to, like, 10 different categories, but now it's down to only 3 categories that you could be listed by. Talk to us about those and the importance of the categories that you choose.

Lesley Hensell [00:09:13]:
You're absolutely correct. An author can choose 3 different categories for their book. And what you really need to nail is if you can possibly be highly ranked even if it's in a smaller category. You may be a general business book, but you need to drill down in Amazon's nodes. They have what they call a browser node, and that's where something goes from, say, home to home and garden to gardening to flowers. So it's drilling down in categories that get more and more specific. At least one of your 3 categories should be very, very specific. Why? Because that means it is a smaller group of books.

Lesley Hensell [00:10:02]:
That enhances your opportunity to have a better ranking in a subcategory even if it's a very small subcategory. This benefits you in 2 ways. Number 1 is if people are very specific about their search, they are more likely to turn you up because they're specific about that particular subject you've written about. But number 2, it gives you more juice in the algorithm. You get more return on your SEO, your search engine optimization book for your keywords, if you are the number 10 book in a tiny subcategory than if you're the number 1,000 book in a larger subcategory.

Susan Friedmann [00:10:48]:
And that's really important. And this is a great segue, Leslie, into the Amazon or the Kindle best seller program which, you know, Aviva Publishing offers, as do many others. Talk to us about that particular program because I know the importance of categories in that program to do exactly what you said, which is sort of drill down and niche down. That's my favorite term is the niching, is to niche down into an area where there are fewer competitors, and you have a better chance of being a number one in that category.

Lesley Hensell [00:11:30]:
Absolutely. And Amazon okay. Because books are what they are, books have always thrived on these lists created by publishers and created by newspapers and reviewers and magazines and groups. All of those have importance, but you have to remember that SEO is like your new New York Times bestseller list. Your SEO is just as important on Amazon and out there on Google as the New York Times or Amazon's program ranking your book. So when you're looking through all of the details of the bestseller program, try and have that analytical brain. It's not just ticking boxes. I think a lot of people go into that program and try and fill out all the information and make the right choices.

Lesley Hensell [00:12:27]:
They think they're just filling out a form or ticking boxes. Everything needs to be strategic. Like, you were just saying, Susan, of the drilling down, it's counterintuitive because we all wanna cast a wide net. I would love to believe that every potential entrepreneur on planet Earth is the audience for my book, The Amazon Incubator, but that's just not true. Its better audience is people who are interested in ecommerce. People who are, honestly, younger males are a good target for me. It's not everyone under the sun. And when you accept that there's a smaller niche group for your book, that is when you get super strategic in that bestseller program and drill down.

Lesley Hensell [00:13:18]:
So you have to kinda let go of the dream that everyone's gonna wanna read your book or everyone can get something out of it, even if they can. And the way to cast that wider net is to actually be as specific as possible from the very beginning.

Susan Friedmann [00:13:33]:
I love that. It it's like my words coming out of your mouth. I love it. Yes. Totally. The more you can drill down. And you rightly said too that people feel that the book is for everyone, and it might be. However, you can't market to everyone, not even on Amazon.

Susan Friedmann [00:13:53]:
Being specific, just like you said, you know, younger males and people who are entrepreneurial, or you've got to know your audience and give up the thought of, my book is for everyone and rather be to a smaller group and be a bigger fish in that pond rather than try and swim in an ocean where you really don't have a chance against so many other people. I mean, if somebody's written a book on leadership, you've got to drill down and not just say leadership because there are thousands of books on leadership or sales or motivation. So it's drilling down. I love that. Let's, talk about mistakes because I know that this is just a pool of opportunities for mistakes. So let's talk about some of those, Lesley. What are some of the common mistakes?

Lesley Hensell [00:14:50]:
To me, the number one mistake is to assume that Amazon has you covered, that Amazon has your best interests at heart, that Amazon will work with you, that Amazon is your partner. None of those things are true. And I'm a person who just wrote a book saying, hey, Amazon is a great way people can make a second income or make a living. And I still believe it is the greatest small business incubator on earth, and it is one of the greatest tools for publishing on earth. So many people who would never get a publishing house to take their book can now publish and spread their ideas, which is fantastic. But Amazon is very large. They're very corporate. They almost run like a government office sometimes very inefficiently, and they are about Amazon.

Lesley Hensell [00:15:46]:
They're not about you. So when you have a problem you need to solve when something isn't going well, if you're trying to get help from Amazon, it needs to be presented to Amazon and how it benefits them. Let's say you have a problem with the page describing your book, the wrong cover is up there or the wrong edition is being promoted. It really needs to be framed as, this is confusing for Amazon's buyers. This is limiting sales on Amazon, not how it's hurting you. That can help you get problems solved more quickly. Also, Amazon cannot be the only place that you depend on for distribution. And I know that's a really tough thing to say.

Lesley Hensell [00:16:30]:
No one wants to hear that because, like, your Kindle Direct Publishing, for example, what a great interface. What an easy way to publish. But Amazon sometimes closes people's KDP accounts down. They sometimes suspend those accounts for various reasons, and I know this because I help them get reinstated. That's one of my services that I offer. They can also limit your reach and your distribution on the platform. They can limit the reach of your ads. There are so many ways that things can go wrong.

Lesley Hensell [00:17:03]:
Have that Shopify link that you have a funnel sending you to a Shopify store to sell your book, or have it out on Barnes and Noble. Get it into Target. Do whatever you can to expand your distribution so that if Amazon shuts you down for some reason, you're not just completely out of business.

Susan Friedmann [00:17:23]:
Yeah. Because I've heard that. I've heard some sob stories. It's heartbreaking. And it takes months sometimes to be able to reinstate this, and it's wonderful that you offer those services, and I know shortly you're gonna be talking more about that. And I want it because I know our listeners, they're going to want to take note of that, because they never know when they might need you.

Lesley Hensell [00:17:48]:
Well, and I hate it that it's even something that ever has to be discussed. I don't like saying there's the dark side of Amazon. So look out and don't just rely on Amazon because, again, there are so many wonderful benefits to Amazon and people have sold 100 of millions of books on Amazon. It's just like anything else in business, though. Any good business, any good product, you have to have contingency plans. You have to have alternate streams of income and other ideas if something goes wrong. Just try and think of it that way.

Susan Friedmann [00:18:23]:
Yeah. Not put all your eggs in one basket, which is very tempting because Amazon does make it so easy. And as you said, it's an incredible operation that's sort of blossomed over the years, and we've seen this happen, and yet it's not the only game in town. Sometimes you're better off on other platforms where you've got more opportunity to get seen by your target audience. As we said. You've got to make those decisions for yourself. How about reviews? Let's talk about reviews about your book on Amazon. How important, first of all, is it to have reviews? And what are some of the best practices to get some of these reviews?

Lesley Hensell [00:19:15]:
We talked a little bit earlier about how important SEO or search engine optimization is on Amazon and how it favors certain keywords and certain products in search results. And one way that it favors certain products in search results is based on reviews. Reviews are critically important for Amazon and for any products on Amazon. And it's really quality as well as quantity, but quality is more important than quantity if your quality is poor. So if I can explain that, it is much better to have 24 and 5 star reviews than to have 300 reviews and have a lot of twos and threes. That's very important to think about in your strategy for trying to get reviews for your book. What's really interesting is that if you are someone who sells products other than books on Amazon, you have to be super careful how you ask for reviews. Amazon doesn't allow any kind of discounting or rebates.

Lesley Hensell [00:20:28]:
For example, I can't say, hey. Buy a bottle of my supplement. Give me a review on my supplement that I sold you, and I'll refund you or rebate you the price of that supplement. That can get you shut down permanently as a seller on Amazon. For books, there is so much gray area. If you are selling your book directly yourself, so if you're a KDP seller or if you are going through the associate's program, you similarly have to be very careful. You can ask for reviews. You are not supposed to ask for 5 star reviews.

Lesley Hensell [00:21:04]:
You're supposed to ask for honest reviews, and you certainly can't compensate anyone for a review. If you have a publisher and you are not working for that publisher and that publisher is sending all of your books to Amazon through a distributor, you can get away with a heck of a lot more because you're not actually the owner of that account that is selling the product to Amazon. So you can ask people to give 5 star reviews. You can ask friends and family for reviews, and you'll be just fine. But just know that there is that gray area that they do not want any kind of compensation for a review or to only ask for positive reviews. But the beauty of reviews is that if you're someone who's kinda small and, you know, you were talking earlier, Susan, about people who bought this book also bought these books. When you look at that on Amazon, you'll often see pop up books that have not sold a lot of copies but do have positive reviews. So a book could have just 10 positive reviews and start popping up in that offer of you might also be interested in based on the fact that they do have a small number of very high reviews.

Susan Friedmann [00:22:20]:
Oh, that's really good to know. You know, I often read reviews. I look at the 5 star, but I also look at the 4 star reviews because I'm always interested, is this something that they missed? Why did somebody give them a 4 star versus 5 star? That's always interesting as well, especially from a competitive standpoint. Let's touch quickly. I know we're touching on all these different areas, but there's just so much, and I know this is open to you coming back and talking more because Amazon's changing its algorithms, probably almost daily. It's hard to keep up with everything, but let's touch briefly on advertising and how those advertising tools, how useful, how beneficial are they for, nonfiction authors?

Lesley Hensell [00:23:14]:
The problem with Amazon Advertising is that people who advertise don't really watch their campaigns carefully. And if you do not watch carefully, you can very quickly get to a point where you're losing money on the sale of your product. So I'm all for advertising if you're driving incremental profits and revenue. I am not a fan of advertising if you're taking a bath. No one needs to lose money to sell a product. So I have some suggestions for advertising that work with books just as well as they do with other products on Amazon. My favorite way to advertise on Amazon is to do so in conjunction with the launch of the new product. The way you get most out of advertising on Amazon is that you launch at the same time as you put PPC ads against that launch.

Lesley Hensell [00:24:10]:
And by doing that, you have the best opportunity of increasing your best seller rank. So Amazon has a honeymoon period for any new product, and that includes books. And during that honeymoon period of the first 30 to 60 days so think about a honeymoon, a real honeymoon. Your new spouse can do no wrong. You're happy with them almost all the time. Well, that's how the honeymoon period is on Amazon. They reward you a little bit extra for every sale. They're really proud and happy that it's going well for you at the beginning.

Lesley Hensell [00:24:45]:
So if you can generate some additional sales in that 30 to 60 days upfront with ads, it might be worth having a dip on your profitability or even not making money because you're boosting that best seller rank, which in turn will generate sales for you down the line. I'm not a huge fan of just perpetually advertising because over time, it's really going to hurt you financially. If you can have it upfront with that launch, that's excellent. Another strategy for authors who have control over their pricing is to have a sale price or to temporarily drop your price and advertise at the same time. Now that's a little counterintuitive because advertising costs money, and you're charging less for the book. So you're not making any profit or you're decreasing your profit. But, again, what we're trying to do is heat up the engine that is serving that book up to people. If you find that you're not doing as well as you'd like, you run a sale on the book or you cut the price of the book, run advertising at that same time, you'll see a nice little increase in your best seller rank, and then you gradually increase the price again and turn off those ads.

Susan Friedmann [00:26:04]:
Fabulous. Those are great tips, Leslie. Thank you. I'm learning so much. I'm like a sponge here with all this information. How can our listeners find out more about you and the incredible services that Riverbend Consulting offers?

Lesley Hensell [00:26:22]:
You can find us online at RiverbendConsulting.com. And here's something really crazy, Susan. There's a form on our website you can fill out, but we also have a phone number. And human beings answer our phones Wow. Which as you know, these days, that's not really a thing that happens anymore. But we have really great people who answer the phones and can talk to you about your problems. If you're having problems with the associate's program, if you're having problems with a KDP account being suspended or having limited functionality, if you're having issues with your brand registry, all of these are problems that we see frequently with self publishing authors and small publishers, really publishers of all sizes on Amazon. And then you can also find me, Leslie Hansel, on all the social media platforms.

I would love for you to connect and friend and all those things. And if you have questions, feel free to direct message me. I'd love to hear from people who are trying to figure out the Amazon puzzle.

Susan Friedmann [00:27:26]:
Beautiful. It's always good to know that, that you know somebody who knows how Amazon works because otherwise it's like looking for a needle in a haystack sometimes with that. So value that. And Leslie, as you know, we always end off with our guests leaving a golden nugget for our listeners. What's yours?

Lesley Hensell [00:27:49]:
It is so tempting to give up. Amazon is frustrating. And if you are a new author or an established author with a new book, you put it up on Amazon and nothing happens, it is so easy to just say, okay. I did my part. I'm walking away. Don't give up. Keep at it. There are tools.

There are things you can do, new strategies to try. So if you wanna jump in on the advertising, ask more people for reviews, do some giveaways, speak at events. Just don't give up. You've worked too hard to let it go now.

Susan Friedmann [00:28:29]:
Lovely. Great words of wisdom. Thank you. Leslie, really appreciate you sharing your wisdom, and I know we're gonna have you back for more because we could go into, as I said to you earlier, each one of the topics that we just sort of touched the tip of the iceberg, we could have a whole interview on just that one top area. So thank you.

And listeners, if your book isn't selling the way you wanted or expect it to, let's you and I jump on a quick call together to brainstorm ways to ramp up those sales because you've invested a whole lot of time, money, and energy, and it's time you got the return you were hoping for. Go to BookMarketingBrainstorm.com
to schedule your free call. And in the meantime, I hope this powerful interview sparked some ideas you can use to sell more books.

Susan Friedmann [00:29:23]:
Until next week, here's wishing you much book and author marketing success.