Influencer marketing for Amazon sellers

Amazon's customer product reviews policies for sellers list what counts as a violation. Several touch creator work directly:

• A seller offering "a financial reward, discount, free products, or other compensation in exchange for a review" of their product.
• Offering a refund or reimbursement after a buyer writes a review.
• Using a third-party service that gives free or discounted products tied to a review.

The same page says breaches by your "business partners, employees, or third party agencies" lead to enforcement against you, even if they happened without your knowledge, and lists penalties that include permanent withdrawal of selling privileges and legal action. A creator or agency acting for you is your responsibility.

Amazon's page about promotional content draws the line. People may receive products free and still review them, but "any attempt to influence or manipulate reviews is prohibited, including conditioning any future benefit on writing a review". Content for someone's own followers is different: it may be paid for, if the connection is clearly disclosed.

For reviews on a new listing, Amazon's own route is Amazon Vine: Amazon invites the reviewers, sends them products that selling partners submit, and says it doesn't influence their opinions.

A viewer who taps through lands on Amazon, where your own analytics can't follow. Plan for that before the post goes live:

• Link to the exact listing, not a search results page, so viewers don't meet a competitor's product first.
• Give each creator their own promo code if you're offering a discount. Amazon's guide to promo codes describes single-use codes, unique to each customer, and group codes that everyone can use. A group code per creator tells you whose audience bought.
• Show what the listing sells. If the video features a colour, size or bundle the listing doesn't offer, viewers arrive looking for something they can't buy.

Choose creators by who watches them and the median views of recent posts, not follower count. The guide to paying TikTok and Instagram creators turns a quote into a cost per 1,000 views.

Amazon Attribution is Amazon's free tool for measuring what marketing outside Amazon does on Amazon. Its reports show clicks, detail page views, add-to-carts, purchases, units sold and product sales for each tag, over a 14-day attribution window.

1. 01

   Check you're eligible

   Amazon lists it for professional sellers enrolled in Brand Registry, in the countries named on its page. Check before you promise a creator a tracked link.

2. 02

   Make one tag per creator

   Create a tag for each creator, pointing at their listing, named after the creator and the post.

3. 03

   Pair it with a code

   A promo code per creator picks up buyers who type the code rather than tap the link. Report codes and tags side by side rather than adding them up, because one purchase can show in both.

4. 04

   Judge after the window closes

   Attribution counts purchases within 14 days of a click, so wait at least that long. Then divide each creator's full cost, fee plus product and postage, by their attributed purchases.

5. 05

   Claim the bonus if it applies

   In Amazon's US store, sellers in Brand Registry can earn a Brand Referral Bonus on sales from marketing outside Amazon that carries an Attribution tag. It arrives as credits that offset referral fees on future sales.

Viewers who search Amazon instead of tapping the link won't show against any tag, so a rise in sales after a post is a hint, not proof. Our guide to measuring sponsorships covers the rest.

Amazon also runs a programme that gives creators their own page on Amazon. Its help page describes a storefront of products they recommend in YouTube videos or Instagram posts, at an address like amazon.com/shop/handle, with earnings that work like Amazon Associates. For a seller:

• You don't join it. It pays creators commission on purchases through their own page. It isn't a way to hire one.
• Some creators you contact will be members. If they add your product to their storefront, they may earn commission from Amazon on top of anything you agree. That's an affiliate link, and it needs disclosing like one.
• Your deal is separate. A fee or gift you agree is between you and the creator, and Amazon's review rules still apply to it.

Nakodo reads your brand's own website, the homepage and up to 5 key pages, rather than your Amazon listing, and writes a brief you can edit, with 3 to 6 groups of search keywords. If your site says little, rewrite the keywords as a buyer would search. The same keywords are searched on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok, and each creator gets a score from 0 to 100 with written reasons, as how it works explains.

Nakodo then emails the best fits that publish an email, or only the creators you pick, with your brand's name as the sender, Monday to Friday, 9:00 to 17:00 in the creator's local time. Write your offer as a post on their channel, nothing about Amazon reviews. Nakodo answers what it can from that offer, passes the rest to you, and introduces each creator who says yes in the same thread, with you in Cc.

• It has no connection to Amazon. It doesn't create Attribution tags or promo codes, and doesn't read your sales or reviews.
• It never guesses an email address, and never shows you a creator's address before the introduction.
• The Free plan searches Instagram and TikTok; YouTube is on the paid plans. See pricing.