1. Introduction
This guide will begin with the very basics of SPN: what it is, the different types of promotions, and familiarization of the SPN done by Western Amazon sellers. It will then move to strategies and practical usage of SPN, using logic based on the different approach and competitive climate that exists.
Amazon takes a bigger commission fee from SPN than you are probably used to. This is worth the investment, but as this guide will help you to understand, investing smartly is the key to success. A little-known fact is that Amazon actually started SPN in China, and multiple years later since its start, it has only just started to show signs of moving toward more western PPC alternatives, like Headline Ads.
Make sure you are using Amazon.cn and not logging into a different version of Amazon. Excess of content is a huge pull for Amazon.cn, and this will be reflected by the undeniable amount of Chinese sellers selling stationery, home goods, and bags. When looking on the Global site for the same product, it is likely it won’t even be a Chinese listing that appears first!
In order to fully understand SPN and make the best use of this guide, it is important to understand some key differences between Amazon in the West versus China.
This is not an introduction to doing business in China, nor is it a beginner’s guide to Seller Central. This is a guide for those who have attempted SPN with little success, or for those who are just starting out and know that a strong foundation in the SPN system will make all the difference. This is also for seasoned sellers who may have had great success with SEO and need to adapt their way of thinking in marketing and evaluating different forms of advertising.
Unlocking Success: Mastering Amazon China SPN for Your Business is intended to be the ultimate guide for Amazon sellers in China needing to understand and use the SPN system. This well-researched document compiles knowledge and resources out there on the SPN system and organizes them in an easily understood format.
2. Understanding Amazon China SPN
Amazon China Service Provider Network (SPN) is a low-risk marketing channel, as a type of CPS (Cost per Sale) service. Many people believed it would be Amazon’s take on an advertising platform, which is non-existent and still a closed beta service, taking place in late 2016. After hearing the name SPN, there was almost a unanimous conclusion that this would be a platform connecting service providers and sellers oriented around different kinds of services provided by different SPs in hopes of acquiring SMEs as clients. That is not the case. Though SPs can still render services to sellers in whatever agreement they choose, SPN is actually a way for Amazon to build upon the previous success of the Associates Program by giving CPS incentives to individuals and companies willing to sell and push Amazon products. Any individual or company can apply as an SP (not to be confused with the aforementioned service providers which will be referred to as SPs) and enroll their own or an existing Amazon seller into SPN by becoming an affiliate. Upon being accepted to SPN, they can then link any ASIN to their affiliate ID and receive commissions from 3-15% CPS by driving sales for that product.
3. Benefits of Using Amazon China SPN
NEO-SPC members come from education institutions or represent companies that provide education products and services. SPN offers a range of ad products to meet the different promotional needs of education sector exhibitors and to ensure that targeted messages reach the right audience. Step 2 of the ad creation process allows the selection of Target Ad Type, where the advertiser chooses the ad type that best meets their marketing objective and the needs of the product being promoted. These ad types include Product Display Ad and Headline Search Ad. Both are effective ways to drive traffic to specific product offers and increase brand and product visibility to shoppers at the point of purchase. Product display ads are cost-per-click based ads that utilize product or interest targeting. They direct interested shoppers to the product detail page by linking the ad creative to a product offer. A simple 1 click: 1 cost pricing model ensures cost control for the advertisers. Headline Search is an ad that is cost-per-click and keyword-targeted. It appears as a highly visible banner ad at the top of search results and is a great way to build brand awareness and promote products to drive sales. Non-specific members and other companies can utilize these ad products to increase awareness and sales of their high-tech content & services industry products.
SPN offers a user-friendly ad solution for advertising on Amazon China. Available to large and small advertisers, it provides self-service interfaces for easy ad implementation. Advertisers only pay when shoppers click on their ads, and there is no minimum spending requirement as with other forms of advertising. Advertisers are able to access ad reports in order to measure the effectiveness of the ads and track ad performance.
Marketplace SPN is an efficient and cost-effective way to increase the visibility of your brand and products on Amazon China. It allows Amazon China marketplace sellers to promote their product offers using keyword-targeted advertising. Whether you are looking to create brand awareness, increase sales on a specific product, or introduce a new product, SPN can help meet your marketing objectives. Keyword-targeted advertising provides improved product exposure by populating ads on search result pages and product detail pages, which are relevant to the specific keywords and products being promoted. This enables shoppers to effectively locate products in the Amazon China marketplace. Search-based ads provide an opportunity for cost control, only charging advertisers when shoppers click on relevant keywords, linking to the product offer.
SPN on Amazon China offers a unique and exclusive way to reach Chinese online shoppers. By taking standard product information and using it to create ads, SPN serves as the link between your product and the right shopper at the right time. This new form of ad allows marketing messages to be delivered to specific consumer segments based on product relevancy, importance, and bid decisions, dramatically increasing product exposure for brands. It includes Premium Product Pages, which enable shoppers who arrive at the page to see graphical, detailed, and relevant product information presented by using your product ASIN. This type of ad will improve conversion rates by enabling shoppers to better understand the product and its features, ultimately driving incremental on-site sales.
4. Getting Started with Amazon China SPN
Here’s how to get started with Amazon China SPN. With SPN, you will receive recommendations for products based on data feeds, and pay on a cost per click model. These recommendations will be based off of either specific products in your Amazon shop or entire categories. Start off by creating a campaign which can be done by clicking ‘SPN’ then ‘campaign management’ under the tab ‘Advertiser’. After this, you choose the amount you are willing to pay per click and set the budget for the campaign. The next step is to choose whether you want to be recommended for similar products in the Amazon marketplace or products that are in the same category as the products you have specified. With this and the loading of data feeds, Amazon will assign your product to the relevant product genre. This can be seen in the campaign management page where you assign product category to a specific campaign, and Amazon will decide the bidding price for clicks after this. Note that it is also possible to override the default category specific bidding by setting a specific bid for a target that is in an assigned category. This can be done in the target management page.
5. Optimizing Product Listings
Relevancy of the high search-volume Chinese keywords to your product is very crucial in determining visibility and CTR. This, in turn, means sales and profits. In general, keywords in the title hold more weight than those in the bullets, which, in turn, hold more weight than those in the back-end. (Note: do not stuff keywords into the title as Amazon has implemented a new filter system to prevent this abuse of the search algorithm). Write around two main keywords in the title with further detail in the bullets. It can also be useful to include some common misspellings of your product within your bullets to ensure all possible traffic is captured. An effective, cost-saving way of accumulating search keywords is to mine the keywords from your PPC ad campaign, which we will discuss in the following sections. A final cost-free method is to use the Google Translate tool, although accuracy may vary in certain terms. Step-by-step click through, you will be presented with English words or phrases and a list of translations in Chinese with a relevant percentage of how often that word is used in recent Chinese search queries. This method is more useful if you are looking to break into the Chinese market on a specific product and are trying to gauge the popularity of the product in relation to Chinese consumer demand for it.
6. Effective Advertising Strategies
Sponsored Products is an easy way for customers to search and discover your products on Amazon. These ads are cost-per-click, keyword-targeted ads that allow you to promote the individual products you list on Amazon. For example, if you sell soccer balls, you may create a campaign that targets the keyword “soccer ball” and show your ad next to the search results. Your ads may also appear on product detail pages for similar products. Sponsored Products can help you increase product visibility and sales. To get started with advertising in SPN, login to SPN, go to the settings page, accept the “advertising agreement” if this is your first time, then start to create an advertising campaign. After creating a campaign, you can download our campaign reporting to check how your campaign is going. The reporting will show you an overview of your campaign, impressions, clicks, CTR, CPC, spend, and orders and sales from advertising. You can use the reporting data as a reference to optimize your campaign. For more information on how to start Sponsored Products, please go to our Getting Started Page.
7. Maximizing Sales through Promotions
To create a successful promotion, carefully select the appropriate products to promote. The item should be a fast-moving consumable product that is in demand with a good sales history but needs a push to increase its rank and visibility. Otherwise, products that are brand new and have zero sales history can utilize a promotional schedule to help generate an early boost in sales from day one. Step two will be setting the promotional discount price and duration. Be sure to analyze the competitiveness and profit margins of the product. If the product is poorly ranked and has low traffic volume, a high percentage discount with a longer duration may be necessary to attract potential customers and give the product a chance to prove itself. If the product is higher ranked with good organic sales and search terms, a short duration with an aggressive discount can create a spike in sales volume and increased visibility and velocity.
Amazon’s product promotions tool enables sellers to price discount products from 5% to 80% off. The duration can last from 1 day to 90 days, which can be useful for setting up promotional events with deal of the day or lightning deals. These promotions will help to stimulate sales, improve product visibility, and conversion rates. However, keep in mind that from the search preset filters, the promotional priced product may not be easily located if it does not drive enough sales volume within the first 24 hours, which will greatly impact its promotional effectiveness.
8. Building Customer Trust and Loyalty
Build a professional-looking storefront and product listings – Professional product listings including pictures, text, and a brand logo can greatly affect customer trust as it strengthens the view of the seller’s professionalism and credibility. An Amazon shop-front looking webpage can also reinforce the customer’s trust as the more professional-looking it is, the more it appears that effort has been put into it and that it is a legitimate business. This also includes detailed product descriptions, and NexusGold can be effectively used here to monitor what the customer clicks on and views. This is used to create a profile of what the customer is interested in and then target advertising for other products around this profile in the hope that these products will be appealing to the customer.
Identifying and standing by unique selling point – Building a brand is important on Amazon, but with such high competition and with many sellers selling the same products, building customer trust through a specific selling point can be equally effective. The customer will trust a seller providing a specific product more if the seller themselves has built an image around said product and has specialized in its supply, opposed to a seller providing many different types of products while being a free-for-all for the customer from which seller they buy from. By doing this, the seller is then building trust and long-term loyalty from the customer who will be more likely to buy from them a second or third time as they know where to find the product and who to buy it from.
9. Managing Inventory and Fulfillment
Sell globally whenever possible. By leveraging your existing FBA offers and eligible listings, you can sell your products across North America and Europe without having to create new offers and can simply add products to Amazon’s European fulfillment network. This allows you to easily manage international inventory from a single inventory pool and avoid the costs of building and maintaining separate inventory.
Use the best practice of creating new product listings only when required. We often come across sellers who fall into the bad habit of creating new listings for existing products. This is highly detrimental because it causes split inventory and you lose the history and sales ranking of the existing product. Only create a new product listing when the product is an entirely new ASIN and requires different images, bullet points, and title from an existing product. Where multiple sellers are offering the same product, it is advisable that they work together using a single product listing. This is much more efficient and results in a better customer experience by consolidating the product’s sales history and reviews.
In order to track how well your products are doing, you should monitor your inventory performance regularly using the various inventory reports available. These reports are vital for tracking the performance of newly deployed product listings and evaluating the impact of any changes to your inventory strategy. The Inventory Dashboard is a summary view of inventory data for all of your FBA and FBM products. Using this section, you can assess the performance of your complete inventory and quickly take action to fix any issues. The recommended reports are the Inventory Health Report and the FBA/FBM inventory reports.
10. Analyzing Performance Metrics
Price and income elasticity are metrics that relate changes in consumer income levels or changes in the price of a product to sales volume. They are relative measures of revenue. High price elasticity or income elastic suggests potential for great increases in revenue, though often changes can be accompanied by entry of new competitors.
Sales rate of change is the derivative of a sales volume metric with respect to time. It is an indicator of market momentum. Data patterns can help determine whether a product is entering growth or maturity phases, or whether a sudden decline indicates the onset of a price war or emergence of superior competitor. A marked decrease in sales rate of change in both the short and long terms can be a precursor to product decline.
Market share is a sales volume metric relative to the total market. It can be expressed either as a percent or a ratio when comparing one company’s sales volume to the total market. The better a new product can establish a relative market share, the higher the probability of success. High market share products are usually subject to tougher competition and experience a higher rate of imitation from competitors. A steep increase in market share may also lead to increased attention from taxing authorities concerning potential violations of anti-trust laws.
Sales value and sales volume are the two basic analytical metrics. Sales value is the total revenue generated from a defined market over a specific period of time, whereas sales volume is the quantity of units sold. The most important step for a new product is to increase sales volume, as this is directly linked to increased revenue.
Definition of Performance Metrics: Understand the key concepts for analyzing sales and consumption data, and how different types of metrics can be useful for formulation and progression of different plans. Data collection methods and sources of error are also discussed.
11. Expanding Your Reach on Amazon China
Collect Intelligence, an SPN affiliate, and TiVo, a DVR for e-commerce shopping and consumer intention, provide a unique opportunity for merchants and brands to expand their reach and increase sales in the Amazon China market. An SPN-enabled product will show up in the search results page when a consumer searches for a similar or competitive item, giving merchants the chance to steal market share from their competitors. An SPN ad will also show up on TiVo pages associated with similar products, creating an opportunity to convert sales from consumers who already have the intention to make a purchase. The ability to collect and analyze data is done on a level that is much more advanced than traditional advertising or even other online retailers. SPN provides specific campaign and keyword performance through sales impact and ROI measurement. This information is crucial for brands in understanding what Chinese consumers are looking for and how to best communicate with them. An SPN campaign can be altered in real time without the need to recreate new ads or start over. This gives merchants flexibility in testing and implementation and eliminates the concern of inadequate advertising. Step-by-step guidance on the SPN system can be found in the SPN two-page PDF.
12. Leveraging Customer Reviews and Ratings
There are four key ways businesses can use customer feedback to improve the competitiveness of both organic and paid product promotions. First, understand that the benefits of getting good customer feedback include generating high conversion rates on new customers and increasing the buyer confidence of those who have not yet bought your product. A higher buy rate for your product will contribute to increased sales and organic rankings. It is extremely important to respond to customer reviews that are negative. This is a great way to find faults or downfalls in your product, show potential new customers that you take pride in customer satisfaction, and improve buyer confidence. This also wins back a percentage of customers who received a faulty product that they were dissatisfied with. As well as conceptualizing review trends, customer email can be set asking the customer to leave a review on their satisfaction with the product. Step 1-2 of the review ratings email will pull in customers who have commented on an average or negative experience to give you a chance to make things right. Step 2 will filter into success as customers who have had positive input will be directed to leave a review on the product.
13. Handling Customer Inquiries and Feedback
There are two types of customers that will send inquiries: those who write you first and those who write you after you respond to their complaint or feedback. The vast majority of inquiries will be negative in nature, usually pertaining to a complaint or feedback about your product. In cases where customers are writing about damages or quality issues, ask them to elaborate on the problem. If the problem can be easily understood from a short explanation, shift to solve the problem instantly within the next email. If it is complicated, or there is potential for future occurrence, let them know that you will be looking into the issue and what caused it and that you will get back to them when you have more information. For simple problems, be sure to follow up on them even after you have stated your solution. This will show the customer that you did not just forget about it and that their business is important to you. For complicated issue that will require further action from the customer, set a reminder to email the customer in a few days to check on the status of the problem.
14. Dealing with Returns and Refunds
When dealing with returns and refunds in China, it is about the same as anywhere else. It will generally be a hassle, not in your favor, and will lead to a negative perception. That’s the bad news. The good news is in the details. It is important to clarify the circumstances of the returns policy before devising a strategy to tackle it. Usually, with refunds and returns, there is a grace period where the consumer can send the product back and receive a refund. Alternatively, they may opt to keep the product and receive a partial refund. Usually, refunds and/or partial refunds are issued if the product is defective. Establishing the exact details of the policy can give you a clearer picture of what to expect in terms of loss from returns. The first and most important strategy is to try and reduce the return of the product as much as possible. A popular method for sellers is to communicate with the consumer and try to persuade them into keeping the product by offering a partial refund, which is usually a good outcome for the seller. This is why it is important to understand the exact details of the returns policy.
15. Staying Up-to-Date with Amazon China SPN Updates
It is vital that you stay up-to-date with all the changes made to the Amazon China SPN programs in order to most effectively utilize it to grow your business. Remember that this is a growing program and many things (some that you may have inquired about in the past) may change in the future as they expand and refine the SPN programs. Usually the first place to hear about changes to SPN programs would be the official Amazon SPN portal. Amazon will post announcements and news relating to all the SPN programs in the specific categories. You can find announcements, policy updates, and the SPN specific newsletter under the “Help” tab in the right header of the SPN portal. Bookmark this in your browser and make a habit of checking it periodically to stay informed with your industry’s SPN program. Another great way to stay up to date is networking with other elite SPN members in your industry (or the general SPN community) to share information and ideas about best practices and meeting SPN program requirements. Networking can be done in SPN specific forums and discussions boards, through in-person meetings, or over the phone.
16. Conclusion
This book represents a systematic guide and a recipe for success for any brand or individual seller aspiring to not only establish, but also grow their Amazon China business via SPN. The content is a reflection of hard-won practical advice, shared in the interest of seeing brands succeed on this important and dynamic marketplace. Amazon China is an environment where best practices are always shifting and evolving, but the core fundamentals detailed in this book are virtually timeless. Most of the top global brands have established themselves in the China market only after experiencing cycles of trial and error and hard lessons learned. These are often necessary, but also painful and expensive. By following the advice in this book, we believe that many costly mistakes can be avoided. Success on Amazon China represents an unrivaled opportunity, and having a winning SKA on the most powerful platform can be the keystone to it. We wish our readers every success and look forward to crossing paths with you in the China market! This book is maintained by the author and available on his website as well as We anticipate the next edition reflecting feedback from readers as well as the evolution of the Amazon China environment. Because the SPN environment is always in flux and new features are continually being added, it’s likely that some of the specifics will change. Where warranted, we will update new editions to reflect these changes. Even if some current features become obsolete, a clear understanding of the core principles in this book, particularly those related to optimizing SPN and detail page maintenance, will always enable sellers to easily adapt to new circumstances.
