Amazon is a big dog when it comes to eCommerce. As of 2019, more than 150.6 million users accessed the Amazon App alone (compare this to Walmart – the second most popular eCommerce app or retail brand with 76.45 million members).
More than 89% of buyers are most likely to purchase from Amazon (than any other site). Literally – and figuratively, more than 3/4ths of the American population puts the money where their fingers are (which is on a “buy now” button on Amazon).
Here are a few more Amazon stats, just to let you brood over them:
- Amazon brought in $125.6 billion in revenue (by the 4th quarter of 2020).
- There are over 150 million Amazon Prime members (more engaged than non-Prime members). About 20% of these shop a few times per week. 7% of Amazon Prime members shop daily.
- At least 4000 items are sold per minute on Amazon.
- Further, more than 1.9 million+ sellers actively sell products on Amazon (Marketplace Pulse, 2021).
This brings us to a few big questions:
How do you, as a seller on Amazon, stand out?
What can you do to boost your sales?
How can you engage better with your potential customers, earn their trust, and sell more?
Say hello to Amazon Live Shopping – a brand new feature that lets you create and host a live show on Amazon.
Amazon Live lets you tap into the power of live streaming and lets you take advantage of the massive eCommerce behemoth that Amazon is.
For Amazon sellers, brands, and influencers, it’s pure gold.
In this post, we’ll go over: The basics of what Amazon Live is, how to brand your show for success, and some Amazon Live inspiration for you.
We’ll also provide some editable Amazon Live free templates that will help you make an impact and put on a show, and how to use them with Streamyard – our favorite tool for Live Streaming from our desktops, and using our choice of Camera/s!
What is Amazon Live?
Amazon plans to take on QVC (the hitherto reigning queen of television commerce in the United States) with Amazon Live Shopping.
Note: Amazon’s live streaming feature is open to U.S. professional sellers (registered in the Amazon Brand Registry).
While taking on QVC, Amazon’s timing couldn’t have been more appropriate: it’s also going to take on Facebook Live & Facebook Shopping, Instagram Live, YouTube Live, and others.
Baked right into the platform (aided by a companion app called Amazon Live Creator for sellers), Amazon promises to help sellers on the platform to sell better, allow brands to interact with customers in real-time, and reach more potential customers.
More importantly, Amazon wants to let sellers “connect” with “potential buyers” en masse.
Amazon Live is a new way for brands to engage with their customers. It’s an opportunity to provide a more personalized experience and build stronger relationships with your audience.
As an Amazon Seller, an Amazon FBA business, a brand, or as an influencer, you can now create great branded content for Amazon Live that engages viewers on both the live stream and in-between scheduled broadcasts.
For eligible influencers, Amazon Live presents you with an opportunity to grow your revenue as an influencer by recommending, promoting, and sharing products with Amazon shoppers (for commissions). As an influencer, you get your own vanity URL, a Rising Star status (to begin with), and more or less the same features that brands get (minus guest creators feature).
Amazon Live also provides sellers, brands, and influencers several features such as:
- Product highlighting
- Live promotions
- Live Chat
- Graphics & overlays
- Ability to go live right through a mobile phone.
- Built-in analytics so brands can determine how well their stream performed (plus, how much of their budget they’ve spent on “boosting” -a way to pay to reach more shoppers), total views, unmuted views, and other metrics.
How to get started with Amazon Live?
Note: To use Amazon Live, you’d have to be a professional Amazon seller registered in Amazon’s Brand Registry with an iPhone and/or iPad. You’ll also need a stable Wi-Fi connection.
If you are an influencer, you’ll need to have been approved into the new Amazon Influencer program to earn commissions from qualifying purchases.
- Download Amazon Live Creator App
a) Influencers will need to download and log-in using the credentials of your Amazon Influencer program.
b) Professional sellers and brands need to log-in using seller central/brand registry log-in credentials. - Multiple users can log-in to one account (provided they meet eligibility criteria). This is useful if you have teams, assistants, or members to help you with the Amazon livestream (such as to highlight products, respond to (or moderate) chat messages, and more.
- [Brands only] You can also invite guests and co-hosts to your Amazon livestream.
- Creating your Livestream: From inside the Amazon Live Creator App, click on the “+” and start your stream.
- Add Products to Carousel (Highlight products as you speak): The purpose of the livestream is to let Amazon shoppers know about the products you discuss. Add products, highlight products, mention live promos, get feedback, encourage chat, and sell more.
- There are three levels in Amazon Live: Rising Star, Insider, and A-list. Everyone (brands and influencers starts as Rising Stars and then level up. Higher levels unlock various features such as showing your livestream under more product placements, more reach, etc.
- Make your live streams more effective: do focus on value, use graphics or overlays such as intros, outros, lower-thirds, for a more professionally presented Live Stream.
Amazon Live: Effectively Using Graphics & Overlays
Want to make an Impact with Amazon Live?
Do you want to draw your existing and potential buyers in with a force others just can’t match?
Go visual.
More than 65% of us humans are visual learners (also called Spatial Learners).
Amazon Live helps you bring your products to life by showing whiteboards, maps, photos, and live demonstrations. Showing products in use helps your customers “visualize”.
This is what IKEA also does, and this is one of the reasons for its success.
How do you help your existing and potential customers on Amazon visualize?
Use Amazon Live and go visual with graphics and overlays along with your regular live streams on Amazon.
By default, you get 3 different basic design themes and 6 graphics within each theme. These themes are inclusive of the below messages:
- Follow me on Amazon
- Chat with me
- Exclusive promotion
- Be Right Back
- Starting Soon
- Thanks for Watching
But you don’t have to stop at “default”. Our team of Graphic designers has created five sets of Amazon Live Graphic Templates that you can update in minutes.
As you do live streaming on Amazon, consider using the following overlays and graphics along with a few tips on making your Amazon Livestream pop:
- Make your visuals (graphics and overlays) help aid your livestream but don’t let them take up more real estate than they should.
- Create and use customized intros and outros to bring in brand consistency and visual impact.
- Use Lower-thirds to highlight social media handles, show names of hosts and guests on your live stream, highlight existing customers, and more.
- Let your personality shine through. Experiment and learn from what’s working and what’s not.
Making Impact with Amazon Live: How to Make the Most of It
Showing up on Amazon Live might feel a little overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be.
With a clear plan, motive, and enough hustle, you can make Amazon live work to boost your reach, grow an audience, and ultimately sell products (fast) while building trust.
Focus on consistency (& be yourself)
There’s only one problem with chasing fancy formulas and magic bullets when it comes to business success: It’s easy to forget basics which are often more to do with behavior and habits than with “secrets”.
By being consistent with Amazon live streams (applicable to almost anything really…) and by being yourself, you make yourself approachable to your audiences.
Show your human side. Expose your vulnerabilities.
Provide Value (Don’t Sell)
Use the graphics, overlays, text, and other elements to do the actual work of selling Amazon products for you.
For instance, use graphics to announce live promotions, use text (with links to products) inside the live chat stream, and add calls to actions in your live streams to announce special promos, sales, and more.
As for the actual communication, interactions, and Amazon Livestream itself, focus on providing value.
Explain how your Amazon-listed products solve problems. Show live demonstrations of how those products work.
Add some B-roll to your live streams (or for the scheduled broadcasts) and tempt your customers with unboxing videos, behind-the-scenes footage, product manufacturing processes, and more.
Amazon Live Shopping Examples: Brands & Influencers That Are Killing It
Looking for some inspiration on how to do Amazon live streams? Here are a few influencers already doing it with Amazon Live.
DealCasters
DealCasters is an exclusive Amazon Live Show (hosted by Jim Fuhs of Fusion Marketing and Chris Stone of Cast Ahead).
Apart from showcasing various products (video equipment, video gear, and more), the Amazon Live Show also teaches you how to do Amazon Livestreaming like a pro.
Watch a few videos on the Live Stream and you’ll also see how the folks at DealCasters pack value into each video, deploy overlays and graphics to showcase live promos, display names of hosts (and/or guests), and more.
Hot tip: The guys from DealCasters recommend you buy your own .live Domain for your brand. For $1.99, this is a great investment!
Launch Your Live
Following a successful Live Show and Podcast series, Christian Karasiewicz has extended his reach tremendously with ‘Launch your Live‘ taking on the Amazon Live Shopping network.
His Amazon live streams are focused on providing value and sharing his extensive knowledge of all hardware/tech and software related to creating the perfect Live Show.
Here’s an example of an Amazon Live Stream, with the branding kept consistent with his Podcast, YouTube Channel, and all other brand touchpoints:
Tech Deals with BMac
Brian MacDuff (a.k.a BMAC) runs regular Amazon Live streams on all things tech (home tech and consumer technology, and lifestyle content).
He streams several times a week.
Notice the overlays, graphics, the “Sponsored By….” graphic (with an actual sponsor), and the product carousel. Further, notice product highlights, prompt to ‘Follow’, and more.
The product carousel is a sales “driver”.
Brands use it to drive direct sales during the live stream and influencers use it to push sponsored product placements.
5 FREE TEMPLATES FOR BRANDING YOUR AMAZON LIVE SHOPPING SHOW
If you’d prefer to Live Stream to Amazon Live through the comfort of your desktop computer, using your favorite cameras, and stepping up your branding, you’ll love the following templates we’ve created to help you stand out.
HOW TO USE THE FREE TEMPLATES
- Register for your Easil Account. We’ll even gift you (with no credit card required) an upgrade to our Plus plan, for thirty days! This enables you to access downloads with transparent backgrounds (PNG files).
- Click on the links to open each pre-designed Amazon Live Shopping Template in the Easil editor.
- Follow the instructions and tips with each Template, and then start to customize your Amazon Live designs with your own content, colors and imagery.
- Download your designs as a PNG file to retain the transparency when using them as overlays within Amazon Live.
- Upload to the Amazon Live Shopping platform!
FREE AMAZON LIVE TEMPLATE #1
FREE AMAZON LIVE TEMPLATE #2
FREE AMAZON LIVE TEMPLATE #3
FREE AMAZON LIVE TEMPLATE #4
FREE AMAZON LIVE TEMPLATE #5
OVER TO YOU
Want to create more? Itching to experiment with Amazon Live Shopping? Get started with your 30 Day free trial of Easil today, and try out our brand new Amazon Live Streaming branding templates!
