Relaunching a product on Amazon is often necessary when your listing experiences a decline in visibility, sales, or customer engagement. This happens for several reasons, ranging from increased competition, negative reviews, poor keyword rankings, changes in Amazon’s algorithm, or even mistakes made during the initial launch. Over time, product listings can become outdated or fail to meet market trends, leading to a drop in performance.

Additionally, if your product’s category has become oversaturated or your marketing strategies are no longer effective, a relaunch allows you to re-enter the marketplace with a renewed approach. This can help improve your listing’s visibility, increase sales conversions, and revive customer interest. A well-planned relaunch can address previous issues and give your product a fresh start to succeed.

While many Amazon sellers focus on successfully launching a new product, an equally important but often overlooked question is, “How do you relaunch a product?” This is a crucial topic because a seller might need to revive an existing product for various reasons. A product listing can face numerous challenges, whether due to a poor initial launch, increasing competition, or an unexpected change in Amazon’s policies.

Sellers depend heavily on product sales, which directly impacts their business when those sales dip. That’s why the process of relaunching a product is so important. However, it’s also essential to recognize that not every product is worth saving. Products can reach the end of their lifecycle on Amazon, and sometimes, no amount of relaunch effort will revive them. This blog will walk you through how to evaluate your situation and successfully relaunch a product when a second chance is viable.

Step 1: Identify Whether Your Issue Is Ranking, Conversions, or Both

Ranking and conversions often go hand in hand, making it difficult to determine which issue is causing the other. If a product’s rank drops, it may become more challenging to find, leading to fewer conversions. Conversely, low conversions may also affect ranking. To troubleshoot effectively, assess where your product ranks for crucial search terms compared to its previous position. Track this over several days or weeks to determine if the decline is consistent or just a temporary glitch.

Review your product’s unit session percentage and session data to get a clearer picture of conversion performance. This will help you pinpoint whether the problem lies more in visibility (ranking) or in turning views into sales (conversions). It’s also essential to analyze the rate of your product’s decline—did sales plummet suddenly, or was it a gradual decrease? Sudden drops may indicate issues like policy violations or listing errors, while gradual declines could point to increased competition or market saturation.

Step 2: Analyze the Competition

Competition is often a key factor behind a product’s decline on Amazon, especially as the number of third-party sellers continues to increase. Increased competition leads to more listings on page one, making it harder for older products to maintain visibility, particularly as newer products benefit from a “honeymoon period” with better exposure.

Additionally, smaller sellers can struggle to keep up if significant brands improve their listing quality. Sellers should regularly assess their competition by examining the number of listings, reviews, and the quality of images and titles in their category. In some cases, a sudden drop in performance may not be due to competition alone but a category change, where Amazon or competitors shift a product into a less relevant category, disrupting keyword rankings and impacting sales.

What is the honeymoon period?

The “Honeymoon Period” on Amazon refers to a theory that new product listings receive a temporary boost in visibility and ranking in their early stages, making it easier to rank for keywords and gain impressions. While Amazon has not officially confirmed this concept, many sellers have observed patterns that support the idea over the years. 

Initially, the Honeymoon Period was believed to give newer listings an advantage, as Amazon’s ranking algorithm wouldn’t have enough sales history to weigh them down compared to older listings. More recently, the emphasis on keyword relevance has shifted the focus. When a new listing is created, it is initially considered relevant for a broad set of keywords, making it easier to rank and promote. However, over time, Amazon refined the listing’s relevance based on actual sales and performance, and the effects of the Honeymoon Period faded. Despite algorithm changes, many sellers still observe the impact of this initial phase in boosting new product visibility.

STEP 3: Review Your Discount Promotion History

If your product has primarily ranked well due to deep discount promotions or sales but needs help generating full-price organic or even PPC sales, it could be a sign of trouble for your listing. While it may be tough to accept, this could indicate that the Amazon marketplace isn’t interested in your product at its current price point or isn’t as competitive as others.

Conversion rate plays a significant role in Amazon’s complex relevance algorithm, and if your listing’s conversion rate is lower than that of competitors, it will likely lose visibility. But ranking isn’t just about page position—several factors can influence conversions, such as review ratings, the number of reviews compared to similarly ranked products, pricing, and the quality of the main image. Shoppers often make decisions based on conscious and subconscious factors, so creating a high-quality product with carefully crafted messaging is essential for success.

Once you’ve evaluated your discount history and other potential issues, you’re ready to address the critical question: How do you effectively re-launch your product?

1. Aggressive Re-rank
   This approach focuses on pushing your current listing back up the rankings using aggressive marketing and promotional tactics. You can boost visibility by running targeted Amazon PPC campaigns, offering discounts, or using external traffic to drive sales. Optimizing your listing with new keywords, improved images, and fresh A+ content can also help revive a product. This option works best if the listing has potential but has been impacted by competition, poor keyword strategy, or temporary setbacks.
2. Restart with a New ASIN
   If your product’s reputation has been significantly damaged—perhaps due to negative reviews, category issues, or outdated content—creating an entirely new ASIN might be more effective. This allows you to relaunch the product with a clean slate. However, be cautious with this option, as Amazon might flag it as a duplicate if the product is too similar to the previous listing. Make sure to make meaningful improvements to the product itself or its presentation before taking this step.
3. Rebrand
   Sometimes, the best course of action is to rebrand the product entirely. This can involve changing the product’s packaging, altering its design, or repositioning it to target a new audience. Rebranding often includes updated visuals, a new marketing strategy, and a fresh brand story. This option is ideal when the product is still viable but needs a fresh identity to stand out in a saturated market.

Relaunching a product on Amazon involves revamping and reintroducing an underperforming product to boost its visibility, sales, and ranking. The process includes optimizing the listing with updated titles, descriptions, and images, implementing a new marketing strategy with Amazon PPC and promotions, addressing negative reviews, and gathering positive feedback. It may also involve adjusting pricing, managing inventory to prevent stockouts, and creating offers to make the product more competitive. The goal is to revitalize the product’s performance, improve its search ranking, and drive higher sales and profitability.

Yes, relaunching a product on Amazon typically involves additional costs, including expenses for Amazon PPC advertising, promotions like coupons and lightning deals, and possibly hiring freelancers for listing optimization (titles, images, or A+ Content). Other costs may include external marketing efforts like social media ads or influencer promotions and using programs like Amazon Vine to generate more reviews. The total cost varies based on the strategies used, but a relaunch generally requires an upfront investment to boost visibility, sales, and overall performance.

Relaunching and restarting a product on Amazon are similar but not the same. Relaunching typically means revamping an existing product with updated strategies, such as optimizing the listing, running new ad campaigns, or offering promotions to boost visibility and sales without completely removing the original product listing. It aims to improve the product’s performance and regain ranking.

In contrast, restarting usually involves removing or completely deleting the current listing and creating a new one from scratch. This is often done when a product needs a better track record (e.g., negative reviews or suppressed listings) and the seller wants a fresh start. Restarting is more drastic and can result in losing existing reviews, ranking history, and sales data.

A relaunch focuses on revitalizing a current listing, while a restart involves creating a new listing to start over.

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