If you’re a big fish, Amazon has been negotiating with several large companies to get their products on their system. Procter & Gamble, Clorox® and Colgate seem to be in already, but these hush-hush sponsorship deals are hard to come by, especially for 99.9% of advertisers. Related products is the angle that Amazon is leveraging for these brands. The opportunities leverage data the companies share about shoppers’ buying history. Amazon Alexa then makes product suggestions to its users that are relevant to their queries.

If you’re not a big fish, organic search results and Amazon’s Choice status will be the main influence on Alexa’s choice of recommendation, not advertising spends. Remember that Echo will not advertise outside of Skills and Alexa will only recommend Amazon products when users ask for them. So how do we activate against these two areas of opportunity?

• You’ve got skills? Amazon has provided extended Alexa functionality through optional additions called Skills. These Skills are apps from third-party developers. Skills is going to be a big focus for Amazon Alexa development throughout 2018, but all apps will be thoroughly screened to make sure that they comply with the user focus on customer satisfaction. Marcus Thomas has actually built a skill for Troy-Bilt®. You will be able to ask a question like, “Alexa, Ask Troy: When’s the best time to mow?” Based on the user’s ZIP Code and selected preferences, a mow time will be recommended, which then can be added to their Google calendar.

• What about organic? Research shows that Amazon’s Alexa recommends products based on the new Amazon’s Choice program. Amazon’s Choice metrics and algorithm are an Amazon secret, but here is what we’ve seen. (Source: http://amzadvisers.com/amazons-alexa-chooses-products-buy/)

1. Sellers that have the Amazon’s Choice badge have a better chance of appearing in Amazon’s Alexa recommendations.
Amazon’s Choice makes product recommendations based on availability, price, popularity, ratings, reviews, shipping speed and other factors.
On the technical side, Amazon’s Alexa recommends products based on the keywords that are related to products. Given that a product passes Amazon’s Choice metrics, the selection of that product by Amazon’s Alexa depends on the keywords that shoppers search.
In addition, sellers can’t simply request for a product to be given this important badge. Instead, sellers have to work harder on inventory management, listing optimization and customer service to meet Amazon’s Choice requirements.

2. Sellers need Prime-authorized products to be chosen by Amazon’s Alexa.
Aside from Amazon’s Choice, Amazon’s Alexa will only entertain products that are available via Prime. These can be FBA products or Seller-Fulfilled Prime program products with the Prime badge. In this case, Amazon’s Alexa will choose the Prime offer that ranks first in the results.
If no Amazon’s Choice or Prime offers are available, Amazon’s Alexa will send the product to the app so that shoppers can pursue the purchase manually. In this case, Amazon’s Alexa will choose products that the customer has purchased before, and that rank first in the organic search results.
For this, sellers need to work on getting more repeat customers for consumable items or widen their customer base for one-time purchases, to improve their SEO for top rankings.

• Some other tips found through this research:

If the product that you want to sell through Amazon’s Alexa is not Prime-eligible, opt for FBA or get the SFP badge. You’ll need this once Amazon shifts over to allowing only Prime offers to be sold on the marketplace.

Manage shipping times, even with FBA. You can’t control the Amazon warehouse system, but you can control how much stock you send so that it can be properly distributed around the country. This gives you a better chance for the fastest shipping times possible.

Grow traffic to your Amazon product page versus your own eCommerce store. Elevate visibility and purchases so that you can be the choice for consumers reordering through Amazon’s Alexa.

Manage product reviews in a timely manner. Use available tools to keep customers happy and leave positive reviews. Reach out to unhappy customers, solve their problems, and ask them to remove their negative reviews.

Create a skill, organic product SEO, better listing content, getting a Choice badge, etc., etc.?  If this all sounds daunting, it probably is, but there’s a method to Amazon’s madness. We hear about the importance of user-experience, and Amazon Echo is a great example of this: the company has built everything around making the shopping experience a priority with the user at the center of the experience. It has perfectly blended assistance with advertising, to the point that the advertising does not feel like product promotion, but personal assistance.