Amazon Live: Drive Discovery and Conversion with a Livestream

As an Amazon seller, you regularly need to adapt and find new ways to market and promote your products. Fortunately, Amazon frequently releases new features for sellers to leverage to gain visibility in front of hundreds of millions of shoppers.

The latest? Amazon Live. 

• What is Amazon Live?
• Who can use Amazon Live?
• Why you should promote your products on Amazon Live
• How to stream on Amazon Live
• Best practices for streaming live on Amazon

What is Amazon Live?

Amazon Live is a program that streams live videos right on the Amazon Live homepage, and on your brand’s product detail pages.

These live videos allow hosts to speak about products and demonstrate how they work, providing a highly engaging promotional tool for sellers to drive more informed shoppers to purchase their products. 

Amazon Live works similarly to QVC — except instead of being aired on TV, you’re live streaming on Amazon. You can show off how your products look and work in real life, above and beyond your listing’s images—especially since customers cannot physically interact with the product before purchasing.

Your live stream will also appear on your listing. 

Setting up a live stream on Amazon is a simple process that allows you to showcase your products in a unique and powerful way. We’ll go over who can use Amazon Live, the benefits of using it, and how to get started.

Who can use Amazon Live?

Before getting into the details of how to use it, let’s quickly go over who’s eligible for the program. 

1. Professional U.S. sellers registered in Amazon Brand Registry
2. U.S. vendors with an approved Amazon Store
3. Amazon Influencers* with an active influencer storefront

If you meet one of these three requirements, you can set up your Amazon Live Creator account and start streaming! 

*The Amazon Influencer program is an extension of the Amazon Associates program, whereby influencers on Instagram, Youtube, Twitter, Facebook, etc. can promote, share, and sell the products they love to their audience. If someone purchases a product from an influencer store, the influencer earns a commission. By contrast, brands that host live streams  can drive discoverability and extra sales to their own listings. 

Why you should promote your products on Amazon Live

Live streaming has become increasingly popular over the last few years, so it only makes sense to take advantage of a new opportunity to reach the massive audience of the world’s biggest retailer. 

One of the biggest benefits to using Amazon Live: it’s free! That’s right—streaming in front of thousands of potential buyers on Amazon is completely free.

Additional benefits to using Amazon Live:

• It’s a new way to get discovered. Streaming live offers you a unique opportunity to showcase your products to hundreds or even thousands of potential customers. This can drive discoverability and brand awareness.
• Live-only promotions. During your live stream, you can promote a special deal that only viewers can take advantage of. This enables you to drive urgency, since the deal will only be available for a limited time. This way, you can award discounts and provide value to the customers who joined you live, and encourage repeat viewership.
• Interact with your viewers. A great benefit to streaming live on Amazon is that you can interact and chat with your viewers. There will be a live chat feature during the stream for people to ask questions about your brand and product. This gives you a great opportunity to really sell the features and benefits.
• Customers can follow your brand. You can urge people to follow your brand page on Amazon so they can be notified every time you go live. This is a great way to promote and launch a brand new product line and get those initial sales.
• Your live stream appears on your listing. As you go live on Amazon, your stream will appear on your listing detail page directly under your images. This is great for people who discovered your product in search but want to learn more about what it is or how it works. As you “level up” (more on this below), your stream will eventually be featured on Amazon’s homepage.
• Go live whenever you want. Go live on Amazon when it’s convenient for you—no need to schedule a time with Amazon. Here’s a tip: Go live during the time of day when you tend to see the most sales. Do your sales spike around 2pm on a Wednesday? Go live then. If you can predict an increase in traffic, you can hopefully drive more conversions.

How to stream on Amazon Live

Getting your livestream set up and running on Amazon is a simple process that anyone can do, even if you aren’t tech savvy.

Before you do any streaming, I suggest going through your competitors’ listings and others within your niche to see if anyone else is doing live streams. You’ll also want to jot down some talking points or develop a script about your product before going live for people to see. Don’t worry, Amazon has a practice mode.

Then, you’ll want to download the creator app and link your seller account. 

Step 1: Download the Amazon Live Creator app (iOS only). This will work on an iPhone or iPad. 

Step 2: Create your Live account by signing into your Seller, Vendor, or Influencer account.

Step 3: Choose your brand and enter your profile name.

Step 4: Choose the product you want to add to your stream.

Step 5: Now you’re ready to set up your stream! You should spend some time on practice mode to prepare your talking points and responses to any customer questions you might receive. 

Using Amazon Live is free, however, you can boost your stream’s potential viewership through Amazon advertising. 

Enter in your stream title, start time, etc. 

Step 6: Share your beautiful face and product to the world!

With the Amazon Live creator app, you can easily view all of your analytics right from the homepage of the app.

Best practices for streaming live on Amazon

To stream effectively on Amazon Live and drive the most sales, follow these best practices:

• Create live-only promotions. This is a great way to provide value to the people who took the time to watch your stream. This will make these viewers or customers want to watch again in the future.
• Livestream for at least 30 minutes at a time. This gives viewers a chance to see your stream. Talk about multiple products and engage with your audience to increase livestream time. 
• Promote your brand page. Encourage your viewers to follow your Amazon brand page to get updates and notifications on when you will go live again.
• Encourage questions. Ask your audience to leave you questions in the chat box so you can answer them live. This really helps sell your product and provide valuable information.
• Share your streams across marketing channels. You are able to create a special link that you can share with your audience. Hint that you will be providing a special deal that only viewers can take advantage of.
• Promote new products. Use the streams as a way to launch brand-new products under your brand. Provide viewers with special deals.
• Show off your product, don’t just talk about it. Give your viewers a detailed look at how it works, highlighting the main benefits.
• Practice your stream before you go live. This helps you get a little more comfortable being in front of the camera.
• Go live for holidays. Take advantage of streams during large events (Prime Day, Black Friday/Cyber Monday, Christmas, holidays, etc)

Tips for being on camera:

• Invest in your setup. Make sure you have high-quality video and audio when live streaming. You’re able to use an external video camera and microphone when streaming on Amazon Live.
• Stream with good lighting. Make sure your videos are properly lit, either with natural light or bright photography lighting, so viewers can clearly see you and your product. 
• Enunciate. Speak clearly, concisely, and confidently. Practice makes perfect, so be sure to practice speaking in front of the camera!  
• Think about your video’s thumbnail. Create a unique and high-quality thumbnail image to capture viewers’ attention.

Level up with Amazon Live and unlock more benefits

Amazon Live features three levels that help you gain achievements and reach goals. As you stream more on Live and make more sales, Amazon will reward you with added benefits to drive even more traffic and sales. Once you reach the minimum requirements for each level, you will need to apply to level up. 

Level 1: Rising Star

• Eligible to stream using the Amazon Live Creator app
• Share links to your livestreams from the Amazon Live Creator app
• Your Amazon followers can receive notifications from the Amazon Shopping app when you go live
• Your livestreams are eligible to automatically appear on:
  • The Amazon Live site, in both relevant product category rows and the ‘Live now’ row
  • Detail pages of your brand’s products

Level 2: Insider

• All Rising Star benefits
• Must have longer stream durations (at least 20 minutes but 60+ minutes is preferred)
• You are expected to have 75% of the products displayed in your carousel on hand physically
• Your livestreams are eligible to automatically appear on:
  • All Rising Star placements
  • The Amazon Live site top of page placement

Level 3: A-List

• All Rising Star and Insider benefits
• Must have high-quality content
• You are expected to have 100% of the products displayed in your carousel on hand
• Must have a consistent livestream schedule
• You have a high chat rate from your viewers
• Special access to Amazon Live events and opportunities
• Priority support from the Amazon Live Creator team
• Your livestreams are eligible to automatically appear on:
  • All Rising Star and Insider placements
  • The Amazon.com home page

Go Live on Amazon today!

Promote your products in a way that sets you apart! If you are brand registered on Amazon, then you need to start streaming live today.

If you have any more questions about streaming on Amazon, let us know in the comments!