With Amazon’s marketplace becoming increasingly saturated—an estimated 300,000+  new sellers joining Amazon US in 2024 alone—and advertising costs continuing to climb, brands must look beyond Amazon’s internal ecosystem to maintain visibility and profitability. Driving external traffic has evolved from a competitive advantage to an essential strategy for market leaders seeking to differentiate their listings, reduce customer acquisition costs, and leverage the algorithm’s preference for sales velocity from diverse traffic sources.

For multi-channel brands, the challenge lies in strategically directing external traffic to Amazon without undermining direct-to-consumer initiatives. This guide examines how brands can implement external traffic strategies that complement—rather than compete with—their DTC objectives.

Best External Traffic Sources for Amazon

Multi-channel brands face the strategic challenge of balancing direct-to-consumer (DTC) website traffic with Amazon visibility. Social media platforms provide organic reach but typically serve your DTC funnel, while strategic exceptions exist for Amazon-exclusive products and major shopping events. Influencer partnerships span from controlled paid collaborations to organic affiliate relationships, with Amazon’s Influencer Program creating sustainable visibility without ongoing costs. Paid social advertising enables precise targeting with platform-specific features to drive high-intent traffic. Google Ads captures consumers actively searching for products in your category, with attribution tools to measure performance across keywords and campaigns. Understanding when and how to leverage each traffic source allows multi-channel brands to maximize Amazon sales while maintaining a balanced channel strategy….

Brand Social Media Marketing

For multi-channel brands, social media platforms primarily serve as funnels to direct traffic to your DTC website where you maintain control over the customer experience and retain higher margins. However, strategically redirecting social traffic to Amazon can be valuable in specific scenarios. For example, when launching Amazon-exclusive products, leverage your social channels to create buzz and highlight the exclusivity, explicitly mentioning Amazon availability. During major sales events like Prime Day, temporarily shift some social promotion toward Amazon to capitalize on the platform’s increased traffic and deal-seeking shoppers. 

It’s also important to recognize that some platforms, particularly TikTok, have developed a natural correlation with Amazon purchasing behavior. Many consumers who discover products through organic TikTok content seek them out on Amazon to make purchases, even without explicit direction from brands. This organic “TikTok-to-Amazon” pipeline has become so prevalent that brands can benefit from this consumer behavior without necessarily having to redirect their audience.

Influencer/Affiliate Partnerships

Influencer partnerships for Amazon traffic generation operate on a spectrum from paid collaborations to affiliate relationships. Paid influencer partnerships provide the most control, where brands contract creators to produce specific content with trackable Amazon links. These arrangements typically include detailed deliverables, posting schedules, and performance expectations, allowing brands to direct traffic to specific Amazon listings during strategic periods. 

Parallel to this, brands can implement gifting campaigns and UGC initiatives that generate organic content without direct payment. While these efforts may not include specific Amazon links, they create product awareness that often leads consumers to search for items on Amazon independently. 

Complementing both approaches, Amazon’s Influencer Program has become increasingly prevalent, with creators establishing their own Amazon storefronts featuring curated product selections. These storefronts represent a win-win scenario where influencers earn commissions on sales while brands gain visibility through trusted recommendations. The program’s success has made Amazon storefronts a standard revenue stream for many influencers, creating a system where creators are incentivized to continuously drive traffic to Amazon listings featuring your products without requiring ongoing direct payment.

Paid Social Advertising

Leveraging paid social media advertising provides a direct way to drive qualified traffic to Amazon products with precise targeting capabilities. 

Utilize platform-specific features like Facebook’s Dynamic Product Ads, Instagram Shopping features, or Pinterest Promoted Pins to showcase products in formats optimized for conversion. 

Implement retargeting campaigns to reconnect with users who have previously engaged with your content but haven’t made a purchase. Allocate budget strategically across platforms based on where your target audience spends their time, testing different ad formats, audiences, and messaging to continuously improve performance and drive high-intent traffic to your Amazon listings.

Google Ads for Amazon Traffic

Google Ads provides a powerful avenue to capture high-intent traffic and direct it to your Amazon listings by targeting consumers actively searching for products in your category. 

Consider focusing on non-branded keywords that demonstrate purchase intent rather than just awareness, as these searchers are often in the final stages of their buying journey. 

Create dedicated landing pages or use Amazon Attribution links to track performance and properly attribute sales from your Google Ad campaigns back to specific keywords and ad groups. 

Google Shopping campaigns can be particularly effective for Amazon sellers, allowing you to display product images, prices, and reviews directly in search results, creating a seamless path to your Amazon listing. 

For multi-channel brands, consider segmenting your keyword strategy, directing generic product searches toward Amazon while reserving brand-specific terms for your DTC website to maximize overall revenue while balancing marketplace and direct sales channels.

Bonus Tip: In the screenshot above, the Google Search results show a “Special Offer” tag that appears on the Amazon listings, enticing consumers with the promise of deals or savings. Brands can obtain this attention-grabbing tag simply by enrolling their products in Amazon’s Subscribe & Save program.

Email Marketing for Amazon Traffic

Email marketing provides multi-channel brands with a unique opportunity to strategically direct their most engaged audience to Amazon listings at optimal moments. 

For multi-channel brands, a segmented approach is most effective: reserve your primary email flows (welcome series, post-purchase) for DTC conversion, while creating dedicated Amazon-focused campaigns for specific strategic objectives. These can include limited-time Amazon promotions, product launches with initial exclusivity on Amazon, or campaigns highlighting Amazon-exclusive bundles or variations. 

During Amazon shopping events like Prime Day, dedicated email campaigns can promote your participating products with time-sensitive messaging that capitalizes on the urgency of these events. 

For subscription-ready products, highlighting the Subscribe & Save option on Amazon can appeal to convenience-focused customers and help increase customer LTV on Amazon.

Promotional Strategies for Amazon Traffic Generation

Leveraging deals and promotions as traffic drivers for Amazon listings can significantly amplify external marketing efforts. During high-visibility events like Prime Day, Black Friday, or Cyber Monday, promoting time-limited Amazon discounts through your external channels capitalizes on consumers’ heightened deal-seeking behavior, creating urgency that drives immediate action. These promotional periods offer exceptional ROI for external traffic investments as conversion rates often double or triple compared to standard periods. 

For new product launches, strategically using limited-time promotions in the crucial first 60-90 days can jumpstart the Amazon algorithm’s recognition of your listing by rapidly increasing sales velocity. This initial momentum is key, as Amazon’s ranking system heavily weights early performance indicators when determining long-term visibility. 

Creating exclusive coupon codes for specific traffic sources (like email subscribers or social followers) can also provide valuable attribution data to measure channel effectiveness. 

The temporary margin sacrifice during promotional periods typically pays off through improved organic ranking, increased review accumulation, and higher organic rank – all key factors that continue generating sales long after the promotion ends. For multi-channel brands, these strategic promotional windows represent ideal opportunities to temporarily shift marketing resources toward Amazon without compromising the long-term DTC strategy.

Amazon Brand Referral Bonus Program

Amazon’s Brand Referral Bonus program (available to brands enrolled in Brand Registry) offers a financial incentive for driving external traffic to your Amazon listings, effectively reducing the platform’s referral fees by an average of 10% on qualifying sales.

The program gives your external marketing efforts a dual benefit: increased sales volume and improved profit margins. Using Amazon Attribution tags, brands can track the performance of non-Amazon marketing channels (including social media, email, search, and display advertising) while earning credits that offset future referral fees. The bonus varies by product category—ranging from approximately 7% to 11%—and is applied two months after the sale to accommodate returns or cancellations. 

For multi-channel brands, this program significantly improves the economics of driving external traffic to Amazon rather than your DTC site, particularly during new product launches or promotional periods when maximizing sales velocity is critical. 

The program also provides valuable analytics through Amazon Attribution, enabling brands to measure campaign performance across channels and optimize their external traffic strategy based on actual conversion data…

Measuring External Traffic Results with Amazon Attribution

Before this tool, sellers couldn’t differentiate which external marketing channels were driving Amazon sales. Now, Amazon Attribution allows sellers to measure how off-site traffic performs on the Amazon platform by tracking engagement across search, social, display, video, and email channels. By analyzing metrics like impressions, clicks, add-to-cart actions, and of course purchases, sellers can understand the entire customer journey and make data-driven decisions.

This can help identify the most effective marketing channels and enable you to adjust your campaigns for better results.

Amazon Attribution is free for sellers enrolled in Brand Registry and vendors.

One thing to note- Unlike tools like Facebook Pixel, Amazon Attribution doesn’t allow sending data back to ad channels for retargeting purposes. This limitation means sellers can track performance but can’t use the data to fuel automatic optimization features on platforms like Google and Facebook Ads.

Conclusion: Optimizing Your Amazon Traffic Strategy

Effectively driving external traffic to Amazon requires a sophisticated, multi-channel approach that balances short-term sales generation with long-term brand equity. Each traffic source—from social media and influencer partnerships to email marketing, paid social, and Google Ads—offers unique advantages when strategically deployed at specific points in your product lifecycle and promotional calendar. 

The key to success lies in understanding when to prioritize Amazon traffic versus DTC traffic, leveraging programs like Brand Referral Bonus to improve economics, and creating compelling promotional strategies that drive initial velocity while building sustainable rankings. 

Envision Horizons, an Amazon-centric growth agency, specializes in helping brands build awareness, gain market share, and drive profitability through Amazon’s expanding suite of advertising and commerce capabilities. Our team of experts provides data-driven strategy, execution, and management through differentiated services including Amazon Advertising (Sponsored Products, Brands, Display & DSP), Amazon SEO Marketing & Creative Optimization, and comprehensive Amazon Operations support. As a verified partner with Advanced Amazon Ad status and proprietary reporting/analytics technology, we drive optimized performance for hundreds of leading brands, transforming external traffic strategies from cost centers into strategic advantages in your multi-channel approach. 

Connect with us to start your journey towards outstanding results!

About the Author

Tristan Williams is the Senior Content Strategist at Envision Horizons, where she leads the creation of thought-leadership content including quarterly Amazon eBooks, informative blogs, and ecommerce industry reports. Tristan also leads the publication of “The Weekly Horizon,” Envision Horizons’ e-commerce newsletter with over 10,000 subscribers, sharing valuable insights on Amazon strategy and marketplace optimization. Tristan holds a Bachelor’s degree in Marketing from Miami University.