BusinessHABBusiness on amazon: You might think that the world’s largest online retailer would be an ideal place for your brand to sell your products. After all, you can list your products for sale on Amazon quickly and easily, reach a huge potential customer base, and pay just a nominal fee for the privilege of doing so. What could possibly go wrong?
However, unless you have a specific strategy for how to succeed on Amazon as a seller, it’s easy to make several crucial mistakes that will not only inhibit your growth but also put your business at risk. In this blog post, we’ll share 10 tips on how to succeed on Amazon as a third-party seller that will help you achieve greater success with less risk involved.
How to Succeed on Amazon: 10 Ways to Grow Your Business
If you have a bricks-and-mortar business, your first inclination when looking at eCommerce might be to avoid it. Counterintuitive as that may sound, Amazon is one of the most effective ways to grow your business and increase sales if you know how to succeed on Amazon. With more than 40% of US adults shopping on Amazon monthly and 90% of consumers starting their product searches directly on Amazon, rather than Google or another search engine, it’s no surprise that businesses are seeing great ROI by selling on Amazon. If you are looking for new ways to grow your business with little investment and risk, read on to learn more about how you can succeed on Amazon.
What is Amazon?
Amazon is an online marketplace where buyers can purchase products from sellers.
The sellers can be individuals who sell their own products, or they can be larger companies with multiple brands under their umbrella.
The marketplace business model has allowed Amazon to become the behemoth it is today.
Amazon has effectively created a marketplace where both buyers and sellers can trust each other.
Amazon has built a robust system for payment, logistics, and customer service that sellers can plug into and run their business on top of.
Amazon handles all customer payment data, customer service, order routing, and shipping.
The seller only has to focus on one thing – creating and shipping a high-quality product.
Because of this Amazon has been able to build a massive database of products, many of which are “FBA” (fulfilled by Amazon).
This means that Amazon has taken over all of the logistics and customer service around that product.
People search for products on Amazon, see the product listing (product photos, description, price), and can purchase it there.
Amazon is a marketplace of both products from Amazon’s own brands and products from third-party sellers.
All of these sellers, no matter if they are Amazon or not, sell their products on Amazon.
Build a Solid Brand and Reputation
When brands have multiple products under their name, they are able to build a brand that customers can trust. When you sell one product, you have one chance to make a good impression on customers.
If you make a mistake, customers will only remember that product and the mistake.
Once you start selling multiple products to multiple buyers, you can build a brand that customers will start to recognize.
A good brand will always be about more than just the product.
A brand is about the experience that customer has with that product.
A brand is about the customer service experience, it’s about the shipping experience.
A brand is about how a product solves a customer’s problem.
Paid Advertising
Amazon paid advertising can be a great way to start bringing in sales for your product.
There are different types of paid advertising on Amazon, including sponsored product ads, headline search ads, and product display ads.
Sponsored Product Ads – Sponsored product ads are when you pay for your product to show up at the top of Amazon search results.
This is a great way to quickly get your product in front of customers who are actively searching for a product like yours.
These product listings are highly optimized for customer search terms.
That means that if someone searches for a product and your ad shows up at the top of the search results, that person will click on your product.
Because of this, sponsored product ads are an excellent way to drive sales in the early days of your launch.
Headline Search Ads – Headline search ads are when you pay to have your product listing show up at the top of the Amazon search results as a headline.
This allows your product listing to be seen by a larger customer audience.
These product listings don’t actually appear as an “ad” in the customer’s view, but instead as a headline that is prioritized above the organic search results.
In the early days of marketing your product, you may be fighting to get your product listing in front of customers.
With headline search ads, you have another way to get your product seen by more customers.
Product Display Ads – Product display ads are a way to show your product listing to customers who are not actively searching for your product.
These ads are shown on Amazon-owned websites, like the deals section, or categories like electronics.
Because of this, product display ads are a great way to get your product listing in front of customers who are browsing but may not be actively searching for your product.
These ads are highly targeted and are a great way to get the word out about your product.
Get the Right Tools for the Job
When you start selling on Amazon, you may find yourself overwhelmed by the amount of tools and resources available to you. There are plenty of third-party tools and services that promise to make your life easier. There are tools for inventory management, product research, product launch strategy, and many other areas of your business. There are a few tools that I recommend that you have in your Amazon seller toolkit: CAM – This is a basic Amazon seller tool that will let you track your sales, product performance, and inventory management. Many other tools have similar features, but my recommendation is to start with CAM since it’s free. Sales and Profit Calculator – You always need to be making sure your price point is competitive, but you also don’t want to price your product so low that you’re losing money. There are a lot of profit margin calculators out there, but I like to use this one from Sellers Base because it also lets you put in your projected sales based on those prices to see how much you’d make in profit. FBA Calculator – A lot of people selling on Amazon want to use FBA (fulfilled by Amazon), but FBA also comes with a higher upfront cost. The Amazon FBA calculator will walk you through what your costs will be and how much you can expect to make with each product you list.
Giveaway: Build Awareness and Grow Your Audience
One of the best ways to grow your audience on Amazon is to give away free product. This is called a “giveaway”, and it’s a great way to build your brand awareness. You can choose to give away one of your products or you can choose to give away an Amazon gift card. One of the best ways to provide a giveaway is to partner with influencers. Influencers are people with large social media followings, who often have a specific interest in your niche. For example, if you’re selling fishing rods, a great influencer to partner with would be a popular fishing blogger or YouTuber. You can partner with influencers by offering them free product or a free gift card to your store. In exchange, they promote your product to their audience, giving you a boost of sales and brand awareness.
Giveaway: Generate Product Reviews
Once you’ve launched your product, you need to give customers a reason to buy. Amazon is a very data-driven marketplace, which means that sellers have to meet certain criteria to be allowed to sell on Amazon. One of those criteria is a certain number of product reviews. That means that if you want to sell your product on Amazon, you will need to get product reviews. There are a few ways you can generate product reviews on Amazon: Get your existing customers to leave reviews – If you are selling a physical product, ask your current customers to leave a review. You can also offer them a discount on their next purchase in exchange for leaving a review. This will help you meet your Amazon product review requirement faster.
Conclusion
Amazon is a massive marketplace that is full of potential for business owners. It has become the go-to marketplace for consumers, making it an important place for sellers to be. With the right strategy, you can succeed on Amazon and grow your business. There are many ways to succeed on Amazon, but it all comes down to having a solid strategy. Whether you are looking to build a brand with your Amazon presence or are looking to boost sales with giveaways, Amazon can be a great way to grow your business. With the right strategy, you can succeed on Amazon and grow your business.
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