Running a successful business on Amazon requires the sellers to perform various functions, from inventory planning to freight coordination and marketing to customer support. However, as the business grows, Amazon sellers often find themselves with less and less time to devote to business development due to day-to-day seller account management tasks, customer queries, and keeping up with the competition. As a result, many Amazon businesses initially experience rapid growth, only to find that their sales become stagnant later.
Amazon is the best marketplace that provides fantastic growth opportunities for small and medium-sized businesses. The seller platform and tools offered by Amazon make it easier for a seller to launch a business with fewer resources. The platform supports you as you learn valuable lessons about online selling; however, to continue growth and morph your account into a profitable brand requires a different set of strategies to continue growing your business. This article will explore strategies that Amazon sellers can use to overcome these challenges and grow their businesses.
Tips to Grow your Business on Amazon
The main goal of every seller is to increase sales and grow their business to get the maximum profit. Below are some lessons from successful Amazon businesses that will help put your business on the right path of growth and development.
- Set Strategic Direction for your Amazon Business
- Automate, Automate
- Use Professionals
- Get Audited
- Hire a VA
- Enroll in Amazon Brand Registry
- Use Amazon Marketplace Data Analytics
- Maximize your Inventory Management
- Provide the Best Customer Experience
- Expand your Paid Advertisement
- Offer Amazon Prime-eligible Order Fulfillment to your Customers
This article is about strategic-level ideas for continued business growth in Amazon; if you are looking for a quick sales boost, check out the 17 ways to increase sales on Amazon.
Set Strategic Direction for your Amazon Business
You may be experiencing a period of slowing or even stagnant sales growth, or maybe your Amazon business is growing at its pace. In either case, it is crucial to take a step back, disconnect, and have an eagle-eye view of your business. It shall provide you with perspective. Identify how your business reached where it is and what you need to take it where you want it to be!
To gain such a perspective and subsequently set the direction, you must analyze your business status and statistics, especially current sales history, sales momentum, pricing strategies, inventory management, and all other crucial aspects. Using your knowledge of your business, set a strategic direction. Also, such an exercise will help you identify areas for improvement that, if corrected, can positively impact your business development on Amazon. You will have a transparent prototype showing the parts of your business that need focus to grow.
Automate, Automate
By automating various aspects of their business, Amazon sellers can save time and resources, increase productivity, and scale their operations to handle more sales and customers. Automating your business processes should free up your time to explore new ideas instead of being stuck with daily management tasks. You can automate all aspects of your seller business, but a few options as a starting point can be:
Automated Product Listings
Amazon sellers can use software tools to automate the listing process. This can save significant time, especially when you have multiple selling channels.
Automated Inventory Management
Amazon sellers can use tools to monitor their inventory levels and reorder stock when needed automatically. This can help to avoid stockouts and ensure that products are always available for customers. Amazon has tools that make it easy for sellers to manage inventory, but as you grow and diversify, inventory automation can be extremely handy if stock is utilized to fulfill orders from multiple sales channels.
Automated Order Fulfillment
For non-FBA Amazon sellers, automated order fulfillment will be the biggest time saver. As an FBM Seller, you can use tools to automate the process of fulfilling orders, including printing shipping labels and updating tracking information. This can save time and reduce errors.
Automated Customer Service
Use tools to automate customer service tasks, such as responding to common questions and issues. Amazon message templates shall suffice for small sellers, but customer service tools can be pretty handy for rapidly growing brands.
Automated Repricing
Repricing tools can automatically adjust your products’ prices according to the competition and market conditions. This can help you to stay competitive and maximize profits.
Automated Accounting & Bookkeeping
Use software like QuickBooks or Xero to automate the process of tracking expenses, generating invoices, and reconciling accounts. Take help from an amazon accounting professional to get set up.
Use Professionals
Your supplier-provided product photos may work to start the sales, but they will not suffice when you grow and need solid footing for long-term success. If your store sales are stalling, it is probably time for professional quality assets. Amazon sellers can take help from the following professional services:-
- Use a professional photographer for high-quality product photos. The importance of product photography is also laid out under a separate heading below.
- Take help from a graphic designer to create product infographics, visuals, and marketing material. Use a professional Amazon Storefront Design service to improve customer engagement and build trust.
- Utilize the services of experienced marketers for better management of Amazon PPC campaigns.
- Market Research by an expert can help you find the most relevant targeting opportunities. Accurate targeting from the start will maximize profitability down the line.
- Get your product videos created by professionals to establish your brand quality in front of your customers.
Use Professional Product Photos
Customers want to know and evaluate the items they buy, so you must show products through original high-quality photos. Don’t use pictures of your product downloaded from online sources, as customers don’t trust such pictures often. Taking professional photos of your product is necessary because it will build trust and increase sales. If you plan to take photos yourself, use a high-quality camera so that your pictures stand out in the highly competitive Amazon marketplace.
Get Audited
An audit evaluates and analyzes the performance and effectiveness of an Amazon Seller account, product listings, advertising, or a brand store. It typically includes analyzing website traffic, conversion rates, user experience, Amazon SEO, and the overall sales and revenue generated by the seller account. A seller account audit aims to identify areas for improvement and develop strategies for increasing online sales and revenue. You can either audit the various aspect of your business yourself or get it audited by the experts. A few avenues to consider for auditing include:
Amazon Product Listing Audit
A product listing audit typically includes analyzing the product title, description, images, pricing, and other elements that make up a product listing. A product listing audit aims to ensure that each product listing is optimized for both Amazon algorithms and customers and to identify any issues that may be impacting the performance of the listing. The product listing audit can also check for compliance of the product listing with the platform’s policies and guidelines.
Amazon Advertising Audit
Amazon Advertising or PPC (pay-per-click) audit evaluates and analyzes the performance of a seller account’s paid advertising campaigns. This typically includes analyzing key performance indicators (KPIs) such as click-through rate (CTR), conversion rate, cost per conversion, and return on ad spend (ROAS). The goal of an Amazon advertising or PPC audit is to identify areas where the campaign can be improved, such as targeting the wrong audience, budgeting, or improvement in bid optimization techniques. Get a free Amazon PPC Audit report from Ad experts.
Complete Seller Account Audit
A complete seller account audit entails a comprehensive evaluation of your account to find the areas that need improvement while finding more avenues for growth. The audit shall also check for compliance with Amazon policies and guidelines.
Hire a VA
A virtual assistant (VA) can help an Amazon seller with product research, product listing optimization, order fulfillment, customer service, advertising, PPC management, reporting & analytics, and listing & account management. These tasks can help the seller save time and increase the efficiency of their business operations, allowing them to focus on growing their sales and revenue.
While an efficient VA can be the best resource for an Amazon Seller, finding a well-trained assistant with high-quality standards is easier said than done. You may need to experiment with a few before finding the ideal resource.
Enroll in Amazon Brand Registry
Amazon Brand Registry is a must! Enrolling with Amazon Brand Registry gives you access to several free marketing tools and data analytics necessary to grow your Amazon business to the next level. Previously, only registered trademarks were eligible for Brand Registry; now, Amazon even allows brands who have filed an application but have yet to receive the trademark registration number.
Use Amazon Marketplace Data Analytics
Amazon’s Marketplace Data can provide valuable insights into customer behavior, market trends, and competitive information to help you make better business decisions. One caveat is that these advanced brand analytics and marketplace intelligence data are only available to the brands enrolled in Amazon Brand Registry.
Maximize your Inventory Management
One of the most common reasons that stop your Amazon business from growing is not managing your inventory efficiently. We see a single seller able to manage the stock for up to 25 SKUs effectively; however, beyond 25 SKUs, they will require help from an additional set of eyes or automated tools to expand further. Better Inventory Management for Amazon Sellers is a basic necessity for sustained growth. If you don’t have a well-planned strategy about how much you buy, you can run out of stock, and if you purchase plenty of products simultaneously, your products may remain on your shelves with dust. This can affect your financial business growth and your brand’s reputation. You can undoubtedly use sales history to forecast the right amount of inventory. Still, it is easier said than done, as other market forces like demand variation, competitor performance, and overall market conditions can affect your sales velocity.
Provide the Best Customer Experience
Every seller will agree that the key to success and the growth of any business is providing a great customer experience. This is the strength of a seller that forces buyers to return and recommend their friends and family to shop from you. Remember to:
- Provide a shopping experience buyers expect from Amazon and its sellers, with the best benefits and competitive prices.
- Focusing on customer service will help you to minimize negative comments and maximize positive reviews.
- Consider an Amazon-sponsored campaign to take your offering to the right consumers.
Expand your Paid Advertisement
Product discoverability on Amazon is getting skewed toward paid marketing with each passing day. A pure organic product launch is not possible anymore. This changing market condition demands that you should also give preference to Amazon advertising programs like sponsored products, sponsored brands, and display ads. The starting point for any seller can be Sponsored Product Ads. These are keywords ads that are appropriate for sellers of every level. There is no risk; you only pay when your ad gets clicked. Remember that every click can help you get a new customer, increase sales, and grow your business. For best performance and maximum return on ad spend, use the services of a professional Amazon PPC management agency.
Offer Amazon Prime-eligible Order Fulfillment to your Customers
Amazon Prime is a vast platform with more than 150 million regular customers. Your store will experience a sales boost once you transition from non-prime offering to becoming prime eligible. The easiest way is to use Amazon’s FBA for order fulfillment; however, FBM sellers with good fulfillment metrics can also become prime eligible through Amazon’s Seller Fulfilled Prime program. As sellers, Prime eligibility can be a significant boost to the growth of your Amazon business.
Growing an Amazon Business requires the ability to scale operations and processes, as well as the ability to adapt to changes in the market. It can be achieved through thoughtful strategy and professional execution of business operations. Over time Amazon has developed into a mature platform that provides fantastic tools and opportunities for individual sellers and small businesses to grow. Combine Amazon tools with the strategies laid out in the above paragraphs to keep growing your Amazon business.
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The tips shared in this blog post are backed by data and research, which instills confidence in their effectiveness.