Amazon sellers have an uphill battle to get consumers to consider their product and possibly buy it if they’re convinced to do so. Marketing for Amazon FBA covers many areas and techniques to get ahead against stiff competition from numerous other sellers. This is why getting better on the marketing side is important because it gives you a leg up on your competition.
Here are seven marketing tips for Amazon sellers
1. Watch Your Advertising Spend to Stay Profitable
With products that get ordered from the U.S. or possibly China, profit margins tend to be around 30-40% for most Amazon sellers. That’s before paying for any advertising to drive visitors to your product page on Amazon itself.
Whether using Amazon’s own advertising platform or external ad networks from Google, LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook, it’s important to budget properly to avoid creating an unprofitable sale scenario.
When looking at improving your Amazon pay-per-click conversions, consider the bid price to place an advert and monitor how many ad clicks are required to secure a sale.
This gives you a clear idea as to what it’s costing to generate sales and whether that’s profitable given the other costs of being an Amazon seller including storage fees and product manufacturing too.
2. Reviews Are Social Proof. Get More of Them
Reviews are the bread and butter of Amazon sales. When a product has no reviews or only a few of them, it’s hard to convert visitors into paying customers.
The rules have changed a lot with regard to getting reviews. Giving away products with a tacit agreement that it’s in exchange for a positive review is no longer permitted. Indeed, Amazon deleted many such reviews to make the remainder more reliable as information for potential buyers.
Try offering discount coupons to regular customers – not by pre-arrangement to avoid breaching any rules – to get early sales. A significantly cheaper sticker price gets over the hump in each buyer’s mind in terms of money risked for a non-reviewed product.
While you may even take a loss on your first consignment of goods, the reviews it will generate helps to sell the next batch. Think medium- to long-term to grow business over time.
3. Use SEO to Raise Your Product Page’s Profile
By using relevant keywords in your product page and backing that up with strategic link building, it’s possible to rank your product page for relevant terms in Google given enough time.
Depending on the keyword selected, it might take 6-12 months to start ranking on page one of Google for the search term. It’s often more successful in the early months to target less competitive buyer terms than the most popular ones.
Be sure to balance out the links, so only a few have the exact match anchor text in the link pointing at the page. You don’t want to be ‘on the nose’ too often, otherwise, it could get picked up as suspect link building by the largest search engine.
Also, don’t ignore Bing as they’re almost 10% of global search volume now.
4. Excellent Images Help Potential Buyers Make Up Their Minds
When starting out as a seller, it’s easy to look for shortcuts when on a smaller budget. Product photos taken with an older smartphone relying on a less-than-stellar camera lens won’t impress anyone.
Usually, they’ll come out grainy due to poor resolution or blurred due to not using a tripod for the perfect still shot.
It’s best to hire a professional studio to take product photos for you. However, if you wish to do it yourself, purchase or borrow a DSLR camera and a tripod from a friend or business associate.
Also, study a few YouTube videos on that camera model to learn how to operate and get the most out of it.
When you’re ready, set up an uncluttered space for the shots. Use a neutral background to make the product stand out. Ensure there’s enough natural or artificial light as digital photography needs extra brightness to avoid the image being too dark. Take photos from different angles using the tripod.
Consider the product’s features and take shots at the right angles to display those clearly. Also, be prepared to learn how to use a graphics package like Adobe Photoshop to fix any visual imperfections to avoid a reshoot.
5. Pay Attention to Customer Support
Beyond the requirements that Amazon has for sellers in terms of response times, you should notice that many reviewers mention the customer support they received from the seller. They may positively or negatively reflect on their experience.
Situations like a missing part, instructions that were unclear or not being able to reach the seller are usually noted in a negative review. These kinds of comments put off likely buyers from clicking the ‘Buy’ button on your product page.
To avoid these issues, ensure your customer support is exceptional. It may not always get you positive reviews, but it’ll avoid losing new sales down the line.
6. Consider Your Approach to Competitive Pricing
Many Amazon buyers are bargain hunters. When not looking for discounts in the retail stores, they’re seeking the best deal online at Amazon.
It depends whether your product has enough unique features to qualify as sought after in its own right or if there are other sellers offering similar products produced at the same factory.
With fewer unique selling points, customers quickly home in on the product with the most attractive pricing. This might even overlook better features if the price is lower.
Amazon does help sellers to compete on price by providing their Low-price Matching service. This online tool assists FBA sellers to strategically adjust their prices to better compete with aggressive sellers that accept lower margins.
7. Focus on Controlling the ‘Buy’ Box
It’s a strange phenomenon on Amazon – sellers don’t own their ‘Buy’ box.
Even though they create a product page, they don’t lock out other sellers from their page. Indeed, if another seller is offering the same basic product at a lower price, they can effectively hijack your product listing and take control of the Buy Box. At that point, another seller is getting the sales and not you.
To avoid this scenario, focus on these factors to convince Amazon not to give the Buy Box away:
- Never go out of stock
- Actively pursue a positive seller rating
- Deliver excellent customer services to avoid poor reviews
- Offer multiple fulfilment options to suit different buyers
- Compete on the price point
- Consider bundling several products together (best done if you market several related products under the same brand)
- Grow traffic to the product page to increase conversions
Once you’ve done the best you can to offer a great product and covered all your bases, then it comes down to marketing. Turning eyeballs into buyers then become the priority. When done smartly, it can pay off massively in improved ROI.
I’m a tech enthusiast, entrepreneur, digital marketer and professional blogger equipped with skills in Digital Marketing, SEO, SEM, SMM, and lead generation. My objective is to simplify technology for you through detailed guides and reviews. I discovered WordPress while setting up my first business site and instantly became enamored. When not crafting websites, making content, or helping clients enhance their online ventures, I usually take care of my health and spend time with family, and explore the world. Connect with me on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin or read my complete biography.