Starting an FBA business is easy. But a
lot of businesses drop out in the first year. Others struggle for a few years
and then give up. Others go from strength to strength and make their owners a
fortune.
What’s the difference? Luck? Having a
better product? No. The difference is that the successful FBA businesses know
how to avoid the pitfalls. So to give you some useful help, here’s our list of
‘how not to sell on Amazon’.
If you’re an FBA seller, you took the
decision to let Amazon look after your logistics. You don’t need to run a
warehouse, take deliveries, or send orders out; Amazon covers all of that for
you.
But while Amazon does a great job, it’s
not infallible. Sometimes thing go wrong. That might mean your inventory gets
lost, or damaged. So when that happens, you’re in line for compensation.
Amazon Attribution can be described as a
self-service analytics tool. That doesn’t sound particularly interesting. On
the other hand, you could describe it as a really great advertising
productivity tool. That sounds a lot better, doesn’t it?
Let’s also mention that if you’re an FBA
seller Amazon will give it access to Amazon Attribution for free! All you have
to do is learn how to use it.
Many FBA entrepreneurs find themselves
overwhelmed by the day-to-day tasks of running their business, effectively trading
one job for another. One solution to this issue is to hire virtual assistants
and freelancers to manage various aspects of your business, freeing up time for
more strategic tasks.
In this article, we’ll discuss the most common
mistakes sellers make when doing business on Amazon and how to avoid them.
#1 Insufficient Time and Effort
Regardless of your initial investment, the key
to success is dedicating ample time and effort to optimize your products,
systems, and business. Instead of seeking quick wins, commit to building the
right team and processes for long-term profitability.
Although your relationship with customers on
Amazon FBA may be indirect, as they technically “belong” to Amazon,
it’s still crucial for you to provide excellent service. Not only does this
ensure a positive customer experience, but it can also help you stand out from
the competition. Here are some tips on how to provide top-notch customer
service as an Amazon FBA seller.
Blogging is a great way to boost
products, particularly for niche products where users all share a common
interest.
For instance, if you sell works, spatulas
or special ingredients, an Asian cooking blog could really put some spice into
your sales. Blogs for drinkers of gourmet tea, for cat owners, model-makers,
crafters – you can surely think of a blog that could get potential buyers
reading regularly. And every time they read, they’ll see your brand and your
products.
Using social media to promote your FBA
sales isn’t just about your own Facebook page, tweets or blog posts. You can
use other people to promote your brand, too; brand ambassadors, and social
media influencers.
The two are not the same. Influencers
have built their own brand. For instance, someone like comedy creation Uncle
Roger (Nigel Ng) who reviews other people’s fried rice videos on Youtube would
be a great influencer if you sold woks and chopsticks! They are the brand, the
best of them have a huge reach, and you can use that to get the word out about
your brand.
You might think that the more keywords you have for your PPC advertising, the better. But it’s more a case of “getting in the zone”; like in the story Goldilocks and the three bears, there’s not enough, there’s way too many, and there’s just right.
You
may be asking what’s wrong with too many keywords. Quite a lot, when it comes
to advertising.
• How can you manage
your ad spending effectively with all those keywords?
As you may know, whenever a new idea
appears somewhere in the Interwebs, Amazon comes up with a way to use it, and
fast. One of the big things in the metaverse has been TikTok, so it’s not
surprising that Amazon has now started a scrolling video feed of its own,
Amazon Inspire.
To be honest it’s a bit of a mix of
Instagram and TikTok, since it features both video and photos. Yes, that sounds
pretty like what you find in your Facebook feed too, right?
The difference is that unlike with TikTok
and Facebook, customers can buy the products straight off the feed. That’s a
great way to sell your product!
Are you wasting money on ads that are not
profitable? Pay Per Click advertising (PPC) is a great way to improve your
sales. But it can be tricky to get the best performance, and even worse, it’s
remarkably easy to waste your money.
Amazon does give you the benefit of its
huge data banks and processing power, and lets you set up automatic campaigns.
You can tell Amazon how much budget you have every day, or every week, and it
will choose the right keywords for you. But it’s not infallible. If you only
use automatic campaigns, you’re not going to optimize your ads. So you need to
mix in some manual campaigns.
Learning about FBA is fascinating. But if
you spend all your time passively learning stuff, and you’re not putting it
into practice, your effort won’t do you much good. You need to find ways to
help ensure you get a return from your investment of time and money in
education.
One way is to remember the four letter
“JFDI”, standing for “Just … Do It”. Doing needs to follow learning.
Amazon advertising works well; if
someone’s looking for something on Amazon, they’re a warm target. They already
want the product, or at least, they say they do. But Amazon advertising can
also be very competitive, so you want to get it right and not waste money on
ads that aren’t working.
All Amazon advertising is pay per click –
you pay when someone clicks on your ad, whether they actually buy the product
or not. So watch out, if you have lots of clicks but no one ways, you can spend
a substantial amount of money that you won’t get back.
Setting up an Amazon storefront is one of
the best ways to promote your brand and products on Amazon. It’s available to
all brand registry enrolled sellers, which you should be if you have a
registered trademark, and it lets you showcase your products and tell your
brand story.
Let’s just look at a few key advantages.
First of all, you have a front page where you can send social media and
newsletter contacts; you don’t have to send them straight to an individual
product. Secondly, you can show different products together, which is great
news if you have a collection of matching items such as lime green kitchenware
or alpaca wool clothing, or different specialized cleaning products (for
leather, silver, copper, stains…).
FBA outsources a lot of your work to
Amazon. But if you’re an FBA seller you’ve already discovered that it doesn’t
outsource all of it.
However, there are ways to get a lot more
of your basic business processes either automated or outsourced. Using
integration tools to automate processes that you’d otherwise have to do
manually is a smart move; it frees your time up, saves money, and also helps
prevent those tiny errors that creep in when you have to retype figures from
one place to another.
(Disclaimer: We have a great product that does a lot of this stuff. Want to know more? Here’s our job description!)
One area you can outsource is prep. Most
suppliers can do more of the prep work; for instance, they can barcode your
product, provide pack inserts, and so on. If you use ThomasNet or AliBaba for
your sourcing, they may even be able to ship direct to Amazon, taking their cue
from inventory levels reported to them from Amazon without your having to do
anything to make it happen.
A new year is about to begin. Let’s see
how you can make it a more profitable year; call that your New Year’s
resolution if you like!
The best approach is to look methodically
at each aspect of your business. Find out which areas are making the most
profit, and which are not contributing much if anything. Then, simply do more
of the first and less of the second, and hey presto! More profit.
Photos are really crucial for selling on
Amazon. Unlike a bricks and mortar shop, customers can’t touch and feel what
they’re buying, so they rely on your photos to get a feel for the product.
You may think you need to have a DSLR and
a whole load of studio equipment to take good photos. Actually, you don’t.
Taking product photos is all about the set-up.
It’s easy to get stuck in a rut when
you’re in business. But sometimes you need some creativity. What can you do
when it’s not there to call on?
Well, there are plenty of ways to free up
your creativity and get your brain making all sorts of creative connections.
Once you’ve done that, you’ll find you’re getting new ideas all the time; ideas
for new products, new marketing angles, new ways to operate your business,
whatever it is you’re focused on.
A lot of people think selling on FBA is
going to be easy. They see it as passive income; set up your products, ship
them to the warehouse, and wait for the money to come in.
If you’re already an FBA seller you know
it doesn’t work like that. There’s a lot to do, from sourcing new product to
running advertising campaigns, responding to client issues, and ensuring you
know just how much inventory you have.
So you’ll need to manage your time. If
you’re not managing it properly, your work is managing you, instead.