When you go in a bricks and mortar store
and it feels a bit tired, you know it. The Christmas decorations are still up
and it’s July? It doesn’t entice. You probably will walk out of there without
buying anything.
Amazon product listings are the same.
They may have been great and state-of-the-art a couple of years ago, but need a
refresh; the online equivalent of a lick of paint and a new window display.
But how do you know which pages really
need updating? And where should you focus your effort?
Inflation has really taken off this year.
Supply chain disruptions due to Covid had already started it off, but the hike
in energy and food prices as a result of war in Ukraine are now pushing it
further; currently prices are increasing by over 9% year-on-year. That comes
after years of low single-digit inflation and, in e-commerce, prices that were
actually falling, so it’s a big shock.
How are consumers reacting? First of all,
they’re making fewer impulse purchases and buying fewer ‘fun’ products. Rubber
chickens, T-Rex costumes, and similar amusements are probably not going to sell
well right now.
An Amazon Storefront is a great way to
capture customers. When they’re on your storefront, they’re not seeing your
competitors’ products; it’s as if they’re in your shop, not on Amazon at all.
And while they’re in the shop, they may well see other things they want to buy.
(Remember going to the grocery store and coming out with a load of stuff that wasn’t on your list?)
Your Store is also the best way to
communicate your brand on Amazon. Product pages, however much you use the
create opportunities you’re given, look like Amazon product pages, but your
Storefront can look like your brand.
One key to success is to create a Storefront that has more than three tabs. According to Amazon that can nearly double user retention, and adds a third to sales per shopper. After all, you’ve given them a couple of reasons to click on to the next tab, and see what’s there.
According to estimates we’ve seen, a
third of customer traffic begins off the Amazon platform. While two-thirds of
customers come to Amazon and start shopping, the others are following links
they’ve seen elsewhere.
There are big advantages to this traffic.
If you point customers from your website or social media to your product page,
they will see your product directly. They won’t have to search, and they won’t
see competitors’ products up against yours. Or you can point them to your
Amazon Store where they’ll see all your products, not just the one they want,
and they’ll also see your branding rather than just a typical Amazon product
page.
When you’re thinking of discounting a
product there are a number of questions you need to ask yourself. If you’re not
certain of what you’re doing, you’re making less profit for no reason.
First of all you need to ask what is the
purpose of the discount. It should have a definite reason, such as:
Many FBA sellers think a customer comes
on Amazon, puts a search query in the text box, and buys the top product,
click, just like that.
No one ever gets married that way! They
have a first date. A second date. Take a holiday together or meet each others’
families. And then, way down the line, they get married.
So most customers who are making a
significant purchase are going to do some research first. They might hang out
on forums for their interest and ask questions to scope out what they need.
They might look around sellers’ web sites (which is one reason you need one). They
might read magazines and newsletters.
It’s a competitive world on Amazon, and
one in which any product search will turn up dozens if not hundreds of hits. So
how can you make your product stand out? In marketing speak, how can you differentiate your product?
First of all, find the gaps and the pain
points. Listen out for questions like
• Why don’t women’s clothes ever have pockets in?
• Why can’t I get pie dishes the right size for one person?
Or screams of anguish like
• I love jeans but blue is not a choice of color!
• My hairdryer is either cold or SCORCHING!!!
• I keep losing the wretched little kneading arm on the bread-maker, darn
it!
Someone, whoever made this comment, has a
problem that your product can solve. Make pretty summer dresses with pockets,
single-size pie dishes, screaming pink and neon yellow jeans, hairdryers with
five different heat settings all of which work, and you have solved the problem.
(Okay, you need to work out whether
that’s just one person’s problem, or whether other people are also crying out
for a product to solve that problem. We went on Twitter about the pockets
issue. Starting a clothes brand called WITHPOCKETSIN is very, very tempting
indeed.)
Look at competitors’ product listings to
see what the issues are, too. Sometimes they are just small things that need to
be put right, but sometimes you may see a really major gap.
Secondly, look for the value added. Can
you bundle products that are often sold separately to make something that’s
more useful? This is how tour operators got started – they realized most people
don’t want to have to book four plane tickets, two hotel rooms, a load of
restaurants and activities … they want to have a simple choice: “us and
the two kids, for two weeks.” (This is also why some tour operators came
unstuck when websites like Kayak and Lastminute started making it so much
easier for people to make up DIY holidays.)
Taking the bread-maker example, I wonder
how many people would prefer to buy a bread-maker with two or three extra
paddles? That saves them having a useless bread-maker. (Buying replacement
paddles is expensive and often difficult.)
So that’s value added, or at least, it avoids the subtraction of value!
Adding a recipe book to kitchen equipment
or a guide to three simple projects with a craft tool also adds value.
And thirdly, look for a niche. It might
be as simple as focusing on black women’s beauty products (most cosmetics
assume you have pale skin), or on products for people with RSI or carpal tunnel
syndrome (eating implements with large, easy to hold handles, specially laid
out computer keyboards). It might be a style niche (luggage for Goths and Emos,
perhaps?) or a special interest niche (quilting, scrap-booking, home brewing).
Most people who inhabit niches get tired
of products that are almost, but not quite, right, or have to put together
their kit from numerous different places, sometimes making compromises
(implements that are usable but ugly, brewing kit that’s been adapted from jam
making purposes). Offer them a brand that clearly understands their lifestyle/needs/interests/style,
and they will come back over and over again.
Any one of these ways of differentiating
is good. Two would be even better!
Of course you can also differentiate by
being cheaper than everyone else, to some extent. But it’s much easier for a
competitor to change that in two clicks. It also reduces your profit margin. So
if you can differentiate by fixing problems, filling gaps, adding value, or
dominating a niche, that’s definitely the right way to go.
People often have difficulty creating a
brand for their FBA business. It’s not something we’re taught at school, and it
doesn’t come naturally, nor does it lend itself to ‘ten steps’ or flowchart
processes. But there are ways to think about brands that can be very helpful
when you’re starting up.
For instance, looked at one way, a brand
is simply a story. Everybody loves a story, so make it an interesting one.
Amazon FBA is a great business, and like
most businesses it has a number of abbreviations you’ll need to learn if you
want to succeed. It can all be a bit difficult, so this week we decided we’d
devote to the most commonly used abbreviations. Now you have them all in one
place and you can refresh your understanding, or perhaps actually find out what
some of them mean in the first place.
SKUs are Stock Keeping Units. All kinds of businesses have their own SKUs;
IKEA has SKUs, each separate car part and spare has its own SKU, Walmart has
SKUs (and you can look up to check availability). An SKU lets a business see
where products are – in stock, out of stock, sold, whatever.
Social proof – other buyers’ experiences
as shown through their reviews – has a huge impact on Amazon users. That’s one
reason getting your first dozen or so reviews is really important when you
launch a product.
But if you get a bad review, it’s a
strike against you. It doesn’t matter that the buyer used the product upside
down, didn’t realize it had to have batteries inserted, or just wanted a
different color – the damage is done.
Or is it?
If you’re a brand registered seller (and
you should be), then the answer is “not necessarily”. Although Amazon
won’t let you comment on the review, as it used to, it allows you to contact
the buyer for any review that gives you fewer than four stars.
Starting an Amazon business is relatively
easy. But there are a number of things that can go wrong, and it’s easy to get
discouraged. Being able to get past those discouraging moments is the difference
between failure and success. So how can you do it?
First of all, you need to get started
with the right expectations. Some people think FBA selling is a get-rich-quick
scheme. They’re going to be disappointed. It may make you rich, but it takes
time and effort to get there. For instance, building your brand, your
reputation, and your seller metrics, is going to take time. Getting into
restricted categories may take time. Getting good reviews will take effort and
maybe some investment.
Amazon Posts offers you a way to improve
your online content and contact with potential buyers, through Amazon’s own
social media platform. If you think of a captive Instagram within Amazon
mobile, that’s pretty much what Posts delivers.
It’s particularly potent as we estimate
over a fifth of buyers start their purchase journeys on social media, whether
that’s Facebook, Youtube or Instagram. If Amazon Posts delivers an equivalent
performance, you could increase your sales significantly.
One of the best things about Amazon Posts
it that can help you to promote your overall brand, not just individual
products. You’ll need product links, but this is a great place to use lifestyle
images, to talk about your brand story, and to build your brand profile. It’s a
sellable feed which consumers can use to click through to your product, but
it’s not as tightly focused as your product pages.
Launching new products is always tricky.
Amazon’s search engine rewards existing best sellers, since its algorithm takes
existing sales volumes into account. You’re taking on products which are
already established, and you need to get yours into the market and selling
fast.
It’s also a risk. Even if you’ve done
your product selection, design and sourcing properly, someone else could launch
a similar product at the same time – worse, you could see several new products
come to market at the same time. In that case you’ll either have to be number
one, or you’ll want to sell off your stock fast and move on to a new idea.
Amazon knows its reputation depends on
consumers’ trust. Buyers need to know that they can confidently buy from Amazon
without being cheated. So Amazon comes down hard on sellers who break the
rules.
That could mean having your account
suspended without notice. That’s disastrous for your business. You can’t sell
your products, and since you’ll lose your access to Seller Central, it’s going
to be very difficult to appeal a decision.
So let’s look at some of the reasons
Amazon might decide to suspend your account.
Amazon has announced that Prime Day 2022
will be in July. They haven’t, as yet, given a firm date, but it’s time to get
moving if you want to be ready to make the most of it.
Prime Day moves around – it was in June
last year, and October in 2020. This year, it’s likely to be a bit more
complicated for sellers, as supply chain issues mean it’s going to be difficult
to get stock resupplied quickly in time for the promotion. If you need
resupply, get it fast or it will be too late. Make sure, if you hold buffer
stock, that you’ve got as much inventory as possible in the Amazon warehouse
before Prime Day. You don’t want a #PrimeDayFail hashtag if you get a
stock-out!
I bought my wardrobe on Facebook
Marketplace. I bought my camera and my laptop on Amazon.
Why? The wardrobe was second hand, and I
could go take a look at it first, and it was only five miles’ drive away. And I
know how to look at a bit of furniture and work out if it’s good quality or
falling to bits. And it was a bit of an impulse buy.
But when I wanted to buy electronics, I
wanted a guarantee, and a seller with a good track record, and I went to search
for exactly the right product at the right price.
Most people are very visual in the way
they learn things. That’s why we have Powerpoint – if you want to see which of
your products makes the most money it’s much easier to assess the slices of a
pie chart than to just read text and figures, for instance.
And this is a very visual age. The
internet might have started as a text-only resource but it’s now led by
pictures – just look at the success of Pinterest and Instagram.
So using infographics to sell your
product is a no-brainer. All the more so now that Amazon has made all your
product images viewable from the search page.
Searches for eco-friendly and sustainable products are increasing
rapidly – more than doubling in a year. According to UK based organization
Business In The Community, searches for “how to live a sustainable
lifestyle” rose 4550 percent in the first couple of months of Covid
lockdowns!
Amazon is also doing its bit, aiming to reduce carbon emissions with
its Climate Pledge. It rewards sustainable products sold on the site with a
Climate Pledge badge, and it’s well worth having, as some customers will
actively search for Climate Pledge badged products. You may qualify if you hit targets for energy
efficiency, compact design, carbon neutral products, animal welfare (eg
cosmetics that haven’t been tested on animals), or responsibly manufactured
products.
Pricing is not easy, whatever some people
say. It’s one of the most important decisions you will make in your FBA
business, but it’s also a really difficult one.
It’s particularly difficult because you
have to strike a balance. Most goods are what economists call price elastic, so
that if you reduce the price, you will sell more units, and if you put the
price up, you will sell fewer units. Customers want to pay as little as they
can.
A big problem if you sell on Amazon is
that it’s so easy for customers to see competing products. It’s like selling
cans of beans in a supermarket – customers can see all the beans on the shelf.
What stops them buying the other ones, and keeps them loyal to yours?
If you build an Amazon storefront,
though, you can promote your brand and your products within your own mini-site.
It’s a way to grab your customers, and it’s also a way to keep them away from
the competition! But that’s only going to work if you know how to engage your
customers fully; otherwise, they’ll go elsewhere.
