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Building Your Amazon Business – Part 3

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Introduction

This is the third in a series of blog posts that will cover some of the key elements when it comes to building your Amazon business. In the first post, we talked about some of the key elements when it comes to establishing your presence on Amazon. In the second post, we discussed Product Page details. This blog post discusses marketing and advertising your business on Amazon.   

Part 3 – Marketing Your Business on Amazon

Advertising on Amazon incorporates a number of items but moves beyond the surface advertising seen from many brands. In addition to sponsored products, deals, coupons and promotions, any successful Amazon advertising campaign built to scale will combine non-traditional ad initiatives with the standard programs. This will include keyword research, SEO, competitor analysis, customer service management, review solicitation, account health oversight and voice of the customer (VoC) responses. Each of these plays a role in the overall marketing of your Amazon business and serves to enhance your presence on the platform and contribute to your ever growing reputation and visibility.  

The Amazon Advertising Basics

Briefly, these are some of the basic marketing and advertising elements you will want to capitalize on: 

  • Sponsored Products – promote your own products which allows you to create listings in specific categories
  • PPC – similar to Google, to bid on specific keywords that customers search for when looking for similar products
  • Vine Programs – Amazon driven reviews from Amazon ‘authenticated’ influencers 
  • Lightning Deals – allow you to run short term deep discount deals
  • Promotions & Coupons – provide discounts on certain products or variation in order to move inventory

ACOS and ROAS

It’s great to run ad campaigns but you need to pay close attention to the data they generate. In your Amazon dashboard, under the Campaign Manager, you will find all of the analytics  for your ACOS (Advertising Cost of Sales) and ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) results. Amazon defines ACOS as “The percentage of your sales that you spend on advertising” and ROAS as “The revenue (return) you receive from your advertising investment”. 

Ideally, you want a higher ROAS and a lower ACOS. Fortunately, ad spends are in real time so you can easily adjust underperforming programs and allocate funds to revenue generating campaigns. However, keep in mind that all lower performing ROAS campaigns are not all negative as they may also be generating page views which can enhance brand awareness for future purchasing decisions. Ideally, you want to monitor ACOS and ROAS at least once a week in order to ensure campaigns are performing optimally.

Advertising Content

In addition to the different campaign options available on Amazon, there are other features you can add to your product pages that will add to your advertising efforts. Many of the items we discussed in our previous post in this series called “Creating Amazon Product Detail Pages” (put a link the post here) add to the overall customer advertising and marketing experience including Product Title Optimization, Informational Bullets, Product Description and Optimization, A+ Content, Product SEO and Product Imagery and Videography all play a role in your marketing efforts. The benefit of these features is that they don’t have a direct cost associated with them and you have full control over each one.

Reviews and Ratings

Ratings are a crucial part of any growing Amazon business. According to Statista (https://www.statista.com/statistics/623659/amazon-customer-review-usage-usa/), over 90% of all Amazon shoppers trust the reviews they read on Amazon in one form or another. Only 6% don’t trust the review which tells you that generating positive reviews should be a key part of your marketing strategy. This means that customer support, responding to questions, on time shipping and delivering quality products will all serve to drive organic sales results on Amazon.

Takeaways   

Amazon advertising is much more than PPC and sponsored ad campaigns. There are a multitude of indirect marketing initiatives that when combined, come together to deliver synergistic results that can exceed expectations and generate positive results that individual campaigns cannot produce in a siloed approach. 

Capitalizing on each of these opportunities will help your brand see positive results as you move towards optimizing ACOS and ROAS through direct and indirect channels.    

Building Your Amazon Business – Part 2

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Introduction

This is the second in a series of blog posts that will cover some of the key elements when it comes to building your Amazon business. In the first post, we talked about some of the key elements when it comes to establishing your presence on Amazon. This blog post discusses the creation of high-converting Product Detail Pages.   

Part 2 – Creating Amazon Product Detail Pages

Optimized and comprehensive product detail pages are a key to your success as a seller on Amazon. Let’s take a look at some of the more important elements that will impact the customer experience and remember to always follow Amazon’s best Practice for creating product detail pages.

Product Title

The product title plays an important role in helping Amazon guide consumers to your product page. Essentially, it makes the connection between what users are searching for and what you are selling. For this reason, keyword research will play a big part in coming up with the right title for your product page or pages.

Amazon Marketing Product Title

Ratings or Reviews

The number of ratings or reviews will show up just under your Brand name which falls directly below the title. While the number of ratings is important, it is also crucial to maintain a high level of good reviews and comments. Amazon will tell you that you should have a rating level of at least 3 stars but anything under 4 stars and higher is facing an uphill battle when it comes to growing the brand. Generating these reviews is one of the hardest things a new or even existing brand faces on Amazon. There are ways to do so legitimately such as Vine programs which we’ll discuss in the upcoming post on Amazon marketing but a word of caution, Amazon closely monitors ratings and sellers that try to generate false reviews are quickly suspended from the platform. 

Amazon Marketing Ratings

Product Pricing

Competitive pricing research will be an important aspect of your product presentation. While your product certainly does not have to be the least expensive in your category, you still want to make sure that you don’t price yourself out of the market no matter how good your product is compared to the competition. If you are a major brand, consumers are less focused on the price point and more so on the brand name and reputation. However, if you are one of many unknown or lesser known brands in your vertical, competitive pricing is one way to build your sales and corresponding ratings which will allow you to gradually increase your price point. Combining attractive pricing with free shipping and Prime offers helps to further advance a successful Amazon strategy. 

Prime Offers

In the October, 2022 report from Stastita seen below – ‘Prime and non-Prime members’ perception of Amazon and selected services worldwide in 2022’ (https://www.statista.com/statistics/1274977/prime-vs-non-prime-perception-on-amazon/) –  the chart shows the clear benefits of making your products available through Prime.  

Prime eligible products are fulfilled through Amazon FBA so a review of your logistical capabilities will be necessary in order to determine if you think Prime can benefit your brand. But if you’re looking to make a competitive statement, then Prime is most likely the way to go.

Amazon Marketing Prime Offers

Product Page Images

Amazon will show the first 7 images you load to your product pages (or 6 plus a video link). Investing in high quality photography is extremely important as it gives consumers a clear look at your products. Amazon is also aggressively pushing video content so video is highly recommended as your 7th placeholder in the image area of the product page. Remember, potential customers will look at images and visuals before they read content so if your images are poor or pixelated, you are likely to lose customers before they even begin to learn about your product.

Amazon Marketing Product Page Images

Bullet Points or Features

The bullet points on your product page provide customers with in depth details about your product including features, benefits, advantages and unique selling points. This is where you can help the consumer make an informed buying decision.

Amazon Marketing Bullet Points

The Buy Box

Winning the Buy Box is extremely important as more than 83% of sales are made through the Buy Box. Winning the Buy Box means that customers are adding your product to their cart. In order to be eligible for the Buy Box, there are a number of factors that Amazon takes into account; you must have a professional seller account combined with a strong account health rating, competitive pricing, and good performance metrics.

Amazon Marketing Buy Box

Takeaways

Creating high-converting Product Detail pages requires a lot of attention to a number of different features as highlighters above. A+ content, optimizing existing listings, adding variations to products, uploading images, sponsored products, ‘frequently bought together’ highlights, and a host of other elements will also come into play as you build your product pages. Combine these with strong account performance and you will quickly see results from your pages.

Building Your Amazon Business – Part 1

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Introduction

This series of blog posts will cover some of the key elements when it comes to building your Amazon business. Whether you are an Amazon startup or an established seller on the Vendor or Seller channels, this series will help you better understand the steps to take and maintain in order to operate successfully in the Amazon ecosystem. These posts assume that you are a brand owner or license holder as opposed to a third-party product reseller although many of the issues discussed apply to all Amazon sellers.

Part 1 – Establishing Your Presence on Amazon

For Amazon newbies as well as established sellers, this first series of items should be reviewed or revisited as part of your ongoing store oversight and management.

There may be other considerations you will need to focus on but this set of blog posts is intended to concentrate on the areas that our experience shows as most crucial to your Amazon success.  

Store Design & Build

Before you can start selling on Amazon, you’ll need to create an account with Vendor Central or Seller Central depending upon which channel you are using (you can visit Amazon to learn more about the differences between these two channels but you will likely be selling through the Seller portal). While the actual look and design of the store is important, mapping the customer journey is paramount to your success as it allows customers to quickly find what they are looking for. Any design elements that impede the path to conversion, no matter how nice they may be, are working against the user experience. It’s also extremely important that your store design follow Amazon best practices and is optimized for mobile and tablets so that customers can easily find what they’re looking for on their mobile device. Amazon offers a number of recommendations for optimal image size as part of the onboarding process.

Brand Registry & Approval

If your brand is trademarked, you will definitely want to subscribe to Brand Registry. There are numerous benefits in doing so including brand protection, an increase in product sales, better reporting options, and more. Plus, it provides credibility for your brand on Amazon by letting customers know that whenever they make a purchase from your company on Amazon, they’re getting authentic products from an approved seller.  

Warehouse Capabilities

To be able to sell via Vendor Central or Seller Central, you’ll need to have a warehouse facility where products can be stored and shipped out when needed. As a seller, you can use the Amazon platform to market and sell your products as well as manage inventory and fulfill orders on behalf of customers. You can choose to use FBA (Fulfilled by Amazon) or sell your products directly from your own warehouse.

FBM or FBA

Once you have a clear understanding of your logistical capabilities, you will be able to decide if you want to fulfill your orders via FBM (Fulfilled by Merchant) or FBA (Fulfilled by Amazon). FBA offers a number of advantages such as prime listings and Amazon managed customer service. FBM is better suited to operations that have a complete internal structure which can ensure on time deliveries and a fully managed back end of the Amazon platform. Keep in mind that FBM logistics involve much more than simply fulfilling and shipping orders and generally require a strong understanding of the Amazon back end. You’ll also want to do a cost analysis to determine which option is best for you. Amazon provides tools to do this and you can also run your own spreadsheet numbers. 

Coming Up Next

In our next post, we’ll look at creating product detail pages that ensure optimal customer experience and follow Amazon best practices.

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