In 2021, 54% of all Amazon’s sales were made by third-party sellers, with Amazon sellers in the US generating more than 50 billion dollars in revenue in the US.
Despite the Amazon statistics though, competition is becoming increasingly fierce, with more and more business-minded people realising the opportunities that becoming an Amazon seller can provide. If you don’t approach Amazon third-party selling in the right way and have both an educated and adaptive strategy in place, you can end up making little to no profit on the platform.
To make sure you have the best at making a success of Amazon, Repricer.com have put together ten valuable Amazon selling tips to adhere to.
1. Optimize Your Listings to Rank
You may be selling directly on the Amazon platform, but it’s still essential to optimize your listings to rank in the SERPs. One of the most important Amazon selling tips is arguably making sure that search engines can easily identify keywords and understand what you’re offering so you can rank accordingly.
There are many free and paid keyword research tools out there for Amazon sellers to benefit from to pinpoint keywords that have a high search volume, aren’t overly competitive and have the right search intent behind them.
Once you’ve collated a list of valuable keywords for a product, make sure to include them in your product title, description, and in the backend of your listing. Think about your brand name, product name, material, colour, size, quantity and more to make sure you are utilising all the right keyword opportunities.
While it’s important to make sure you use keywords where they fit, don’t be tempted to stuff them in at every given opportunity. Your listing’s content still needs to read well and be informative to consumers.
2. Have an Adaptive Pricing Strategy
Competitive pricing is key if you want to compete with established brands and stand out from the crowd on Amazon. Unless your product is 100% unique or offers a feature that consumers can’t get elsewhere, the lower you can get your prices while still making a profit, the better.
To go one step further than being competitive with your prices, you should aim to be adaptive too. Market demand is always changing, with new competitors joining the scene all the time, making it essential to be proactive in making sure your prices fit with the times.
For those just starting as an Amazon seller or those with a small inventory, you can change your prices manually or set rules for when your prices change according to what your close competitors are charging.
If you’re offering a wide range of products though, algorithmic repricing is the way to go. This method involves an automatic repricing tool using complex algorithms and real-time data to lower or raise a seller’s prices. Reputable repricing tools like Repricer.com consider a wide range of factors that not only help sellers to compete but also achieve the Amazon Buy Box.
Related: Book a demo of Repricer.com to discover how repricing software can help you
3. High-Quality Photography
Your imagery is one of the deciding factors in whether a consumer will make a purchase or not. eCommerce brands should be prepared to invest significant time and money into getting your product photography right if you want to catch people’s eye and sell yourself.
A blurry or grainy photo can subconsciously immediately put someone off and establish a negative first impression of your brand. Don’t neglect your photography and make sure to offer browsers plenty of photos to display different angles and your product in use.
Always take your photos against a white and clutter-free background so they’re easy on the eye. The harder a consumer’s brain needs to work to imagine themselves using or wearing your product in real life, the less likely you are to make a sale. It should be easy for potential buyers to envision the product in their home and understand how it will benefit their day-to-day life.
If you have the budget available to work with professional eCommerce or product photographers, go for it. There is even the option to offer 360-view images for people to view your product from every angle.
4. Grab a Share of Amazon’s Buy Box
The next of our Amazon selling tips is to try your utmost best to appear in the Buy Box. Almost all sellers that manage to get their products in the Buy Box see this reflected in their sales.
Unfortunately, though, unlike Walmart Marketplace that provide sellers with a clear strategy for appearing in the Buy Box, Amazon keep their cards a lot closer to their chest. Some key factors to consider are:
- Competitive pricing
- Stock availability
- Fulfilment By Amazon (FBA)
- Seller ratings
- Product reviews
- Product bundles
You should aim to incorporate a number of these factors into your selling strategies to not only appear in the Buy Box but elevate your brand reputation and sales too.
5. Benefit from Fulfilment By Amazon (FBA)
Fulfilment By Amazon (FBA) is a program that allows sellers to hand over a significant amount of the hassle of fulfilling orders to Amazon themselves. You can store your inventory in their warehouse, where Amazon will pick, pack, and ship all orders for you as and when they come in.
Although using the Amazon FBA program isn’t the only way to be a successful Amazon seller, it allows you to offer Amazon Prime to consumers and benefit from the incredibly short delivery times that come with it.
Amazon Prime originally launched over a decade ago in 2007, but in the UK, it now has more than fifteen million members, who tend to spend far more on average each year than non-Prime Amazon users.
By using the FBA program and having the Prime badge on your listings, you can establish an immediate level of trust with consumers and differentiate yourself from products that don’t offer Prime delivery.
Of course, there are higher fees involved with using FBA, but both your sales and overall strategy will see a benefit by leaving you with more time to channel into other areas of your brand.
6. Gain Reviews
Gaining some positive reviews on your listing is essential if you want to gain a consistent income from your Amazon sales. Reviews are the first place people look when shopping online, with a glowing review being all that you need to push a consumer to make a buying decision.
To start building a solid foundation of reviews for your products, get in touch with customers shortly after your product has been delivered to ask for a review and some feedback. This way, if your customers do have anything negative to say, you can resolve the issue before it becomes a negative review on your listings.
You can even use Amazon to automatically request reviews from your customers and ask for a star rating.
7. Provide Exceptional Customer Service
Don’t sit back and relax once your Amazon listings are optimised and launched, there are plenty of other aspects to becoming a successful Amazon seller. One of these is eCommerce customer service – you need to go above and beyond when dealing with both prospective, current, and returning customers.
Responding to customers in a professional, helpful, and meaningful manner will determine whether people choose to buy from you again or go to your competitors instead. When responding to a customer query, aim to solve all problems in your response and remove any potential obstacles preventing an individual from making a purchase.
Should you get any negative feedback or complaints about your products, tackling these positively and professionally can turn a negative exchange into a profitable one.
8. Use Amazon Marketing Services (AMS)
Amazon offers its advertising and marketing services for sellers, allowing you to target keywords and get products in front of your target audience.
If you have a budget available for advertising, Amazon offers multiple types of ad campaigns, whether you want Amazon to automatically place your product ads where they think is relevant, or you prefer to create manual campaigns and target specific keywords.
There are multiple types of ads available, whether you prefer to create innovative custom ads or stick to display ads. What’s more, you only have to pay per click, so you can benefit from tons of brand exposure and visibility without necessarily having to pay for each person that views your ad.
If you are new to sponsored advertising, you can start small and use the data from your ad campaigns to educate and optimise future strategies.
9. Be Proactive with Your Inventory
Although you can benefit from the FBA program, you still need to manage your inventory effectively. Amazon uses the inventory of brands as the main ranking factor when deciding where and when to display certain products.
Letting your inventory fall too low or letting a product go out of stock completely can not only impact your sales but can influence the overall rankings of your products overall.
10. Content is Key
An overarching Amazon selling tip to keep in mind is that content is king. If your product listings are not well-written and informative, no one will buy from you. When describing your products, you should aim to tell a story of your brand, be creative and use bullet points to spell out your product’s key features.
Don’t stop with your product listings either, you can use creative content across all your channels to build a positive brand reputation.
Social media is a free tool to use to your advantage, with Facebook and Instagram offering plenty of highly visual ways for you to demonstrate your products and direct people straight to your Amazon listings. Amazon understands the importance of promotion on social media; hence you can even create your own social media discount codes to use, offering your audience an incentive to click through to your product listings.
Final Thoughts
When it comes down to Amazon selling tips, your third-party selling strategy is what you make of it. The more time, resources, and budget you have to invest, the more visibility you will gain and the more revenue you can generate. In a nutshell, you can build up your inventory over time until you have a multi-faceted, educated and highly profitable Amazon selling strategy in place.
To make sure you’re ready to implement these Amazon selling tips and offer your products at competitive prices, you might want to check out our Amazon repricer. Repricer.com is designed to help both small and established brands win the Amazon Buy Box and maximise profits on all their selling platforms. Book a demo to learn more or start your free 14-day trial today (no credit card needed).
