Does scaling your Amazon business feel overwhelming? Well, product bundling can be a profitable – and smart way to scale up your business.
But, there’s a bundle of bundles out there – even if we are just talking about selling on Amazon! So, let’s take a look at the whole idea of bundling your products to help scale your business.
Then let’s enjoy savouring the benefits of bundling to your customers, you, and your business. Finally, we’ll consider some of the main bundling options open to you when selling on Amazon – the ‘how’, if you like. This one’s important, as you need to choose the bundling method and strategy that will suit your business and your products. Get this right and you will literally make a bundle.
What is Amazon Product Bundling?
Given that bundling in the context of selling is basically gathering together a bunch of items and selling it, product bundling on Amazon is more about gathering together items where there is some kind of connection or relationship between the individual products.
This ‘connection’, or ‘relationship’, can be more creative and alluring than you initially think.
A basic example of a connection between Amazon bundled products could be something where one of the products in an bundle is useful or needed for the use of other:
- Pair of shoes and shoehorn.
- Toothbrush and toothpaste.
- Hairdryer and hairbrush.
- Balsamic vinegar and olive oil.
- Baby bottle steriliser and bottle brush.
- Yoga mat and block.
- Leather wallet and coin holder.
- Dog collar and lead.
Stop! We’ve done something there, without thinking about it.
What we’ve done is, crossed a little line between a functional relationship and one that is more to do with taste, choice, enjoyment, and emotion.
And what else are we doing? We’ve more strongly introduced the customer as an influential factor here. We’ve gone beyond functionality and wriggled into the realms of customer preference – and customer preference is exactly where you want to be.
Why? Because it gives you an edge over the competition.
Customer preference covers a whole gamut of emotions and needs that, when successfully consummated, can culminate for you as a business in easier selling, customer satisfaction, customer loyalty and the strengthening of your brand.
All these are really good, because if competitors then copy your bundling idea you’ve already-established success, and accompanying good reviews and so brand loyalty will see most of them off.
That’s product bundling. Simply selling two or more items together, with an opportunity to be creative and look at things from your customer’s point of view.
Always keep your creative hat on!
The Benefits of Amazon Bundling
Bundling – the Benefits to your Customer
Naturally, the customer comes first for our consideration of the benefits of bundling.
For the purposes of this exercise, let’s assume that we’re talking about Amazon bundled products with a price that is less than the sum of the prices of each individual item in the bundle.
For example, suppose you’re bundling together a £3 item, a £4 item, and a £6 item. Rather than selling your bundle at the straight sum of the prices of all these items, £13, you can afford to discount it to please the customer and encourage a sale to, let’s say, £12.00.
The customer gets a discount so they are happy. You get the sale, so you are happy!
For the customer, buying a product bundle on Amazon is:
- An easy, fast and efficient transaction – easy shopping is a known magnet for customers.
- Convenient – this counts for a lot as it ripples into a good customer experience which in turn will mean good reviews on Amazon for you.
- Better value or a saving – customers like to feel they’ve got a good deal and they just love saving money on a purchase.
- A saving on shipping – if applicable and there are shipping fees associated with the products you’re selling, the customer is likely to save with one bigger shipment rather than three smaller individual ones.
- Satisfying – all of the above (easy, convenient, and saving money) snowball into a very satisfying feeling for the customer and that’s good for your brand.
- Inspirational – the customer may not have thought of the combo you’ve put together in your bundle, and they might love it for that and buy it!
- Amusing or entertaining – people like to buy things that make them laugh, feel entertained or happy.
Given these benefits and their potential to not only acquire new customers but to retain them, why would you not bundle Amazon products?
Bundled Amazon Products – The Benefits to your Business
The obvious benefits of successful Amazon product bundling for your business are implied in the title of this post: you make money and have an open-goal opportunity to scale your operations.
Those are the two big headline benefits to acknowledge and aim for, but let’s not wallow in them too much and instead look at some of the less obvious ones.
For your business, Amazon product bundling is:
- A chance to sell something unique – you get to dismiss the usual competition and dominate the Amazon Buy Box.
- Lower costs of sales – depending on your product, these could mean lower PPC costs, savings on packaging, and savings on Amazon storage fees, if applicable (although bigger or heavier boxes can cost more – check out storage fees in Amazon Seller Central. If you fulfil your own orders, you might save on shipping costs and fulfilment time
- Fast and efficient – the more efficient and productive you can be, the better your chances are of generating a healthier profit.
- Convenient – once set up, bundles can be easy to manage – let alone an easy sell.
- Less competitive – until they copy you (if they can), you can enjoy having an edge over the competition. Remember, you can also be fending off the competition with an Amazon Buy Box tool like Repricer.
- Getting ahead of the competition – for a while or longer you’ll be unique unless of course, you’ve deliberately decided to take on the competition and sell similar bundles.
- A boost for your slow-sellers – if you’ve got some products that aren’t selling as fast as others, consider bundling them with one or more of your popular selling items.
Pretty good, but it isn’t all sweetness and light! Here are three aspects to be aware of.
- With bundling, there’ll be extra admin involved, regardless of whether you are a fulfilment by Amazon (FBA) or fulfilment by merchant (FBM) seller.
- Creating a bundle is launching a new product as far as Amazon is concerned. Bear in mind you’ll need a new unique product code (UPC), and you’ll be starting from scratch in earning reviews. And starting from scratch and earning reviews also means your customers won’t see all the lovely ones you’ve already accumulated on your individual products, unless they browse around.
- If you’re bundling other businesses’ products, there will be paperwork to get through to make sure you are doing everything right – from their point of view, as well as the country you’re selling in.
These three aren’t insurmountable problems – they’re just things you need to deal diligently with – usually just the once.
Remember: if you’ve got a great Amazon bundle that practically sells itself, it’s all worth it.
Amazon Bundling Options
Let’s start with some housekeeping notes on Amazon. It’s as well to digest these guidelines now, rather than arrange your Amazon bundled products only to find out that it doesn’t meet Amazon requirements.
- Amazon insists that your bundle contains complementary items. In other words, the items need to enable or enhance each other to the benefit of the customer. Actually, this isn’t a showstopper and makes sense as you wouldn’t get many sales bundling a flower pot, ice cream, and hair dye!
- Your bundle needs its own stock-keeping unit (SKU) and UPC (barcode).
- A bundle can only be listed in a single category, even if the items in your bundle cover multiple categories. When there are multiple categories represented in a bundle, the bundle can only be listed in the category of the highest priced item in the bundle.
- You’re not allowed to include generic products in your bundle, or the customer might think the generic products are part of your brand offering.
- Once you’ve created a bundle, you can’t change its contents – you’ll need to create a new bundle to do that.
The Amazon Virtual Bundle
This is a great tool. But note that, before we go on, you need to be a stocked-up FBA brand registered seller to take advantage of it.
A virtual bundle on Amazon is a selection of two to five products from your catalogue. This bundle is usually sold at a discount.
As an FBA seller, it’s really easy to set up. Amazon already stocks your products. They aren’t actually packaged together, but they’re sold together.
The number of virtual bundles available to customers is based on the smallest quantity available of all the products within the bundle.
For example, if you have 20 egg cups, 30 teaspoons and 40 toast racks available at Amazon, you have 20 virtual bundles that you can sell. It’s kind of obvious, really, but worth noting at your research stage. Clever Amazon of course automatically adjusts the number available as your bundle sells.
As we have already mentioned above, a bundle is sold on a new UPC and SKU. This means you can edit your title, description, bullets, images and price. But note that you can’t change the products offered in the bundle itself.
Bundling Wholesale Products and Selling them on Amazon
This is basically bulk selling other companies’ wholesale products. You simply create a wholesale account on Amazon with the wholesale company and resell their products in bundles.
Easy. But there is a downside. The competition can be fierce, especially with popular Amazon product bundles.
There is Another Way!
Alternatively, if you’re an FBM seller you can buy wholesale and make your own bundles, package, and dispatch them. There’s a lot of work going on if you take this route, but you can make good money.
One big advantage of this is that you’re in charge and in control. You can bundle what you like – as long as what you’re selling doesn’t infringe Amazon’s terms and conditions.
If you want to cut down on some of the workload, you can use a third-party logistics (3PL) centre to pack and dispatch your bundles. These can go direct to the customer from the 3PL, or you can, if you’re brand registered with Amazon and are following their bundling guidelines, feed your bundled stock into Amazon for them to fulfil on your behalf.
A Way to Put Some Icing on Your Profit Cake
Bear in mind if you’re selling consumables in your bundle that can end up being regular repeat purchases, you can increase your propensity to sell by offering Amazon Subscribe & Save.
An example of this would be Amazon bundled products that include cat food, vitamins or skincare, which a customer could subscribe to have delivered every month.
Everyone wins.
Your customer loves it because it’s that bundled convenience again – and they don’t have to remember every month to buy the product they need and use regularly.
You’ll love it because you make more money, and with a better profit margin. Not to mention the deep satisfaction, financial security, lower admin, higher customer retention and enhanced customer loyalty of selling something regularly.
Conclusion
Whatever bundling route or strategy you choose, if you get it right you can make great money and grow your Amazon seller business. You’ll increase customer satisfaction, customer retention and loyalty.
Just remember, the more unique you can make your Amazon bundled products proposition the more chance you’ve got to leave the competition floundering in your wake. So remember to be creative!
Enjoy your bundling on Amazon!
