How to sell your products on Amazon

Getting your product on the right platform can be crucial to the success of your business. 

With Amazon as the largest online retailer in the world, now is the perfect time to consider if the platform is the right fit for your product. With so many of my own clients wanting to be present on another platform and created another revenue stream, I know so many of you are going to be excited about this one!

This is why I was thrilled to chat with the lovely Verity, the founder of Smart Little Space, on the podcast this week. She works with product brand owners to help them set up and launch their brands on the world’s largest e-commerce channel and grow a new revenue stream. After her own personal success on Amazon Verity went on to lead a team of e-commerce specialists at an agency where she helped hundreds of clients skyrocket their business on Amazon. She then transitioned into becoming the founder of Smart Little Space, which works with female-focused brands.

How to know if Amazon is the right fit for you and your business

A question I get a lot, is it viable and profitable? Amazon doesn’t always work for every single brand. It’s not always for everybody. So, how could a product business owner know if Amazon is the right fit for them?

This is something that Verity spends a lot of time talking to brands about to work out whether or not it’s the right fit. And one thing she says is that when it comes to selling a brand, it’s usually better if you are already established in some capacity. If you have a brand that’s already established, you need to remember you are not necessarily creating the product for the platform, which a lot of people do. So the first thing to know before you do anything aka get into all the exciting creative aspects, is to look at your numbers.

Using calculators that Amazon provides can help you generate those numbers to work out which products to sell first.

And from there Verity suggests that you really look at the competition and do a bit of in-depth research on the platform to see who is your competition, and what price will be they selling at? What quality are they selling? All these questions can help you decide if Amazon is a valid platform for you. 

And often at the end of that, Verity’s clients will figure out that there are maybe just a few of their products that they decide to launch. This can give you an indication of whether you should invest more time and more products later on down the road.

What are the benefits of selling on Amazon?

A larger customer base

It’s important to understand that there are fees involved and basically to pay those fees, you get the opportunity to market your products in front of millions of customers. 

For example, if you are an Australian brand wanting to get in front of a much larger USA market Amazon can be a great way to tap into that market, without being located in the US and much of the process is automated for you.

Customers feel safer purchasing from Amazon

There is actually a lot of data to show that a customer will find a brand on Amazon that they like, then they will navigate away from Amazon, look at the brand’s website, to check if this is a valid and legitimate brand. And then they will come back to Amazon to buy from that platform. It makes you wonder, why wouldn’t they just buy direct from that business’s website rather than go back to Amazon. And the answer is, that they feel safe. They have always had a good experience purchasing through Amazon and feel protected entering their purchase information.

Ease of multiple purchases

A customer may be purchasing multiple items on Amazon that day. And they just want to put everything through straight away with one transaction and they want it immediately because we all want something straight away. 

How important is it to have a trademark when selling on Amazon?

Amazon has now changed a lot of its rules. It’s become a little bit harder to just become a seller because Amazon want really good sellers on the platform. 

This is the result of sellers using the platform in unscrupulous ways in the past.

Verity says that one way they have changed is their access process into their brand registry system. This brand registry gives you more support and more tools to use as a seller, and makes you more competitive on Amazon. 

In order to become part of the brand registry, you need to have a trademark. Which is actually not as scary as that sounds. Once you have your trademark, you input that into Amazon’s brand registry. 

Mistakes and red flags to avoid when considering Amazon

Verity finds that one mistake she sometimes sees people make is that they look at their competition in a very general sense, rather than looking at their more specific competition. So there would definitely be some brands out there selling the same kind of product as you, but at a much cheaper price point however, the quality of their product is much lower and is mass produced. So you really need to consider, who is my actual competition? And when you dig into that, sometimes you find actually this isn’t as competitive as you thought. 

But one thing to remember is that if you found that there was no competition, not a single competitor, that is a big red flag for Verity. It tells her, that because Amazon is a search engine, like Google, that means that nobody is searching for that product. 

What advice does Verity have for business owners who might be feeling a bit overwhelmed by Amazon and what are your top tips to help get them started? 

First of all, Verity understands that Amazon is not the easiest platform. It does take require some effort and especially upfront, it requires some effort to create your listings, to do it the right way to get your listing up and running. So it’s important to understand that when you are considering launching a product on Amazon.

But she also says that once you have completed this process once, the cycle repeats, so if you can launch one product, you can do the same thing over and over. 

What are the biggest mistakes you see business owners make when it comes to launching?

Mistake 1: Attempting to do too much when it comes to your launching strategies. It is usually best to keep your launch strategy simple and to just focus on one or two avenues at a time.

People tend to overcomplicate it and trying to do too many things. Have a simple plan in place and stick to the plan. 

Mistake 2: Not fully optimising your listing before launching. 

Make sure you have gone through every element on a product listing and you can tick off every part of it to its capacity that Amazon allows. This includes keywords in your listing, high quality imagery, graphics if needed, and video is even great to use. Set up your storefront. Because one thing Verity says you need to understand with Amazon being a search engine is that keywords will get you found because that’s what people are searching for, but your images and your graphics will sell it.

What are the top three marketing strategies that can create a massive impact?

Marketing strategy 1: Amazon advertising within the platform has really taken off, says Verity. And that’s mainly because Amazon has realized the potential and they’ve added in some really great options into their ads, which they didn’t have before. When Verity started selling in 2012, it was very simple. There were basically two ads you could use. But Amazon has really brought forward a lot more advertising opportunities lately. One of the high converting at the moment, are video ads. They are really engaging with people. So it could be a good idea to have a good ads strategy in place by utilising the Amazon advertising with video.

Marketing strategy 2: Using videos on your listing. 

Videos are getting a lot of traction, with Amazon’s beta testing some aspects of video in the background. It’s not available to everyone at the moment, as it is still in beta testing, but some brands are able to display video content on their listing. 

What you can do, is put them into a storefront, which is like a miniature website on the platform. 

Marketing strategy 3: Build trust and transparency by ensuring you are creating consistency of your brand across your Amazon presence and your e-commerce website presence. So that when a customer is clicking between the two, there is really no difference. This creates that trust factor and makes customer more likely to buy from you, even when it is through Amazon, rather than your own website.

It’s time to pull up your big girl pants!

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