A few years ago, a workable Amazon strategy was to order a product from China, add your logo to it, create a good-looking product listing, and publish it on Amazon. Today, with the competition being much fiercer, it requires significantly more strategic planning to conquer this vast marketplace.
Amazon’s conquest is based on accurate market analysis, the correct positioning of the product in relation to competitors, matching the brand and sales arguments to the selected market, and making the product listing more commercially attractive than its competitors.
Although competition at Amazon has intensified, you should remember that the number of potential product categories has also increased with strong growth. A particular product might not have offered a significant sales opportunity a few years ago, but now you can sell the same product in large quantities.
Unfortunately, we often hear from customers who have tried Amazon sales how “Amazon wasn’t our thing” or “Amazon didn’t offer enough potential.” When we discuss the stages of the experiment in more detail, it turns out that the full potential of Amazon hasn’t been utilized.
Selling on Amazon is always a data-driven process where you need to figure out the following before any product is shipped to Amazon’s warehouse or even a product listing is published:
- What are customers looking for? Make sure your product is associated with Amazon search terms that have enough volume and are relevant to the product.
- How much competition is there in the category? If your competitors have professionally created listings and lots of good reviews, there is a risk that profitable sales won’t occur even if things are done correctly. If the competition in a particular category is too fierce, you may want to move on to look at the subcategories. For example, if the search term “coffee cup” is too competitive, try extending the review to subcategories such as “large coffee cup” or “funny coffee cup,” or any term relevant to your product.
- Does the customer get enough added value? You must be able to compare your product with others objectively. Why would a customer buy yours and not a competitor’s product? When thinking about added value, take advantage of your own experience of the category (what customers value) and competitors ’Amazon listings with reviews (what competitors offer, what customers like, what they don’t like).
Once you’ve figured out these and a few other factors like margin, you’ll know if your product has Amazon potential. If the answer is yes, you can proceed to create the listing.
The essential things in the listing are:
- Target the listing to the category selected in the analysis phase. Tackle competitors ’problems (assuming your product doesn’t have them) and describe the benefits of your product as accurately as possible. Also, keep in mind that Amazon is a search engine. Relevant keywords must be found in the listing for the Amazon algorithm to rank the listing for the right keywords. Listing without good rankings (i.e., good rankings in search results) is worthless and does not generate profitable sales.
- Images play a crucial role in Amazon. Many customers don’t even read the product texts but only look at the price and pictures. It is extremely important to have good pictures. The role of images is even more critical in Amazon than in a regular online store. Take the main picture as an example. It appears first when customers search for products on Amazon. If the main image is bland and doesn’t stand out from the competition, the product listing gets no clicks and, therefore, no sales.
The issues presented in this article have been explicitly raised from the point of view of strategy, and not all the measures included in the analysis phase, for example, have been mentioned. Your Amazon Partners offers its customers 10+ years of experience in market analysis, product positioning, brand internationalization, and e-commerce sales development.
