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In today’s digitally driven world, online reviews can make or break a brand or product. Positive reviews can drive sales and enhance reputation, but negative feedback can equally deter potential customers and damage brand trust. Especially in platforms like Amazon, Yelp, or Google My Business, reviews play a crucial role in influencing purchase decisions.
Stepping into the world of e-commerce, particularly on a platform as massive as Amazon, can be exhilarating. The promise of reaching millions of customers and building a successful business is enticing. One of the tools at the disposal of Amazon sellers aiming for this success is the Fulfillment By Amazon (FBA) program. If you’re a new seller, understanding Amazon FBA can be crucial. Let’s dive into the essentials of this game-changing service.
Amazon has solidified its position as the world’s premier online marketplace, hosting millions of sellers and boasting an even larger customer base. But as any seasoned Amazon seller would confess, success isn’t just about having a great product. A significant part of the game lies in understanding and mastering Amazon’s search algorithm, known as A9.
In this post, we’ll delve deep into the intricacies of A9, offering insights on how it works and its implications for sellers.
Crafting compelling product descriptions and titles for your Amazon FBA listings is not just a nicety; it’s a necessity. Stellar copywriting doesn’t just introduce your product—it sells it. If you’re wondering how to harness the power of words for increased sales, here’s your guide.
In the rapidly expanding world of e-commerce, Amazon’s FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) program is a game-changer. But, with an ocean of sellers, how can one make a ripple? Here’s a dive into seven fundamental strategies to not just swim, but surf atop the Amazon wave.
In the world of Amazon FBA, speed isn’t just about fast deliveries; it starts way earlier in the production cycle. The time taken between placing an order and receiving the finished product – commonly known as lead time – holds the potential to make or break your Amazon enterprise. Here’s a comprehensive look into why lead time is pivotal for your FBA business.
Amazon FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) is a competitive marketplace where several sellers offer similar or identical products. In such a crowded marketplace, differentiating your product is crucial to stand out and attract customers. Differentiation is not merely about being different; it is about offering something unique and valuable that solves a particular problem for the customer. Here are some strategies to differentiate your FBA product:
Identify Gaps and Pain Points
Listen to your customers’ questions and frustrations. For example, if people are complaining about the lack of pockets in women’s clothing or the absence of single-size pie dishes, there lies an opportunity. Solve these problems by offering pretty summer dresses with pockets or single-size pie dishes. The key is to determine if this is a common problem or a one-off complaint. Engage in social listening, review competitors’ product listings, and pay attention to customer reviews.
Add Value
Consider bundling products often sold separately to create a more useful and convenient package. For example, offer a bread-maker with two or three extra paddles to save customers from the inconvenience of having a useless bread-maker if a paddle is lost. Adding a recipe book to kitchen equipment or a guide to simple projects with a craft tool can also enhance the product’s value.
Target a Niche
Focus on a specific segment of the market that is underserved. For example, target black women’s beauty products, products for people with RSI or carpal tunnel syndrome, or special interest niches like quilting, scrap-booking, or home brewing. Offer products that clearly understand and cater to their lifestyle, needs, interests, or style.
Fix Problems and Fill Gaps
Offering a solution to common problems or filling a significant gap in the market is an excellent way to differentiate. For example, providing eating implements with large, easy-to-hold handles for people with RSI or carpal tunnel syndrome.
Conclusion
Differentiating your product on Amazon FBA involves more than just being different. It requires identifying gaps and pain points, adding value, targeting a niche, and fixing problems. Although you can differentiate by being cheaper, it’s not sustainable as competitors can easily adjust their prices. The key to successful differentiation lies in solving problems, filling gaps, adding value, and dominating a niche. Implementing two or more of these strategies can lead to even better results and set your brand apart in the crowded Amazon FBA marketplace.
As an Amazon FBA seller, you know how vital customer reviews are for your product’s success. Positive reviews can skyrocket your sales, while negative ones can have a disastrous effect. Even though negative reviews are disheartening, it’s essential to approach them proactively and use them as an opportunity to showcase your commitment to customer service.
Understand the Impact
Social proof, reflected through customer reviews, significantly influences other buyers’ decisions. A bad review, irrespective of its validity, can dent your product’s reputation. Even if the buyer used the product incorrectly or had unrealistic expectations, the negative perception is already out there.
Assess the Review
If you are a brand registered seller on Amazon, you can contact the buyer who left a review with fewer than four stars. First, assess if the review is legitimate. Sometimes, reviews refer to counterfeit products or issues outside your control, in which case you can report it to Amazon. If the review is valid, determine if it’s a simple issue to rectify, such as sending the correct size or color. Sometimes, the buyer may have made a mistake during the order process. Approach the situation with empathy and offer a solution without making the customer feel at fault.
Address the Issue
If the mistake lies with you, Amazon, or the product was damaged, take immediate steps to rectify the situation. Offer a refund or replacement, and follow up with the customer to ensure they received it and are satisfied. Even if you don’t explicitly mention the review, this proactive approach might prompt the buyer to edit their review to reflect your excellent customer service.
Help the Customer
Sometimes, negative reviews stem from a lack of understanding about the product’s usage. If a buyer struggles with your product, offer assistance and ask for their feedback on how to improve the product or its instructions. Addressing recurring issues in the Q&A section on your product page, or in the product packaging, can also help prevent similar negative reviews in the future.
Provide Guidance
Help buyers make informed decisions by providing clear and comprehensive information about your product. For example, if your product’s size is a common issue, provide an infographic or a detailed sizing guide. Remember, the goal is not just to address negative reviews but to prevent them by offering all necessary information upfront.
Encourage Reviews
While it’s crucial to address negative reviews, it’s equally important to encourage satisfied customers to share their positive experiences. Use automatic email follow-ups to ask for reviews without explicitly requesting a positive one. Expressing genuine interest in their feedback shows you value their opinion and care about their experience.
Conclusion
Negative reviews are inevitable in the e-commerce world. However, addressing them with empathy, proactivity, and a genuine desire to improve can turn a negative situation into a positive one. Not only can this approach lead to edited reviews, but it also helps build trust with future buyers and enhances your brand’s reputation. Remember, every review, good or bad, is an opportunity to showcase your commitment to customer satisfaction.
Customers are getting addicted to discounts. For some, it’s a way of coping with recession and high price inflation; look for discounts to stretch the household budget that little bit further. For others, it’s a way to afford luxuries on a limited budget; and for a hardcore few, searching out those discounts is a hunt that brings a real sense of achievement, a game they enjoy for its own sake.
One thing we do know is that discounts are addictive. Getting a good deal releases serration, the ‘feelgood’ brain chemical, and gives the buyer a little ‘high’. If you’ve ever got a super bargain at a flea market or estate sale, you’ll know how that feels.
So if you want to boost your sales, successful sales promotions are a must. But there are different ways to provide discounts, which will appeal to different types of customers. You also need to protect your margins, as every percent off that you give a customer is a slice of your profit that you’re giving up, so you need to be sure that you’ll attract more in sales than you give up in margin.
The easiest way to promote sales is to apply an overall discount. “Closing down sale, everything half price” is a good example. But this isn’t very targeted, and can mean you’re selling at a loss, which is why it seems to be used most often in closing down sales!
It’s better to target particular products that you want to promote. For instance, you may have a product which used to sell quite well, but it’s been lacking in sales velocity recently. Why not use a significant discount to try to boost sales back up again?
New products can also benefit from discounts. You can even offer a discount on pre-orders to get a new product off to a good start.
Offering multipacks and bundle discounts can be a great way to increase your average order size. If a customer was going to order four lipsticks, but you have a multipack of five available for a price that’s not much higher, you’re probably going to get that extra sale. Bundles can sell really well if you’ve thought through your customer’s needs; for instance, beginners’ kits for crafts or art, or even for cooking. A top seller for one shop is a sushi kit that includes all the tools you need, rice vinegar, soy sauce, and sushi rice; the only thing the buyer needs to add for themselves is the fish!
Don’t forget that there are a lot of ways you can stay in control of your discounts. For instance, you could limit purchases to one per customer. You can offer discounts for a strictly limited time, through an Amazon Lightning Deal or a coupon campaign, or up to a limited number of products. Communicate that to your customers and you’ve automatically introduced scarcity value and urgency; will they be able to resist?
Exclusivity is another way to give customers some extra motivation. Use a coupon code on your social media, or in an email newsletter, and you can make your consumers feel special.
You might decide to use flash sales to iron out some of the seasonality in your revenue. (One bar reduces its beer prices in January, which is always a tough time for the hospitality industry.) Alternatively, you might use seasonal deals around holidays to ensure you grab a good share of the business. Always have a tactical reason for your discounts, and always work out the numbers first! How many discounted offers do you have to sell to be better off than if you’d stuck with your original price?
Back in the Middle Ages there was an idea that everything had a right price, as if God had said “Let a loaf of bread be worth three groats”. But on Amazon, there’s no ‘right’ price; prices change all the time, as competitors struggle to secure sales, trying to undercut each other or at least to ensure their prices are competitive.
Bricks and mortar retail prices don’t usually change so fast. Even if a competitor has a sale, it will take some time for a major retailer to respond. But on Amazon, prices might change several times a day. Right now, there are two different trends clashing; while sellers want to set their prices as low as they can, inflation means input costs are rising.
Your price is one of the biggest factors affecting your competitiveness. Not only will consumers check your price against others, but Amazon’s search engine will reward you for having a competitive price, and penalize you for selling at a price substantially higher than your cheapest rival.
Usually, FBA sellers agonize for ages about what price to launch a product at. However, the rookies then lose interest in pricing. They’re too busy doing SEO, advertising, or creating social media content.
Unfortunately their competitors are going to take advantage of this by sniping at their price. They might equal the price, or undercut it slightly, and that will change the competitive dynamics. That’s why you need to think about repricing dynamically.
You can reprice manually in Seller Central, going to Manage Inventory and simply changing the price for a listing. But if you have dozens of products, and you’re checking them every day, you’ll end up doing nothing else!
So automated repricing is a better way to go, and there are numerous solutions you can use. Automated repricing software continuously checks your competitors’ prices, and will reprice if competitors’ prices change. It can also tell if a rival has run out of stock, which might give you a chance to boost your price a bit as you no longer have to match their pricing.
Make sure you don’t let autopricing drag you into a race to the bottom, though. You ought to at least set a minimum price, or you could end up selling at a loss. You might also want to exclude some of your rivals. For instance, you could tell the repricer not to pay attention to any seller with less than a four star rating, or fewer than 30 reviews. It’s these extra rules where your expertise as a seller counts, as you have a good feel for where in the market your product ought to sit.
By the way, another benefit of automatic repricing is that it avoids manual mistakes. Key in ’10’ instead of ‘100’ as your price for Apple AirPods, and you’re in trouble!
Of course, you might not want to reduce your prices for ever. So instead, you could offer a discount for a limited period. That’s a different way of responding to competitors’ price cuts. The advantage is that it’s easier to reinstate your original price later. If your competitor only reduced their prices to make up for poor sales last month, you don’t want to get stuck with prices at that level.
That’s why you should probably tell your repricer software not to reprice more than 10 percent without alerting you. That lets small shifts be repriced automatically, but means you can carry out a discount promotion or use bundling or multi-packs to support your sales, instead of chopping your price savagely.
And of course, if you want some advice on how to use discount coupons, Vipon will be happy to help!