All day, every day, I look at brands on Amazon and all too often I see the same thing over and over; the current Amazon sellers aren’t doing a damn thing to add any value to the brand whose products they are selling.
In fact, in many cases, these sellers are nothing more than parasites that are collectively sucking value from your brand, and slowing destroying the equity that you (the brand owner) have worked so hard to create.
It’s no wonder that may brands today don’t want to increase the number of people selling their products on Amazon.
How to Increase Your Revenue on Amazon
When it comes to maximizing conversions and sales, there are 3 parts of your product listing that you absolutely must get right:
- Pictures
- Bullet points
- Product reviews
In addition to the 3 points above, there are also a number of other ways that professional 3rd party sellers can add value to your brand.
Turn Your Images Into Sell Sheets
When it comes to maximizing a products listing’s conversion ratio and increasing sales, there is nothing more powerful than having high-quality pictures that provide buyers with all the relevant information they need to make a purchase decision.
Here is an example of a product that has very high quality images – images which provide value with key pieces of information.
In other words, instead of just showing the product, these images have become sell sheets for this particular product.
Now take a look at your brand’s product listings and ask yourself if there are key pieces of information that your potential customers would want to know, and if there is, why haven’t the Amazon sellers you are currently working with added it?
Bullet Points to Sell Benefits
Most often when I am looking at a product listing, the bullet points are far too short and talk only about a product features. This is the wrong way to create bullet points.
As you can see in the example below, there is a fair amount of available real estate in this area, and the bullet points should be focused not on features, but instead on the benefits that the product will give a customer.
Automatically Generate More Product Reviews
Product reviews have a dramatic impact on how well, or how poorly, a product sells. According to Amazon’s data, 2 to 3% of customers that purchase a product will take the time to leave a product review.
If you look at the number of reviews that you have and they are less than 2 to 3% of the sales volume for this product, the sellers on this product listing have not bothered to implement an automatic review gathering system.
Generating organic reviews automatically is very easy to do. Ideally, every one of your sellers will set up an email autoresponder system to ask all buyers for a product review. However, in all likelihood, few – if any – of the sellers on your product listing will have taking the time to do this, because they aren’t interested in investing the resources needed. Instead, they are only interested in helping themselves and to win the sale, they often resort to the easiest option available to them; and that is to cut the price.
As a result, the total number of product reviews (and your sales volume) will be far lower than it otherwise would be if such a review generation system were put in place.
Respond to Negative Reviews
Removing a negative product review is nearly impossible to do, so instead of ignoring them, professional 3rd party sellers like TLK will publicly respond to each review and in doing so, demonstrate to other potential customers that customer service is a priority for your brand!
If your current crop of 3rd party sellers aren’t responding to negative reviews, your brand is suffering as a result.
Other Benefits a 3rd Party Seller Can Offer
If you have a relationship with a 3rd party seller, you should expect them to add additional value beyond optimizing product listings. Here are a few more things you can expect from your 3rd party seller.
Report & Identify MAP Violators
If your company has a MAP policy, chances are you are already familiar with the frustration that comes from seeing your product selling on Amazon below MAP because every time this happens all your other retail partners are quick to (loudly) voice their complaints.
Controlling MAP on Amazon is not easy. One of the major challenges in controlling MAP on Amazon is simply identifying who all the unauthorized sellers are.
If you are working with a professional 3rd party seller, this is one area where you should expect them to add a great deal of value to your relationship because it is in that 3rd party seller’s best interest to do their utmost to help you to identify all of the sellers who are selling your product below MAP.
Increase Visibility Using Keyword Research
Today 40% of product research on the Internet starts on Amazon. As a result, one of the major keys to maximizing product visibility on Amazon lies in having a thorough understanding of all of the search terms the buyers might use to find your product and then optimizing your listing to show up for as many of these search terms as possible.
When I am looking at products on Amazon, time and time again it is painfully obvious that none of the current sellers for a given product have put any serious effort into keyword research and optimization.
For example, if your product title doesn’t contain the main keyword people would use to find that product, you are definitely not going to rank very well in the Amazons search results – and sales will suffer significantly as a result.
This is yet another area where a professional 3rd party seller can add a great deal of value to their relationship with you, and when they do, you should immediately see a lift in organic sales.
Drive Revenue with PPC Advertising Campaigns
If the products you sell face a high level of competition for exposure in the Amazon search results, creating and managing effective PPC advertising campaigns is a very powerful tool for increasing the exposure, discovering profitable long-tail keywords, and increasing long term sales.
When you have multiple sellers on each one of your product listings, it is unlikely that any of them is putting the effort necessary into these types of promotional campaigns – and your sales are suffering as a result.
On Amazon, SEO & PPC work hand in hand to achieve greater product exposure, and they are a powerful combination if used correctly.
Once again this is an area where a professional 3rd party seller with PPC campaign management experience can add significant value to their relationship with you.
Inventory Management
If your products are in a competitive niche, running out of inventory is the kiss of death in terms of sales velocity, sales rank, and product visibility.
When you have multiple sellers on each one of your product listings, it’s highly unlikely that they are providing you with a coordinated sales forecast, and as a result, you have to cross your fingers that they’ll all do a good job of inventory management to keep all your products in stock at all times.
This is yet another area where a professional 3rd party seller can add significant value to your brand; especially if you are considering reducing the number of unauthorized sellers or eliminating them all together to go with a single exclusive 3rd party seller so you can control MAP pricing.
Going with an Exclusive 3rd Party Seller
Deciding to give a single seller exclusivity for one (or all) of your products is a decision that can solve a great deal of the problems that most brands face on Amazon.
With a single seller representing your brand, you can expect them to help you to:
- Control MAP pricing & eliminate the race to the bottom
- Help to identify and eliminate unauthorized sellers
- Get more product reviews
- Ensure your listings are fully optimized (pictures, sales copy, keyword targeting) for maximum product visibility
- Provide you with detailed reports on the performance of the Amazon channel
- Ensure consistent customer service levels
- Work closely with you as your partner and add as much of the value described in this post as possible
Conclusion
If you haven’t had much in the way of an Amazon eCommerce strategy up to this point, you are probably leaving a great deal of money on the table.
Rather than ignoring requests from new sellers to sell your products on Amazon, perhaps a more effective strategy involves investing the time to better understand how a professional 3rd party seller can add value to their relationship with your brand in ways that your current crop of 3rd party sellers aren’t doing – or don’t know how to do.
About Inovtech Services
Inovtech Services is a digital retail agency with significant expertise in the Amazon marketplace and unlike typical marketing agencies who will charge you thousands of dollars in fees, we earn our income by purchasing your products wholesale and then reselling them – thereby ensuring that our interests are 100% aligned with yours.
