As an individual or as a business, the Amazon marketplace is often seen as a quick means to target consumers who direct shop on the Amazon platform.
Small and large organisations alike can effectively mitigate the traditional earned marketing mediums including Google search engines in preference of the Amazon Seller experience.
More About Amazon Selling
Amazon provides an important comparison function that empowers online shoppers actively involved in the information seeking and purchasing process to act sooner (frequently within the same Amazon session). This added comparison exposure can help brands expand their consumer visibility, bringing seller products to greater audiences within minutes of deciding to sell on Amazon and setting up an Amazon store.
In this post, I explore some of my most practical expert tips which should provide some value to new and established Amazon Sellers.
# Tip 1 – SEO is still applicable to Amazon!
As Amazon shops are primarily a paid medium driven by shopping feeds and associated paid placement approaches, it is not surprising that many individuals and businesses fail to consider the value the Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) can bring to your Amazon Seller success.
As a seller, there is more to turning a profit each month after paying Amazon FBA fees than simply uploading the products on the platform. Amazon is like all the other aggregator shopping engines in regard to that fact that in order to display content/products/services tied to user queries, it relies on understanding it first – This is where SEO can play a crucial part…
Lots of the more traditional SEO tactics are important to help with product placement, ongoing refinements and positioning in order to make the most out of your Amazon Seller marketing. Ensuring that the most commercially viable products appear tied to transactional intent searches is just one example of this in practice.
In a recent quote from WorldFirst they state that it is crucial for Amazon Sellers to:
“Spend time and resource understanding Amazon’s ranking factors so your product gets in front of as many customers as possible.
… Make sure you find out the right keywords and descriptors for your product and make use of the additional keywords that Amazon allows you to add to include similar listings.”
# Tip 2 – Price is everything (almost)
In many traditional buying cycles, people have the opportunity to consider a wide range of buying signals due in part to an expected longer duration between initial trigger to buy, and final point of purchase.
A large number of people utilizing Amazon as their preferred shopping destination make the decision to do so due to the expected convenience of an expedited shopping experience tied directly to single destination shopping and the added convenience of repeat purchasing within Amazon.
Part of the challenge that this means to Amazon Sellers is that they have a much shorter impact period for which the user makes an almost immediate buying decision. The direct impact of this is that factors like price and review (review volume and rating) become more impactful to the buyer.
In most situations the seller with the lower price and comparable reviews/ratings will make the sale, whereas the added user work required to source this information on other buying approaches (including direct website sales) reduces the requirement to be the cheapest provider considerably.
# Tip 3 – Reviews matter as much as price
As an Amazon Seller, the more reviews and ratings that your business and products have (in fact, the more positive reviews/ratings), the higher the volume of sales you will achieve.
Volumes of reviews matter too – not just for the user within the buying process, but also for Amazon. The reviews will influence the ranking, credibility, trust, and authority signals provided by your products and services for ranking within Amazon.
To place this statement into context – Over 70% of all Amazon buyers consider product reviews before making a decision to buy. In the same article they reinforce this by saying that:
“Nearly 63% of consumers indicate they are more likely to purchase from a site if it has product ratings and reviews…
… Smart marketers know that social proof is the marketing tactic for easing the minds of worried customers.”.
By putting in place a framework and approach for generating ongoing positive reviews and ratings, and redressing any negative reviews and customer feedback, you enable the would-be buyer to reduce their anticipated risk in purchasing from you, reinforce their anticipated reward/value from the transaction, and help the buyer in making spending decisions faster.
Final Thoughts for Amazon Sellers
Amazon Sellers have a unique opportunity to access both local and global marketplaces and showcase their products within an almost immediate timeframe after setting up an Amazon shop.
Whilst Amazon can deliver fantastic rewards for individuals and businesses with the budget to compete, it can also prove much more challenging with regards to return on investment and user expectations tied in no small part to the increased buyer sensitivity to price points and reviews/ratings/trust.
In this post I discussed my top 3 tips for new and established Amazon Sellers and I hope they prove useful for your future Amazon Seller success.
