What to do when you don’t know what to do next on Amazon

Welcome to the bring your product idea to life podcast. This is the podcast for you if you're getting started selling products or if you'd like to create your own product to sell.

I'm Vicki Weinberg, a product creation coach and Amazon expert. Every week I share friendly practical advice as well as inspirational stories from small businesses. Let's get started.

Hello. Welcome to another episode of Amazon Made Easy. If you're watching this on YouTube, this will be the last time in a while you see me dress like this.

As I mentioned before, I've recorded all four episodes for June in the same morning. So I look very, very consistent. And I suppose that's on brand. Maybe that's a good thing.

Actually, that's something I'm going to talk about later in this episode. Why consistency is good. So. So yeah, it's good that. Good that I look the same this month. If you're not watching this episode on YouTube, you can be.

If you come over to YouTube and sear Vicki Weinberg, then you can get all of the episodes in full. You can also get highlight clips. So the best bits from my episodes. Also some exclusive content.

So if you're not there already, do come over and have a watch. So today I want to talk about what to do when you don't know what to do next. So you probably know the feeling.

You're live on Amazon, you're busy, you're overwhelmed. You are also selling in other places. You've probably got your own website, maybe you're doing your own fulfillment, maybe you sell face to face.

Maybe you're in stocks, maybe you've got wholesale, you've got loads of stuff going on, on. And Amazon might have taken a bit of a. But, you know, might be on the back burner.

It might be something you're managing actively, but you might be thinking, okay, I'm there now what? And depending who you listen to, you're going to hear something different.

So you might be hearing, oh, you need to be running ads because you'll get more sales. Oh, actually you should update your listing and optimize your text. Oh, actually you have to keep discounting and adding sales.

And then of course there's, you know, making sure you've got enough stock. There's, there's a lot to do and there's a. Can feel a lot of pressure to do everything and, you know, not to know what you should be focusing on.

So today's episode is a short reminder that you don't need to do everything. Maybe you don't need to do Anything. And you certainly don't need to do everything all at once.

If everything is good, if you're getting consistent sales, you might decide actually you're going to leave things as they are because things are good and you've got other priorities and Amazon is taking along nicely and you're happy with that. If that's you, that's great.

If it's not, if you're thinking, you know, I'm still growing, I'm still not quite sure the level of sales I'd like, or maybe sales have dropped off and you're like, I think I need to change something, but I'm not quite sure what. Then this is the episode for you. And I should mention actually that I have a free resource which is an Amazon self audit checklist.

It's basically a list of things that you can go through and check that they're all correct on Amazon. So if you're listening to this and you're feeling that overwhelm of oh my gosh, what on earth, you know, what on earth do I do?

What should I even be looking at?

I'm going to cover a few things off in this episode, but that checklist will be really helpful because it's my full and comprehensive list of all the different metrics and different checks and things you can go and look at to make sure that see if there are any small changes you can make to improve your performance on Amazon. So let's talk about first, how to prioritize what to do. If you're like, where do you know, Vicki? What do I do? Where do I start? Amazon feels new.

It feels overwhelming. What do I do? Well, okay, it depends on what you're looking for.

If you're looking for some quick wins, there's some really low hanging fruit on Amazon.

So for example, updating your images, if your images are a bit out of date, I know it sounds very basic, but honestly, refreshing your main image can make a real difference and it's something you can do very quickly. Another quick win is looking at your shipping settings. So let's say you're selling via FBM and things, things have slowed down.

Just take a look at your settings, go onto your product pages. If you're a customer, how long is it going to take for a customer to receive your your product? Is that okay?

Is there a handling time on there that doesn't need to be on there? And equally the other way around, if you're getting penalized a lot for late shipping, do you need to be give yourself a bit of a Grace period.

Do you need to add a handling time in?

That's depending on what you know what you're looking at, whether it's you want to make more sales or maybe your delivery metrics aren't where you want to be. Those are two really quick things that you can look at medium term. The kinds of things you might want to focus on are getting reviews.

And I did a whole episode on reviews that I'm going to link to in the show notes.

So maybe you might decide, actually I'm not selling as many as I'd like, but my reviews on the low side, say for the next couple of months, that's going to be my focus, is getting everyone who buys from me to leave reviews and perhaps even encouraging people you know external to Amazon so perhaps your existing customers, your mailing list, social media followers to come and buy from you on Amazon with the purpose of leaving a review and making SEO updates to your listings, adding in keywords and changing the text for the purpose of SEO. I count that as something medium term because you're not going to see the benefits of that immediately. That takes a little bit of time.

But that's something else you might want to look at if you think your visibility isn't where you want it to be. And longer term things you can do are ads. Again, that's going to really help with visibility. But ads are not a quick fix.

They take a little while to get going to be profitable. So I count them as like a long term solution. Driving external traffic.

So it might be that you're going to drive traffic, as I said, from your mailing list or social media to Amazon or maybe you're going to run ads external to Amazon, taking people to your Amazon listing or maybe even launching more products.

Perhaps you have reached sort of a consistent level of sales with the products you have already and maybe adding more products from your range would help drive your sales up. So that might also be something to consider doing if you are thinking, okay, that's, that's great, but I want something I can do right now.

I'm going to give you a couple of quick checks you can make regarding your product listings because you know that I've, you've heard me talk about so many times the importance of really product listings.

And I think we're going to go, I think it'd be helpful if we go through a few things that you can look at specifically related to listings because let's be honest, you can go through the audit checklist and that's going to give you some great things to look at and check everything's in place. But the main thing that your customer sees when it comes to Amazon before they actually receive your your product is product listing.

And I know I talk about product listings all the time, but they really are important. They are what helps you sell your products on Amazon.

So let's go through a few listing related checks that we could do this week, this month to check that your listings are as good a place as they can be and that you're getting all the visibility and sales that you need. So first check to do is are you leading with benefits, not just features when it comes to your product listing.

So customers buy products that benefit them or solve a problem. And if your bullets are only talk, I say your bullets, but your title as well. But bullet points is really the bulk of the text.

That's the thing that most people go and look at.

If they only talk about the features of your products and as I mentioned, what flavor your product is, where it's made, all of these kind of things, they might not connect as well as with your customers. However, if you can really articulate the benefit of your product to the customer.

So perhaps you have a product for babies and it's machine washable, which is great because it means that a busy parent can just throw it in the washing machine rather than having to hand wash it. That's a real benefit. Do you see what I mean?

And that's something that a customer can connect to because that's a problem they might have and you have the solution. Don't assume that the value of your product is obvious.

It might be obvious to you, but a customer who's scrolling quickly through search results, clicking through to product, looking to see, okay, is this what I'm going to buy? They might not necessarily be digging into the details. Some customers will.

There'll be people who you know are scanning everywhere because they're looking for something really specific. But a lot of people won't be.

You have to make it really easy to find out why your product is the best choice for them and help them to make a buying decision. Second thing you can check is are your images shown how the product fits into real life? So a great main image gets you the click.

So if your main product image comes up in the search results is compelling along with the title, that will get someone to click through to your product listing. But actually it's the supporting images that are going to convert into a sale.

Lots and lots of people now buy on Amazon by flicking through the Images. I know, I do it myself. And so are you, are you using your images to the best of your abilities?

In fact, I had a episode recently on visual branding that I will link to in this episode which is show notes. This episode which is great about talking about how you can use your images to really sell your product.

But the basic things to think about are all your images talking about the benefits of your product or with your brand. Are they showing how your products use? Are they showing it scale? Are they showing the key features and the benefits?

Are they really showing off what makes your product unique? Could your images help your customer see your product fitting into their life?

These are all the questions to ask yourself when you're looking at refreshing your images. The third quick check to do is look at is your copy. So you're listing text written for, written for people.

Is it written to be, you know, does it read well and would someone be able to read it, understand it, understand what you're trying to say, or is it written for the algorithm? And I see this a lot less now, but it is worth bringing up.

Keywords are really important, but sometimes I read product listings and I can just see that they're, you know, they're just full of keywords. And by the way, that's really good.

Your listings do need to have keywords in there, but they need to be woven into your text in a way that the listing is still readable. So this is a really good check for you to do. Is your listing well written? Does it make sense to somebody or is it just stuff?

With keywords, a great listing gives the customer all they need to know to decide whether to buy with the keywords really cleverly woven through.

And if you're not sure which it is, get someone you trust to have a read of your product listing and let you know if there's anything that stands out to them as sort of jarring.

Because sometimes having too many keywords in a listing can the language might jar slightly or the other thing is, does your listing and this is a really great check. Does your listing answer all the questions they would have as a, as a buyer?

The fourth quick check you can do regarding your product listings is check that they reflect your brand. Have you changed your branding on your website?

You haven't changed on Amazon, for example, or do your new listings on Amazon reflect your new branding, your old list, but your older listings have your old branding. This can jar a little bit for customers, so this is something to really make sure you've got aligned. Same with the Language as well.

If one of your product listings sounds quite formal and then another one sounds quite chatty, it doesn't feel like it's part of the same brand.

Equally, if you've got product listings that are really great, you know you, they're really well optimized for search and you filled in all the fields and you can really see the USP and maybe they've got some A plus content on there.

And then you've got other listings where the bullet points of a list of features, because maybe they were ones you did, they're older listings, you haven't got around to updating them. Again, it just jars a bit to customers. It doesn't quite fit. And obviously when people are buying online, a lot of it is about perception and trust.

And I really, really recommend that Your Amazon product listings1 are all cohesive so it will work together. They all look and feel and sound like they're the same brand.

And also that fits in with your brand on social media, on your website and anywhere else somewhere someone might find you. So that's another check to do. And then the final thing you can go and take a look at is your reviews. When was the last time you had a look at your.

A really good look at reviews? And importantly, when did you last review your content against your review?

Because your customer reviews are basically telling you what your customers think about your products and what matters to them. So are your listings answering the right questions?

So are there things that people are saying in your product list, in your reviews where you're thinking, oh, actually, I don't think I've actually told people that in my listing. If so, put that in. What do customers care about?

Make sure you're using the language that they're using to show that you understand what it is they care about and what it is that they're looking for.

If all of your reviews tell you that there's one feature of your product that you know they just love and that's the best thing ever, make sure you're highlighting that thing up front in your listing because your customers are telling you that's important, that needs to be right up there in your title. It needs to be in your bullets. It needs to be really clear.

Because when we write our product listings, and I'm speaking from experience, we're so close to our products and we might think, oh, this is the reason people buy this product, for this particular thing. Actually, that particular thing might not be the best thing that everyone connects with and everyone loves and that compels them all to buy.

It might be something different and something that you hadn't quite anticipated.

So I think it's really, really important to see what your customers are saying, see what they like about your product, what they're telling you, and adjust your listings accordingly. So hopefully that's been a really helpful little ramp.

You want to give you a few ideas of things that you could look at now if you were like, Amazon's a lot and I don't know what to do and I know I want to change things, but where do I start? As I said, I'm going to link to the my Amazon Self audits in the show notes for this episode.

That's a really great resource because that has lots and lots of ideas of things you can go look at and check and just make sure you're happy with. But I wanted to leave you with something today.

I didn't want this whole episode to be me saying, go and get this checklist, because that's not very useful, is it? And of course, that is a visual as well, which doesn't work very well for a podcast. So hopefully you found this episode useful.

I'll link to the checklist in the show notes. And I just want to say that you're. Whatever you're doing or not doing on Amazon, I very much doubt that you're doing it wrong. There is a lot.

Well, at times there's a lot.

Sometimes Amazon can go really well and sometimes you can take your off the ball a little bit and you can focus on other parts of your business and Amazon will go along swimmingly and other times it needs a bit more attention.

And when it does need a bit more attention, whether that's because you're starting or if it's because you're growing, maybe it's because you've got an issue and something's gone wrong, it can be a bit overwhelming.

So just to reassure you that that always be the case, it shouldn't always be a headache, it shouldn't always be taking up a lot of your time and energy. Hopefully that's more of a seasonal thing and you'll have some stages as well where all is good.

And you know, you don't have to focus on Amazon as much. I promise you that people do get there. That is, that is a thing.

And if that's not you and you're thinking, oh, spending quite a lot of time and energy on Amazon at the moment, know that, that that will change. It shouldn't be a headache. But also you don't have to do Everything at once. That's the other thing that's really, that's really important.

If you've listened to this episode and you're feeling really overwhelmed, you're like, vicki, this hasn't helped because actually, you've just given me a whole other load of things to look at. Don't stress. Download the audit checklist and just work through things. You know, do one. Do one thing a week, one finger. I'll say one thing a month.

You could probably do more than one in a month, but you know what I mean. It doesn't all have to be done today, doesn't have to be done tomorrow.

Please don't, please, please, please don't worry is the message I want to leave you with, actually. And finally, if you want more support, the doors to Amazon Made Easy, my membership for Amazon sellers always open.

It's priced at less than a pound a day. And being part of Amazon Made Easy means you never need to guess what to do next. Because I can help you.

We have live Q A calls every fortnight where you can ask me your questions, you can show me things you're concerned about, we can make a plan for the things you need to do to your account, your listings together. You've basically got me there holding your hand or sitting next to you, however you want to think about it.

But I'm going to be there with you to help you. Whether it's identifying what you need to do, whether it's helping you make decisions, whatever it is, I'm there to support you.

I'm there to guide you, I'm there to answer your questions. Amazon Made Easy is a lovely small community.

There really aren't loads of us at the moment, which is great because it means I get to know you and your business so, so well, and I won't forget you because you know that there's not a community of hundreds of people. There's. There's a. It's small enough that I'm not going to forget you. I'm going to know who you are, I'm going to know what you're doing.

I'm going to remember what we spoke about last time. I'm going to know all about your business and your products, and that way I really feel like I can support you the best I can.

So if you're interested, vickyweinberg.com forward/membership or you can go to the link in the show notes. So, well, I've now wrapped up recording.

I think I've been recording for over an hour now because I've done all of my June Amazon Made Easy episodes feeling very proud of myself.

So when you're listening to this it'll be right at the end of June so I hope we're having some lovely weather at this time of year and I will be back on Friday with another episode.

Can't remember who this interview is because it's so far in the future, but there will be another episode out this Friday and then of course I'll be back with another Amazon Made Easy bonus episode on Tuesday. So have a lovely week and I'll speak to you in a few days.

Thank you so much for listening right to the end of this episode.

Do remember that you can get the full back catalogue and lots of free resources on my website vickywineberg.com Please do remember to rate and review this episode if you've enjoyed it and also share it with a friend who you think might find it useful. Thank you again and see you next week.