If you sell your products on Amazon you probably already know that there’s more to it than listing products and sitting back. There’s so much you could do to get the most from selling on Amazon – but lots of us don’t have the time day-to-day.
If you find yourself with some time over the Summer, here are some things you could do to get the most from your Seller Central account and from selling on Amazon.
Take a look at your reports
When did you last take a really good look at your Amazon business? As well as reviewing your sales, you can also see which are your best selling products, which convert best and which move slower.
Remember, bestsellers and best converting products might not be the same. If you have products that convert well, but aren’t selling as many as you like, that might be an indication that it’s worth setting up ads (or doing something free) to drive traffic to them.
Review your inventory
If you’re selling via FBA (Fulfilled by Amazon) take a look at your inventory performance. Amazon will highlight products where you have excess inventory, as well as those that are selling fast and need re-stocking.
If you have excess inventory, make a plan for how you’re going to sell it through – or create a removal request to avoid potentially large storage fees.
Review your listings
This is a great time to review your listings and optimise if needed. Run your keyword research again and see if there are any new terms that need including.
Review your text and images and ensure they’re as good as possible. Updating your images (perhaps even just swapping out the main image) can be a great way to refresh your listing.
This is also a great time to review what your competitors are doing (and who they are). Things may well have changed since you first set up your listing(s). Take a look at who your competition is now, review your pricing (does it still make sense) and see if you can find any inspiration for your own listings. (Note I said inspiration here – definitely no copying. I.e. if all your competitors are using A+ content for their listings – see below – this might be the time for you to do the same.)
Check your account health
Account health gives a breakdown of your listings and shows any issues highlighted by customers. This could be as simple as something missing from your listing, or perhaps updating some text that’s been misunderstood (or is out of date).
These aren’t always flagged – so it’s worth checking every month or two to stay on top of it.
Review your Amazon advertising
If you’re running Sponsored Products ads on Amazon it can be tempting to ‘set and forget’ – but don’t! Ads need reviewing and tweaking regularly (daily if you can – or a few times a week minimum to get the most out of them.)
Run the reports and use them to optimise your campaigns. The main thing I do here is to look at where the money for each campaign is going (i.e. which are the most expensive keywords) and to add anything that’s cost money, but isn’t generating sales into negative keywords. This blog post goes into this in a bit more detail.
This could also be a great time to experiment with trialling new types of ads – using video for example, or driving traffic to your storefront rather than your product listings.
What haven’t you got around to?
Perhaps you haven’t yet applied for Amazon’s Brand Registry. Maybe you have, but you’re yet to set up a Storefront or any A+ listings.
There’s a lot you could be doing to help drive sales.
Not sure what Brand Registry is?
If your brand has a pending or registered trademark, in the country in which you wish to enrol you can apply. This is free and gives you access to other features on Amazon, only available to brand registered sellers, such as the ability to set up A+ content, an Amazon Storefront, more Advertising options and better protection for your brand on Amazon.
If you have Brand Registry, try the following:
- Set up A+ content
This gives you the ability to add more text, images and other features to your product listing.
- Set up an Amazon Storefront
A store can help you build up brand awareness by sharing more about your brand and products. You can also video to a store, which can be a great way to demonstrate how your product works.
Other things you might look at include:
- Amazon Vine (to get reviews)
- Subscribe & Save – great if you have a consumable product
- Running deals & discounts
- Selling your product in other marketplaces
If one of your goals this Summer is to improve your Amazon sales, this blog post has some ideas.