Once you are up and running as a seller on Amazon, it’s a never ending quest to increase sales. There are many tactics to try. Some will work for you and some will not. But luckily for you, Amazon does all the picking, packing and shipping which gives you time to figure out the rest.
Below are 7 tips for boosting sales on Amazon. The last one is a super insider tip and it’s so easy!
Social Media
Social Media can be a very effective tool for boosting Amazon Sales. If you already have a social media following, use this as a way to keep your products top of mind. Don’t be overly “salesy” though.
Consumers don’t want to be hit over the head with a sale pitch in their social media feed. The goal here is to be a little more subtle. Share meme’s, share other people’s content, post funny pictures of your office or someone using your products. You can always add in a subtle link somewhere on the post directing people to your Amazon listings. Also don’t forget to use hashtags! Whatever your industry is, there is a hashtag for it. Social Media loves Hashtags!
Great Images
Don’t underestimate the power of a great product image. Put yourself in the customer’s shoes. If they are shopping for something on Amazon and there are 10 merchants selling something that looks all identical to the customer, they are going to gravitate towards the listing with the most appealing picture. Go the extra mile and pay for professional product photos. It will pay for itself 10 fold. It’s hard to trust a merchant if the photo has a lot of shadows in it or it’s obvious that the photo was taken with a smart phone and no additional lighting. Customers pick up on these small cues.
Great Product Description
This is something that is often overlooked but can add a lot of value. Spend time on your product title and description on your Amazon Listings. Show it to someone that knows nothing about your business or the product you are selling and ask them for feedback. In fact show it to 10 people. Sometimes you are just too close to your business to really understand what needs to be fixed. A great title and description can really help to boost sales on your Amazon Listing.
Positive Reviews
Reviews, Reviews, Reviews, this is the lifeblood of your Amazon listing. In the early days of Amazon you could use any number of 3rdparty companies that would help distribute coupons to eager bargain hunters in exchange for a review of your product. In fact it was pretty easy, if you had the budget, to generate 50 to 100 reviews in a short period of time and rocket up to the top of the Amazon Search Results. It’s a lot hard to do this now. Amazon has put the stop to the practice of bribing customers for good reviews.
Amazon does offer an early review service for products that are just launching, but they only work with new products. If your product has a few reviews and has been live for a while you have to go the slow and steady route. Each customer that buys from you on Amazon, make sure they get a follow up from you asking if everything went as expected and if they would not mind leaving you a review. Do not however ask for a positive review and definitely do not offer compensation for reviews. This is now against Amazon TOS.
Add More Products
At a certain point you may find yourself maxed out with sales volume for your current products. It’s pretty common and happens to a lot of merchants. They launch one product, it sells well and sales continue to grow each month. At some point sales begin to level off and stay rather consistent. That is probably the market demand for the product you’re selling. To grow your Amazon business, you need to branch out into new products, either complimentary to your current line, or something totally new. The next challenge is picking a product that is going to sell well for you and will not cost an arm and a leg to get on page 1 of Amazon Search Results. To research products and help to reduce your risk, you will want to use a product research tool.
Expand to Europe!
If you are a US Merchant, you have probably thought about expanding to Canada or Mexico. You may have even tried it, only to find that the audience is so small that it’s hardly worth it. Amazon has just expanded its EU offering. You can now ship products to a UK warehouse and orders from all across the EU can be fulfilled from one or two UK warehouses. Don’t get me wrong, it takes some setting up and paperwork to get approved, but the Amazon Europe audience size is only 10% smaller than the entire US audience. So with the right product fit, you could almost double your sales!
Export Settings
If you are a US based Amazon Merchant and you are not ready for the hassle of expanding to Europe, at least make sure you have enabled your Export Settings. To do this, go to: Settings>Fulfillment by Amazon in your Seller Central Account. Scroll to the bottom of the page. Second to last you will find “Export Settings”. Set this to Enabled. Here is what Amazon says about this program; “At no extra charge, the FBA Export program helps you expand your business to more than 100 countries without dealing with the complexities of selling internationally.” Basically what this means is that at the discretion of Amazon, they will make certain products available to a NON US audience and ship the products from your FBA inventory to the customer without your knowledge. (That’s a good thing) It’s just incremental sales to NON US customers that you would not normally have.
There you have it; this is only a partial list of course. There are many ways to increase sales for your Amazon Listings. It’s a continuous process of trial and error. Keep reading; keep learning, figure out what works and what doesn’t. Seriously though, the Export Settings function typically increases sales by 2-3% for 30 seconds for work! Happy Selling!
Author: Jon Carmen. Digital Media Consultant. 20 years of consulting and building companies in the digital economy. Digital Media, Adtech, Mobile, eCommerce.
