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Amazon has become a dominant force in the online retailing space, generating significant revenue for brands selling their products through its programs. Just earlier this year, the company reached $100 billion in annual sales, and an estimated 60% or more of high-income US households are members of the Amazon Prime program.
Above: Chart from financial firm Piper Jaffray
The Amazon marketplace provides unbeatable visibility for brands looking to put their products in front of as many potential shoppers as is possible. The numbers speak for themselves. Consumer Intelligence Research Partners estimates that there are 63 million Prime members among Amazon’s shoppers, each of them spending about $1,200 on average in 2015, compared with just $600 per year for non-Prime members.
It goes without saying, Amazon can be a considerably profitable opportunity. But with such visibility, the competition is fierce. So it’s easy to understand why brands are drawn to the marketplace, yet why so many remain resistant to adding Amazon to their sales channels. Some businesses simply don’t know if they have the resources to handle their channel or are concerned about channel conflict and losing control of their brand.
How do you know if Amazon is in fact a golden
opportunity for your business?
Consulting with clients on their Amazon selling strategies, I found there was a need for a comprehensive playbook on how to assess if Amazon is the right fit brands, and develop a plan for how to grow revenue and attract new customers on the Amazon marketplace.
No matter what stage you’re at with your business, “The Amazon Expansion Plan” aims to answer the big questions that marketers and owners of larger brands are asking around how to launch and build revenue quickly on Amazon - both in the US and international marketplaces. It provides actionable strategies to help brands effectively grow sales, optimize their marketplace presence and expand their business. It’s what my team and I are doing daily at Bobsled Marketing to helps brands build profitable Amazon stores.
Top 6 things you will learn from The Amazon Expansion Plan
1. You will know if your brand is ready for the Amazon marketplace
There are over 400 million product listings on Amazon, so selling in this marketplace is not really something that you can just “dip your toe into”. Before you start, consider whether your company has the time, resources and money to invest in a successful presence on this marketplace. This book will help you get a grip on the Amazon landscape, understand the nitty-gritty details of the marketplace and start your journey with a strong sales strategy.
“In 2016, Amazon was scored by consumers as the most trusted company in America, for the third year in a row. People love shopping there because they get free returns, they always get treated well, if they ever have a problem with the product or seller, it’s taken care of immediately.
For sellers, it means that you can get sales from customers you couldn’t have reached before, even through your own online store. It opens up a whole new market segment for you to sell into, despite being weighted in favor of the customer’s experience over the seller’s.”
2. Learn the perks and downsides of the different options for selling on Amazon
One of the most important things about selling on Amazon is understanding the perks and downsides of the many different programs available for brands. The Vendor Program, Fulfilled by Amazon, the Merchant program and Launchpad are the four options a seller has, but each has its own pros and cons. In this book, I share answers to the most common questions about selling on Amazon and I go through all the four programs to help you identify the program that would best fit your business model and sales objective.
“There are three main methods of selling available for retailers looking to expand their brand on Amazon. There’s the Vendor Program, the Fulfilled By Merchant (FBM) Program and the Fulfilled By Amazon (FBA) Program.
The FBA and FBM models allow you to sell direct to the consumer via Amazon’s platform and infrastructure, while the Vendor Program is essentially a wholesale model, where you deal with a buyer, ship in your inventory, and then let them handle the rest.”
3. How to optimize your product listing to grow sales
Getting strong conversion rates for your product listings tells Amazon that your products are popular and compelling to shoppers. Put yourself in your shoppers’ shoes and try to evaluate how compelling your listings are. This includes factors like imagery, titles,, description and product reviews. In this book you will learn everything you need to understand what makes for strong product listings that get your customers’ attention.
“When you’re thinking about how to structure the information about your product, take a look at the information hierarchy Amazon has built into the product pages.
The most important information all shows above the fold: the visual content, the headline that gets the attention of the right customers, and the easily-digested bullet points that let the reader know if this product could be the right option for them.“
— The Amazon Expansion Plan
4. How to get more reviews
It’s estimated that 61% of consumers read online reviews before making a purchase decision, yet less than 5% of Amazon customers actually end up writing a review for products that they buy. This has Amazon sellers facing a big paradox: no reviews, no sales. It is understandable why many just don’t know where to start, particularly after Amazon made a surprise change to their Terms of Service regarding “Incentivized reviews” in October this year. In this book, I walk you through some of the common methods of getting reviews, the same step-by-step process we use at Bobsled Marketing.
"It’s critical to break this vicious catch-22 cycle and begin to build up genuine reviews for your product assortment on Amazon. The good news is that you don’t need all 5-star reviews, and there are a few ways to start building up your products credibility with reviews."
5. How to optimize PPC campaigns and improve ROI
With PPC on Amazon it’s not just a matter of how much you should spend. The truth is that optimizing your PPC campaigns should be a cornerstone component of your selling strategy on Amazon and it is definitely not something you just set and then forget about. Used effectively in product launches and overall channel management, PPC can prove to be an extremely powerful way to drive relevant traffic while increasing revenue and sales velocity. In this book, you will learn how to improve your ROI with step-by-step tactics, you will understand how pay-per-click works and how to assess the competitiveness of your product category.
“If you don’t have any PPC (pay-per-click) campaigns running on Amazon yet, you should start by running an automated campaign for two weeks. This is where Amazon will just use the keywords indexed in the back end of your listing, as well as pulling keywords from your title and description, and it will start an automatic campaign based on their best guess about what your keywords mean.”
6. How to launch your product in international Amazon markets
As of November 2016, Amazon has 31 fulfillment centers throughout Europe (UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Czech Republic and Poland), proof that its international expansion strategy is well on its way. In fact, in Q1 2016, Amazon’s revenue from other countries than US hit close to the 25% mark in terms of growth rate. Establishing your brand in one of Amazon’s international marketplaces could dramatically expand your reach if you capped out of your American potential. In this book, you will learn when expanding outside the US marketplace is a good opportunity,the logistical implications behind setting up your business in a different country, and how the European Fulfilment Network and Pan-European Inventory programs work.
“Expanding into new territories is an exciting, ambitious undertaking for any business. There are huge opportunities associated with entering a new market that has less competition (and customer bases that are eager for new purchasing options).
It’s critical, though, that you take a realistic approach to this expansion, both in terms of the amount of work that will be required to execute the plan, and the timeline it will take for you to get established.
— The Amazon Expansion Plan
BOTTOM LINE
Today, being on Amazon is becoming synonymous with being a modern and accessible consumer brand. Sure, there’s a lot going on in this marketplace, but the information to help you succeed is available in “The Amazon Expansion Plan”. Time to dive into how to capitalize on the opportunities Amazon offers.
