Marketing plays a vital role in your business success. Regardless of how innovative or useful your products are, if these aren’t promoted using the right mediums, you’ll never gain any customers and income. Your business will never gain the traction it needs without marketing. However, with the number of businesses operating today, it can be hard for a neophyte to stand out in the business arena. It’ll probably take you years and a lot of dedication and effort before your business can entice customers and stay ahead of the competition. Since Amazon is already a household name, this platform can alleviate your business marketing efforts.
Selling on Amazon: Pros and Cons
Aside from being the largest online selling platform, Amazon also allows businesses to sell products through its website. This enables businesses, especially those who are still new and small, to take advantage of a platform known to every possible target audience. Additionally, selling products on Amazon can give you the following the benefits:
- Access to consumers: If you want your business to thrive, you should go where the customers are; and today, more and more people are using the World Wide Web for their purchases. Online selling platforms such as Amazon has been customers’ go-to platforms whenever they need to make any purchases. If your products aren’t visible or available through Amazon, you’re missing out on a lot of opportunities in enticing customers and earning sales.
- Ease of use: Selling your products on Amazon doesn’t require any professional training or experience. The process that a business has to go through in order to sell a product on Amazon is simple. All you have to do is register on Amazon and add your products to Amazon’s catalog. If you already have a website that is solely dedicated to your business and products, you can even promote it using the same platform.
- Utility: Amazon offers a lot of services that businesses can utilize. For starters, you can make use of Fulfillment by Amazon, or FBA. If you acquire this service, Amazon will work with your business behind the scenes. They’ll be responsible for packing and shipping your orders. They’ll also accommodate customer complaints and returns, leaving you with more time on your hands. If you’re leaning towards this direction in marketing your products, do your homework and read about the best course review for Amazon FBA. This will help you properly set your expectations and determine if FBA is apt for your business’s needs.
And while the entire notion of selling through Amazon might be enticing for different kinds of businesses, using this platform isn’t a foolproof marketing strategy. In fact, when businesses sell their products on Amazon, they’re bound to experience the following disadvantages:
- Split loyalty: Once you decide to sell your product on Amazon, your business will have a wider audience reach. This will allow you to either gain new customers or expand to a new target audience. This kind of benefit might help you earn more, but keep in mind that these people were Amazon’s customers first, not yours. Usually, they’ll be loyal to Amazon and not your brand. But this doesn’t mean that you can’t win their loyalty; this simply means that using Amazon will make it harder for you to gain customers’ demographics compared when you’re using other metrics and tracking tools.
- Dependency: So you’re now selling your products through Amazon, and you’ve been receiving a lot of orders. The number of products sold every day doubled, and you couldn’t be happier! Making a sale is always good news in business, but this can become a problem in the long run. If your business is too dependent on Amazon to increase sales, you’ll end up wasting other digital marketing efforts. You’ll have an outdated website and stale social media profiles. What will happen when your Amazon sales significantly decrease? Will you have something to fall back on?
- Competition: You’re not the first business to sell using Amazon. In fact, a lot of businesses have been using this platform for years. If you’re planning to sell through Amazon, you should be prepared for the competition and come up with strategies that can help your products stand out. If you won’t, you’ll end up being a “me too” business, hiding behind the shadows of larger and more established businesses.
Selling on Amazon: How You Can Do It Better
Selling on Amazon might seem like an easy solution for your business’ marketing woes. However, since this also comes with several cons, you have to start off on the right foot. You have to be careful with your attempts so your business can achieve the best possible results. Here’s how you can do it:
- Optimize your product details for search: Amazon is a fast-paced marketplace for different kinds of businesses. This is where you’ll find businesses selling products of all sorts – from kitchenware and apparel to home decors and even gift ideas. If you want customers to buy from you over your competitors, make it easy for them to find your products. Start by editing your product details and including keywords that you think customers will use when they’re searching for your offerings. The simpler these terms are, the easier it’ll be for customers to find you on Amazon.
- Use competitive pricing: Price is one of a customer’s deciding factor. Most of the time, customers will purchase products that are cheap but still provide them with the benefits they’re expecting. This is something that you should consider when selling on Amazon. Pay attention to how your competitors are pricing their products, and make sure that you’re competitively pricing yours. Pricing your products too cheap or too expensive from the competition won’t do your business any good.
- Take professional product images: Customers can’t personally see the products you’re selling, which is why you should use professional product images to convince them. This means that all the grainy photos taken with your mobile phones shouldn’t be uploaded. On the contrary, you should only post high-quality photos in order to create a more professional and trustworthy brand.
- Work continually to improve your performance: Sure, Amazon might provide you with the platform and tools needed for your business to sell products. However, you shouldn’t solely depend on these components for your business success. You should consistently check your sales, return rate, and selling rating to determine which strategies should you improve and which ones to retain. Doing this will help you come up with a marketing strategy that will work on Amazon.
- Follow Amazon’s rules: Although it can be tiring to read a page full of rules and regulations, if you’re a business who wants to sell and succeed using Amazon, you should just do it. You should pay attention to all of Amazon’s rules and consider these when you’re creating a marketing strategy. Knowing Amazon’s rules also prevents your business from being penalized or suspended.
Your Effort Counts
Selling on Amazon can be a fast and easy solution for businesses to promote and sell their products. However, you shouldn’t solely depend your business success on this platform or the reputation this brand has. You should also exert time and effort to supplement the marketing efforts you’ve implemented on Amazon. Collectively, these will significantly impact the amount of success your business can attain in the future!
