Learn the best practices used by high-volume sellers to crush your competition on Amazon.
Establishing an online storefront in one of the world’s largest marketplace can be tough since you need to compete with millions of sellers every single day. However, this doesn’t mean that breaking through the competition is impossible. Stand out from the competition with the help of SellerMobile and the following strategies below.
Best Strategies to Beat Your Competition on Amazon
Strategy #1: Ramp Up Your Reviews
To become one of Amazon’s top-rating sellers, your products need to attract attention. One factor that contributes greatly to increasing your traffic is positive feedback and product reviews. Happy customers don’t mind leaving positive comments on your products.
How do you achieve that?
1. Prepare the package beautifully
It is one thing to deliver a product on time and entirely another thing to send it wrapped in a beautiful package. There is a different level of excitement a nicely wrapped present creates. More so, the unique experience it brings when unboxing it.
2. Build Engagement
Creating engagement is a perfect way not only to entice customers to leave a positive review on your page but also to enhance brand awareness. There are several tactics you can build engagement:
- Include an unexpected freebie in your customer’s order
- Slash off a certain amount on their next purchase
- Open a pop-up shop in areas where you have lots of customers
3. Request for feedback nicely
You will be surprised by how many customers are unaware of the importance of leaving good seller feedback. That is why you should be proactive in requesting for feedback. When asking for feedback, you can insert a note in the package or do it via email. Either way, make sure to ask nicely.
4. Automate the process
If you are receiving a decent amount of sales, sending personalized emails for every single order can be time-consuming. By using an automated tool, like what SellerMobile offers, you can auto-send sequence emails from the moment your customer places an order until after they receive their product. Soliciting feedback becomes easy too.
The more positive reviews you get, the higher chances you have to stand out from the competition.
Strategy #2: Engage on Different Tactics and Techniques
There are literally thousands of marketing strategies that can help you promote and sell your products, and improve sales and profit. It’s all about testing them out to see what works and don’t. If you’ve been in this industry for some time, you probably have been using certain strategies you’ve developed on your own over the course of time. Make sure to maximize and optimize these strategies inside and outside the Amazon marketplace to give your brand a competitive edge.
Here’s how you can create a successful Amazon marketing campaign:
1. Set clear-cut objectives
Before anything else, set specific objectives and key performance indicators (KPIs). This is to help you determine how your campaign is performing and spot areas you need to refine. For example, if your objective is to obtain more positive feedback, think about how many feedbacks you want to receive on a daily or weekly basis. Look also into the different ways that will help you measure success.
2. Define your audience
To get a clear understanding of your target customers, start by searching their demographics, interests and purchasing habits. What do they buy most? Where do they spend most of their money? With the information you’ve gathered, find the best ways you can reach them. It could be through email marketing, social media, or paid ads.
3. Determine your budget
Budgeting is one of the challenging parts in building a successful Amazon marketing campaign. The trick here is to set a budget based on what you can afford. If you are not sure how much you can afford, try to look at how much income you can generate from your average customers. You can also set an estimate based on your spend the past year.
4. Track results
Once you’ve launched your Amazon marketing campaign, be sure to track and measure results. This is where your objectives come into play. You know your campaign was successful if it met your desired outcome. As you analyze the results, try to ask yourself these questions:
Would I repeat this campaign? If not, why?
Which aspect of the campaign should I refine or remove?
What did I learn about my target customers?
Let these questions guide you in planning your next campaign.
A good Amazon marketing campaign is what will set you apart from your competitors. Although it seems like a complex task, it’s actually a straightforward process – if you do it properly.
Strategy #3: Learn How to Use Social Media
Utilize the power of social media to your advantage. Several networking and microblogging sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are great avenues to promote your Amazon products. You can market them using your personal accounts or business profiles. Either way, diversifying your marketing outside Amazon is a great method to expand your reach.
In addition, if your budget permits, you can create a website and domain to become more discoverable to your potential customers. Although beating your competitors seems hard on social media, there are lots of opportunities (such as influencer marketing) that you can tap into to get your page visible to your target audience, and ultimately stand out from the competition.
Capitalizing on Influencer Marketing
Amazon Influencer Program offers an enormous opportunity for Amazon sellers to grow their brand on social media. Joining forces with Amazon influencers not only builds your brand but also makes the buying journey seamless and easy. For instance, a simple swipe-up on an influencer’s Instagram story or a quick tap on the tagged account on the influencer’s Facebook post can take a potential customer directly to your Amazon store.
Top benefits of pairing up with Amazon influencers include:
- Increased sales
- Improved PPC ad visibility
- Reduced Amazon ads ACoS
- More positive reviews from happy customers
- Show up ahead of competitors in product searches
Learn more about Amazon Influencer Program here.
Strategy #4: Never Run Out of Stock
If you want to increase your sales and seller rank, it is important to always have a fully stocked inventory, especially during holiday season where millions of people head over to Amazon to buy what they need.
There is no sense in offering a high-quality product and service for an affordable price if what you are offering is out-of-stock. You must know when to restock to prevent lost sales. Healthy inventory plays a big role in improving your seller rating, which in turn, could help your business shine out from the crowd.
Here are different ways to manage your inventory:
1. Keep track of your inventory
By tracking your inventory, you become more aware of its condition and status. You know when and how many products you need to stock. You also know how much of your products will sell. A good understanding of your inventory allows you to come up with an immediate solution when a problem arises.
2. Don’t invest in slow-moving stocks
Having an accurate picture of your inventory enables you to easily process the amount of orders you can fill, and therefore prevent you from overstocking your inventory. It’s not wise to invest on products that yield low financial returns. A smart move would be to order small amounts of supply so you have room to adjust your inventory if demand changes.
3. Understand your order issues
Monitoring your past order problems allows you to understand what went wrong with your inventory management and find a solution to overcome it so it doesn’t happen again. Some of the key issues you can track might include the orders that were cancelled, orders that didn’t arrive on time, and orders with long turn around times. Figure out what might have caused these issues and how you can avoid them in the future.
Strategy #5: Run Amazon PPC Ads
PPC can be a game-changer for your Amazon store. If you aren’t doing PPC advertising yet, you’ll likely lose out on valuable traffic and revenue.
In case you are new to PPC, the simplest explanation goes like this: Amazon sellers bid on keywords. The seller with the highest bid and best ad quality wins the keyword. When a buyer searches that certain keyword, the seller who won the keyword will appear on the search results page.
When done effectively, PPC ads increase visibility, drive traffic to your listing, boost revenue, and give you an edge over the competition.
Amazon ads come in three types: Sponsored Products, Headline Search Ads and Product Display Ads.
1. Sponsored Product Ads
With Sponsored Product Ads, you only pay when a customer clicks on your ads. Once a customer clicks on your ad, they’ll be directed to your product details page where they can buy the product from you.
These ads show up in several places around the Amazon website, and are often displayed in search results. They appear on the side bar, in the middle of the page, and on other’s product detail pages.
2. Headline Search Ads
Also called banner ads, you’ll find these ads on top of the search results page with some ad copy. Headline Search Ads are targeted by keywords and operate on a cost-per-click basis. Once a customer clicks on the ad, they’re directed on a certain page, which could be your product detail page or to your Amazon store.
3. Product Display Ads
These ads work a little bit differently than the previous ad types. They aren’t targeted with keywords, instead they require you to pick relevant product pages where you want your ad to show up, including your competitor’s page.
Product Display ads also allow you to target your ad based on your customers’ interest or specific products. You can see these ads below your product’s “add to cart” button.
Check out our Amazon PPC Guide to learn more.
Strategy #6: Optimize Your Listing
The next best way to crush your competition on Amazon is to develop well-optimized product listings.
When it comes to listing optimization, there are three factors you need to look out for: keyword, content, and images.
Keyword
To make your product listing discoverable, choose keywords that are most relevant to your product and what customers are actually searching for. The more likely your listing match what the customer is looking for, the better your conversion rates are and the higher you rise in the ranks. Ultimately, overtaking the competition.
Content
Crafting well-written content that strategically incorporates your most valuable keywords is the key to optimizing your listing for higher ranking and conversions. To fully optimize your listing, place your most relevant keywords in these 5 prime locations:
- Title
- Bullet Points
- Product Description
- A+ Content
- Back-End Search Terms
- Photos
Images
When it comes to Amazon listing optimization, words are only half the battle. High-quality, professional images work in tandem with your content to rake in sales and stand out from the crowd.
Go for bright, clear and high-quality pictures to capture your customers’ attention. Show your product from different angles, giving customers a complete and authentic view of your product. Furthermore, use a white background to give your photos a professional look.
Discover more essential strategies to rank your product listings on Amazon here.
Strategy #7: Focus on Pricing
Amazon is a very price-sensitive marketplace, which means you need smart pricing strategies to help you earn a decent profit without struggling.
Having an effective pricing strategies is one surefire way to give you a competitive advantage. Research your competitors, ensure that your pricing aligns with theirs, and set up pricing preferences to remain competitive.
Don’t Race to the Bottom
If your product costs too much, it will fail to attract customers. If your product costs too low, you will hardly make a profit.
It is quite important for you to learn how to create different Amazon seller pricing strategies that are best suited for your products and for your customer’s demands. Intelligently setting a competitive Amazon price for your items can make or break a sale when a customer is trying to determine where to purchase from.
Even if it means paying more, customers are more likely to choose a seller who has better records than a cheaper price. Additionally, wise shoppers have this preconceived notion that the lowest priced items are usually the ones with poor quality and customer service.
Therefore, instead of chasing the cheapest price, price your items 1.5% above the lowest seller. In doing so, you are still cheap enough to be competitive but won’t get caught up in a race to the bottom.
For this reason, conducting an Amazon pricing strategy analysis, or having a third-party repricer tool do it for you, may be beneficial as you work to set your product prices.
Bottom Line
To stand out from the competition you have to be equipped with the right tools and strategies; otherwise, it will prove challenging. Outplay your rivals in the Amazon marketplace with the help of these tips and of course with the use of SellerMobile. Sign up for our 30-day free trial to learn more.
