Want to grow your Amazon business but don’t know where to start? Developing a viable growth strategy is hard, but we want to help make it easier for you. That’s why we’ve put together…
The top 5 strategies to grow your Amazon business fast
1. Assess Your Business & Set Goals
When you’re developing a growth strategy, you need to first think about the big picture, i.e. what is going well and what isn’t. When you start there, you’ll be able to set more informed goals, maximize efficiencies, and identify areas of improvement. So spend some time reviewing all areas of your business, from sales history and sales velocity to pricing strategy to inventory management to cash flow. When you look at the big picture, you’ll be able to better identify the levers that will promote growth and those that need fixing. Then, you can set actual growth targets and devise a plan for how you’ll reach them.
Pro Tip: If your sales aren’t where they should be, SellerMobile has a Lost Sales Analysis Tool that runs competitive analyses to tell you when and/or why you’re losing revenue, plus how to get it back.
2. Optimize Product & Price
Speaking of revenue, you may be losing sales because you’re not selling the right product or setting the right price. At the end of the day, you won’t be able to grow your Amazon business if you’re not stocking products that are in demand, priced to sell, and inexpensive to source. Follow these three simple steps to make sure your product and pricing strategies are in tip-top shape:
- Go for products with a strong selling history and set keywords that actually match what customers are using in their searches.
- Make sure you’re getting the lowest possible price from your supplier(s). Negotiate with them on unit price, shipping costs, production time, etc. and consider shopping around to make sure you’re getting the best deal.
- Set a Buy Box-worthy selling price that also gives you a high margin.
Pro Tip: To optimize your selling price so you maintain Buy Box status and actually get sales, you may want to consider a repricer tool like SellerMobile’s Algorithmic Repricer, which will help identify the best price on a given day.
3. Maximize Inventory Management
Without a solid inventory management strategy, you can’t grow. Period. After all, if you run out of stock, you can’t make sales. What’s worse, Amazon may even suspend your account. This doesn’t mean you should buy a massive order though, because your cash flow will be tied up in too much inventory that’s not selling fast enough. Instead, you need to know how much inventory to have on hand at a given time plus when and how much to reorder. To figure this out, start by looking at your sales velocity, which tells how much you sell and at what rate plus when your busy and slow periods are.
Pro Tip: To help you determine when you need to reorder, SellerMobile’s Predictive Restock Tool accurately predicts when you might run out so you can restock at the right time.
4. Focus on the Customer
An easy way to one-up the competition and win business is to offer a great customer experience — one that encourages repeat business as well as customer referrals. To make sure you offer the best shopping experience, consider the below tips — you just might win the Buy Box in the process:
- Be easy to find: Optimize your keywords and Amazon SEO and/or consider a Sponsored Products campaign so customers actually find what they are looking for.
- Offer Prime benefits: These days, Amazon shoppers expect competitive pricing and fast, free shipping, so if you don’t offer basic Prime benefits, they might move on to a listing that does.
- Focus on customer service: Communicate with your customers as needed to avoid negative reviews and promote positive ones. And if you get the same recurring negative feedback, make any necessary changes — it’ll improve the overall shopping experience.
Pro Tip: With SellerMobile’s Feedback Automation Tool you can automate and simplify the feedback review process, boost account rankings and increase visibility.
5. Improve Cash Flow
Simply put, you can’t grow your Amazon business without cash. Growth requires investing — whether it’s in product, people or something else. So how can you grow when your cash is tied up with Amazon? As you well know, their two week payment delay makes it difficult to turn inventory quickly, invest in bulk purchases, launch marketing campaigns, hire employees or outsource work to a third party service or tool — all of which are essential for growth. So unless you have an endless pool of funds to lean on, you’re going to need to fix your constant cash flow crunch.
Pro Tip: There is an easy solution for marketplace sellers like you who want to get paid daily, increase cash flow and grow. It’s called Payability, a financing company that offers three cash flow options depending on your needs:
- Payability Instant Advance: Payability buys a certain amount (up to a month’s worth of payouts) of your future receivables up front and at a discount, giving you a large lump sum of cash to draw from daily.
- Payability Instant Access: Payability pays you your marketplace income one business day after making a sale, giving you daily real-time access to your cash.
- Payability Seller Card: Available to Instant Access customers, the Seller Card gives you 24/7/365 access to yesterday’s income, including on weekends and holidays. It can be used wherever Visa is accepted and comes with awesome cash back rewards (in some cases up to 20%).
With Payability, you can take your business to the next level. But don’t just take it from us. More than 2,500 marketplace sellers have used Payability to grow their Amazon businesses 2.5x faster than their competitors. Take Jump City Toys, for example, who uses Instant Access to turn more inventory and sell (and grow) faster, or Wild & Gold Distributors who saw a 50% increase in sales with her first Instant Advance. You can be like them, too — just visit SellerMobile to get started and get a $200 sign on bonus and 1.75% Instant Access fee.
Author Bio:
Victoria Sullivan is a Marketing Manager at Payability. She has over eight years of social media, copywriting and marketing experience. Prior to joining the Payability team, Victoria developed social media content and strategies for top technology brands such as Skype and Samsung. She holds a degree in Advertising from Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. She can often be found in a yoga class or working on her fashion blog.
