Time
Amazon takes a LOT of time.
For one product you need to do the follow pre-launch:
- Find a product niche that you’re going to have unique value to add
- Do deep research on patents related to the product
- Develop a unique style to sell the product
- If you’re able to, get a patent in your country to protect the IP of the brand
- Develop a brand that is not infringing on others’ trademarks
- Get test orders from multiple suppliers to find the best-quality manufacturing
- Ensure you will have ample margins for overhead, shipping, and more.
- Do deep keyword research into the product category to ensure there is enough demand or a lack of quality competitors
- Design packaging that’s engaging and includes the goal keyword that the product needs to sell on
- Buy a UPC from GS1. If you buy it off of speedycodes or eBay, you’re going to have massive problems
- Get a trademark in your country for the brand name
- Create a business entity in your country
- Create an Amazon Seller account
- Apply for brand registry with the trademark
- Use the GS1 UPC to create an ASIN
- Do deep competitor research to understand the category, sub-category, and your closest competitors. What are their reviews saying they do poorly>
- Ship a few units to influencers, photographers, and videographers to get product content.
- Enroll in Amazon Vine to get initial reviews pre-launch
- Create Amazon shipping labels for the pallet, master case, and box.
- Take your keyword research and create engaging, keyword-filled copy to fill out the title, bullet points, description, and back-end attributes
- Take the photos and videos to create a perfect V1 of a product page from the HERO photo, secondary photos, videos, and A+ content
- Add in brand story to get Premium A+ content to put the video in the A+ Content section
- Create any necessary parentages to share reviews and improve the conversion rate
- Set up the FBA new selection program
Once the product is going live:
- Get Amazon advertising created on the competitor product pages and keywords that you need to rank for
- A/B test each facet of the product
- Use coupons, deals, selling price, and promotions to drive volume
- Create an excellent DTC site to add legitimacy
- Request Reviews within ToS
- Create a great social media profile to add social proof
- Test out each targeting type and campaign type in Amazon advertising
- A/B test Advertising images and videos
- Adjust bids and budgets to get the desired volume to increase keyword rankings
- Re-order shipments as they’re going OOS
- Create trademarks for the product name, not just the brand name
- Launch new variations of the product to give customers more options (especially to increase AOV with new sizes and quantities)
- Use Paid Social (Meta, Tik Tok, Reddit Ads, etc.) to grow social media, DTC site sales, and Amazon sales
- Use influencers and affiliates to scale the sales
- Sell on Walmart.com as a 3P seller
- Sell on TikTok Shop
- Use Paid Ads (Google Adwords, Bing Ads, Amazon DSP, etc.) to grow each channel
Most brands do not have the resources to devote 3+ FTE to the channel to get all of this done.
Channel Knowledge Expertise
Amazon has incredible depth to it. It used to be simple, but has become a massive amount of content to wade through.
Nuances include:
- Understand parentage interactions
- Understanding how to edit a PDP
- Understand how to edit a locked PDP through ticketing and feed files
- Understanding how to properly load a feed file
- How to upload photos onto a PDP
- How to upload a video to multiple PDPs
- How to create a MFN SKU
- How to create a FBA SKU
- How to merge SKUs
- How to create FBA Shipments
- How to create MCF shipments
- How to create MFN shipments
- How to automate MFN shipments
- How to understand inventory limits
- How to increase inventory limits
- How to set up NARF to sell on Amazon and Mexico
- How to change a product’s sales price
- How to change a product’s list price
- How to set up automated pricing
- How to win the buy box
- How to kick off 3P sellers
- How to download and interpret Amazon reports
- How to understand profitability and accounting of Amazon orders
- How to create Amazon campaigns
- When to up or lower bids
- When to lower or raise campaign budgets
- When to use SP, SB, STV, or SD
- When to use Meta Ads, G Adwords, and off-amazon ads to help add fuel to the fire
- When to use PR to add fuel to the fire
- When to use affiliates and influencers to add fuel to the fire
- How to use Amazon Creator Connections
- How to add a Brand Story
- How to add A+ content
- How to get approved for and use Premium A+ content
- How to setup Amazon Vine
- How and When to create the right deals, coupons, promotions, and discounts
- How to create an engaging Amazon Brand Storefront
- How to make the Amazon brand storefront have it’s own amazon.com/brand custom URL
- How to get funding for an Amazon Seller
- How to use Amazon’s Product Opportunity Explorer to launch new variations and SKUs
- How to understand your return rate and to decrease it
- How to understand all fees a product incurs each sale
- How to balance growth with profitability
- How to properly rank and grow on each search term
- How to steal market share from competitors
- How to fight large amounts of money that is being withheld from you via payments
- How to use tools like H10 to gain views into competitors
- How to set up B2B pricing
- How to use Brand Analytics to go deeper
- How to see organic sales from Brand Analytics’ Search Query Performance
- How to see similar skus through Brand Analytics
- How to see your Amazon demographics through Brand Analytics
- How to give bad reviewing customers a refund
- How to get a brand referral bonus on off-amazon traffic
- How to create FBA Virtual bundles
- How to create MFN virtual bundles
- How to properly create net new bundles
- A/B testing through Amazon experiments
- How to understand the marketing funnel through Brand Analytics’ Customer Loyalty Analytics
- How to understand your products’ paid click-through rate and conversion rate through the ad console
- How to understand your products’ organic click-through rate and conversion rate through Brand Analytics Search Catalog Performance
- How to see LTV through Brand Analytics Repeat Purchase Behavior
- How to see skus to launch or to bundle with (or advertise against) with Brand Analytics Market Basket Analysis
- How to avoid high pricing errors that other channels cause
And much, much more.
So why do you need an Amazon expert? To get the most out of Amazon and make much, much more money. To avoid cannibalizing your other channels.
Agencies also get access to Betas early, know which software to leverage to help you understand profitability, test out new API features, and have multiple experienced brains to help solve problems.