Time

Amazon takes a LOT of time.

For one product you need to do the follow pre-launch:

1. Find a product niche that you’re going to have unique value to add
2. Do deep research on patents related to the product
3. Develop a unique style to sell the product
4. If you’re able to, get a patent in your country to protect the IP of the brand
5. Develop a brand that is not infringing on others’ trademarks
6. Get test orders from multiple suppliers to find the best-quality manufacturing
7. Ensure you will have ample margins for overhead, shipping, and more.
8. Do deep keyword research into the product category to ensure there is enough demand or a lack of quality competitors
9. Design packaging that’s engaging and includes the goal keyword that the product needs to sell on
10. Buy a UPC from GS1. If you buy it off of speedycodes or eBay, you’re going to have massive problems
11. Get a trademark in your country for the brand name
12. Create a business entity in your country
13. Create an Amazon Seller account
14. Apply for brand registry with the trademark
15. Use the GS1 UPC to create an ASIN
16. Do deep competitor research to understand the category, sub-category, and your closest competitors. What are their reviews saying they do poorly>
17. Ship a few units to influencers, photographers, and videographers to get product content.
18. Enroll in Amazon Vine to get initial reviews pre-launch
19. Create Amazon shipping labels for the pallet, master case, and box.
20. Take your keyword research and create engaging, keyword-filled copy to fill out the title, bullet points, description, and back-end attributes
21. Take the photos and videos to create a perfect V1 of a product page from the HERO photo, secondary photos, videos, and A+ content
22. Add in brand story to get Premium A+ content to put the video in the A+ Content section
23. Create any necessary parentages to share reviews and improve the conversion rate
24. Set up the FBA new selection program

Once the product is going live:

1. Get Amazon advertising created on the competitor product pages and keywords that you need to rank for
2. A/B test each facet of the product
3. Use coupons, deals, selling price, and promotions to drive volume
4. Create an excellent DTC site to add legitimacy
5. Request Reviews within ToS
6. Create a great social media profile to add social proof
7. Test out each targeting type and campaign type in Amazon advertising
8. A/B test Advertising images and videos
9. Adjust bids and budgets to get the desired volume to increase keyword rankings
10. Re-order shipments as they’re going OOS
11. Create trademarks for the product name, not just the brand name
12. Launch new variations of the product to give customers more options (especially to increase AOV with new sizes and quantities)
13. Use Paid Social (Meta, Tik Tok, Reddit Ads, etc.) to grow social media, DTC site sales, and Amazon sales
14. Use influencers and affiliates to scale the sales
15. Sell on Walmart.com as a 3P seller
16. Sell on TikTok Shop
17. 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:

1. Understand parentage interactions
2. Understanding how to edit a PDP
3. Understand how to edit a locked PDP through ticketing and feed files
4. Understanding how to properly load a feed file
5. How to upload photos onto a PDP
6. How to upload a video to multiple PDPs
7. How to create a MFN SKU
8. How to create a FBA SKU
9. How to merge SKUs
10. How to create FBA Shipments
11. How to create MCF shipments
12. How to create MFN shipments
13. How to automate MFN shipments
14. How to understand inventory limits
15. How to increase inventory limits
16. How to set up NARF to sell on Amazon and Mexico
17. How to change a product’s sales price
18. How to change a product’s list price
19. How to set up automated pricing
20. How to win the buy box
21. How to kick off 3P sellers
22. How to download and interpret Amazon reports
23. How to understand profitability and accounting of Amazon orders
24. How to create Amazon campaigns
25. When to up or lower bids
26. When to lower or raise campaign budgets
27. When to use SP, SB, STV, or SD
28. When to use Meta Ads, G Adwords, and off-amazon ads to help add fuel to the fire
29. When to use PR to add fuel to the fire
30. When to use affiliates and influencers to add fuel to the fire
31. How to use Amazon Creator Connections
32. How to add a Brand Story
33. How to add A+ content
34. How to get approved for and use Premium A+ content
35. How to setup Amazon Vine
36. How and When to create the right deals, coupons, promotions, and discounts
37. How to create an engaging Amazon Brand Storefront
38. How to make the Amazon brand storefront have it’s own amazon.com/brand custom URL
39. How to get funding for an Amazon Seller
40. How to use Amazon’s Product Opportunity Explorer to launch new variations and SKUs
41. How to understand your return rate and to decrease it
42. How to understand all fees a product incurs each sale
43. How to balance growth with profitability
44. How to properly rank and grow on each search term
45. How to steal market share from competitors
46. How to fight large amounts of money that is being withheld from you via payments
47. How to use tools like H10 to gain views into competitors
48. How to set up B2B pricing
49. How to use Brand Analytics to go deeper
50. How to see organic sales from Brand Analytics’ Search Query Performance
51. How to see similar skus through Brand Analytics
52. How to see your Amazon demographics through Brand Analytics
53. How to give bad reviewing customers a refund
54. How to get a brand referral bonus on off-amazon traffic
55. How to create FBA Virtual bundles
56. How to create MFN virtual bundles
57. How to properly create net new bundles
58. A/B testing through Amazon experiments
59. How to understand the marketing funnel through Brand Analytics’ Customer Loyalty Analytics
60. How to understand your products’ paid click-through rate and conversion rate through the ad console
61. How to understand your products’ organic click-through rate and conversion rate through Brand Analytics Search Catalog Performance
62. How to see LTV through Brand Analytics Repeat Purchase Behavior
63. How to see skus to launch or to bundle with (or advertise against) with Brand Analytics Market Basket Analysis
64. 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.