Third-party sellers make up a huge part of Amazon. With so many sellers and businesses all trying to become successful on the platform, it can be difficult to see how you can carve out a niche and become successful there. Becoming successful on Amazon is often a mix of finding the right product, ensuring you remain in good standing with the company and selling to customers who are ready to buy. However, to cement your place on the platform, you need to develop an Amazon FBA (Fulfilled by Amazon) business. Here are a few tips to running and ensuring the success of your Amazon FBA business once you set up your FBA business.
Use Amazon Seller Tools
Every business should find tools that help them streamline their operations, and there are a lot of tools like that for Amazon FBA. When trying to find the right tool, ensure it helps you understand your target market, research keywords to add to product titles and descriptions, optimize your listings, spy on your competitors, and understand your customers better.
While these tools are not a replacement for the work you have to do to make your business succeed, they help streamline many of the processes and operations required to do so.
Ensure Your Prices are Competitive
The volumes you sell have a huge effect on whether you can keep your business going. To ensure you are selling adequate volume, offer competitive pricing. The two mistakes you can make here are hiking your price and lowering them too much. Hiking your prices above the average for the category results in low volumes, and lowering the price too much leads to losses,
The sweet spot is around or right above the average price for the product or the price your competitors have set. There are several tools you can use to maintain a competitive price, including Amazon’s low-price feature, or to adjust your prices automatically depending on how the market is moving.
Manage Your Inventory
Being an FBA partner means Amazon is responsible for shipping your products and so they know how much you have in stock. If you sell more than you have, Amazon is likely to suspend your account and you will have a hard time getting back on the program.
Keep an eye on your inventory and take extra precautions to order or manufacture slightly more than you need so you never run out of stock.
Market Outside Amazon
Amazon does a great job of assisting its FBA partners with their advertising. However, you should never rely only on Amazon; instead, try to advertise outside the platform. Social media remains the best tool for FBA partners, with Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter being huge in this regard.
Leveraging these platforms is not always about advertising your products, as doing so can help you create a strong community of loyal customers. It is also a great way to get people to share information about your products so you can benefit from the free advertising.
Have an Exit Strategy
Every business needs an exit strategy, be it exiting a market, discontinuing certain products, or selling the business outright. While it may not seem like it, having an exit strategy in place is a great way to manage the business and plan for its future.
The main reason for doing so is to recoup your investment or to invest in other endeavors. The best time to sell is when your FBA is still going strong so you get a good amount for the business.
Amazon is an amazing platform that can help you become wildly successful if you know how to run your FBA business properly. Concentrate on products, the market, your customers, growing the business, and following the FBA rules and you will have a widely successful business in your hands.