How to Accelerate Your Business: Amazon FBA Webinar

Being an Amazon seller can be a little overwhelming at times. From readjusting your business model in order to stay relevant, to finding the right suppliers, and optimizing your product listings, there are plenty of aspects of an Amazon FBA business to think about. We at Mayan have worked in the business for years and have learned handfuls of tips and tricks to help Amazon sellers like you along the way.

In our first ever webinar, our CEO and co-founder Ernesto Reza sat down to chat with Andrew Laird, Senior Account Manager at Mayan and founder of the Ecommerce brand ProShot. Combined, Ernesto and Andrew have over 13 years of experience in Ecommerce, data, and marketing. They've developed their expertise to help others achieve their business goals. 

Ernesto and Andrew are filled with nuggets of wisdom when it comes to marketing, sales, and all of those important details that sellers like yourself need to apply if you want to grow your Amazon business. In the webinar, they share some of their top expert tips for selling on Amazon FBA.

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What We Covered in the Webinar

From the perfect length of your product video to making changes to your supply chain in 2022, Ernesto and Andrew covered the important topics for all Amazon FBA sellers, such as:

1. How to optimize your Amazon product listings with images and videos
2. Transforming your inventory and supply chain from a cost into a competitive advantage
3. How to use ads to drive sales and improve your ranking
4. Holiday planning tips for Amazon FBA sellers
5. A bonus hack!
   

Last year, Amazon estimated it to be the “biggest holiday season ever” for the platform and they were right: Reports state that in a record-breaking season, worldwide sales increased by 50% compared to 2019. This means that small- and medium-sized online businesses like yours on Amazon sold almost 1 billion products over the holiday season in 2020.

But how can you, as an Amazon seller, plan for this holiday rush? Our experts at Mayan share their top Amazon selling strategy tips to help you prep for the busy (that’s an understatement!) holiday season this year.

Webinar Highlights: Expert Tips for Selling on Amazon FBA

The recap of our webinar below is filled with proven strategies of what works and what doesn't work when selling on Amazon FBA.

How to Optimize Your Amazon Product Listings With Images and Videos

To stay relevant on Amazon, you have to be creative when upgrading your product listings. The key takeaway that we have for you here is to paint a picture of what your product can offer your customers. 

One of the best ways to optimize your product listings is by helping your customers imagine how they’d use the product in everyday life. 

Ernesto gave an example of why the first image is so important for your Amazon store: "As soon as a customer lands on your listing, their eyes are going to go straight to the images, and you want to convey as much key information about your product in the image.”

Videos are another tool you can use to connect with your audience

Ernesto says, “How can you create an emotional attachment to this product? By creating a video that shows how you are going to use it in real life situations. You don't just want a simple video of a product spinning, you want to be able to understand how this product is going to fit into your life and why you need to buy it right now, because it's going to make your life that much better."

Use the real estate Amazon gives you

Andrew chimed in to remind Amazon sellers to take advantage of what the platform gives you. If you want to succeed and stand apart from your competition, it’s important to make the most of the real estate that you have. He says, "I see so many cases where sellers are not using as many photos as they could, or not taking more advantage of video." 

So, one of the top tips we can offer Amazon FBA businesses is to really invest time in creating visuals that show the reasons why people should be purchasing your products off of Amazon. If you need assistance with creating visuals, there are plenty of freelance services and Virtual Assistants who can help you.

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Simple tips for upgrading your Amazon product listings:

‍Images

• Eliminate most of the white space in your images. Focus on the product.
• Highlight key product features and attributes using text. The best Amazon product images will have text that highlights the best parts of the listing.
• Lifestyle images are a very powerful way to let your customer understand how to use your product. 
• Put at least 7-8 high quality images in every listing (1000 pixels on each side of the image). Anything lower quality won’t allow for the hover over zoom feature.
  

Video

• Video should be between 30-45 seconds in length. 
• Use the time to be quick and to the point.
• Captions are important. Create visual text in your video to highlight your product’s main features.\
  

Andrew finished this section off by sharing one last point about Brand Registry. Registering your brand on Amazon protects your product listings, and it allows you to create a brand store so you can showcase your whole portfolio of products.

Transforming Your Inventory and Supply Chain From a Cost Into a Competitive Advantage

It’s almost 2022 and things have changed over the past few years. If you want to succeed as an Amazon seller going forward, it’s best to take another look at your supply chain and ask yourself, “Are things really working?”

There are so many costs to keep track of when it comes to your inventory and supply chain. Amazon sellers have to think about everything from:

• Manufacturing
• Packaging
• Product inserts 
• Quality assurance
• Freight forwarding
• 3PL storage
• Amazon fees
  

While all of these fees might seem like a lot to handle, don’t think of them as costs that will set you back. The expert tip Ernesto shared is to think of them as areas that you can optimize instead. Any of the fees where you have a cost savings will give you a competitive advantage over your competition. Essentially, cost savings can lead to higher margins, which means you can dedicate more budget to other areas of your business to help boost sales.

“Any of these areas that you can optimize and reduce costs can lead you to a competitive advantage.” This way, you can:

• Price your product better.
• Allocate more budget towards Amazon ads.
• Keep your budget the same, but you’ll know that you have better margins than your competition.
  

Importance of supply chain management for Amazon sellers

Going into 2022, Andrew’s seller tip is to come up with a new framework for thinking about your logistics. Ever since the pandemic, global logistics have been a huge problem for many Amazon sellers. There’s a myriad of problems with transporting materials; things like delays and issues with shipping containers getting stuck in ports. “It's been a huge problem for all of our sellers just staying in stock. Not just restocking, but getting supplies from overseas.”

Give your supply chain a six month time frame

To remedy any inevitable shipping issues and delays, Andrew said to rework your business model to have a 6 month time frame. This is important because staying in stock is vital if you want to really grow as an Amazon FBA business. 

There are so many risks that come with suddenly being out of stock: You’ll lose sales, your sales rank will go down, your velocity will slow down, and all of this will inevitably affect your future sales for months. Even when you’re back in stock, you can’t expect to have the same daily sales as you had before because you will lose your ranking. 

Holding six months of inventory can be very expensive for many Amazon FBA sellers, but Andrew advised that if you have a winning product and are ready to compete on Amazon, this is something you need to think about. 

“If you don't have the cash right on hand, it's worth it to think about some growth capital options. Getting loans specifically for inventory can be very effective and generally have a much lower rate than other business loans.”

Consider a different manufacturer for your products in 2022

Delays were a constant reality for Amazon sellers around the world this year, and things aren’t looking good when it comes to overseas imports for 2022. Sellers will most likely experience a myriad of setbacks.

Ernesto’s seller tip on this topic is to expand your manufacturing options. “Different ways to mitigate this risk and prepare is to look at other countries for the manufacturing of your products. Two candidates that really stand out are India and Mexico.” 

A lot of Amazon sellers still get their supplies from China and things like distance, wage costs, and delays from shipping items overseas have now become huge obstacles. Both India and Mexico have much lower labor wages than China. And for Amazon U.S. sellers in particular, there are a number of other benefits to moving your manufacturer to Mexico, including:

• Newly revamped NAFTA: Amazon sellers in the U.S. won’t have to pay tariffs on shipments from Mexico.
• IMEX: A program in Mexico, where if the raw material can’t be sourced in Mexico, you can import it without paying any extra tariffs. 
• It’s much easier to visit the manufacturing plant to go for the quality assurance process yourself.
• Say goodbye to sea shipments!
  

Supply chain changes are here, and Amazon sellers should roll with the punches.

How you can use ads to drive sales and improve your ranking

When you have your product ready to go, it’s important to get the word out there. And there are so many ways to advertise your products, be it by using Amazon Ads or other platforms like Google, Facebook, Instagram, etc. 

Ernesto’s advertising seller tip is to dedicate 80% of your ad budget on Amazon ads and the remaining 20% to ads off of Amazon. Why? Because any customer visiting Amazon has a much higher intent to purchase a product, so invest your ad spend there.

When dividing your Amazon Ads spend, put 70% towards sponsored products and 30% towards sponsored brand and sponsored radio (audio ads).

And remember that amazing video you created for your product listing? You can use that for your ads on Amazon.

Why is it important to advertise on Amazon? 

As Ernesto reminds us, 60% of all sales within Amazon are preceded by an ad. “It's becoming more and more of a pay-to-play platform. You gotta advertise.”

Ad optimization techniques

Some of Andrew’s ad optimization techniques:

• Do keyword analysis before writing your ad copy.
• Structure your ads correctly between your budgets and different types of campaigns.
• Always moderate your budgets and your bids.
• Make sure that your top performing ads don't run out of budget during the day (This happens a lot: don’t make the same mistake as other Amazon sellers!). 

Top Holiday Planning Tips for Amazon FBA Sellers

50% of all online sales in the U.S. come from Amazon, and a decent chunk of that happens during the holiday season. Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals start things off early in November and the sales start riding in for the holidays. As an FBA seller, you'll need to be prepared.

Here are Ernesto and Andrew's holiday planning tips for Amazon FBA sellers:

• Prep your inventory as early as August before the holidays sales period.
• Know Amazon's deadlines to submit deals, coupons, and more. They will need at least a few days to be approved.
• Don't put your prices so low that your products will be unprofitable.
• Add holiday-themed keywords to your Amazon store and ads.
• When thinking about repricing your products, know that Amazon gives you a limit on how many months or weeks before you can increase your price for the lightning deal or other holiday deals.
  

You can find even more holiday selling tips and ways to spruce up your Amazon store for Black Friday and Cyber Monday on our blog.

Bonus Hack

We wouldn't leave you without at least one bonus hack, would we? To close things off, Ernesto shared this expert bonus hack you can use to help take your Amazon business to the next level. 

In recent years, there has been a large influx of new players into the Amazon ecosystem called the "aggregators." Their business model is to go around the ecommerce space, buying existing Amazon FBA brands and rolling them up into a portfolio.

These aggregators have teams of experts that are running experiments across all of their brands. The hack we're going to leave you with is to track these brands that have been publicly acquired by aggregators to see the main changes/strategies that they are testing. From images, product inserts, the list goes on - you can use this data as inspiration for your own Amazon store!

You can watch our free webinar on Youtube here.

We've driven strong results for our customers

Mayan is a growth automation platform for Amazon sellers. During the first month of collaboration, our customers have reported 30% average increase in ad sales and 25% average increase in ROAS. 

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