Simple Hacks to Becoming a Multi-Million Dollar Amazon Seller

The entrepreneurial journey is never easy, whether you are researching products to sell on Amazon or scaling an existing Amazon business. Amazon selling is no different from opening a brick-and-mortar store; you want to make significant profits and build a brand that will last a lifetime. What separates successful brands on Amazon from others is how well they manage to separate themselves from the pack and offer a unique brand story with transformational products.

In a sea of Amazon sellers competing for the same customer base, understanding the Amazon ecosystem goes a long way in helping you scale your brand to a multi-million-dollar empire. Mayan was hosted by Post Purchase Pro, where multi-million dollar Amazon Seller Andrew Laird and Product Marketing Manager Julia Gall from Mayan shared their simple hacks to becoming a multi-million dollar Amazon Seller. Keep reading to find out more, or watch the video below.

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What are the best practices to grow your sales on Amazon?

Amazon is becoming increasingly competitive as more and more entrepreneurs realize the opportunities selling on Amazon can provide. To reap big on these opportunities, you must approach third-party selling the right way. If not, you might make little to no profit on the platform despite spending most of your savings on inventory.

#1 Optimize your product listing for conversion

Your Amazon listing is critical to your sales volume. Images and videos can make or break customers' emotional connection as they scroll through your product detail page. Hacking your product listing means finding ways to help potential customers imagine using your product. How do you do that?

• The images and videos you use should explain the benefit and value of the product you are selling.
• Create an emotional connection by making sure customers can see someone using the product.
• Add text to images to highlight the product's primary benefits and features. These are commonly known as infographic images.

Amazon allows up to seven images per listing, so get creative in that section. The first image is the most crucial since it's what customers see first when they land on your listing. Make sure you get that image right. One of the most important things is ensuring that you minimize white space as much as possible. Also, use high-quality product photography rather than stock photos or heavy photoshopped content. And remember, following Amazon’s image requirements is a must as the platform strictly monitors image criteria. Keep your hero or thumb image within TOS to prevent your listing from being suppressed now or in the future.

Second, use lifestyle images to explain the benefits and value of your product. Rather than leveraging plain images, add text to some of your images to highlight your product's most significant benefits. Amazon buyers don't want to read through chunks of text and will go through images before adding an item to a cart. If they can't figure out the benefits or features of the product quickly, there is no way they are going to buy.

Third, create an emotional connection to your product. Emotions are what sell products. So, consider going beyond features and benefits and show your potential customer how your product fits into their lifestyle and why they need to purchase it now. Amazon has already given you space to optimize your listing to make more sales. So, why not include videos? Humans process videos and images faster than text, so create compelling videos that help you sell your product. 

One of the ways you can make an emotional connection with buyers is by adding an image of someone using the product. You don't need to break the bank for this by hiring expensive actors. Just record a high-quality video of you, your friend, or a family member using the product. Keep the videos short to about 30 to 45 seconds but ensure your customer can see someone using the product. Some examples of great video editing platforms you can leverage cheaply are veed.io and promo.com.

Finally, ensure you ad-test the images and videos for best-case conversion. Not all images are going to work, so this step is essential. Ad-testing helps you determine which images are working and which ones are not. Consider using A/B testing to understand what images and videos are getting a high click-through rate and which ones have a higher conversion rate.

#2 Drive sales and rankings with advertising optimization

Ad optimization is vital to your success in generating higher revenue and involves both on and off-Amazon ads. Off Amazon advertising uses Google and social media sites like Facebook and Instagram to promote your products in an omnichannel approach. 

Try targeting 20% off-Amazon advertising, and the bulk of this ad spend on sponsored products, sponsored brands, and sponsored videos. Facebook and Instagram may not offer high ROI, whereas Google does. Ideally, 87% of all internet searches are on Google, so it makes sense to have a Google advertising budget. But Google can be a bit more expensive, so relying more on Amazon advertising makes sense.

Ad optimization is all about finding keywords that will increase your listing conversion. Conduct keyword research and extract keywords that you are sure will increase traffic to your listing. The best practice is finding relevant keywords on Amazon and then migrating them to Google, Bing, and Yahoo. While most people use Google, Bing and Yahoo make up billions of monthly searches. The idea is to utilize all platforms at your disposal and leverage a highly relevant keyword strategy to provide the best results.  

If a keyword works on Amazon, it may also work on Google, Yahoo and Bing. Once you create your keyword strategy, you can break it down further into each ad type:

• Sponsored products
• Sponsored brand
• Sponsored video
  
  

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Sponsored brands and videos are part of the sponsored display, an essential aspect of advertising for Amazon sellers. One of the best features of Sponsored Display is the capability for remarketing at a lower budget. Remarketing works by displaying the same ad on different platforms to the point that it triggers the customer to click and make a purchase. It's an excellent tactic to take advantage of if you want to scale your business and make more money.

#3 Come up with cost-saving measures

You cannot become a multi-million-dollar Amazon seller if you don't work on your numbers, from the cost of goods to manufacturing fees, packaging and PPL, customs, and Amazon fees. Take a step back and figure out how to reduce some of the costs to increase your profit margins. But also, start managing your numbers from the conception of your business so you can find profitable long-term success.

Factor supply chain issues and devise ways to cut costs. For instance, if you spend more on manufacturing, you might want to renegotiate with your manufacturer, especially if your product is already doing well on Amazon.

Bonus: Research your competition

Third-party sellers make up a considerable bulk of Amazon sales. Look into what your main competitors are doing better, especially those making more sales, and see what strategies you can adopt. What images and videos are they using, resulting in more conversions? Look at brands that aggregators have acquired and research the methods they leveraged that could work for your brand. 

How can you use Prime Day and other holiday events to increase sales?

Prime Day is an annual event that involves 48 hours of epic deals on top Amazon brands and small businesses. The retail holiday is designed for Amazon Prime members. For successful brands, this is one of the biggest events where, when done right, you can make more sales than you've ever made in a whole year. But that will only happen if you are well prepared and have the right strategies.

One of the strategies brands commonly leverage is called Fear Of Missing Out. You can leverage FOMO by letting customers know that unit quantities are low and only available for select times. Fearing that there isn't a lot left, a customer feels obliged to make a purchase fast. The strategy works but always ensure you don’t experience inventory stockouts and prepare to cover increased order volume. 

Another tactic you can use is advertising and lighting deals. Lighting deals require a considerable discount and are only offered to select sellers. Consider how much inventory you have at your disposal, and your margins as margins determine what kind of deals you can offer during Prime Day. Prime Day is only a two-day event so ensure you have enough inventory in the Amazon fulfillment centers to fulfill all your orders. When you set discounts, ensure you're not cutting your prices so much that you end up hurting your margins.

Finally, adding coupons to your listing can also help drive organic rank. The discount isn't automatically applied; it's more of a psychological effect where the customer clicks on the coupon because they feel like they are saving money. Coupons also help make a listing stand out on Amazon because they are marked with a green button. 

Summary

For most Amazon sellers, the main goal when starting is to scale to a point where you can comfortably make six figures. But with the right strategy, you don't need to spend millions to reach multi-million-dollar Amazon seller status. Figure out how to offload different things and cost-save so you can focus on growing and building your brand far past the six-figure mark.

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