Shownotes
You’ve launched your product on Amazon, the listing’s live, but the sales just aren’t coming. You’re not alone. In this episode, I break down the most common reasons your Amazon listings might not be converting – and what to check before slashing your price or throwing money at ads. (Please don't do either - at least until after you've listened!)
From overlooked image issues to keyword-heavy copy, we’ll cover simple but effective tweaks that can make all the difference.
You’ll learn:
- The most common reasons products don’t sell (even with great potential)
- Why good listings focus on benefits, not just features
- What to do before considering price cuts or advertising
- How to look at your listing like a customer would
- Why small changes can lead to big results
Mentioned in this episode:
- Amazon Made Easy: https://vickiweinberg.com/membership/
- how to get sales and product reviews - particularly if you’re fairly new to Amazon: https://player.captivate.fm/episode/be806954-df44-48c4-b9c4-50a78dee7227/
- What's Amazon Vine and how does it work? https://player.captivate.fm/episode/31085d58-6597-4221-8627-35e4846480ba/
- How to write product listings that actually convert: https://player.captivate.fm/episode/2867148e-c3f0-48db-a946-79de4a79131a/
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Mentioned in this episode:
Amazon Made Easy is open
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Transcripts
Welcome to the bring your product idea to life podcast. This is the podcast for you if you're getting started selling products or if you'd like to create your own product to sell.
I'm Vicki Weinberg, a product creation coach and Amazon expert. Every week I share friendly practical advice as well as inspirational stories from small businesses. Let's get started.
Speaker B:Hello and welcome to another episode of bring your product idea to life. I am so happy that you're here with me. I'm gonna let you into a little secret. I'm actually recording all of June's podcast episodes at once.
So if you are watching this episode on YouTube, expect me to be wearing the outfit, same outfit for all of June's podcast episodes, because I'm going to record all of them today while I'm in the podcast recording mood. And if you're not watching this on YouTube, remember that you can. All of my podcast episodes are available on YouTube.
You just need to go to YouTube, search for Vicki Weinberg.
You can see full episodes, you can see highlights from episodes and also some content, original content I've recorded that isn't available anywhere else. So if you like this podcast and you find it useful, do go over and follow me on YouTube and that would be amazing.
So today, what I want to talk to you about is what to do if your product is on Amazon. You've done all the hard work, you've got it listed, and the sales just aren't coming.
First of all, I know this is really disheartening, and if you're in this position, I feel for you, I empathize with you. I know this is not an easy place to be. You've done all this work and you're just waiting to get some sales and they're not coming.
Or maybe they're not coming as soon as you'd expected. So I just want to reassure you that one, I understand and I know how hard this is, and that's why I'm recording this episode.
And secondly, I want you to know that this is actually really common. You won't be the first person and you won't be the last person this has happened to. So first of all, know this.
It really does take some time and some work and some energy to get sales going.
Very few people, and you've probably heard me say this before, very few people list their products on Amazon and sit back and the sales start coming in. It does take some work and some effort to get off to a great start on Amazon. And you've done so much hard Work already.
It's amazing you've got your product listed. We just need to get you some sales. So let's talk through some of the common issues.
Some of the most things I see most often that might be preventing you from getting those first sales. And let's start by looking at your product listings. First thing to look at is the images.
Because remember, when someone searches for your products on Amazon or products like yours, first thing they see is the main image and the product title. Have a look at your main image. Does it really demonstrate your product in the best light? Does, is it shot in great lighting? That's a good question.
Does that main image, is it on a white background? Is it really clear? Does it show your product and does it show it off to its best? That's the first check to do.
Also, while we're speaking about the title, is your product title showing off your product to the best of its ability? I've talked about titles before. Titles are great for Amazon SEO, which we'll come on to in a moment.
But titles are also a great place to get across some of the key features of your product. And remember, the most important things go towards the front of your title so they're not cut off in the search results.
So those are two things that you can look at. Next, coming into your product listing itself, have a look at your, your bullet points, your description.
Are you talking about the features of your product or are you just listing the benefits or the outcomes? Are you really selling your product in your listing?
Now, I did a whole episode about how to write a product listing for Amazon, which I can link to in this episode. You can go back and listen to that in full. But knowing how to write a great product listing for Amazon is a bit of an art, but it is replicable.
So once you've created your first listing, you'll be able to take the same formula and use it for all your other listings. But the key thing to remember is you are selling your product.
So customers don't just want to know what features your product has, what it's made out of, what its dimensions are. All these things are important. By the way, they want to know, why should I buy this product?
And that's the thing to have in mind when you're writing your product listing. We've spoken a little bit about SEO and keywords. This is something that's really, really important.
If you haven't done some keyword research before writing your product listing, and your copy for your listing isn't keyword rich by this I mean, you haven't, like, looked at what things people are actually searching for in the Amazon search bar and use those words, terms and phrases in your listing text.
Chances are people just aren't finding you because, as you know, as I've touched on in previous episodes, there'll be lots of other sellers selling similar products to yours who've been on Amazon a lot longer. They've already had some sales, they've already had some reviews.
They're going to show up much higher for the same search results that you're targeting.
And if you're not targeting any, if you don't have any keywords in your listing at all, if you're not using the backend search term fields, that's going to be a problem because you're just not going to be found. So do make sure that you've thought about SEO when you're writing your product listings.
And while we're speaking about keywords, something else I sometimes see is overuse of keywords, particularly in titles. I sometimes see titles that are really full of keywords and the same sort of words and phrases may be used a couple of times.
Actually, this leads me on to something useful for you to know. Amazon, I think, have seen this too, because they're putting a stop to it now.
You now can't use the same word more than twice in your title, and I think this is Amazon's way of trying to prevent that. So hopefully this isn't going to be something we see as much going forward.
But that can also not help you out either, because yes, your title might be really keyword rich, but actually if it doesn't make much sense, the customer might not be enticed to click through. So we have to balance all of these things out. Another reason why you may not have had any sales yet is lack of social proof.
And by this I mean reviews.
It's very, very likely that if you've only just launched on Amazon, you don't have any reviews unless you've used friends and family or your existing customers your email list. We'll talk about some other ways to get reviews later.
Unless you've used something Amazon vine to get reviews, presumably you're not going to have any. But as you know, customers love reviews, particularly on Amazon.
Amazon is a great place for reviews, and reviews really do help people make buying decisions. So if you don't have any reviews on your listing, that might be a reason people aren't buying.
And I did a whole episode on how to get and how to get reviews and also A whole episode on Amazon Vine.
Again, I'm going to link to those in the show notes for this episode because I think they'll be really useful for you to listen to if reviews is something that you're struggling with. And then the final thing, well, final two things. One is that maybe you don't have a clear USP on your product listing.
What I mean by this is your product is in a category, but there's other products similar to yours. But your product listing doesn't really explain why a customer should choose your listing over someone else's listing.
And this is particularly important if your listing is new. And as I've said, there are other, the other products in your category are all have all been on Amazon for a while.
They've all got social proof, they've all got sales, all the things that you're aspiring to.
It can be really, really hard for a customer to say, okay, I'm going to take a chance on this product that's got no reviews and it's brand new versus this product that I can see people are already buying, already liking.
By the way, this is not to say that's impossible, but it's really important that your product listing explains really clearly what' special about your product and why someone might choose it above someone else's, especially when you're starting from scratch. And actually next week's episode is going to be all about this topic.
It's going to be all about how to stand out on Amazon, you know, particularly if your product isn't unique, how to stand out and how to get people to choose your products over others. So make sure you're subscribed and listening to next week's episode.
And then the final reason you might not have had any sales is perhaps and we very blunt here, you're not doing anything at all to drive traffic. As I said right at the start of this episode, excuse me, you have to do something to drive traffic to Amazon listing.
The days of getting set up on Amazon and the sales just rolling in are long, long, long gone.
I think when I first started selling on Amazon, which is probably about nine years ago, we were sort of at the end of that, so it sort of was possible. But for the last, I don't know how many years, five years plus, that just isn't a thing anymore. Unless you're a really big established brand.
I'm not going to name any brands here. But if you're a really big, well known brand, well one, you're probably on Amazon already. But if you're not. And you go on there.
Perhaps people will find you, because perhaps people will be, will be searching for you anyway. But for most of us, that's just not going to be the case. We do have to do something to drive traffic to our listings.
Okay, so we've talked through some of the reasons you might not be getting sales on your listing yet. I say yet because it's happening for you. I promise it is. So I'm going to talk through some of the things that you, you can do to generate sales.
But before that, let's turn it on its head. And I want to talk about some of the things not to do.
And I'm starting with this so that we end on a positive, because I hate doing the negatives, but it's important to talk about this. So first thing not to do if you're not seeing any sales on Amazon yet is to panic.
As I said right at the top of this episode, I promise you, this is something I hear and see a lot. It's common. It's not you, it's not your product. You haven't done anything wrong, as I said.
And as you will know, you getting set up on Amazon is a massive feat in itself. Well done. You've done amazingly. It's just going to take a little bit more work to get your first sales. And that is to be expected.
And hopefully, if you've worked with me, I would have told you this right at the outset.
And if you worked with, if you're working with somebody else, I hope they told you that as well, because it's something that's really important to know. So firstly, please don't panic.
Second thing I want you to know, dropping the price of your product because you feel you're not making sales and maybe you look at other people's products and thinking, oh, but theirs is, you know, theirs is cheaper than mine. And why would someone pay this? And the product's brand new, isn't the answer.
Please, please, please don't devalue your product because you're not getting sales yet, because the sales will come. I work with brands who sell really expensive products on Amazon. Things that people think, oh, no, you couldn't sell that. People won't pay that.
But they do. I see it every day. So I promise you the price will not be the issue.
Unless, of course, you haven't done your research into pricing your product before creating it, before selling it. But I'm going to assume that you have. Your, you've got your rrp, you're happy with that price, stick to it.
Dropping the price can lead to low procedure can lead to a lower perceived value. So especially if you've got a premium product, if you're panicking because nobody's buying it, and then you suddenly say, oh, do you know what?
I'm going to make it cheaper, well then your product suddenly isn't perceived as high value, it's perceived as whatever you price it at. So please, please, please don't do this. You could add a sale price, so you could drop it by 20 or something, or 10, whatever figure you like.
For a limited time, Amazon will display this as a sale price. So you'd see the, the RRP crossed out with a red line and then it will say the discount and then customers are very clear that that's a sale.
So this is the price of the product and this is the price it is. Now you can totally do that. That can be a really good thing to do initially to get some sales.
And we're going to talk about other things you can do right, regarding price and promotions a bit later. And the other thing I don't want you to do just yet is run any ads because if, unless you have reviews. So that's. So a caveat on that.
I'm assuming you haven't got reviews, maybe you do. But if you don't have any reviews at all, don't run ads yet. Because ads convert so much better when you have reviews.
So if you can hold out and do some other things, focus on.
Even if you were just to now focus on getting reviews and then think, okay, once I get to, I don't know, 10 reviews is a good number, I'm going to start running ads. That would be, that would be a great thing to do. You can definitely do that.
But what I don't want you to do is switch on ads too soon and then find you're spending a lot of money and they're not converting as you, as you'd expect, that's going to make you even more disappointed. So, so don't do that. So hold out on ads until you've got some reviews on your product.
Let's talk about the positives, let's talk about all the things that you can do to help get your first sales on Amazon. Well, first of all, go through the list of things that I gave right at the top of this episode. So the things to take a look at.
So that was your product images, your product text, your titles, your keywords.
We spoke about getting some reviews, making sure you've got usps for your listings that people understand the value of your product, why they might buy it, do all of those things. First of all, that's a really good first step.
The next thing I think it's worth doing is revisiting your listings in a bit more detail and figuring out, you know, searching for your product. If it does come up in search, which is great looking at, how does it show up? How does it read?
How would you feel as a customer if you saw that product in the search results? Would it entice you to click through? A really good tip here would be to get a friend involved.
So maybe you could take a screenshot of your product on the search page, send it to someone you trust and say, you know, what's your perceived. What's your perception of this, of this listing? Would you click through? If not, why not? And get some advice there? You can also get someone else.
As I say, this has to be someone you trust to read for your product listing and let you know if there are any gaps that you know, if they have any questions that you haven't answered, is there something that's preventing them from buying? And it's a simpler case of they just don't understand. To give you a real life example, I was looking for something on Amazon recently. What was it?
Oh, it was a rucksack.
I wanted a rucksack for my son and I disregarded quite a lot of rucksacks because it didn't tell me the capacity and I really needed to know the capacity. But it was amazing how many would say medium rucksack, large rucksack. But there was no, you know, it usually says in liters.
And I disregarded some that looked great. They had great reviews.
Because I couldn't find that piece of information and because it was something that I knew if I brought and it was too small or too big, I would have to send back. That was a hassle. I just didn't buy. So that can, and that can and often is an issue.
So I really recommend getting someone, perhaps someone who's not too close to your products and not someone who knows inside out like you do, to read for your listing and let you know, is there any questions they'd have after, after reading that? Is there any key information you've missed out? Because that could be the difference between a sale and not getting a sale.
Also, think about things from your customer's perspective. So if you're doing fbm, for example, could your shipping price be an issue? If you're charging for shipping?
If so what a way around this and something I suggest quite often is to incorporate the shipping price into the product price, which basically means your product price on Amazon is a bit higher than anywhere else you sell it because you're incorporating the delivery cost or maybe some of the delivery cost, you're absorbing it into that product price. So to the customer it appears that they're getting free shipping, but actually you've absorbed that into the overall price.
That's one thing you can do. Also if you're doing fbm, have a look at handling times.
So I had something with a client recently where we noticed that she'd put accidentally, I think it was something that pulled through from Shopify. They had a three day handling time on some of her products.
And what that basically meant was the three day handling time plus the time Amazon estimate it will take to deliver it was looking like her products were going to take about a week to arrive. Because their products were seasonal.
Customers weren't going to want to wait a week when there were other similar products they could either get on prime or they could get from other sellers and get a lot quicker. And so that had an impact on sales and that was luckily something we were able to fix. So do have a look at all of these settings.
Have a look at your listing as if you were a customer and see if you can find any things that might be tripping people up or preventing them from buying. If you're doing fba, obviously this isn't so much of an issue and this is really a thing to think about if you're doing fbm.
And this isn't to say that you have to do FBA either. If you don't want to send in your stock for Amazon for Phil, you absolutely don't have to.
For some products, I do think it's a good idea and you know a big advocate of maybe trialing it so sending in just a few units and seeing if it makes a difference. However, if you're totally against it, you absolutely don't have to. You can still sell your products on Amazon and fulfill them yourself.
That is definitely a thing that definitely works. But just make sure you're happy with all the settings.
You're happy with how long a customer is going to take to receive your product and how much they're going to pay for that. Because these things are all really, really important. Other things you can do to get those first sales. You could run a sale price or a promotion.
So that's a great way so you can do a promotion whether that's 20% off or 25% off. Or if you're selling multiple products, maybe it's a bundle, whatever it is you want to do to get you to encourage people to buy.
Perhaps you could even do this with a discount code so you can set up promotions where a customer has to enter a code at checkout. You can make that code secret.
You could maybe just email it to your email list to encourage them to purchase on Amazon because we know that your customers already like your product. You can always then encourage them to leave a review.
And I know this is a tricky one because if you have customers and a mailing list and they're already buying on your website, presumably you'd like them to buy there because for most brands, I understand that a sale on your website gives, you know, gives you more money than a sale on Amazon because Amazon charge all of these fees. However, if it you make it very clear it's a one off. So I don't know, buy the next 48 hours on Amazon to get this discount.
That discount is lower than your website price. And then after that time it goes, the price goes back up. Or maybe this is a discount that ends. No one else sees it, only your customers.
However you decide to do it, what's great is that it might encourage your customers who were going to buy from you anyway and would usually buy on your website, to buy on Amazon this one time. Hopefully they'll then leave a review as well and then they'll probably go back to buying on your website if the price is comparable after that.
Or maybe you offer different incentives. People who buy from your website, however you do it.
We're just really talking here about getting sales going because the way Amazon works is it rewards sales. So while these first sales are really hard to get, they are the hardest. I promise.
Once you start to get sales, Amazon then has some proof that people like find your product relevant. They like it, they're buying it, then they'll start showing it to more customers. So really we're just talking about getting those initial sales.
I'm not suggesting that everyone who buys from your website now should switch and start buying your product on Amazon. Absolutely not. It's about perhaps using some of those people to get some initial sales just to get things going. Other things you can do.
So you can use your email, your email list, your social media, you know, talk about the fact you're on Amazon. As I say, maybe to incentivize people. Maybe you want to ask customers come and leave you a review.
I'm Working brands at a moment who are doing something really smart. So they have partnered with another brand who sells similar products to theirs, but not quite the same. And they've got a flyer.
This brand has basically sent it a flyer to all of their, in all of their deliveries for the month saying this brand that you might like is on Amazon and they're offering a, I think it's a 20 discount for this month.
Here's the code and it's exclusive, an exclusive code to people who are buying from this other company who as I say, are in a similar niche, but they're not direct competitors and they've just come to an agreement where they're going to do this. And I think that it's a great way, very original way of getting some more traffic. So think creatively.
Think about who might want to buy your product and how can you get in front of them. And if incentivizing them is going to help with sales, that might be something to do as well, at least in the short term.
I'm not saying you have to have sales and offers and promotions running forever. Definitely, definitely not. So finally, hopefully you found these tips helpful.
I really hope you found this reassuring because I want, the way I want you to approach this is with curiosity rather than panic. And by that I mean think of it as a problem solving exercise. Think of it as, okay, so I've got my listing. It's here. People aren't buying.
I wonder if I can work out why.
Work through some of these steps and see if you can, you know, find out the reason or reasons and try a couple of things and I promise that, you know, you will, you will get there, those sales will come. It probably will take a little bit of work. It often does. Hopefully this has given you some ideas to get going.
And finally I'm going to leave you with Inside my membership. Amazon Made Easy. These are the kind of conversations we have.
Very often we focus on the small things that are maybe meaning you're not getting your first sales or you're not getting the sales you would have wanted.
We have live Q and A calls every fortnight where people come to me with their, with their issues and their questions and we talk through and we come up with these kind of solutions together. It costs less than a pound a day and if it's something you're interested in, then I will pop a link in the show notes for this episode.
Thank you so much for listening and I really look forward to speaking with you again next week and of course sharing another amazing interview with you on Friday.
Speaker B:Thank you so much for listening right to the end of this episode.
Do remember that you can get the full back catalogue and lots of free resources on my website, vickyweinberg.com Please do remember to rate and review this episode if you've enjoyed it, and also share it with a friend who you think might find it useful. Thank you again and see you next week.
