The quick changes you can make to see results on Amazon this quarter

Vicki Weinberg: 00:00:18

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.

Vicki Weinberg: 00:00:37

Let's get started. Hello and welcome to this episode of bring your product idea to life.

So, as I mentioned in last week's episode, it's September and we are now all turning our thoughts to quarter four. So I wanted to record this episode to give you some ideas of things that you can do right now.

Also over this month to help improve your sales on Amazon when we go into quarter four.

Now I have seven suggestions of tasks that you can carry out to make sure you're putting yourself in the best possible position to get lots of sales next quarter quarter. I will start this episode by saying you definitely don't have to do everything at once.

Everything I'm suggestion suggestion suggesting is a small tweak, but even these can have a real impact. So if you're short on time, don't panic. Take from these ones you feel are most relevant. You definitely don't need to do all seven.

Of course you might want to, and you also don't need to do everything at once. These are just my thoughts on the things you could do over the course of this month.

Whenever you've got time, and depending on how large your account is, how many listings you are, some of these things will, you know, it might take you minutes, some might take you a little bit longer, but you can plan them in for when it works for you. And I really hope that some of these suggestions will make a real difference for you.

So the first thing I would like to suggest is having a look at your product titles. So I spoke at an episode a few weeks ago about how Amazon have changed their title requirements.

So I'm not talking about that, but hopefully you remember that episode.

If not just to give you a recap, title requirements on Amazon have now changed and Amazon is suppressing listings where the titles don't meet these new standards.

So that's definitely something to go away and look at if you're not sure if your titles are compliant or not, because you don't want to be getting any suppressed listings ahead of quarter four. And if you need to go back to that episode, I'm just checking which one that was for you.

That was episode 291 and I talk in a lot more detail about what's changed and what you need to do to ensure you stay compliant. But what I want to suggest today is more around thinking about how well your product title is working for you.

Because when a customer searches on Amazon, they see two things in the search results, but actually they see lots of things in terms of products. They see lots and lots of products, but they only see two things for each product and that is the main image and the title.

So what I want to suggest is that you review your product titles and make sure that they are clear, they're relevant and they help customers understand what they're buying.

And one of the best ways you can do this is to make sure that your most important, most important features of your product or the biggest benefits of your product are included towards the front of your title. Because as you'll know, it's titles get cut off in search.

So I'm not suggesting a rewrite of all of your titles, but it might be, you might want to look at them and think, you know, like I remember when I was at school doing this lesson about, about writing for a newspaper and we had to do this assignment, this when I was in high school. And part of the assignment was about writing this, writing headlines and about putting out the most key pieces of information.

There was an example, and I wish I prepared this one a little bit more to give the exact example that it gave, that it gave us. But it was something that the story was about a snow day and the fact that schools were going to be closed and the weather was going to be terrible.

And the teacher asked us, you know, if you were writing this for a school magazine, what would you, what would your headline be? And we all came up with these really clever headlines. And then she said, well, think about your audience.

The thing that they most want to know is the fact that school's closed. That should be, that should be your headline.

And hopefully that very strange analogy has explained a little bit of what I'm talking about here, which is that what is the key thing your customer needs to know about your product? Is there a special feature that makes it, it unique?

And if so, is that information A, in your title and B, if it is, is it up front where it's not going to get cut off in the search results? Because you know, you can, lots of people lead with their brand name or the model name of the product.

But actually think about what does a customer need to see when they're looking at the search results?

What's going to entice them to click through to Your product, what is the key information right there up front in the title where they can see it alongside the image. And my second thing I'd going to suggest you have a look at is your images.

So your main image, as I've just said, really impacts on your click through rate along with your title. So it might be that this is a good time to review your main image, make sure it's a high enough resolution.

Think about have you been using this same image for a long time? So if you've never changed your main product image, well, it might be that you haven't changed it and it's great and it's working for you.

But if sales aren't perhaps where you'd like them to be, have you thought about switching out your main image? It obviously has to be your product on a white background, but would you like to try showing it from a different angle?

For example, is there a different feature? Could it be a bit more cropped so there's not as much white space around it? This is definitely something you can trial this month.

And remember, if you do this and you see a negative impact on sales or something isn't quite working, you can always revert back to the image you were using before. But switching out your main image can be a really nice thing to do to refresh your listings.

Of course you do run the risk that your customers who are used to finding your product on Amazon and recognizing it by the image, there's always a, you know, there's always a slight chance they're going to look at and go well, is this the same product? But what I'm suggesting isn't unless you've rebranded everything that's completely different isn't, you know, switching things up entirely.

It's like I say, a different angle, a different viewpoint, bit less white space, whatever it might be. But I think this is a really nice way you can trial updating your listing and seeing if it does have an impact on your click through rate.

You can also add some more images to your listing. So this is a really great time to think about. Do you need to add more information to help customers buy your product easily?

So lifestyle images make a really big, make a really big difference. Images showing sort of key benefits or features of your product to make a big difference. Having infographics are amazing.

Basically your images have to answer all the questions that a customer might have about your products. And I've spoken about this more in a previous episode. I've definitely gone into more detail images so you can go back and listen to that.

If you're not sure how well your images are currently explaining your product, have a look at your reviews. So your reviews are a great source of information. And again, I've done a whole episode on this.

It's amazing all the things I've done episodes on and I'll link to some of these in the in the show notes. So I'm not constantly telling you to go and look for old episodes, but have a read through your reviews.

And are people putting out things or asking questions? Remember, there were questions in your listing as well.

Are people basically talking about things where you're like, actually, this should be really clear. If you feel it should be really clear, but your customers don't feel it's really clear, then something is missing.

And yes, your bullet points are really important and we'll come on to those in a moment. Your bullet points do need to tell customers what your what your product is, who it's for, what the benefits are, basically why they should buy it.

But some customers won't read your bullet points. There are some customers, particularly on mobile, who are just going to swipe through your images and expect to get all the key information there.

So make sure it's there for them.

So moving on to your bullet points, as I say, not everyone will read them, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be fantastic, because lots of people do read bullet points. Your bullet points need to focus on the benefits of your product, not just the features. And I think they need to be really easy to read.

So I like to use really clear formatting. I have capitalized headers. I use really short chunks of information and make it really easy to skim. Your bullet points need to sell your product.

So I suggest this is a really great time. And I did an episode a while ago about reviewing your Amazon account over the summer.

So it might be that you've listened to that and you've done this already, because this is something I suggested you do back then.

But if you've got to September and you haven't done that, or maybe you haven't listened to that older episode, this is something I really would suggest you do now. Make sure your bullet points really, really sell your product.

You know, you almost want to tell your customer you should be buying this product because without using those words, the next thing I suggest you have a little look at is your backend keywords or what Amazon calls search terms. Often people forget these, but they really help Amazon understand your listing and show it to the appropriate customers.

If you haven't filled them in already, make sure they're filled in. Make sure they're relevant and they don't repeat all of the keywords you've got in the, you know, in your bullets and your title.

Also, don't put commas into there because they're wasted space. You only get a limited number of characters.

But if you're not using your backend search terms, that's something I definitely suggest you do if you're thinking, well, what do I even put in there? So they're keywords and phrases that customers might be looking for when they're looking for your product.

If you're not sure what to use, you can use your brand analytics.

I spoke about these in detail in episode 291 and I will do another episode shortly, giving you a bit more information about brand analytics and how you use them. But basically you can get some information in there about what customers are searching for. That's bringing them to your listing. That's really useful.

It will show you how well you're ranking for all of these keywords and search terms as well.

And you could definitely improve your listings by putting some of the key ones into your listing text and your title, but also into the backend search terms as well. So the next thing I suggest you take a look at is your pricing. And this one might, you know, might not take you very long.

Maybe you're really confident in your pricing. Maybe you've been offering the same price on Amazon for a long time.

Although I will say, if you've been selling your products on Amazon for the same price for a long time, could you put it up slightly? There's no reason why not, particularly if your product adds value, you've got great reviews and you're confident in a slight price increase.

I work with one brand who increases their price. They sell in the US and they increase it by 50 cents every quarter.

I think they'll obviously have to stop at some point because otherwise they'll price themselves out.

But actually the reason for doing this is that their products when they originally launched was a lot cheaper than other products on the market at the time. Other similar products.

They realized that, but they didn't want to make the big price jump because they were doing really well, had lots of subscribe and save customers lots of repeat purchases and they thought, actually we could put our product up by another sort of five, seven dollars. But will that alienate people? Will that turn people off? It's a big hike jump. So they're putting the price up in Increments.

That's the kind of thing that you can be thinking about.

You definitely, I'm not saying increase your price for the sake of it, but I'm saying keep an eye on your competitors and the market just as you did before you listed your products on Amazon. Hopefully when you listed your product on Amazon, you either listed it for the same price as you were selling on your website. Lots of people do this.

Maybe you added a slight increase to take account the fees. A lot of people do this as well.

But hopefully you also looked at similar products to yours on Amazon and saw, okay, what are my competitors pricing their products at and where does my product fit in? I'm not saying you need to be the cheapest.

In fact, I often really discourage being the cheapest because you don't want to get into a price war where everyone's competing to be the cheapest. Because I really think when that happens, no one wins. But your price needs to make sense to the customer.

While we're talking about pricing, let's also talk a little bit about fees. Have you reviewed Amazon's fees for a while? Have you checked that the size and weight information for your FBA products is correct?

If not, you might be getting overcharged. I've definitely seen this a few times for clients where they've been.

We look at their FBA fees, which you can see in your inventory, and they look a bit off. And then we go in and we see that the size and weight information Amazon has is incorrect.

And you can actually ask Amazon to re measure your products if you believe the information they hold is inaccurate. You can update them and sell essential. But they may or may not accept that.

But you can ask them to physically go with a ruler and scales and, and check this for themselves.

That's actually one worth trying because it's better to fix this now before your sales go up, hopefully in quarter four and you're getting a lot more sales, but also a lot more fees.

Also check you in the right product category because as you will probably know, the Amazon referral fee changes depending what category your product is listed in. Check you're in the correct category because again, I've seen instances recently where Amazon has moved a product from one category to the other.

They don't always tell the seller. So that's a bit of a warning for you.

Go and have a look at that as well because you might find you've been moved into a category that either isn't appropriate. You're like, why is my product here? Doesn't make any sense?

Or a category where the fees are slightly higher than the category that you could or should be listed in. So these are just a couple of things to check.

None of this is to scare you, by the way, and I'm not saying for a minute that any of this will have happened to you.

These are just some suggestions if you have a bit of time and you just want to check that everything's in order before you go into the busy time of year. Because what you don't want is to find things like this out in mid November because then it's going to be a headache, let's face it.

Hopefully by then you're making lots of sales on Amazon and everywhere else you sell, you're super busy.

The last thing you are going to want to do is fix some of these, like what are quite small issues in terms of getting fixed, but also quite a headache for you.

So I'm just trying to save you a bit of time and headache and hassle by suggesting if you have a minute, it's a really great time to look at this now. And as I said, if you did my summer audit, some of this you would have done already. And let's now talk about fulfillment.

So if you are not using fba, is that something you want to offer for quarter four? So I do work with brands who use FBM so they fulfill their own orders on Amazon year round.

And then when it comes to like the busy set key selling periods of the year, so quarter four, perhaps Mother's Day, Father's Day, depending on the products they sell, they either send in stock for FBA or they send in additional stock for fba. I really think it's worth thinking about your delivery, what, how you're going to set up your delivery for quarter four before it starts.

Another thing is if you are using FBA now, do you need to have an FBM option too?

I like having both because if you go out of FBA stock, this could have a really big impact in quarter four, bigger than any other time of the year because the warehouses are so busy. Getting stock sent in and checked in takes a lot longer than other times of the year.

So might be that you go, actually I'm going to have an FBM option set up as well, just as a backup. You don't even have to assign any stock to it, you can just have it the listing sat there.

So if you go out of stock for FBA and you want, you know, you want to continue with fulfilling orders because as we've spoken about before, if you go out of stock on Amazon, what happens then is that your ranking starts to drop and all that hard work you've, you've put in, you know, I don't say it goes down the drain, but it's, it's sad to watch your rankings drop because you know you're out of stock and you can't fulfill orders and you, you're missing out on sales every single day.

But if you have an FBM order and you can just allocate some stock for that, and you can either fulfill orders yourself or do it from a third party fulfillment center or whatever you do for, you know, that week or however long it takes to get stock in, that can really help you over that period. And all of this is doable. But I'm just suggesting you think about it now. So think about, also think about your stock for quarter four.

Do you have enough in the warehouse? Because now is also a really great time to start sending it in.

If you can send in enough stock now to last you for the last quarter of the year or, you know, estimate what you might need, you'll feel so much relief in November when you like, actually, I've got enough stock and it's going to see me all the way through. What you don't want is to get to mid November, panic and think, oh my gosh, I'm going to run out sooner than I thought. What am I going to do?

Do I need to set up some F orders? Should I send some more stock in? Will it get there in time?

Basically, if you listen to last week's episode, what I'm all about this month is saving you headaches in the future and really helping you to think a little bit ahead and plan a little bit ahead so that your future self really helps you. Because everything goes really, really well. Because you thought about it, if something happens, don't worry, you've got a solution.

You thought about it in September, it's all good. Now, the final thing I'd like you to think about in September is your advertising.

As I've spoken about before, a small advertising budget can go a long way if your listing is optimized.

So if you're not confident that your listings are as good as they could be, I wouldn't suggest sending traffic to them, especially if you haven't been doing it for the rest of the year. However, once your listings are in good shape, I think ads are a great way to drive traffic to your listing, Amazon advertising in particular.

So it might be that if you haven't been running ads or you have previously but you've turned them off for some reason or and you were thinking, okay, we're going to run ads again in quarter four, it might actually be a good idea to turn them back on now while it's in September, just to see how they go. A few reasons really.

One, it gives you a chance to test what's working and see what keywords are converting, maybe optimize your campaigns a little bit. Also, bid amounts in September are usually slightly lower than they are as we go later into the year, so it'll be a little bit cheaper for you.

So those I think are two really good reasons. And also if you are running ads already again, check in on them, see how they're doing. I have an episode all about Amazon advertising.

I'm trying to see which episode number it is because I do not remember these off the top of my head what I would do. I will list link to this in the show notes.

That's probably the most useful thing for you all about how to optimize your ads because again, if you've got ads running on Amazon and you haven't looked at them in a couple of weeks or months, hopefully, hopefully you haven't done that because that always scares me because who knows what you spent, what your return is. But don't worry, it's not too late.

Go in and have a look this month, get everything tidied up, close down any campaigns aren't working, shut off any key, anything that isn't working, tweak your bids, do any, do whatever it is you need to do to get those campaigns working really well. And again, if you do it in September, you will be really pleased with yourself when we get later into the year.

So to summarize, I think doing some of these things now will a help you with, you know, perform better in quarter four because you'll be setting yourself up to hopefully get more visibility, better click through rate and more sales.

But as well as that, I think it will just also give you some peace of mind that when you get really busy later on in the year, everything on Amazon is sorted, you've taken care of everything already and if anything does happen, you have a plan how to deal with it it. So if you need more support, I offer a full Amazon account audit. So this is more suitable.

If you have, you know, quite a large Amazon account, you have quite a lot of products, I can do a full account audit and I can let you know because obviously these are just generic things I'm suggesting that will work, hopefully work for you.

But if you want something that's just for you, because it might be there are things that you need to sort out or things that you need to put in place.

I haven't even covered on this episode because I don't, I, I don't know, because your Amazon seller account and the products you sell and your listings is going to be completely different. So I offer a full account audit whereby I go into everything in great detail and I give you all of my suggestions.

And when I say all of my suggestions, you usually get at least a page of things that you can change right now to improve your sales on Amazon. Or if that sounds a bit much, maybe you've only got a few listings, you haven't got quite a large account.

You can book a power rail with me and we can go through this and anything else in a bit more detail.

So if you'd like to book any of those or just find out more, you can go to vickyweinberg.com and that my website is also always linked up in the show notes as well. And yeah, if you have any questions, you can always get in touch. Vicky, vickyweinberg.com I'd love to help you.

And I'm going to be back on Friday with another interview and then next week I'm going to talk specifically about your Amazon product listings and going to a bit more depth about what you can do to them to get them in a great shape for the next quarter. So thank you as always for being here and see you next week.

Vicki Weinberg: 00:20:53

Thank you so much for listening Right to the end of this episode.

Do remember that you can get the full back catalog 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.

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