In Amazon’s recent letter to shareholders, the company announced that for the first time ever, “more than half of the units sold on Amazon worldwide were from third-party sellers.” With every passing day, competition on Amazon gets more intense. It may seem like many of the quick-win markets are quickly becoming crowded, but there are often easy opportunities to put new and differentiated products out there that, with a little help, can increase Amazon sales.
In order to stay relevant on the world’s largest ecommerce marketplace, you have to find new ways to differentiate your products while keeping costs low. Whether you’re just sourcing a product or already selling, we’ve got 3 simple tips to help you increase Amazon sales by differentiating your products.
TIP #1 — Before you source, find market gaps to fill
As you narrow down your list of product ideas and hone in on a market, start reading competitor product reviews. You want to identify common complaints and recurring frustrations.
Are most of the products in the market flimsy and cheap? Maybe customers were looking for a different version of the product. Maybe they felt their options were too expensive.
Once you’ve identified a few common complaints, ask your supplier if they can make changes to address these pain points. You’ll want to make sure that any changes to the product are inexpensive and that your costs will still be low enough for you to compete in your market when it comes to price.
In other words, don’t add a $2.00 improvement to a $3.00 product. Keep your costs low while improving on the current best selling products in the market. It could be as simple as choosing a different color or material for your product without even changing the function.
Just make sure that demand for that change is there. Don’t ask your supplier to make you an aquamarine lemon squeezer just because it’s your favorite color. Look at the numbers to make sure they support your decision.
You can use Keyword Research to find if there is demand for these differentiating features. For example, if you search the term iphone 14 case with Keyword Research, you’ll find iphone 14 case gets 5,283 estimated searches a month and iphone 14 case with screen protector gets 10,530 estimated searches a month.
This demonstrates a definite desire for iphone cases with a screen protector. But there are only about 2 listings on page 1 for the term iphone case with screen protector. With more than 10,500 searches a month, you can probably assume that screen protectors are desirable for this product for a portion of the market.
It makes sense to do this kind of research during the sourcing process so that you can evaluate the cost of differentiating a product before you jump into a market. But this is also something you can do once you have a product that is selling. You can always ask your supplier to make small changes to improve your product. This all might seem like nitpicking, but each tweak will help you increase Amazon sales for your products.
TIP #2 — Show shoppers that your product is better with your hero image
Photos are still a differentiator. Until the majority of sellers begin to actually invest in high quality photos, this still remains one of the best ways to differentiate your product.
If nothing else, invest in a few quality studio shots to use for your hero image. Your hero image is the main image for your product – the one that shoppers see on a search result page.
By purchasing a few professional hero images, you can split test them to find the optimal image for you product.
Product photography is extremely undervalued by most FBA sellers but so important to increase Amazon sales. It is the way that people judge your product. Even before they see price, shoppers see your hero image.
Elements of a hero image that gains clicks and conversions:
- A spotless, professionally edited, pure white background
- Crisp, clean, and accurate portrayal of the product
- Expert composition that shows off your product and provides the information shoppers need about what is included
Being informative with your photos does not mean putting text on your images. If you want messaging in your hero image, put it on the packaging for your product. Using text in your main image is against Amazon’s Product Image Requirements, and it clutters the images, making it look tacky and unprofessional.
It’s not always enough to just get shoppers to a product page. Once they are there, use lifestyle images to help shoppers understand how the product is used, what size it is, and how it might look in their day-to-day lives.
Use well-written Amazon SEO copy that helps shoppers understand the benefits of your product. Then, once you’ve convinced a shopper that your product is the best, make sure they have a great experience. Speedy and professional customer response go a long way when questions and complaints come in.
TIP #3 — Expand your product’s visibility with Sponsored Ads
It’s not enough to put a product up on Amazon and just expect it to start selling. Make sure shoppers can find it by running a launch and/or running sponsored ads. Even if you run a launch and are ranking on page one for your main keyword, sponsored ads can help expand your visibility and increase Amazon sales.
You can use Keyword Research to find high-volume keywords that are hyper relevant to your product. Use the keywords that you find to set up broad match campaigns. Let them run for a week or more, and then see which keywords are most profitable for you.
Take the most successful keywords from your broad match campaign and put them into a phrase match campaign with slightly higher bids. Then let it run for another week before you come back and reevaluate. If there are a few keywords that are really performing well, put them into an exact match campaign and increase your bid a little more.
In this way, you can cater your sponsored ad spend so that it is optimized to increase Amazon sales. When you find the best keywords for your product, you can hit the sweet spot of minimal spend and maximum return. A small ad spend can go a long way to increasing your product’s visibility, sales, and overall ranking.
It’s not too late to get into a good market. Find that sweet spot in the market by differentiating your products. Discover the perfect product to sell today with the Viral Launch Product Discovery software suite.
