This article was contributed by Jeff Lieber and his team from TurnKey Product Management, an Amazon consulting company. With over 12 years of Amazon experience and over 8-figures in revenue made for our clients in the past year alone, we are uniquely positioned to help brands scale their sales on Amazon through a variety of services: full-service management, Amazon PPC management, 1-on-1 coaching, standard operating procedures, online training and more.
Physical product sellers usually either fall into one of two camps when they think of selling on Amazon.
One group thinks Amazon is a dark abyss of competition, where it’s hard to gain traction and ever feel secure in managing sales on the platform. While the other group believes that Amazon is going to be the secret sauce to making passive income.
Which camp do you fall into?
While there is some truth in both scenarios, neither is the full picture of selling on Amazon.
But, as a consulting agency that helps sellers to sell their products the right way on Amazon, we do have a 5-step recipe to move you towards selling 8-figures on Amazon.
Interested? Let’s walk you through it!
Step 1: Build a brand of AMAZING products, that serve the same customers with a high LTV
From what we have seen, the sellers that struggle in today’s Amazon landscape are the ones who sell everything from spatulas to birdhouses.
They find a niche where they can be profitable and they pick a product to sell. Then they do it again, and again, and again.
And while these one-off products can sometimes work for you for a little while, ultimately Amazon shoppers are getting savvier and they are really looking for brands they can trust.
If they have a choice between a kitchen brand selling a spatula and a random brand who sells kitchen tools and gaming headphones (we’ve seen that!), they are likely going to go with the kitchen brand who also sells other kitchen tools.
Another thing to consider when it comes to lifetime value is adding products to your catalog that are consumable or have a repeated purchase element. Once you’ve won over a customer with your amazing products, be sure there’s more where that came from for them to purchase.
Step 2: Get a customer review plan in place.
While some organic reviews may trickle in, you cannot rely on sporadic reviews to support the credibility of your product. Most customers don’t buy products that have weak reviews.
There are several Amazon powered review features that can help you to systematize getting reviews consistently.
First, is the “Request a Review” button, which allows you to ask customers for a review post-purchase. There’s also the Early Review program, which can get you up to 5 reviews. Amazon Vine is another program that incentivizes customers to leave a review, and this program can earn you up to 30 reviews!
It’s so important to be TOS compliant, so these are three safe options for soliciting reviews from your customers.
What can reviews do for your sales? We had a client go from 745 reviews to 900 reviews in 7 months. Their sales? Those went from $57k to $85k per month on Amazon during that same period.
Bonus tip: If you want to also employ some external review generation strategies, we recommend: setting up an autoresponder, utilizing an external review funnel, and also just see what your competitors are doing to prompt reviews.
Step 3: Promotion planning.
Are you running promotions right now? If so, which ones?
Typically, sellers we speak with are only running coupon clippings or promo codes. But, if you stop there you’re missing out on so many more opportunities.
Plus, by systematically running these promotions, you’ll be able to gather data and really improve the effectiveness of promotions to yield such great results for your sales.
Another type of promotion we love to run with our clients is Lightning Deals. 7-Day deals are also fantastic because both deals allow your listing to appear on the deals page, which gives additional exposure to your product.
If you have a lot of inventory and really want to do a large push on a single day, we recommend running a Daily Deal.
We had a client who pushed all of their traffic (on and off Amazon) towards the DOTD and it resulted in $243,000 in sales on a single day.
While you may not always want to drive off-Amazon traffic onto Amazon, here’s a great example of how it can really work in your favor.
Step 4: PPC management
Amazon makes it pretty simple to run PPC campaigns, but we can count on two hands the number of sellers we’ve talked to that really feel like they are crushing it at managing their own PPC management.
Between auto/manual campaigns, headline search ads, brand-sponsored ads, etc… there are so many ways to use your ad dollars, and chances are you are missing out on major exposure opportunities and ultimately sales if you aren’t managing your PPC correctly.
TurnKey does offer PPC-only management, for sellers who simply want to offload that aspect of their Amazon business.
Recently, we’ve also been running DSP ads for clients, and have personally been BLOWN AWAY by the results. We’re talking $300k/month to $1M/month in sales in 90-days. We are happy to test out DSP for clients to see if it’s the right advertising platform for them.
Step 5: Invest in a team
While at the beginning of selling on Amazon you may be a one-person show, you don’t want the day to day activities of your business to be reliant upon you forever.
There are aspects of running your business that only YOU can do, and then there’s 90% of the rest of the work.
Things like planning promotions, requesting reviews, updating autoresponders, responding to customer questions, updating copy, etc… These are all things that you can pay someone else to do.
And then your time is freed WAY up once you have them trained. Who should you hire first?
Think of the repetitive tasks you do every single day. Start making a list and even making videos or SOPs that could train someone else on how to do those tasks. Then you can search on hiring websites for remote workers who have Amazon or eCommerce experience, and give them a try.
You’ll be delighted with how much more you can accomplish when you are involved in more revenue-producing activities.
So, are you ready to make 8-figures on Amazon?
It’s completely within your reach if you start making Amazon a priority and BELIEVING in your product’s potential on this platform.
You have to be all in. We promise that if you’re willing to focus on doing Amazon the right way and include the steps above, you’ll reach new sales thresholds in your business. The first step in moving towards 8-figures is recognizing where your holes are, and then taking action.
One of our clients went from $300k to $1M a month in 90 days, in large part to proper PPC and DSP management.
They identified a weakness in their Amazon game and found a solution. Don’t wait to make the changes you know are holding you back. What are you going to start this week?