Anyone who has caroused the internet in the past 5 years has heard the buzzword “life hacking. The concept is pretty straightforward — every life strategy you develop should drive growth and efficiency.
How can this apply to your Amazon FBA business? A growth hacking mindset takes business owners outside the traditional marketing box to expand reach, develop and run tests, find new products, and implement programs that drive more online sales — using as few time and money resources as possible.
We’ve compiled 9 growth-hacking strategies that can be implemented into your business model quickly. These ideas are designed to grow sales, expand branding, and give you a hand up over competitors.
1. Cross-list Your Products
You’ve already gone through the effort to acquire great products. Is there a reason you shouldn’t put them on as many marketplaces as possible? A few hours of effort can double or triple your sales in a short amount of time.
If you don’t have the logistics in place to ship your own products, Amazon can fulfill orders to third-party websites with the Amazon’s Multi-Channel Fulfillment (MCF) program. The program works exactly the same as FBA -- Amazon warehouses and ships your products. All you have to do is punch in the shipping information when orders come through from the other sites.
Here’s a sample of major websites who allow third party sellers. Note, some may be more restrictive than others.
2. Build Backlinks
A “backlink” is any link on a non-Amazon web page that points (or “links”) back to your Amazon product page. The more web traffic you get to a product listing, the more likely you are to show up at the top of page when a customer is searching for your product.
This isn’t to say you should paste links everywhere. Spamming your link can be penalized by Google, though it’s not likely since Amazon has such high Domain Authority*. Rather than spamming the comments section of every blog you can find, consider establishing high-quality backlinks. These can come from bloggers in your niche (within their own posts), press releases, infographics, and review websites.
If you do get penalized (meaning, you were showing up on page 1 of a Google search, but you’re suddenly on page 5) edit your listing a few times. This will refresh your Amazon URL and start the process over.
* Domain Authority (DA) is a search engine ranking score developed by Moz that predicts how well a website will rank on search engine result pages (SERPs). A Domain Authority score ranges from 1 to 100, with higher scores corresponding to a greater ability to rank. See more details here.
3. Improve Your Copy
The writing on your listing is second in importance to only your product photos. Some simple edits can make a listing look more professional, driving sales. Look over your listings (especially ones with other sellers, who can make changes without you realizing) and check for the following:
- Misspellings and grammar issues
- Discrepancies (e.g. title says product is 20 ounces but listing description says 24 ounces)
- Keywords (Are all relevant search terms included in copy?)
- Descriptive title (Amazon suggests “Product Brand/Description + Line/Collection + Material/Ingredient + Color/Size + Quantity”)
4. Use Amazon Giveaways
Did you know Amazon has a program designed to help professional sellers get up to 5 verified reviews? This is especially useful when attempting to gain traction on a brand new listing. The difference between no reviews and one Amazon product review is drastic. The flat cost is $60 for each product enrolled in the program. These reviews are verified, and while not guaranteed to be good, they’re still a good way to get a new listing moving. More information about the Early Reviewer Program can be found here.
5. Use Competitor’s Images
Do you have a wholesale product that another company has attempted to brand for themself? Make a new listing with the main image of your competitor’s listing, but cut their price down. Use Product Display Ads to put yourself at the top of the search -- people will think its the same product and click on it because it’s less expensive. You’ll get solid traffic and show up on the “Customer Also Bought section” of their listing. (Don’t steal images -- this only works if you have the exact same product with a different barcode AND they are using a stock/manufacturer photos, not their own copyrighted pictures)
6. Find Your Competitors Supplier
Want to know where your competitor is buying their product? Try and find a part/manufacturing number. Googling these unique numbers will bring up catalogs, websites, and order forms that would have been hard to find otherwise. For a more in-depth search, use Panjiva.com to reverse engineer your competitors entire supply chain.
7. Create Urgency In Follow Up
If you use a follow-up email service, make your subject line urgent. A customer is much more likely to open an email that says ‘Re: Amazon.com -- Please Review Now’ than “Please tell us about your product experience..”
8. Keep FBM Available Inventory Quantity Low
If you fulfill products on your own via FBM*, keep your inventory levels below 10 units as Amazon will display an “almost out of stock” indicator on the product page. While this does take a little more legwork (you’ll have to go in an manually change your stock number frequently) this is a proven psychological hack that will increase the conversion rate of your listing.
* FBM - Fulfilled by Merchant
9. Build a Website, Build a Brand.
Grow your customer base by developing a blog, or offer services that complement your products through your website. Just having a functioning website in addition to an FBA* business lends credibility to your brand which can help to set you apart from other FBA sellers.
Here are some website bulding platforms to get you started:
Having a website will also allow you to collect your customers information in order to remarket to them in the future. It’s a great way to be proactive, while waiting for sales to come to your FBA store.
* FBM - Fulfilled by Amazon