A Look Back at a Challenging 2020 – Soaring E-Commerce and Important Life Lessons – 223
I don’t have to tell anyone that 2020 has been a wild ride. Though, when it comes to entrepreneurs and e-commerce sellers, we have a lot to be grateful for. E-commerce business is absolutely booming throughout the entire online-selling ecosystem.
As we gradually adjust to a new (and hopefully temporary) normal, as entrepreneurs there’s a good chance that our lives have changed less than most of the population. Because of that, in this episode of the AM/PM Podcast, Tim Jordan takes the time to walk us through his experiences in the last year.
While on that entrepreneurial walk, Tim goes into depth on what he’s learned since the COVID pandemic hit. Yes, selling online is increasing exponentially, but it’s the kindness, and resilience of people that have made the greatest impression on Tim.
If you’re a fan of positivity and good news, this episode is for you!
In episode 223 of the AM/PM Podcast, Tim discusses:
- 02:30 – A Year of Challenges (and Exploding E-Commerce)
- 04:15 – Online Selling is Increasing Exponentially
- 06:15 – Lesson Number One: People are Absolutely Amazing
- 09:15 – A Bike Shout-Out Business is Born of Resilience
- 11:30 – Entrepreneurs Don’t Just Create Income, They Also Create Opportunity
- 14:00 – Mixing E-Commerce Mortar
- 18:00 – Obstacles are Leading to New “Verticals”
- 21:30 – Focusing on What’s Important
- 25:00 – A Family Health Crisis Makes Tim’s Priorities Much More Clear
- 33:45 – Success is More Than a Perfectly Built Sales Funnel
- 36:45 – Does Your Job Define You?
Enjoy this episode? Be sure to check out our previous episodes for even more content to propel you to Amazon FBA Seller success! And don’t forget to “join” our Facebook Group and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or wherever you listen to our podcast.
Want to absolutely start crushing it on eCommerce and make more money? Follow these steps for helpful resources to get started:
- Get the Ultimate Resource Guide from Tim Jordan for tools and services that he uses every day to dominate on Amazon!
- New to Selling on Amazon? Freedom Ticket offers the best tips, tricks, and strategies for beginners just starting out! Sign up for Freedom Ticket.
- Trying to Find a New Product? Get the most powerful Amazon product research tool in Black Box, available only at Helium 10! Start researching with Black Box.
- Want to Verify Your Product Idea? Use Xray in our Chrome extension to check how lucrative your next product idea is with over a dozen metrics of data! Download the Helium 10 Chrome Extension.
- The Ultimate Software Tool Suite for Amazon Sellers! Get more Helium 10 tools that can help you to optimize your listings and increase sales for a low price! Sign up today!
- Protect Your Amazon Brand with a Trademark! Protecting your brand from hijackers is vital. SellerTradmarks.com provides a streamlined process for obtaining a trademark for your business and shielding your products from fraud!
- Does Amazon Owe YOU Money? Find Out for FREE! If you have been selling for over a year on Amazon, you may be owed money for lost or damaged inventory and not even know it. Get a FREE refund report to see how much you’re owed!
Transcript
Tim Jordan: Hey, everybody, normally on episodes of AM/PM Podcast, I’d bring in special guests that have some thoughts to share, but fortunately, I get to learn a lot as well, and sometimes I have a few things to share as well. So in this episode, we’re going to be talking about some thoughts that I have kind of wrapping up 2020 going into like the prime of Q4 and also some thoughts leading into 2021, some lessons we’ve learned along the way, especially as I think back to some of the past guests that we’ve had some valuable lessons that I’ve learned getting to do the host. I hope you liked this episode. Stay tuned.
Tim Jordan: Hi. I’m Tim Jordan and in every corner of the world, entrepreneurship is growing. So join me as I explore the stories of successes and failures. Listen in as I chat with the risk takers, the adventurous and the entrepreneurial veterans, we all have a dream of living a life, fulfilling our passions, and we want a business that doesn’t make us punch a time clock, but instead runs around the clock in the AM and the PM. So get motivated, get inspired. You’re listening to the AM/PM Podcast.
Tim Jordan: Hey everybody. Welcome to the AM/PM Podcast. First. I want to thank you for being here. I want to thank you for listening. This has been a crazy year in a lot of ways. And for me, there’s been some pretty high highs and pretty low lows, but one of the highlights was becoming the host of this podcast. And I know it’s not the end of the year yet, but we’re wrapping up to the end of the year where, month and a half out, my opinion, like once you hit Thanksgiving here in the US, you’re basically wrapping things up. So as I’m kind of musing and reminiscing about this year, I just realized that I need to thank you guys for supporting amp and podcast for being part of the community for listening. I appreciate the opportunity to be the host here. And I really honestly hope that you guys have found some value. If you’re listening to this, I suspect you have found some value. Otherwise you wouldn’t be back listening to another episode, but one of the great joys for me getting to be the host is learning along with you. I’ve had some very candid conversations on camera, sometimes off camera that have substantially helped improve my life, my business experience, my wisdom, as little of it is there is.
Tim Jordan: And just my perspective, I think that some of you that follow this podcast regularly have got to witness me having some breakthrough moments, talking to these guests. So it’s been a real joy for me. I hope it’s been a joy for you, but I just want to take a second and thank you for being here. Thank you for listening. Thank you for supporting. And as we wrap up this year, push into the busiest time, which is December for us, e-commerce sellers and then move into 2021. I hope that we continue providing really high content or high levels of content, really high value, and that you guys stick along for the ride and keep listening in. So as I think back to 2020, I think it’s an understatement to say that a lot of ways it’s been pretty rough year. We’ve had, you know, obviously the pandemic, which has led to lockdowns, which has led to family issues, which have led to friends, family, we’re all either scared or some of us have been sick.
Tim Jordan: I personally know people that have died of coronavirus. And I know a lot of people that never got the virus, but were locked in their house for six or seven months. There’s been riots. There’s been political unrest in many places. We see on the news a lot of talk about the US but there’s been stuff going on all around the world. There’s been extreme poverty, which has gotten worse in places that are near and dear to my heart. Like Central America, didn’t get to make the headlines, but it’s a real deal. We had this crazy election cycle in the US that as of what is today’s date, 11/26, it’s not quite over, we’re still battling some of the stuff going on. There’ve been a lot of bad headlines, right? And going into this year, I had high hopes.
Tim Jordan: I thought everything was going to be awesome best year ever. And then COVID hit. The good news is e-commerce is booming. And if you’re listening to this podcast, you’re at least familiar with e-commerce, whether you’re an e-commerce seller or not. It is one of those sectors that is growing like crazy. My role at sellers funding, one of the companies that supports sellers in multiple marketplaces, I was just looking at data minutes before recorded, talking about how the e-commerce industry in itself is up like 40 or more percent. Your target, their Q3 report is they’re up 180%, Walmart up 80%, Amazon up over 50% from Q3 of last year, looking at Q3 reports. But as much as the e-commerce marketplaces are growing, what’s interesting looking at the data that sellers funding has is that e-commerce sellers are growing at an even higher rate, right? So I don’t have the exact math in front of me. It’s something like overall e-commerce industry has bumped up 40% from this time last year, where e-commerce sellers have bumped up like 80%, which is crazy. So, I know that there’s been some bad headlines. There’s also been some good ones, going back to bad headlines in the e-commerce industry. There are a lot of things that were wrecked. I mean, restrictions to logistics systems, fulfillment centers being locked down, fulfillment centers, being slow to receive stuff, shortage of shipping containers in China, all sorts of crazy stuff happening. So even on top of the bad are on top of the good, the good news of e-commerce sellers. It hasn’t been easy. There’s been a lot of struggles for me. I can tell you that this year has been topsy turvy. I had a business that was completely wrecked the end of last year.
Tim Jordan: And I started off this year trying to overcome some broken up business partnerships, but I had really, really high hopes for the business that does events. And we do trips to China and things like that. That was completely wrecked. And we were looking at a seven figure year, potentially in that business and it’s done. It’s dead. But other initiatives were started like the AM/PM Podcast. I’ve recovered from some bad business dealings, some bad relationships. I’ve started new partnerships. I’ve got other ventures going on and I’ve got deals in the works for 2021. They’re going to start me off even stronger. So, as I think about this year, and I think about like the good things and the bad things, I start thinking about some of those thoughts that are relevant to all of us entrepreneurs, right?
Tim Jordan: And that’s what I want to share with you today. As we enter the heart of Q4, as we enter like depth of Q4, I want to be thinking about exactly how we can take some of these lessons that we’ve learned good or bad and apply them to the end of the year as we wrap up. So, some of the thoughts in no particular order that I want to share, I hope you’ll grant me the time to share those with you now. The first thought that I’ve had one of the first lessons that I’ve learned from this year is that people are absolutely amazing, right? The headlines are occupied by the bad guys. The guys that aren’t necessarily those that their mothers are proud of, but really people are amazing. In the midst of the lockdowns, this entire meeting education industry. I mean, it transferred online. There has never been as rapid and swift of a transfer of focus and capabilities as there was when all of this– not just hospitality, but like the education, the events, the conferences, it was amazing. Zoom, the company zoom that we’re all familiar with, they handled like a 2000% growth in one month. There’s never been like an infrastructure built for a SAS company, a software company that was able to handle a 2% growth because people are amazing, right? People are able to pivot. People are able to change. It was nuts. I know people whose businesses were wrecked because they were in the Airbnb space. They had a lot of properties there. They rented out through Airbnb. And when the lockdown started happening and people weren’t traveling and the vacations were stopping instead of going home and crying about it, they instantly transitioned their business to setting up capabilities for medical staff to utilize their homes.
Tim Jordan: Carlos Alvarez, buddy of mine down in Miami. He had a ton of Airbnb properties. And that’s what he started doing is he started advertising to nurses and healthcare workers that maybe were traveling to the area, or didn’t want to take a potential virus back to their home. They immediately rotated. They immediately transitioned. I think that’s amazing. There are companies that, right at the beginning of the pandemic lockdowns that had giant banquets, they had all sorts of events planned and they were canceled. They had all this food. And so instead of letting the food spoil, they spent extra time, effort, energy to take all this food, to help others, to give it to homeless shelters. Big businesses like distilleries. They turned on a dime. And instead of making vodka and whiskey, they started making hand sanitizer and selling it oftentimes at a loss just to support the local communities. That’s huge. There is a– I was reading a news article a few days ago about a Baltimore hotel who it’s restaurants closed, right? They had to close the restaurants and instead of just keeping those offices or those restaurants, that space vacant, they open it up to let people come in and prepare packaged meals for those in needs. So they opened it up for all these nonprofits to come in, utilize the assembly lines and the food preparation areas and just the floor space to package prepared food, to take it to those in need. That’s huge, right? Like it costs a hotel, a lot of money to open up their doors, let people in, reconfigure these restaurants, utilize social distancing and things like that. Like that’s huge. And there are some other cool people that have done some cool things. I was reading a story about a guy named Matthew Fleming in Tacoma, Washington. Dude was bombed, bombed, bombed. When the pandemic lockdown started, he lost his job. He was discouraged to you as depressed. He was sitting at home and he thought, what I can do is I can create a business and spread some cheer. And he started a little business called bike shout outs, where what you do is you pay him a few dollars. And as long as it’s within a bike ride distance of where he was at, he would literally ride his bike by and shout anything. I saw videos of this guy. He would ride past a house and scream. I love you, mom. There were jokes. There’s all sorts of funny stuff. You’d pay him just to say anything. And it just, it reminds me of how amazing people are and how resilient they are. That even just something as silly as doing bike shout outs, like that’s getting off your butt.
Tim Jordan: It means we’re not sitting on the couch, wallowing in our sorrows because our business or our livelihood has come to a pause. I won’t say to a complete halt, but to a pause. Here’s my point. My great grandma, not my great grandma, but my grandma who is great. My dear old grandma, she always used to say all crisis come to an end. Right? All crisis. They always come to an end. And when I look back at 2020 and kind of the dumpster fire, that it wasn’t a lot of ways. It’s easy for it to seem like everything was bad news, right? Because that’s what we’re inundated with is the negatives, the negatives, the negatives. But when you look underneath the surface and you look at what people are doing in response to the political unrest, what people are doing in response to businesses needing to make true swift transitions, or when you think about the responses that people had to helping others and helping those in need, I see that people are awesome.
Tim Jordan: And I can honestly say that entrepreneurs are absolutely on the top of that list. Entrepreneurs, we’re not just about making money. I heard someone say that entrepreneurship isn’t about creating more income. It’s about creating more opportunities. I think that this year has been an extreme example, like, like very clear to me why entrepreneurship is so important, the big businesses, the big box stores, you know, they’re transitioning slower than e-commerce sellers, but the awesome people, the awesome entrepreneurs, they awesome hustlers and movers and shakers of the world. At least that I know are the ones that not only just took advantage of different opportunities this year, but really made big changes for those around them, right? It’s not just about money, but it’s about creating opportunity, helping those around us and overcoming adversity, which we’ve all had to do at some point this year. And I’ve just been amazed at how fast people are able to do that. Again, thinking about wrapping up 2020, we know that this too shall pass. That I’ll quote this too shall pass and that we’re going to get through this. And I’m a hundred percent encouraged that I’m in the middle of an entrepreneurial world, that I get to work with entrepreneurs and amazing people every day, because they are the ones that are going to get us out of this, the rough year, the fastest. But they’re also the ones that have allowed me to have an incredible year personally. And this entire ecosystem of e-commerce has had an incredible year as well because of those people, those movers and shakers.
Tim Jordan: Another thing that I think about, kind of a second point that I want to share is that life is not always easy when it comes to business. The note that I made for myself was mixing mortar sucks. All right. And I’ll tell you what that is. One of my first businesses was a masonry company, a construction company. We did really high end outdoor kitchens and fireplaces and stuff like that. And I loved laying the rocks, right? I loved, and I’m creating an outdoor fireplace and arranging these stones just dry and like, knowing that this is permanent, right. But to get those stones light, I first had to go to wheelbarrow. It makes mortar, sand and Portland cement, and this wheel barrow. And it sucked. It was the worst. You never know quite how much water to put in. If it’s not enough water, then you’re just shoveling dust, which sucks. And that’s a pain. If you put on too much water, then crap. Now I got to go put in more cement and sand and it’s just backbreaking work. Because you’re literally standing. I never had one of those big mixers. I had a wheelbarrow and I had a hoe and I would just mix mix and manages. It just wrecked your back. But if I didn’t go through that effort of mixing that mortar and getting dust in my face and blowing concrete boogers for the next week, from all that stuff that got sucked up my nose. Like, if I didn’t do the hard work, then I couldn’t take that wheelbarrow for a mortar over and start laying the stones and create something beautiful. Right? Mixing mortar sucks, but it’s massively important if we don’t do it, we’re not going to get to the good stuff. We’re not going to be able to create something wonderful. And when I think about this year, and I think about my business, I think about the business of those around me. One thing that I have, like one thing that I’ve started following this year is that we need to start thinking long term, right? We get so frustrated mixing that mortar. We get so frustrated having to do the hard work and those in our business life are the little hiccups, they’re little mistakes, they’re little issues, right? They’re the things that like resonate, and resonate in our minds is one of the biggest problems, but we have to get through those. Right? So as an example, in my coaching program, um, I tell people, in fact, last hours on coach call, we were talking about this. If your first product you break even, that’s great.
Tim Jordan: And that first product, like over the first six months, you just break even, you don’t even make any money. You’ve mixed. A lot of mortar. You’ve been frustrated. You’ve had listings de-indexed on Amazon. You’ve had all this crazy stuff happening, but if you’re not putting time and mixing that mortar, you can’t build something better. But we like to think short term a lot of times, we like to think of the little struggles, a little headaches, a little mistakes that we make. And we’re not thinking about this beautiful stone wall that we’re building, right? This beautiful structure later. I tell people like mixing that mortar is not fun. It’s not sexy. It’s not glamorous. Sometimes we end up dirty and sometimes, we don’t get to go lay that stone. It dries before we make it right. All these reasons I’m maybe I’m stretching the analogy too thin, but we have to be doing something. We have to be moving along. When I think about some of my biggest mistakes in business, or maybe even some of my business mistakes in life, my personal life, like my biggest screw ups. What I realize now was that those biggest mistakes whether they’re my fault, whether it’s bad luck, whether it’s I had this great product I was selling and someone else just completely tanked it, or maybe even a mistake that I made, I made a boneheaded decision. I made a, you know, I hurt somebody. I hurt myself like those screw ups, those mistakes, those bad misfortunes, all that they were was my mixing mortar. They were just preparing me for better things. Right.
Speaker 1: When I look at sometimes, even the most frustrating elements, especially the first half of this year now I’m kind of thankful for them. I was just mixing mortar. I was preparing, I was going through the dirty hard work to be ready for something better. When something fell apart, something didn’t work out a product that I wanted to launch didn’t work. A business relationship I had fell through a personal relationship. I had disappointed me. I always think about those in kind of hindsight. And I can see a clear path of where that helped me somehow, whether it helped me gain wisdom, helped me gain experience. It just cut something from my life that was dragging me down, gave me opportunity to go to something that was going to lift me up. Right. I think about this all the time in the e-commerce business, we’re all hustlers, right? But sometimes we get so dead set on. I have to sell a product and sometimes our chosen vertical. It may just show us another one that’s even better. Right? An example of that, I’m going to talk about my buddy, Carl Jacoby, down South prep. He has a prep and fulfillment center for e-commerce sellers, specifically Amazon businesses. And Carl started off selling online, right? That wasn’t his calling, his chosen verticals. He’s going to sell online. I know he still sells a little bit, but when, especially when COVID hit and all of these FBA, fulfillment centers for Amazon started slowing down on their receiving and they’re shipping out. And the logistics system was really, really getting kind of stressed.
Tim Jordan: People were looking for 3PLs, people looking for fulfillment centers. People were looking for options. And guys like Carl, who probably a year or two ago, I don’t know this and to speculate, but a year or two ago, defined themselves as an e-commerce seller. Now we’re defining themselves as someone that supports e-commerce sellers and that’s his new vertical like that’s where he’s going to do exceptionally well. It’s where he’s going to make his money. That’s where he’s going to impact his family and himself for the better, because that business. But my point is like he had to go through those tough times. He had to go through the struggles of, Hey, I can’t get maybe I can’t get enough business or do I need to upgrade to a warehouse? And then the time came– or a bigger warehouse, then the time came where he upgraded and he moved along. Right. I’m speculating a little bit, Carl. I didn’t tell you, I was going to talk about you, but you’re just like an example of people that are in my life that I see, basically on a day-to-day basis that we’re able to transition and move. So here’s my point, when we think about the tough times this year, what I want you to do is think about them as investments, right? You’re doing the dirty work. You’re mixing that mortar. You’re building foundation. You’re putting in the work for something better, whether that’s better experience, better wisdom, better business opportunities. You’re being pushed out of a bad situation, maybe forced fleets you don’t like. It’s all worth it. When you think about, or when I think about like past guests on this podcast this year, the first one I think of is Marcus Whitney. Marcus Whitney was, I mean, incredible guy to interview and you guys can go back several episodes and listen to that. You can search at Marcus, Whitney but, I mean, this guy was living downtown Atlanta. He was in a night by night hotel. He was serving tables. He wasn’t getting by. He had kid on a way. He had people he was trying to support and life was tough, man. Life is tough, but dude never quit. Dude never got into any shady business. He just kept hustling, kept educating himself. He was mixing mortar every night. I know when he walked into that $30, $20 a night hotel, that was probably not in the best part of town. There was all sorts of shady folks around and he kept telling myself, I’m going to keep pushing. I’m going to keep working. He was mixing that mortar. And what that allowed him to do is gain the experience and the wisdom to push through any adversity.
Tim Jordan: And now the dude owns a professional soccer team. The guy runs one of the biggest VC firms and most successful firms for medical technology, like who would have thought. Right? So when I think about this world of negativity around us, and here’s kind of the final point, like when we think about all the negative stuff that’s going on in the world, and we start thinking about the negative stuff that’s going on with us, the product launch didn’t work. This relationship fell apart. I can’t figure this out. I was talking to my buddy Norm Farrar yesterday and he’s like, Tim, I’m so tired of being in my desk chair. He just wants to get out and socialize. We all need that right now, but this too shall pass. This is all a short-term crisis. And we start thinking long term and we realize the world isn’t falling apart. The sky isn’t falling. We need to take a deep breath. We need to breathe. We need to keep moving. And we need to realize that this year, if it’s been tough for you, which for a lot of us, it has a lot of us have been blessed. A lot of it’s been a tough year. Just realize that all you were doing was mixing that mortar, which is now going to let you start stacking those beautiful stones and create something permanent. You’ve been investing in yourself. You’ve gone through the struggles. And as long as you keep pressing forward, you don’t give up. You don’t get discouraged. You don’t stop moving your feet. You’re going to be able to take those hard times from this year, especially from this year and utilize them to continue improving, making something better, lighter.
Tim Jordan: The third point that I want to make today and kind of my final point is not contradictory to the other things. I’m talking about moving forward, I’m talking about keep fighting the good fight and get over the hard times and all that. So I’m not contradicting that. But in addition to that, what I want to say is that we need to make sure that we’re focusing on what’s important. Okay. What we’re focusing on needs to be the important things in life. I’ve had kind of a recent revelation and it was really through interviewing people on this podcast. We think about success. We think granular, we think success is selling a product or creating an agency or whatever it is. I don’t believe that anymore. I don’t believe that success for us is becoming a seven figure Amazon or Shopify seller, or creating this great digital marketing agency. Those may be what lead to success, but success is actually creating freedom, creating time for yourself, creating a financial stability, creating freedom for others, creating jobs for others, creating opportunities for others, right?
Tim Jordan: Success is not the vehicle that gets you to the end. Success is the end. The vehicle can change. Right? A lot of times, especially me, like I get this crazy tunnel vision. I like it. So focused on one project or I get so focused on one product, or get so focused on one business vertical that I forget that what I’m working on for success, isn’t making that vehicle successful. I just need to get to the other end. Right. And by being so focused on this tunnel, I forget that like success is time. Success for me is creating more time when maybe I’m missing that time right now. Maybe I have the flexibility right now to spend time with my kids. And I’m so focused. I’m not going to get this product launch so I can retire in four years and then have time with my kids. But I’m freaking, like, I could still have time with my kids right now. Right? We get so singularly focused that we lose focus. Does that make sense? I’ll give you an example. This is one that I’ve never talked about, but it’s real to me. I do trips to China. I’ve been going to China for like five or six years now and I’ve gotten pretty good at, I know the methods. I know the culture really well, all that good stuff. And before I started doing large-scale trips, I take sometimes 40, 50 people at a time. I would go to China and I would have just clients, occasionally come with me, Hey, tag along, you pay your way and all, kind of let you shadow me. And about a year and a half ago maybe. Maybe two years now, I had a client that was going to China. And I had a trip. I had a meeting set up and the meetings that I had set up were very important to my business. I got to get to these meetings and get these purchases done and get these prototypes figured out because that’s success. Right. And I felt responsible to this client because while this client came with me, my plan was to help facilitate her business. Right. That was going to be another vertical of my success was helping this client. And about three days before going to China, I’m still at this time working as a firefighter, I’m just sleeping at the fire station. I wake up one morning at like four 30 and I’ve got like 20 missed calls from an aunt out in Denver. What the crap she’s texting me and she’s scared and she’s got voicemail, she’s crying.
Tim Jordan: Something’s wrong with my mom. So I call her and I’m like, Amarita, what’s up? Like, what’s going on? She’s like, I don’t know what to do. She’s like, we think your mom’s had a stroke. And my mom is she’s divorced, lives by herself in Denver. And so, what are you talking about? She says, well, thinks she’s had a stroke. Oh my gosh, is she conscious? No, she’s not conscious. She’s on a breathing tube. I don’t know what to do. So I immediately bought a plane ticket for like two hours later. I went and told my captain, I got to go. I got a plane flew out to Denver. Now I spent 10 years as an EMT. I am fairly confident in at least triaging medical situations. Right. So, I get to the hospital in Denver and I walk in and my mom’s in ICU and she’s got a breathing tube in her throat. And it turns out she’s had a very massive stroke. Right. Very massive. And I remember the neurosurgeon walking in and pulling up a scan of her brain. And you could see the discoloration where this stroke had occurred. It was actually a full stroke, like blood loss stopped. And there was necrotic tissue in there. And it was like half of her brain. And like I realized, this is serious. She’s not coming back from this. And, of course, I was holding it together because my other siblings were flying in and I’m like the guy that has to hold it together. And I remember I’ll never forget seeing that image and knowing like this is not recoverable. And seeing her there in that bed and the reason she was in the hospital to begin with that, she had just had a surgery on her abdomen the day before. Right. So she had, long story short. She had a little abdominal surgery, not a big deal that she had been cut open. And while she was in the hospital, she had a stroke. And I remember walking up to her and we didn’t know if could hear us or anything. And she had her hands bound, like in these Velcro straps, I said, what are these for? They said, well, she keeps trying to pull the tube out of her throat. And her breathing tube, we can’t do that, all this. And she was fighting him and she didn’t have any eye movement or anything, but she was fighting these straps. And I can just tell from body language, she was in pain. And I said, do you have pain medicines? We can’t give her pain medicine. She’s had a stroke altered level of consciousness.
Tim Jordan: And I said, you can’t give her pain meds? And like, we can’t give her pain meds. And I’m like, Oh my gosh, like, she can feel pain. She can’t talk to her. She can’t clean up. She can feel pain. And I wonder her left arm. And I removed the Velcro strap. And instead of her hand going up to pull the breathing tube out, it immediately went and found me and it grabbed me and it grabbed my chest and worked. She felt around and grabbed like behind my waist. I’m standing there beside her in the bed. And she just pulled me and she would not let me go. I’m talking about iron grip. And she was still just riding in pain and I’m crying. I’m like, Oh my gosh. I can’t do anything for her. And we’re an ICU and she’s got a breathing tube in, but she’s conscious enough that she knows it’s me. I know she knows me because she physically grabbed me and now she’s not letting go. And they can’t give her big sedation because of the strokes. They’ve got her in like this weird Twilight thing with it’s awful, God awful. And I’m just trying to keep it together, but not doing a very good job. Finally, I begged the doctors. I said, you’ve got to give her pain meds. You can’t do this to her. You got to give her medicine. You got to give her medicine. They said, we can’t give her medicine. We can’t give her like an opioid or a narcotic, but we can put her in an induced coma. And what that’ll do is it’ll give us several days for her stomach start healing up. We can ease her off. We can start doing some different therapies. See if some of the blood we can regain some of the blood flow to those places in her brain, yada, yada. And I made the decision. I’m like, do it. Like, I don’t care. You’ve got to get her out of pain. We can’t do this. And I said, all right. So, it was going to be like two hours before they could do that. They had to do a bunch of checks, get blood pressure stabilized, all that stuff. And I stood there with her, with her arm around me for two hours. She would not let me go. And like the whole time, I’m just in agony. This poor woman is laying here in pain. She can feel it. She knows I’m here, but she can’t speak to it. She’s had a massive stroke.
Tim Jordan: She can’t communicate. She can’t do anything. She’s just riding in pain. Finally, they gave her a sedative. She instantly relaxed, induced this very light coma. I don’t even know what it was, but they were actually able to take the breathing tube out of her. She’s just lying there and I had this trip to China coming up and I remember my two sisters flew up from Tennessee and they’re meeting with me and I just went to a room and just lost it. I had to go find a room by myself and just cry for a while. Come back, got my head in the game. I’ll be the leader. I’ll be in charge of this. I’ve got a lot of responsibilities. I have a responsibility to my mom. I’ve got responsibility of family. I’ve got a responsibility to my business. I’ve got responsibility to this product, I’ve got a launch, got responsibility to this client that wants to come to China with me, I’ve got a responsibility to all these things, right. And I was laying them all on like an equal footing. And I started using logic. I started rationalizing things. And one of the things that my sister said, she says, you got to go to China. I said, yeah, I got to go to China. She said, well, you’re going to lose your plane ticket. You’re not going to get this deal done. You’ve got a client. That’s going to be upset because you’re supposed to guide her on China. And I said, you’re right. And mom’s going to stay in this coma for two weeks. There’s nothing I can do here anyways. There’s nothing I can do. Like, I’m just going to be dead way. And I’m just going to get in people’s way. And I started justifying what I later did, which was left. And I left and I went to China and I remember thinking I was kind of relief. I’m not just sitting in a hospital. There’s nothing I can do there. And as I kept justifying it, justifying it. About six days into my China trip with jet lag, I wake up and it’s like four in the morning and I’ve probably got 40 or 50 missed calls on my cell phone. And it’s my wife just calling, calling, calling a texting. Please answer, please answer. Please answer. Please answer. She didn’t know what hotel I was at. Because I was moving hotels. She couldn’t call hotel. And I called her. I said, what’s going on? She said, I’m driving to Nashville to meet your sister. We’re getting, we’ve got plane tickets. We’re flying to Denver.
Tim Jordan: They’re bolusing your mom with fluids. All that means is when they’re bolusing, they’re basically pumping fluids in your system. Your system’s collapsing, right? Your heart stopping the pump or you can’t keep your blood pressure up. They’re literally just injecting your fluids to try to hold you a little longer. And she said, they’re bolusing your mom, hopefully until I can get out there with your sister and say goodbye. Man, you talk about lonely. I’m 7,500 miles away at 4:00 AM in a Chinese hotel by myself. And like I realized this, like she’s about to die. My mom had a pretty rough life. She had a few unfortunate events we’ll say happen. And she was just starting to come around, living her best life, as I say. And she was supposed to be flying out to meet my youngest son, grandson that she hadn’t met yet, who was a couple of months old, like just a little time later. And all this stuff was starting to come together for her. And she was dying in that bed and I’m 7,500 miles. And so, I’m calling the airlines trying to change flights, but I know it’s going to take me 40 hours to get home. It’s going to be a nightmare and I’m not going to make it. About an hour later, my younger sister who was there at the hospital, she texted me. She said, she’s gone. I remember sitting there in my bedroom and didn’t have anything else that I wanted to the gym and started working out or like I hardly ever workout, but I remember working out and it was all just logistics for me. I got to get home, got to start planning a funeral. I got to deal with the estate, all that stuff. And there’s no way I could even get on a flight till like 5:00 PM that night. So I had 12 hours to kill. Right. So I went down to breakfast and met my client there.
Tim Jordan: And she said, well, how was your mama? Well, she knew my mom was in the hospital. I said, well, my mom died. She said, geez, your mom died? I said, yeah. I said, she died a couple hours ago. And that lady, she’s the one that made me realize this point. She was like, you should have been there. And I was like, well, we didn’t know she was going to die. We didn’t know what was going to happen. We thought she’s had a coma, she’s getting out of the way. And she never said anything, but like, to this day, Hey, I realize, man, I really got my priority screwed up. And I know it’s an extreme example, but we all do this. We all justify a little more time and research. We all just find one more phone call. We all justify, Oh, I got to do this and this and this. And we’re missing out on the things. They are important because success for me. And I think for most of you, and if it’s not a should be. Success isn’t another product. Success. Isn’t more clients in your agency. Success isn’t a perfectly built funnel. Success are the things that you have more of when you do those things well. Success is more time, more freedom, more stability, more family interactions, more friendships, more deeper relationships, more helping others. For me, I was so focused on success, being a good trip to China, a good product launch, a good prototype development, good meetings in China that I was forgetting that success is being there when people need you, being there for your family, being there for your friends, creating stability, creating freedom, all of those things. And I got those misaligned. I got those mismatched. And to this day, that’s a lesson I’ll never forget.
Tim Jordan: I’m not perfect at it. I screw up all the time. My poor kids have to deal with me in a lot of zoom meetings at nine o’clock at night when I should be having tuck them in or even 7:00 AM on Saturday when I should be on the couch, just watching cartoons with them. But I will never forget missing, not just missing my mom’s death, but not being there for my family and not being there with her arm around me for one more hour, because I was so focused on this next product to this next trip, or this next meeting or this next launch, right. We can get wrapped. So wrapped up in what we need to do that we overlook and forget what we should do when I was a firefighter. I had these crazy relationships to these guys, because you spend 24 hours a day in these fire stations. You either love them or you hate them. Or you do both at the same time. But you get like in these deep– you eat all your meals with these guys. Like it’s a tight knit and you start to like, see people’s personalities come out. And there was one guy that man, me and him just bumped heads like crazy. Gosh, it was awful. Mike, every day I walked in, saw him, I would dread it. He was a captain on neighboring truck at one station for four or five years in May. And me and this guy we’d have knocked on drag outs. And one day I was super frustrated and I was just like, ready to blow. I was so angry at this guy just saying something boneheaded. And it was all, we call it badge something, I’m a captain, look at my badge, go it just being a turd.
Tim Jordan: And his driver, a guy named Steve who I really respect. Steve sat me down. Steve said, Tim, why are you worried about this? Don’t worry about what Mike has to say. He said, we’re firefighters. I said, yeah. He said, Mike is a firefighter. Said, you just said the same thing. He said, no. He said, we are a firefighter. Mike defines himself as a firefighter. I started thinking about that. He said, Tim, we do all sorts of stuff. We collect old cars. We love watching football. We love go fishing occasionally. We do this and this and this. And firefighting for us is just a facility. It’s our job. And maybe something we love, but it’s still a job. It doesn’t define us wholly. Said, but Mike, it defines him wholly, like everything in life revolves around his success or failure firefighter and gosh, that is so much of what we do as entrepreneurs.
Tim Jordan: We define our personal success by our business success. And what we have to remember is that we’re not a firefighter. We’re just a firefighter. We’re not an entrepreneur. We’re just an entrepreneur. Right? Meaning going back to this whole focus, like don’t get caught up in everything having to be perfect. Because we forget to pay attention to the other things like our business, our entrepreneurship, our products, our agency, whatever it is, can’t be a hundred percent of our focus. We are not defined by our business success. We’re defined by much more than that. And when we get so caught up in this small piece and we don’t think about the big piece, we don’t take care of ourselves. We don’t take care of our friends. We don’t take care of our family. Right. And we end up being worse at all of it because when we’re not doing those things, we’re not going to be as good as our business. Right. So, those are the three points that I wanted to make to. I hope that this hasn’t been too sappy. I hope it hasn’t been too deep and weird. And, but I really feel this, like the strong desire to share this with you. When I think about everything that’s gone on over the past year and not just cause it’s still a month before the year ends, but not just what’s going on through the year, but the things that I’m keeping top of mind as I finish out Q4 and it’s like going to the beginning of 2021, like don’t forget that throughout all the headlines, the bad stuff going on and the disappointments and the discouragements. And like, remember that people one are amazing. People do amazing things. People have done amazing things. People are doing amazing things.
Tim Jordan: Also remember that a lot of the sucky stuff that we’re doing in life, we’re just mixing mortar. We’re just preparing for the fun stuff we’re preparing for building something great. We’re investing in ourselves, the mistakes, the losses, the money that we’ve lost, the discouragement, like all that is, is mixing mortar. We’re just preparing something great. You don’t have to love it, but you should be appreciative of it and respect it because if we don’t go through those hard phases, we’re never going to be able to capitalize on the great phases. And then also the third point was focused on what’s important. Don’t get so wrapped up in your business. Don’t get so wrapped up in this product that we forget that life is not defined by us as entrepreneurs. We’re just entrepreneurs. That’s part of what we are. And whether you have an extreme case or not, you don’t want to be the person sitting in China on some stupid products. It’s not even selling anymore. Right. And I’m not there for my family. When something crazy happens and something I’ll regret the rest of my life. So keep focused again. I hope this is valuable. I appreciate you guys listening to me. I know that one of the huge values to this podcast are the guests that we bring on. And I appreciate you guys letting me have an opportunity to share some of my own thoughts. I feel like I get exposed to a lot of different thoughts and ideas and content and experience and all that stuff. And sometimes I just want to wrap it all up and put it kind of– put a bow on it and leading into the Christmas theme. But no, like just recap some of that and consolidate and organize some of my thoughts that I have based on all this stuff. So, I hope you guys continue to listen as podcast. I hope you guys have a killer Q4. Well, we’re more than halfway through Q4, but killer December if you’re an e-commerce seller. And just keep on keeping on, remember that all crisis come to an end, this crazy year of good and bad is almost over. In 2021, I think will also be an incredible year. Thank you guys. We’ll see you on the next episode.
The post A Look Back at a Challenging 2020 – Soaring E-Commerce and Important Life Lessons – 223 appeared first on AM/PM Podcast.
Keepa Product Review, Pricing, and Recommendations
When it comes to sourcing products, you need to have the right set of insights at hand to be able to make the best decisions possible. Especially if you’re sourcing products on Amazon, where you can reach bigger markets, but with a high competition rate. Keepa Chrome Extension is a tool that gives you a product’s price history and sales rank tracker.
It’s one Amazon sellers’ top choices to gather data to make better decision about pricing your own goods. At first, the Keepa graphs may be too overwhelming, but once you get the hang of it, you can use it for different purposes.
It’s available for Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera and Internet Explorer.
Keepa Features
Keepa has three main features created to help you collect pricing information on Amazon. It lets you track prices in 10 different local currencies and for over 800 million products. The main thing you should know about Keepa is that all data gathered is exportable, that means you can play around with it and use it however your business needs.
You can get all sorts of insights and details about price variation for the products that you include in your wish list. The data is shown in graphs for easy reading and you can activate tracking alerts.
Keepa is available in the following countries: United States, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, China, India and Australia have access to the extension. Below, we’ll explain each feature.
1. Deals
Find products to track! Sellers can use Keepa to browse products by category, deal type (new, used, collectible, refurbished, etc.), price drop time interval, pricing range and discount range.
If you click on a product, Keepa will show its Amazon price history graph and its tracking product options. The tracking options are for you to decide on your desired price, your desired price for new product or used product, etc. Keepa also keeps its own tracking alerts in real time. You can get those alerts on your browser notifications or your email.
2. Track
In this section, you’ll find the overview of all your tracked products, your wishlists and most recent notifications.
Keepa can monitor a specific product on Amazon and send you an alert when the price drops.
3. Data
This is probably Keepa’s most useful section. Keepa gathers a ton of data from millions of products. This gives sellers a range of actions that can take place using the data provided:
- Product finder: You can use Keepa’s database to find a product you may want to add to your watch list
- Product viewer: You can import your product lists
- Best seller lists: Easily find the best selling products on Amazon and sort them by category
- Top seller list: Check out what merchants are succeeding in your field of business.
- Category tree: Keepa makes data easy to read. You can browse products on Amazon by category
- Keepa’s API. The API allows you to request live pricing and availability, price history, sales rank, offers count, Buy Box information, review count history. Basically, any insight you want to know about a specific product.
How Can I Use Keepa?
Keepa does have a learning curve for sellers to take the most advantage of the extension. Here’s a little summary of some things Keepa can be useful for and so you can have a better understanding of what the extension can do:
- Keepa is color coded: Amazon is orange, new marketplace goods are blue, used marketplace goods are black, and the sales rank of a product is green. You’ll get an idea of how a product is doing just by taking a glimpse at the screen.
- Keepa shows immediate results and gives you the option to display date ranges of a day, week, month, three months or all the data the extension has on file.
- You can see an intuitive display of a product’s monetary history.
- You can find out what is a product’s sales rank.
- You can decide to remove a layer or a set of data when you feel the screen is too crowded, or if you want to focus on a single aspect. You can also broaden your scope by clicking back and the data sets will reappear. The data sets point out of a product is in stock by shading them in black. Out of stock products will appear in white.
- See the in-stock, out-of-stock history of a product.
- If you click on all data sets, Keepa just shows you a green line on a graph to indicate the sales rank history over the date range you choose.
Source: Repricer Express
New Features
Since its last update, Keepa now includes these features:
- Pink Buy Box line replacing the Buy Box diamonds.
- Find out how many people are in the current Buy Box rotation
- If Amazon is sharing the Buy Box, Keepa will let you know. It also shows Amazon in/out of stock.
- if the main category sales rank disappears from Amazon, Keepa has new ways of showing you the sales ranks
How Much Does Keepa Cost?
For bigger sellers, this is probably the cheapest software to use for their Amazon business.
Keepa is defined as a freemium service, which means you can install it for free with access to only some of its features. If you want to get full access to the whole set of tools, then you’ll have to pay a monthly fee of $20. You can pay for an annual subscription and get a discount, too.
Keepa will pay for itself. Even if you only use Amazon once a week, it’s likely that you’ll end up saving more than $20 a month.
Keepa Pros and Cons
PROS | CONS |
Know all the pricing details of a given product. Perfectly blends with the browser and the website is easy to use. The graphs will appear right under the picture of the item. |
It’s not a completely free tool.It may be difficult to navigate so much information at first. |
Final Thoughts
Keepa is the perfect solution when it comes to finding new business opportunities, scouting new markets and sourcing new products.
It provides different sets of data extracted directly from Amazon. The good is that you’ll get information about basically every pricing detail of a product, the bad is that it’s so much information that it does take a while to learn to use it to your advantage.
It’s completely worth it! Once you incorporate Keepa to your business, you won’t waste more time making important business decisions blindly.
The post Keepa Product Review, Pricing, and Recommendations appeared first on AMZ Advisers.
Tap Into The Benefits of Amazon Live Creator
Amazon Live Creator allows you to stream videos from Amazon’s homepage. It works similarly to QVC the only difference is instead of being aired on TV, you’re live streaming on Amazon. These live videos allow the sellers to show off the products they are selling and demonstrate how it works.
In today’s digital world, flexibility and adaptability are two of the most important characteristics a seller must-have. As an Amazon seller, you need to constantly adapt and find new ways to market and promote your products. Good thing, Amazon frequently releases new features for sellers to help them gain visibility in front of hundreds of millions of shoppers around the globe.
The latest? Amazon Live.
This is a highly engaging promotional tool for sellers as it simply allows you to showcase your products in a unique and powerful way through Amazon live streaming.
Amazon Live Creator
Brands and influencers can get started live-streaming on Amazon using the Amazon Live Creator app.
The Amazon Live Creator app helps sellers create, capture and manage live streams. It greatly helps in building your followers on Amazon. Growing your followers will help in increasing your viewership, as your followers are being notified in the Amazon mobile shopping app each time you go live.
Amazon Live Creator is a fun and interactive live video bringing products to life by featuring them in your product carousel. Such features as product highlighting, chat, and live promotions are available to help you engage with your audience during your streams.
How Does Amazon Live Work?
Amazon Live allows sellers to promote products by hosting live streams on Amazon itself. It not only harnesses the power of video but also enables live social interaction with shoppers who can shop the products featured in your live stream and chat with you during the broadcast. Consumers nowadays are embracing social, media-rich, and live experiences. Amazon Live provides a way to ride that wave and shoppers can simply access it anytime and anywhere using their mobile gadgets.
As a brand that sells on Amazon, there’s no additional fee to use Amazon Live, making it a great way to enrich your ad funnel and build your brand.
Why Promote Products through Amazon Live Creator?
Live streaming is very popular today, so sellers need to take advantage of this new opportunity to reach Amazon’s massive audience.
And the good thing about the Amazon live is it’s totally free! That’s right—streaming in front of thousands of potential buyers on Amazon is completely free. An important reminder, you’ll still need to be brand registered, which may entail separate costs.
Additional benefits to using Amazon Live:
- It’s a new way to get discovered
Live-streaming gives a unique opportunity to showcase your products to hundreds or even thousands of potential customers globally. This will help boost discoverability and brand awareness.
Live-Only promotions
Sellers can promote a special deal that only viewers can take advantage of during your live stream. One great benefit to streaming live on Amazon is that you can interact and chat with your viewers. People can ask questions about your brand and product. This gives you a great opportunity to really sell and will enable you to provide value and award discounts to the customers who joined you live and encourage repeat viewership.
You can also urge people to follow your brand page on Amazon so they can be notified every time you go live. What a great way to promote and launch a brand new product line and get those initial sales!
Your live stream appears on your listing
Your stream will appear on your listing detail page every time you go on live. This means that people who discovered your product in search can learn more about what that product is or how it works. As you progress, your stream will eventually be featured on Amazon’s homepage which will increase your visibility.
Go live whenever you want
Go live on Amazon at your own convenience! You don’t need to secure a schedule for you to go live on Amazon. Here’s a tip: Go live during the time of day when you tend to see the most sales. If you can predict an increase in traffic, you can hopefully drive more conversions.
Who Can Use Amazon Live?
You can make use of Amazon Live if you fit one of these three descriptions:
- Influencer enrolled in the Amazon Influencer Program
- Amazon seller with brand registry
- Amazon vendor who has approval for an Amazon Store
Amazon Live creators can level up by going live and showcase their value to Amazon shoppers. Amazon designates each creator according to a three-level system of Rising Star, Insider, and A-List. You begin as a Rising Star, then move up and unlock benefits as you create live streams and attract audiences. To better understand the three-level system let’s differentiate one another.
- Rising Star. Creators begin as Rising Stars whose content is eligible to appear in the “Live Now” row, detail pages for your brand’s products, and Amazon Live site in relevant product category rows
- Insider. Steaming for at least 90 minutes within 30 days is required before moving on to the next level which is the Insider status. If you will be able to meet this requirement then you can apply to move to this second level. If your application is approved then your content is eligible to appear at the top of the Amazon Live homepage.
- A-List. You can apply for the highest level if you stream for 1,000 minutes and get $5,000 in eligible sales or sell 100 units of the product in 30 days. If you’re approved you’ll get a lot of perks and benefits that include access to Amazon Live events, priority support from the Amazon Live Creator team, and not to mention appearing on the Amazon Live site top-of-page placement
How to Set Up Amazon Live Creator
Several points have been discussed but before reaping the benefits of an Amazon Live let’s go dive deeper on how we can set it up for your own advantage. Get started with Amazon Live by making sure you understand the program and how it works (i.e. read this blog). Then when you already have the knowledge and ready to get things done, download the Amazon Live Creator app. Note that the app is currently not available for Android devices. It is optimized and works well for iPhone but can also be used on an iPad. The app is free to use and there are no fees involved in live streaming.
Log in to the app with the email and password associated with your Seller Central or Vendor Central account.
Just by using the Amazon Live app, you can do live streaming, or if you have the equipment, you can use devices such as an external camera with your broadcast software for better quality and control over your video. It’s helpful to have more than one person on your team to install the app. You can do multiple simultaneous log-ins, so that when you go live, there can be one person on camera and another monitoring and responding to messages. It’s purely a team effort.
What to Do Before Going Live
Preparation will do the trick on this and will help you keep on track. Make sure that before you go live you need to prepare what is needed and practice everything about your live stream, from what you’ll say to how you’ll run the tech. You may utilize the Practice Mode in the app to polish your routine.
Consider having a list so you won’t miss anything before battle begins. Here are some helpful tips for you:
- Check and confirm if your internet connection is reliable at the time you want to do the live-streaming.
- Make sure your devices are fully charged or at least plugged in so you won’t run out of power before your stream is over.
- Set your phone to ‘do not disturb’ so you won’t get interrupted while you’re live streaming. Don’t try to use any other apps on your device while you’re live streaming or your stream will end abruptly. Please take note that If you need to receive messages or use other apps during the stream, you’ll need to use a different device to get you going.
- Make sure you are in a clean and quiet space and that you won;t be uninterrupted. Turn off any devices that may create background noise.
Amazon monitors all live streams and they can be cut off if they violate Amazon’s rules. Make sure you are familiar with the Amazon Live community policies before you go live.
Streaming on Amazon Live Creator
Setting up and running a live stream on Amazon follows a simple process even a beginner can do. If you aren’t tech-savvy don’t worry because this can work with you too!
Before you do any streaming, I suggest going through your competitors’ listings and others within your niche to see if anyone else is doing live streams. Study and observed how they do their streaming. Write down some important points for you to ponder. Create a script that talks about your product before you go live. Practice without the devices on and work on your speech. Good thing, Amazon has a practice mode for you to utilize.
When all are set, download the creator app and link your seller account. Here’s the step by step guide to help you get through:
Step 1
Download Amazon Live Creator (iOS). This will work on an iPhone or iPad. This is currently not available on Android devices.
Step 2
Create a Live account.
Step 3
Select your brand and add a profile name.
Step 4
Select the product you are adding to your stream.
Step 5
Set up your stream
You should spend some time in practice mode to prepare your talking points and responses to any customer questions you might receive.
When you start the live stream you can post a message in the chat to alert viewers that you are available and will do live streaming.. You can view chat messages that come in and respond to them either in the chat or verbally on video. The chat feature can make the experience more interactive and personal.
Amazon Live is free. However, you do have the option of boosting your stream’s potential viewership through Amazon advertising.
Enter in your stream title, start time, etc.
Step 6
Share your beautiful face and product to the world!
The more frequently and the longer you stream, creates an opportunity for your shoppers to interact with you. The Amazon recommendation is to run a single live stream for at least 30 minutes so that shoppers have time to discover it. This is what Amazon will look at when you apply to level up:
- Total overall streaming minutes ( length of stream)
- Frequency of streaming
- Consistency in streaming schedule.
Make use of your time streaming with meaningful content by introducing more than one product, showcasing the product’s best asset, and replying to customer comments. Make it fun and interactive. It might feel repetitive to you to reinforce those key points, but remember that you are doing a live stream and shoppers may be coming and going during the show.
You can also easily view the Analytics right from the homepage of the Amazon Live Creator App.
The Interactive Features of Amazon Live Creator
The Amazon Live Creator app will provide you with a link to your stream which you can share in advance with your audience from other channels. Sending this link through an email message is one sure way to bring attention to a live stream.
You may encourage your customers to follow your brand so they may be notified of future live stream events. Follow is a program that allows Amazon shoppers to keep up with the influencers, brands, and topics they care about the most. They will constantly received notifications through Amazon mobile app. Keep in mind that Amazon currently offers no way for you to count or track your followers.
During a live stream, engage and encourage your shoppers to type in their questions, read out those questions and give the answers enthusiastically. You can also reply directly in the chat and customers can react by clicking the stars button.
You might want to use a live stream when you’re running special promotions for your products. Alternatively, you can run custom promotions specifically during the live stream by creating special promotion codes in Seller or Vendor Central and then sharing those discounts during the live stream.
Tips for being on camera:
- Use only high-quality video and audio when streaming.
- Make sure your videos are properly lit, either with natural light or bright photography lighting, so viewers can clearly see you and your product.
- Show up smartly! Speak clearly, concisely, and confidently. Practice makes perfect, so be sure to practice speaking in front of the camera!
- Create a thumbnail that’s unique and high-quality so you can capture viewers’ attention.
- Use a bright and clear backdrop or use a background related to your product. For example, if you’re promoting a kitchen appliance, set up your stream in your kitchen.
Boost Performance From Live Streaming
One way to drive more traffic to a live stream is through careful planning. Scheduling it in advance and promoting it on your other channels is really a big help. Also, encouraging customers to follow your brand on Amazon can come a long way.
Paid promotion of a stream can also help increase sales from the live stream. Amazon sellers (not vendors) can boost their live stream for better placements across the Amazon desktop site and mobile shopping app, including product detail pages. Boosting can last up to 48 hours. You’ll pay for this promotion on a CPM basis, using the same payment method you have set up for Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands. Keep in mind you can only track boost performance in the Amazon Live Creator app, not in Seller Central.
Post-Live Stream Tips
Your videos will be available on your channel page and can appear on Amazon.com/Live after your live stream. Both the Influencers and brand owners may see them on their product detail pages. If you want to edit your recording, you can download it from Amazon.com. You can also remove it.
To track your performance over a 28-day period and plan improved tactics or prepare to level up use the channel analytics dashboard in the app. Amazon can track total views, unmuted views, average view duration, clicks, click-through-rate (CTR), and sales.
It is highly recommended that you have to set smart and attainable goals for your live streaming. It depends on your purpose and you have to work on it.
If your purpose is to begin brand-building, growing views and view duration maybe your focus. If you need the live stream to drive directly toward sales, you’ll also need to look at clicks, CTR, and sales.
Prepare for Updates to the Service
For you to be always updated, you may turn on notifications within the Amazon Live Creator app for you to be alerted of any developments, enhancement, and opportunities the app may have in the future. Amazon is leaning into the top of the funnel, video advertising, and social media-style engagement, so we won’t be surprised to see plenty of new developments coming for Amazon Live. They released three new Amazon Live features in September alone.
You can start experimenting with video promotions through live streaming instead of just sticking to Sponsored Products. To get a jump on this trend, consider also using Amazon Stores, Sponsored Brands video, or Amazon DSP.
Final Thoughts
To sum up, Amazon Live is a great way for brands to creatively showcase their products and have a meaningful engagement with their customers. Amazon Live is a good promotional tool that enable product discovery, interactivity, and engagement, share brand updates, and promote deals.
To get the most out of the program, keep the following tips in mind to get you going:
- Practice your presentation and check that everything works before you go live so the live stream runs smoothly
- Schedule live streams in advance so you can promote the live stream on your other channels
- Interact with viewers through the social features so you can encourage them to follow your brand
- Get creative when setting, inviting guests, and showcasing your products’ features
- Make a plan to stream on a regular schedule for 30 minutes or more so you can grab customers’ attention and rise up in the Amazon Live Creator ranks to get additional features
- Strategically pair Amazon Live events with deals and consider boosting your live streams
Helpful Amazon Live Links
Are you ready to take on the leap and get started with Amazon Live? Here are the links to download the app and quick start guides from Amazon.
- Amazon Live Creator in the App Store
- Amazon Live Creator: The Basics
- Amazon Live Creator: Best Practices
The post Tap Into The Benefits of Amazon Live Creator appeared first on AMZ Advisers.
Jungle Scout vs Viral Launch Product Review
Product research tools are a crucial instrument to build a competitive retail business online. If you expect to stand out from the competition online, then you need to leverage a solid Amazon research and intelligence tool. Jungle Scout and Viral Launch are two of the top product research tools out there
In a nutshell, with both tools you can:
- Get help in sourcing and listing profitable products,
- Throw data and metrics to analyze which products would be profitable,
- Help to find suppliers for these products,
- Assist with scaling your Amazon store.
In this product review, you’ll learn how these two tools work so you can make better business decisions.
Jungle Scout Review
Jungle Scout is made for Amazon sellers. Currently, it’s one of the best product research software tools in the market. Over 200,000 sellers already use this software to grow their business.
Jungle Scout is aimed at getting info and tools to start, manage, and scale your Amazon business. Here are a few of the main features Jungle Scout includes:
- Jungle Scout Academy – get access to a ton of videos about starting an Amazon FBA store with the necessary insights to use the software to its full advantage.
- Chrome Extension, Opportunity Finder, and Product Finder tool – you can easily discover emerging trends and profitable niches to sell on Amazon. Find products with high demand and low keyword competition to drive sales.
- Supplier Database and Supplier Tracker – get access to all the verified Amazon suppliers to source and ship products directly to customers.
- Product Database and Product Tracker – Set specific search criteria by product categories, estimated product sales, revenue and more. Forget about seasonality risks or unexpected shifts in demand by monitoring your products over time.
- Listing builder and Keyword Scout – build the perfect listing and rank higher than other sellers using high-converting, top-ranking keywords.
- Alerts, Inventory Manager and Sales Analytics –keep track of what your customers are saying, of what stock you have and your sales to make to provide a timely solution.
Jungle Scout comes in two separate versions: a web app and a Chrome extension, each with its own features.
The Chrome extension is helpful to assess a page on Amazon and pull important details, like the Jungle Scout sales estimator and product prices. The extension works great for exploring and validating product ideas. The web app is more about uncovering lucrative products and niches.
Jungle Scout Pros & Cons
Pros
- It’s a product research tool which is easy to use and great for finding product opportunities
- Strong insights on sales data
- It helps you define which competitor products have high or low-profit margins
- The Chrome Extension gives accurate and precise results about competitors and products
- Jungle Scout provides learning material to guide to guide you in starting an Amazon FBA store
Cons
- It’s been said Jungle Scout customer support can be slow.
You may not find help available in a language other than English.
Viral Launch Review
Viral Launch was created to help you in sourcing, launching, and expanding your business on Amazon. It’s now the third-largest digital advertising platform in the US.
You can use Viral Launch to view many different data points, like historical trends, monthly revenue, monthly sales and your sales history up to 12 months in the past.
This comprehensive tool offers many stellar features:
- Kinetic PPC – automate your Amazon PPC. Kinetic PPC gives you access to more data on campaigns, keywords and search terms if you compare it to organic sales.
- Market Intelligence – It provides the latest and most precise estimates of sales due to having access to comprehensive Amazon data.
- Listings optimizer – Create an SEO optimized listing, identifying unused keywords and tracking the used ones to maximize your keyword ranking on Amazon.
- Keyword Manager and Keyword Research – Viral Launch features an Amazon search tool that will bid for targeted keywords, while the Keyword Manager is an analytics dashboard with all keyword data for your products.
Viral Launch generates insights about average reviews, average star ratings, sellers rank, and sales estimates. Then it arranges everything based on the profitability scores. Viral Launch has a database with a log of over 350 million Amazon products and it gives support for 10 different Amazon markets.
Also, a big plus for Viral Launch is that it offers packages depending on sellers’ preference. It includes different services, add-ons, and coupon codes.
Viral Launch Pros & Cons
Pros
- Viral Launch is great for launching and scaling an Amazon store.
- Extensive analytical information on products and sellers.
- Many video tutorials and checklists that are easy to follow.
- You can customize your plan and choose the features you prefer.
Cons
- No notifications for auto-renewals.
- There are no refunds or partial refunds for unused services.
- Market Intelligence may fail to throw results, sometimes.
Best Product Discovery Tool
- Jungle Scout uses Niche Hunter – Any seller trying to find new products, Niche Hunter has it all, from product database to detailed filters.
- Viral Launch uses Market Intelligence – Market Intelligence is only a little better than Niche Hunter by a margin.
Best Amazon Keyword Research Tool
Viral Launch and Jungle Scout have the same dynamics in keyword research tools, but Jungle Scout displays more data points and it offers the Ad Stats and Giveaway Counter as a plus.
Price – Jungle Scout or Viral Launch?
Jungle Scout and Viral Launch have different pricing strategies. Jungle Scout charges depending on the monthly number of orders. Viral Launch has four pricing tiers. The top pricing tier includes all features, while the monthly fee is based on your revenue.
Viral Launch seems to have package plans made for smaller Amazon sellers.
Viral Launch Pricing
Here’s what each package costs and what you can get:
MI Extension (Best for researchers) – $21 per month
- – Market Intelligence: product research & Chrome extension
- – Review Automation: Trigger review requests sent from Amazon automatically
Beginner (Companies starting from scratch)– $50 per month
- – Product Discovery: product finder
- – Market Intelligence: product research & Chrome extension
- – Competitor Intelligence: reverse ASIN tool (3 products – US only)
Pro (Best for growing brands) – $83 per month
- – Product Discovery: product finder
- – Market Intelligence: product research & Chrome extension
- – Review Automation
- – Keyword Research: Amazon keyword research tool (US only)
- – Competitor Intelligence: reverse ASIN tool (3 products – US only)
- – Listing Builder: listing creation tool (US only)
- – Listing Analyzer: listing evaluation tool (50 products – US only)
- – Keyword Manager: keyword tracker (2,000 KWs – US only)
Brand Builder (Best for ambitious brands) – $125 per month
- – Product Discovery: product finder
- – Market Intelligence: product research & Chrome extension
- – Keyword Research: Amazon keyword research tool (US only)
- – Competitor Intelligence: reverse ASIN tool (100 products – US only)
- – Listing Builder: listing creation tool (US only)
- – Listing Analyzer: listing evaluation tool (100 products – US only)
- – Keyword Manager: keyword tracker (5,000 KWs – US only)
Kinetic – $166 per month
- – Kinetic: sponsored ad management
- – Product Discovery: product finder
- – Market Intelligence: product research & Chrome extension
- – Keyword Research: Amazon keyword research tool (US only)
- – Listing Builder: listing creation tool (US only)
- – Competitor Intelligence: a reverse ASIN tool with keyword tracking (250 products – US only)
- – Listing Analyzer: listing evaluation tool (100 products – US only)
- – Keyword Manager: keyword tracker (5,000 KWs – US only)
Jungle Scout Pricing
In 2020, Jungle Scout prices became pretty affordable, take a look at what they have to offer:
Basic – $39 per month or $469 billed annually
- – Product research essentials, like Product Database and Product Tracker
- – Access to Academy’s training materials
- – Single user license
- – Full access to the Chrome browser extension
Suite – $49 per month or $589 billed annually
- – Review Automation
- – Ability to add more users
- – Access to more in-depth historical product and keyword data
- – Unlimited searches with our powerful research tools
- – Advanced seller features
Professional – $84 per month or $999 billed annually
- – Track up to 1000 ASINs
- – 6 users included
- – 6 months of historical data in Product Tracker
- – 2 years of historical keyword data
- – Priority onboarding
Verdict
They’re both product research tools that are built for helping in product discovery, keyword research, competitor intelligence, and product tracking to build or expand your Amazon business. So, it comes down to what your business needs are.
Viral Launch has a more dynamic list of packages, if you want more features. This is better for more experienced sellers.
Jungle Scout, on the other hand, offers cheaper plans with all features you need to start a business.
Check out our latest product review: Helium 10 Vs Jungle Scout | Product Review, Pricing & Recommendations
The post Jungle Scout vs Viral Launch Product Review appeared first on AMZ Advisers.
Amazon Shipping, Changing Ecommerce Delivery in the UK
With the holiday season fast approaching, Amazon Shipping is here to provide UK sellers with a convenient solution to deliver their products at a lightning speed.
Brian Olsavsky, SVP, Chief Financial Officer at Amazon, said that Amazon’s capacity will be “tight” for the coming holidays and will continue to rely on their shipping partners such as UPS and the U.S. Postal Service to provide its large network the best during this time of the year.
However, in the United Kingdom, Amazon is taking a more steadfast approach by providing UK sellers with a solution to tackle the imminent setbacks that come with the shopping craze of the holiday season.
Read on to learn more about how Amazon is working to make this holiday season’s order fulfillment as smooth as possible.
What makes Amazon Shipping so appealing?
When it comes to freight and transportation, Amazon was able to manage it well.
For starters, Amazon Shipping is not a fulfillment service. It just makes delivery easy by offering the following:
- Parcels’s pick-up 7 days a week
- Shoppers can expect next-day deliveries for items sold outside the Amazon Marketplace
- Sellers can get quick reimbursements if their parcels get missing in the process
- No extra charges for residential or weekend delivery and peak fees
- You can cancel your subscription at any time
- Dedicated Shipper Support
- Easy sign-up
- Customized quotes
With this new shipping alternative, Amazon sellers will be able to deliver more packages in a short period of time and will keep other costs such as fuel consumption down.
What’s not so great about Amazon Shipping?
- There is a tier-limitation of 2-5 packages
- There are shipping restrictions for hazmat products (i.e, aerosoles and batteries) and others that may require age verification such as alcohol
- Amazon’s move into shipping its own packages and freight will be a big advantage, especially this holiday season when everyone is rushing and very eager to get their parcels on time.
- If you are an Amazon Seller in the UK, you might want to get a quote. Visit Amazon Shipping website for more information.
USPS Shipping Fee Hike
Amazon warned sellers about higher shipping costs during the holiday season, referring to the USPS temporary rate hike that took effect in October. Amazon issued the following announcement about the hike:
From October 18, 2020 to December 27, 2020, the U.S. Postal Service will be implementing a temporary commercial price increase. As a result, USPS rates on Buy Shipping will increase to coincide with this price increase. For information, please refer to the following announcement from the USPS.
Neither FedEx nor UPS are raising the general shipping rates, but they are changing some surcharges for the holiday season. This practice is not actually new; they started doing this 6 years ago after the 2013 holiday-shipping crisis.
Shipping & delivery options for Amazon Sellers outside the UK
The e-comm giant recently announced plans to open delivery stations near Atlanta, Colorado Springs, and Syracuse, N.Y.
And although Amazon, UPS, and the USPS (United States Postal Service) are dependent on each other, little by little Amazon is becoming more independent.
The Birth of Amazon Flex
2013 wasn’t an easy year for UPS. The company struggled to meet holiday shipping deadlines, making their reputation low when gifts didn’t arrive before Christmas.
After seeing what happened, Amazon launched Flex two years after.
Amazon Flex is an Uber-like service for package deliveries with contract drivers who are using their own cars to drop off orders at customers’ place.
They were also able to invite entrepreneurs to form small businesses to lease 20 to 40 gray vans with Amazon’s blue smile logo to expand further into delivery in metro markets.
This delivery service scattered to different locations across the globe. It now has 1,700 delivery-service partners in:
- United States
- Canada
- The United Kingdom
- Spain and
- Germany
Key by Amazon | In-Garage Delivery
Just in time for the holidays, Amazon has expanded its Key by Amazon In-Garage Delivery service to over 4,000 cities across the United States.
In-Garage Delivery service is now available to Prime members in selected cities such as Los Angeles, New York, Dallas, Houston, Chicago, Boston, Atlanta, Phoenix, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and thousands of surrounding areas. Members can check their zip code eligibility on the Key by Amazon webpage.
The delivery service rolled out at the perfect time. Consumers are turning to Amazon and other e-marketplaces for their holiday shopping needs.
Most of the consumers are still hesitant to visit a retail store due to health or safety concerns stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic.
It offers convenience, and a secure in-garage delivery service is an enticing draw to shoppers seeking to limit in-person interactions.
The initiative may drive more Prime members to shop on Amazon’s marketplace this holiday season and can increase membership subscriptions — especially since 81% of consumers said they are more likely to purchase a product with free shipping. Membership is not free, but shoppers are not charged for product delivery through Prime. Amazon sellers should make products in their catalog Prime-eligible by cyber week to maximize their sales.
Amazon Fresh
In addition to the expansion, Amazon launched a new in-garage delivery service for groceries.
Prime members can order groceries from Amazon Fresh or Whole Foods Market and have it delivered into their garage.
The Key by Amazon In-Garage Grocery Delivery service is currently available in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Dallas, and Chicago.
Final Thoughts
Shoppers can check this page throughout the season to get the latest on holiday shipping (including holiday shipping cut-off dates), delivery, pickup, returns information, and more.
The post Amazon Shipping, Changing Ecommerce Delivery in the UK appeared first on AMZ Advisers.
Amazon Pharmacy: A Threat for Brick-and-Mortar Drugstores?
November 17th was the launch of Amazon’s new service, Amazon Pharmacy. This serviced made it possible for customers to order their prescription medication online using desktop or mobile via the Amazon app.
As an alternative to filling out their prescription face-to-face at a pharmacy or drug store, customers can receive their medication in the comfort of their homes.
Amazon honors most insurance plans and also offers discounts on medicines for some customers without insurance.
Also, they get a self-service help section and the option of speaking with a pharmacist available 24/7.
Currently, Amazon Pharmacy is available in 45 states, not including Hawaii, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Minnesota.
Amazon Pharmacy and Prime
Members of Amazon Prime can experience more perks and benefits compared with regular shoppers. This includes free two-day shipping compared to the free five-day shipping of non-Prime members.
Prime members can avail the prescription savings benefit, offering discounts of up to 80% off generic medication and 40% off branded meds when paying without insurance.
These deals are available online and in over 50,000 participating pharmacies all over the United States. Prime members can access their prescription savings at checkout on Amazon Pharmacy. For more information, visit Amazon Pharmacy website.
“We understand the importance of access to affordable medication, and we believe Prime members will find tremendous value with the new Amazon Prime prescription savings benefit,” said Jamil Ghani, Vice President, Amazon Prime.
“Our goal is for Prime to make members’ lives easier and more convenient every day, and we’re excited to extend the incredible savings, seamless shopping experience, and fast, free delivery members know and love with Prime to Amazon Pharmacy.”
The Amazon Prime prescription savings benefit paired with Amazon Pharmacy provide one place for customers to easily check and compare prices and buy medications to be delivered straight to their doorstep.
Amazon Pushes Further into Healthcare | Pill Pack
Amazon has ventured into healthcare before with their acquiring of PillPack in 2018. Pillpack is a delivery startup that ships medications on a 30-day schedule. This pharmacy offers a full range of services such as sorting and packaging medication for customers.
They require only a list of the medications, doctor information, applicable insurance details, and a method of payment.
PillPack’s infrastructure helped build Amazon Pharmacy, which includes its pharmacy software, fulfillment centers, and relationships with healthcare providers. PillPack is still operating as a separate service for customers who have chronic health conditions.
TJ Parker, PillPack’s co-founder, and now Vice President of Amazon Pharmacy said:
“We designed Amazon Pharmacy to put customers first – bringing Amazon’s customer obsession to an industry that can be inconvenient and confusing.
We work hard behind the scenes to handle complications seamlessly so anyone who needs a prescription can understand their options, place their order for the lowest available price, and have their medication delivered quickly.”
Amazon Pharmacy Threatens Physical Stores
Brick-and-mortar pharmacies like CVS, Walgreens, and Rite Aid, were not ready to compete with solid online stores like Amazon.
Which is why they’re now offering prescription delivery services.
Valued at over $300 billion in the United States, the pharmaceutical industry is extremely competitive.
In light of the current situation, shoppers are trying to avoid big crowds. Therefore, Amazon Pharmacy came at the right time.
This method of purchasing and receiving prescription medication through mail may be “the new normal” throughout the pandemic and even moving forward.
Doug Herrington, Senior Vice President of North American Consumer at Amazon stated the following:
“As more and more people look to complete everyday errands from home, pharmacy is an important and needed addition to the Amazon online store… which will help more customers save time, save money, simplify their lives, and feel healthier.”
How Amazon Pharmacy Works
The pharmacy service is available to customers who are over 18 years of age.
Most forms of insurance are accepted by Amazon and have money-saving offers for people without insurance.
Flexible spending accounts or health savings accounts are suitable ofr customers to purchase their prescriptions on the service.
When customers order medication for the first time, the site might first ask them questions like:
- Whether they’re pregnant
- What’s their date of birth, and
- Their gender assigned at birth
The law requires that information for companies to provide pharmacy care, and pharmacists can also confirm prescriptions this way.
Patients can request their doctors to send their prescriptions directly to Amazon Pharmacy, or they can ask to be transferred from an existing retailer.
Amazon claims to have tools to verify if each prescription ordered is legitimately from the physician.
This can clamp down on any possible fraud.
Deliveries of prescriptions can be tracked by customers the same as with any other order from Amazon.
What’s in Store
The offered medicines include a variety of generic and branded drugs. Customers can purchase birth control and commonly prescribed drugs like insulin, triamcinolone steroid creams, metformin, and sumatriptan. Amazon Pharmacy will not deliver Schedule II controlled medications, however, which includes most opioids They also will not be selling vitamins and supplements, and thus, will not be a replacement for the Health & Personal Care store.
Amazon will also check for possible problematic drug interactions for those who are taking several medications at the same time.
According to Parker, the storing and collecting of customer health information conforms with federal HIPAA rules, and unless given permission, the company will not disclose pharmacy data with advertisers or marketers.
Final Thoughts
Amazon Pharmacy launched at the best time possible since people are social distancing.
The immune compromised most especially can greatly benefit from ordering prescription medications online rather than in-store. Amazon Pharmacy also provides the option to speak with a pharmacist 24/7 for customers who have questions about their prescriptions.
The pharmaceutical industry is very competitive, but Amazon Pharmacy offers an e-commerce approach plus discounts for Prime members that helps people fill their prescriptions more easily. This initiative could be the beginning of a new trend in the fulfillment of medication.
The post Amazon Pharmacy: A Threat for Brick-and-Mortar Drugstores? appeared first on AMZ Advisers.
Sponsored Products vs Sponsored Brands: Which one do you need?
If you’re selling on Amazon, you need the right strategy to increase your revenue through the use of ads. Investing in ads will give you the edge and will make you stand out especially if your product is ranking and selling well on Amazon. This is why you need to know the difference between Sponsored Products vs Sponsored Brands.
With ad revenue higher than ever since the increase in demand for eCommerce all over the world, it’s a no-brainer, and yes, a good investment indeed!
Let’s have a glimpse of what we need to know about this topic.
Sponsored Products vs Sponsored Brands
Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and the new Sponsored Display Ads provide plenty of opportunities to sellers to put their product in the limelight and in front of the right audience. But are all ad formats created equally? Most sellers and vendors in Amazon say it is not.
Sponsored Brands is always on the top spot on the search results page. More brand exposure is at stake as it gives the opportunity to send shoppers directly to your custom build brand store.
With so much potential because of the wide exposure, this format continues to be under-utilized. Why? Sellers and vendors who are using Sponsored Brands only derive 11% of their ad revenue from this format. To further explain why let’s take a look and dive a little deeper into the data
Sponsored Brands ads consist of three different formats, namely Product Collection, Store Spotlight, and Video. In this blog, we will be focusing on the most common format. We will be comparing Sponsored Products to Sponsored Brands Product Collection ads only.
The analysis is based on the performance data of anonymized Sponsored Products & Sponsored Brands from close to 1,000 US advertiser profiles. It does not tie into any official performance statement from Amazon Advertising.
Why Use Sponsored Ads
If you want to grow your brand awareness and yearning to build your marketing power then you should certainly start to utilize Amazon sponsored ads effectively.
Amazon advertising has experienced remarkable growth in 2019. Its market share has jumped up, occupying 50% of the total share in the e-commerce industry. This only shows that the Amazon sponsored product ads and brand ads are the most powerful advertising tools for brands to increase their discoverability and drive more sales.
With recent changes in the sponsored ads, Amazon’s footprint in the digital world is picking up. Presently, Amazon offers three different types of advertising solutions.
- Amazon Sponsored Products
- Amazon Sponsored Brands (formerly called Headline Search Ads)
- Amazon Sponsored Display
It has become extremely crucial for sellers to outsmart their competitors using paid advertising campaigns mainly because the competition is becoming tighter. As more and more sellers start their business on Amazon it is best to use strategies that will make you rise above them all.
This article will allow you to see an in-depth analysis of how Amazon Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands work, as well as all the things you need to know to get started with sponsored ads.
About Amazon Sponsored Ads
Sponsored ads are pay-per-click (PPC) ads that run on keywords and ASINs. They allow you to drive traffic to different sections like product listings, or search results within the Amazon platform.
Sponsored ads in Amazon plays a vital role in the ad strategies of sellers and marketers. The demand and value are significantly rising as the years go by. This increase in value has pushed the CPC rates to be higher. As the rates increase, so as the value of sponsored ads.
More than ever, brands are investing and paying more money for their sponsored ads as it drives them closer to a lot of potential buyers around the globe.
During the seasonal sales, the CPC tends to be higher but the conversion rates are also on the higher side. This increased the importance of sponsored ads especially during seasonal sales like Cyber Monday and Black Friday where buyers are actively seeking what to buy.
Amazon Sponsored Products
Amazon Sponsored Products are PPC ads that will help you drive traffic to your product listings on Amazon. Also, with Amazon Sponsored Products you can achieve a set of goals and will enable you to measure your performance too.
Amazon Sponsored Brands
With Sponsored brand ads, you pay only when someone clicks on your ad. Note that these ads carry higher CPC (cost per click) than sponsored product ads as they have higher prominence than the latter.
Amazon determines where the ads will appear and it depends on the bid amount.
2020 Sponsored Products vs Sponsored Brands Updates
Sponsored Product Ads Updates
Auto-targeting Campaigns – Negative keywords
Negative keywords were available earlier within manual campaigns. At present, this feature is available for auto-targeting campaigns. You can set the keywords at the campaign level. With the new change, Amazon sellers all over will be able to make use of auto-targeting campaigns much even better.
Ad Group changes for Vendors
Amazon is trying to merge ad platforms for both sellers and vendors. Before, this ad group segmentation was only available for sellers but now, vendors can get overall control and group products across different categories.
Sponsored Brand Ads Updates
Taller Mobile Carousel
Since the majority of people are using their mobile phones frequently, Sponsored brand ads changed the way they appear on the mobile platform. The ads are bigger and are available in the mobile carousel format. This format is also a bit similar to the format available on the Facebook platform.
Suggested Bids
In sponsored brand ads, suggested bids will give an understanding of the visibility of the keywords that have at least one click and how they performed. The suggested bids will help you to identify the keywords that go well with the buyer search criteria.
Amazon Store Spotlight
Amazon storefronts stand as a mini-version of your websites. Thus, the need to create brand stores is of utmost importance.
Amazon store spotlight is a new ad format that creatively highlights a brand’s store. This will enable you to drive more traffic to your brand’s store and its subpages. It’s up to you to decide which pages or categories you want to drive more traffic.
Performance of Sponsored Brands vs Sponsored Products
According to Sellics, the median click-through-rate for Sponsored Products is 0.42%, and Sponsored Brands 0.38% – this means that when looking at average-performing ads from a perspective of a click-through-rate, Sponsored Brands perform inferior – with an 11% lower click-through-rate.
The worst-performing Sponsored Brands ads have a click-through-rate which is 33% lower than Sponsored Products.
However, looking at the top 20% performers, the click-through-rate is 11% higher in favor of Sponsored Brands. This simply means the best performers perform better. In other words, as far as click-through-rates is concern the margin for error is greater with Sponsored Brands –.
As you can notice, most shoppers generally don’t like to click on “ads”. They don’t pay much attention to it. Also, Sponsored Brands are less covert than Sponsored Products. They look much more like traditional ads.
It is very important to remember that as a brand, you have to make an especially compelling offer to earn the click. It is like showcasing a fascinating brand store with a Store Spotlight Ad or displaying off a related best-selling product in a Product Collection ad. Good thing is that the format provides the resources to do so. Sponsored Brands have the potential to outperform Sponsored Products clicks-wise when done right.
Conversion for Sponsored Brands vs Sponsored Products
The median conversion rate for Sponsored Products is 13% higher than Sponsored Brands’. This gap is relatively consistent across different performance levels and this is no longer a surprise to the people behind this industry.
While conversion rate is important, it might also not be the best metric or benchmark for measuring the performance of Sponsored Brands’. Sponsored Brands ads are much more likely to have upper-funnel goals, such as creating brand awareness.
The brand awareness campaign is more likely to be a KPI (Key Performance Indicator) In fact, Amazon suggests that using Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands together increases overall conversion rate by 50% and ROAS by 24% based on their research.
This only means that the lower conversion rate doesn’t necessarily mean the ad’s not “working”.
On the other hand, in the marketing funnel, you should always consider the possible difference in buyers’ intent. Say, for example, a shopper already knows what they want and are ready to buy, they just click on a Sponsored Product Ad, while clicking on a store or a banner-shaped ad could be a sign that the shopper is browsing and looking after some products or we could say that they are on the earlier stage of the purchasing journey.
CPC on Sponsored Brands vs Sponsored Products
The median cost-per-click is the same for both ad types at $0.64. The more significant variance will be by product category.
It is also important to note that for most other performance levels, including the top and bottom 20%, CPC is a bit lower for Sponsored Brands – between four and eight percent lower.
This is likely due to reduced competition. A lower adoption rate of the format means fewer bidders, fewer bids, and ultimately a lower price at auction.
Basically, a lower CPC spells huge potential to sellers in Amazon.
Sponsored Brands vs Sponsored Products: ACoS
Comparing ACoS between the best-performers and worst-performers gives a mixed result. This is because ACoS depends on a range of different KPIs – mainly Cost Per Click (CPC), conversion rate, and Average Selling Price (ASP).
While conversion rates tend to be lower for Sponsored Brands, they also tend to have a lower CPC. The unique combination of these KPIs in a particular segment determines the ACoS. E.g. for the best-performers, Sponsored Brands have a 12% lower ACoS.
Get the Most out of Amazon Sponsored Products
The increase in CPC has become a new trend in 2019 and continuously trending in 2020. As an Amazon seller, you can take advantage of Sponsored product ads by setting specific goals, such as:
Increase visibility – with Sponsored product ads, you can position your ads on the top of search results. This means increasing your visibility significantly. If you use the right keywords to target these ad placements, you can convert more potential buyers and generate more sales.
Pay only for clicks – You only pay when your ads are clicked. This will save you from paying hefty amounts when your ads aren’t clicked.
Also, you can use sponsored products as part of brand awareness.
Optimize your Sponsored Products Campaign
Your default bid is how much you are willing to spend on the PPC campaign.
Always bear in mind that the PPC strategy should align with the goals you set. Setting a higher bid to beat out other bidders for first page placement is not always the right strategy. Try to start low and adjust the bid amount to reach an optimal level.
Get the Most out of Amazon Sponsored Brands
Try considering sponsored brand campaigns as part of your ‘top of funnel’ marketing process. Build brand awareness and target new buyers to improve your product discovery through the use of these campaigns.
You might ask how?
Determine how much you want to spend on the campaign, your goals, what products you want to advertise, and the keywords you want to target is the first thing you should have in mind. Sponsored brand ads are usually structured with specific keywords to make them work better.
Final Thoughts
Some key metrics such as click-through-rate and conversion rate suggest that Sponsored Brands are worse performers. But the truth is for some product categories, Sponsored Brands perform even better than Sponsored Products.
Sponsored Brands tend to perform better than Sponsored Products in terms of ACoS in categories where CPCs are lower and conversion rates are higher for Sponsored Brands.
- Electronics (-42% ACoS)
- Toys & Games (-35% ACoS)
- Clothing (-32% ACoS)
- Automotive (-14% ACoS)
- Cell Phones & Accessories (-11% ACoS)
If you will look at the top categories most of them (4 of 5) have lower CPCs in Sponsored Brands than in Sponsored Products: This connotes a window of opportunity where advertisers can benefit from less competition.
You can also notice that there is also a higher conversion rate for Sponsored Brands in 3 of the 5 best performers. The reason is maybe because shoppers are more focused on brands in these categories and they value or respond positively to a branded shopping experience provided by Sponsored Brands Ads and brand stores.
However, running successful Sponsored Brands campaigns is certainly not limited to the categories identified above.
Sponsored brand ads generally have the goal of bringing out brand awareness and consideration. They are designed to prepare purchases that happen at a later stage – despite those conversions not being attributed directly to the Sponsored Brands ad.
As mentioned, research by Amazon suggests that using Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands together increases overall conversion rate by 50% and ROAS by 24%.
It is good to remember that in addition to the bare metrics and ad profit mentioned above, Sponsored Brands ads have the potential to serve upper-funnel goals and that moving your ad strategy gradually up the funnel and this is one sure way to secure long term success on Amazon.
Believing that Sponsored Brands plays second fiddle to Sponsored Products means a missed opportunity. Understanding their potential, it’s more useful to think of both formats as partners.
It’s only a matter of time before more sellers and vendors catch on and go with the flow. Now’s your chance to hit the ground running and discover endless possibilities through the use of these ads in your Amazon business.
The post Sponsored Products vs Sponsored Brands: Which one do you need? appeared first on AMZ Advisers.
How Is The FBA Sell-Through Rate Calculated? What Sellers Should Know
Amazon’s Inventory Performance Index (IPI) is a score that determines how good sellers are managing their inventory. There are several factors affecting your IPI score and one of these is the FBA sell-through rate.
Amazon sellers are at risk of higher fees and storage limitations if they overlook their sell-through rate. To address this kind of issue there are a number of steps to take to increase or maintain your IPI score at an optimal level. This will also help make your Amazon fees lower.
In this post, we’ll learn more about what an IPI score is, how your FBA sell-through rate factors in, and how you can improve it to boost sales.
FBA Sell-Through Rate Defined
The FBA sell-through rate is calculated as units sold over time as compared to initial inventory. It is the number of units sold and shipped over the past 90 days divided by the average number of units stored at the fulfillment centers during that time period.
To further boost your IPI score, you need to work on improving your FBA sell-through rate through constant monitoring of your stock.
To monitor and view your weekly sell-through rate, click on the ‘View inventory in stock’ link in the ‘SKUs to restock today’ section right next to the IPI progress bar in the dashboard. The report will also show you an estimate of how many more days worth of stock you have.
Preparing Inventory for the Q4 Holiday Shopping Season
As the holiday shopping season approaches, and also in preparation for the second wave of COVID-19, Amazon fulfillment centers are getting ready to accommodate the demands of consumers.
In an effort to maintain their name in the industry, Amazon has hired more than 175,000 employees and also invested billions of dollars in COVID-related initiatives to continuously meet the increasing demands of the customers and protect their employees as well.
There are capacity restraints in fulfillment centers. Therefore, Amazon will hold from third-party sellers.
And due to the pandemic, Amazon sellers will face a series of setbacks. Given this situation, sellers have to work smarter and think of ways to improve their inventory management skills.
Therefore, you should evaluate your fulfillment capabilities in preparation for holiday shopping in 2020 and throughout the next year. Moving forward, a diversified fulfillment strategy of FBA and FBM is the key factor in reducing the risk in Q4 and in the coming year.
Amazon has also begun displaying Seller business names and addresses. This step clearly shows that the retail giant will continue to put measures in place to minimize the risk from third-party sellers.
This is of great help for customers to learn more about the business of the seller and the products that they are selling. Such measures can include more Seller information in the Buy Box or storefront.
Keep in mind that your suspension guidelines will come into force in response to Negative Customer Experience (“NCX”).
FBA Sell-Through Rate: What is Amazon’s Inventory Performance Index (IPI)?
Good inventory management helps you know exactly how much inventory you need to have on-hand. It helps in reducing costs, expanding profitability, and improving business growth for FBA sellers. A mastery of this will help you get through the challenges and will boost your IPI score.
According to Amazon, the Inventory Performance Index 2.1k (IPI) measures inventory management over time including how well you balance inventory levels and sales for a good FBA sell-through rate.
To do this, you need to monitor your Inventory Performance Dashboard regularly and keep a close eye on influencing factors to make sure that you are maximizing your allotted storage space, which will also reduce your costs.
Limiting inventory at the ASIN level is a new strategy of Amazon’s. Established in March of this year, it continues as a way to help manage inventory during the fourth quarter and beyond.
All ASINs that are affected will be tagged ‘Limited restock’ and show the maximum inventory limits under the “Days of Supply” column. Sellers need to keep within these limits and plan FBA shipments accordingly to manage their FBA sell-through rate and overall IPI score.
How to Measure IPI
Tracking and monitoring your inventory will help maximize your profitability.
As much as possible, refrain from carrying too much stock. This decreases your profitability due to storage fees and holding costs.
Your FBA sell-through rate is calculated by taking your units sold and shipped over the past 90 days and dividing that number by the average number of units available at fulfillment centers during that time period. This FBA sell-through rate will help you to assess your inventory performance.
Here are a few tips on how you can improve your FBA sell-through rate:
- Create and adjust your advertising strategy
- Create Sales / Markdowns
- Audit your product detail pages
- Remove some of your inventory (e.g. slow-moving inventory)
Your stranded inventory percentage is the amount of inventory that is not available for purchase due to a listing problem that resulted in inventory without an active offer. To address this kind of concern, Amazon provides the “Fix listing” option to help lower this percentage. The exact reason why your inventory has been stranded is stated in detail and provides you with the steps on how to resolve the issue.
Another way to measure your IPI is through FBA in-stock rate. This is the percentage of time your replenishable FBA ASINs have been in stock during the previous 30 days. You may miss an opportunity to increase your IPI when you run out of stock of your best selling or popular items. When an ASIN is out of stock, you should flag that ASIN as non-replenishable in the Restock tool so it doesn’t affect your score.
Boost Your IPI Score
If your IPI score is 350 or under, it’s time for you to plan and execute what is needed. Here’s how to give it a much-needed boost:
1. Increase your FBA sell-through rate
Your FBA sell-through rate refers to the number of products you sell in relation to how much stock you have on hand.
Work smart on increasing your FBA sell-through rate to make it as high as possible. Amazon wants each seller to have a high FBA sell-through rate because it means more stock is leaving their warehouses faster.
Ideal sell-through rates depend on a number of factors, including your industry and the types of products you sell. Consider the following to help increase your sell-through rate:
- Bundling products – increasing the number of products sold with each transaction
- Discounting items – enticing customers with product markdowns
- Removing inventory – moving stock from FBA warehouses if it’s not needed
- Reducing reorders for less popular products – making sure what’s in stock is likely to sell
2. Avoid overstocking
Overstock refers to an excessive supply of a product. It means keeping more items in stock than is needed to meet demand. In most cases, overstocking comes down to poor inventory management practices that lead to excessive stock and poor ratings.
Here’s a formula to calculate the exact cost of overstocking products:
Cost of inventory on hand x excess inventory = annual overstock waste expense
Preventing overstocking is all about meeting (not exceeding) demand. With that in mind, overstocking can be avoided by:
- Forecasting demand – carefully plan for the future accurately. This will give you an idea of how much stock you’ll need at any given time.
- Pricing strategically – come up with a strategic plan for the correct pricing of goods. If the price is right the chances of selling more are high. Regular movement of stock from the warehouse will help avoid overstock.
- Automating reorders – adopt a trusted inventory management system that will make it easier for you to know when to place orders by automatically calculating your reorder point
3. Improve your in-stock rate for your best selling or popular items.
While you want to avoid overstocking, it’s also important to keep popular items in stock to avoid missed sales opportunities. It helps in improving your FBA sell-through rate over time.
Optimize your in-stock rate for popular products by:
- Utilizing key sales reports generated by an inventory management system to let you see the best selling products at different times of the year, and make sure those products are stocked when they need to be.
- Doing an ABC inventory analysis to categorize products and focus on keeping ‘A’ products in stock at all times. Find out more about how to do an ABC analysis of products here.
4. Fix stranded inventory
Stranded inventory refers to stock being held at an Amazon fulfillment center that isn’t associated with an active Amazon listing. The reasons why inventory becomes stranded include listings for products that were not created or have errors, resulting in inventory that is accumulating storage fees but can’t be sold.
Amazon penalizes sellers for stranded inventory because it costs the company to hold stock that will potentially never be sold.
It also entails costs on your part to store that inventory at Amazon warehouses, so it’s in your best interest to fix stranded inventory as soon as possible.
To fix your stranded inventory, access the Fix Stranded Inventory page from the Manage Inventory tab to remove or manually edit and relist your items.
Final Thoughts
Sellers must always be mindful of their IPI scores.
They should be extra careful especially mid-month of every quarter (February, May, August, and November).
If you receive a storage limit notice mid-quarter, work your way up and make sure your IPI score is back on track by the end of that respective quarter.
Note that not all third-party sellers will be subject to these restrictions. They only apply to FBA sellers on Amazon.com and there will be exceptions because IPI is still a work in progress.
It’s also important to note that there is some lee-way for seasonal sellers, subject to negotiation, and Amazon is prepared to consider special circumstances. Make sure you reach out to Amazon if you think you qualify.
Keep growing and improving your IPI score. Learn the ropes and master the process to enter a world of endless opportunities.
The post How Is The FBA Sell-Through Rate Calculated? What Sellers Should Know appeared first on AMZ Advisers.
Helium 10 vs Jungle Scout | Product Review, Pricing & Recommendations
When it comes down to building an Amazon business from scratch or growing your existing Amazon business., there are a few suites out there that can help you keep track of your inventory, find niche products to sell, or just manage your everyday transactions. Two of them are Helium 10 and Jungle Scout.
These two powerful suites provide a set of tools with different functions to ultimately drive more sales.
Find out which software fits your business needs in the best way.
What is Helium 10
Helium 10 is an amazing software designed to help Amazon FBA sellers. It is made up of several features that can find high ranking keywords, identify trends, spy on competitors, and even optimize product listings.
Basically, it has everything you need to kickstart an Amazon business, expand it, and make more sales.
Most Popular Helium 10 Features
Helium 10’s Chrome Extension can collect and show you data like net profit, average sales, average rating or average price. In the Chrome extension you’ll find Helium 10 XRay, which includes these functions:
- Profitability Calculator: Calculate your profit and find out if your selling a product is worth it or not.
- Inventory Levels: Analyze your competitor’s stock level to calculate your own inventory.
- Review Downloader: Analyze all negative reviews from your competitors and avoid getting bad reviews yourself.
Helium 10 Magnet
Helium Magnet is the largest Amazon keywords database out there and the most reliable one.
Sellers can easily find high volume keywords that are relevant to their listing. Its broad recommendations will throw keywords you wouldn’t even consider otherwise.
Helium 10 Cerebro
Helium Cerebro works as a reverse ASIN keyword research tool. It gives you access to relevant information, like search volume and the quantity of contending items.
You can find the best keywords to target if you use Helium 10 Magnet and Helium 10 Cerebro combined. That is one of the best ways to drive traffic and sales by putting specific keywords in the product title or targeting keyword search terms for your PPC Ads.
What is Jungle Scout?
Jungle Scout is a set of tools that was created to help you easily find profitable products on Amazon. Jungle Scout is beneficial for sellers who are looking to import products, add private labels, and resell.
The takes important information like the number of reviews or best seller rank, to calculate the right number of estimated sales.
Most popular Jungle Scout Features
The Jungle Scout Opportunity Finder tool can help you discover emerging trends and profitable product niches.
Either if you’re a seller looking for their first product to sell on Amazon or if you’re a seller building a business around unique products, you can use the Opportunity Finder to find the most accurate keywords. You can set search parameters like product category, competition, LQS and opportunity score.
Jungle Scout Chrome Extension
Jungle Find and validate Amazon FBA product opportunities directly from Amazon. The Chrome extension works as a bridge between Amazon and Jungle Scout that is built directly into your browser.
You’ll be able to see opportunity scores, price, reviews, daily sales, sales history, and more, that will help make better decisions for your product ideas.
Jungle Scout Sales Estimator
Jungle Scout’s Amazon Sales Estimator is a free tool that allows you to check average monthly sales of specific Amazon categories. You can also have better product launches and it is a simple way to keep a close look on your competitors.
Jungle Scout Product Tracker
Jungle Scout Product Tracker allows you to analyze and track a product to get accurate sales data.
You can see how certain products perform over a specific time frame so you can detect the most profitable ones. You can also access information such as average price, daily units sold, average daily revenue, etc.
Advantages of Helium 10 over Jungle Scout
- Sales Dashboard – Keep track of your product performance. Jungle Scout still doesn’t have a similar feature.
- Competitor Keyword Spy – Find out your competitors’ ranking both via PPC campaigns and organically.
- Refund Genie –Identify Amazon’s mistakes when a refund takes place. As a seller, the refund genie can assist you in requesting your money back.
- Alerts – Immediately find out when someone hijacks your item, your product title changes, or images get altered.
Advantages of Jungle Scout over Helium 10
- Supplier Database – Sellers can find and verify suppliers. Discover who is supplying what, how frequently, and the volumes supplied. The feature allows you to search by product, company, or supplier. You can even see how much your competitors are paying for their items.
- Giveaway Platform – This feature helps you facilitate giveaways or other launch strategies to guarantee the success of your product.
Jungle Scout Pros and Cons
Pros | Cons |
Easy to use Acces to supplier’s database Affordable |
The tool set is not as complete as Helium 10 No mobile app |
Helium 10 Pros and Cons
Pros | Cons |
All-in-one of every tool you need to grow or kickstart a business. Amazon training Workshops |
It can be expensive You need a learning curve to use it to its full potential. |
Pricing
Helium 10 does provide the option of a free plan with the Helium 10 Chrome Extension. You can perform 1000 search queries without paying anything.
If you already have an idea of the exact tools for your business, you can choose to pay only for the tools you really need with Helium 10’s “A La Carte Plan.” This plan can range from $17 to $97, depending on the features.
Otherwise, here are other options:
- Platinum Plan: $97 per month
- Diamond Plan: $197 per month
- Elite Plan: $397 per month
If you decide to pay annualy, you sabe some money:
- PLATINUM PLAN: $970 per year
- Diamond Plan: $1970 per year
- Elite Plan: $4764 per year
Jungle Scout has two versions, the Web App or the Chrome Extension, which have different prices.
Here’s Jungle Scout pricing:
- Jungle Scout (WebApp only): $49 per month
- Jungle Scout & Extension: $69 per month
- Extension: $39 per month
Or, you can get a discount when paying annually:
- Jungle Scout (WebApp only): $39 per month
- Jungle Scout & Extension: $49 per month
- Extension: $19 per month
Helium 10 and Jungle Scout: Which one is better?
Both are amazing software suites with their own pros and cons. Jungle Scout is a great tool with on itself, although Helium 10 is much more comprehensive. Jungle Scout is intuitive and simple, while Helium 10 requires some training.
So it all comes down to your business strategy and how much insights you need to start or grow your business. Helium 10 can help sellers who want to build an Amazon business from scratch and grow it in the long run. The main advantage of Jungle Scout is that it’s much cheaper and might be exactly what you have been looking for.
The post Helium 10 vs Jungle Scout | Product Review, Pricing & Recommendations appeared first on AMZ Advisers.
Amazon Manufacturer Part Number: What Is It For?
Amazon uses the manufacturer part number (MPN) as one way to uniquely identify specific products. Aside from MPN, Amazon also uses other unique identifiers such as UPC, EAN, and GTIN. Let’s have an overview of what this MPN is all about and its significant uses.
What Is a Manufacturer Part Number (MPN)?
A Manufacturer Part Number or MPN is a unique code issued by the manufacturer to identify individual parts or products. It normally comes in a series of numbers and letters. MPN helps distinguish it from its counterfeit parts. This also assures the buyer that the parts or products they are buying are legitimate and 100% genuine.
Amazon provides an optional field for the MPN in the listing inventory as does not apply to all merchandise. It is often used for automotive/Powersports and consumer electronics
Some sellers use other product codes applicable for certain products. For instance, a jacket has an SKU instead of an MPN, and a book has an ISBN. Some also use a UPC as a product identifier. You may get confused hearing these terms simultaneously, so let us tackle the differences for your reference.
SKU (Stock Keeping Unit) – is a series of numbers used in tracking inventory or stocks.
ISBN (International Standard Book Number) – A product code used by publishers, booksellers for stock control purposes.
UPC (Universal Product Code) – this is a common barcode seen on physical products that is used for tracking retail items.
How the Manufacturer Part Number (MPN) can Dramatically Improve Your Amazon Sales
This unique identifier is also used in Amazon’s internal and external searches, so it is highly encouraged to provide an MPN for greater product visibility. Aside from this, having the manufacturer’s part number will help the buyer get the right item and may help increase conversions.
Image: Source Approach
In today’s digital world, shopping has never been so easy, and the internet made this all possible. Connecting to your buyers and suppliers from all over the world is now within reach. If you are looking for a specific part, you can go straight to the manufacturer and purchase from there. While this may sound good, some manufacturers are often hesitant to sell parts directly to the consumer:
- The chances of parts return is high when the wrong part is ordered
- Difficulty finding the exact or appropriate part that the buyer needs, resulting in poor user experience
- Buyers are afraid to order the wrong part thus, reducing potential conversion to sellers
As a seller, you can use this to your advantage to increase Amazon sales.
Conversions
If you’re a seller who can provide a Manufacturer Part Number and include these details in your listing, then you’ll have an edge and you will find yourself with a unique and profitable opportunity. If they are looking for a specific MPN and find it, most likely they will buy the part on the spot. A higher chance of conversion is at stake. Also, these buyers are less likely to return unwanted items and are likely to come back in the future.
SEO and Discoverability
Buyers use search engines when looking for a certain part. To increase your discoverability in the digital space, having MPN is of big help. This field is indexed by both Google and Amazon’s A9 search algorithms. If you have it, there is a big chance you will be picked by both search engines and displayed in the results. This increases your chances of being seen by many more customers, and eventually generating more sales.
Fewer Returns
If you are a seller, you must aim for a lower return rate or better yet, no return at all for better ranking and ratings. When you sell the right and exact part or product to a buyer there is no chance of having it returned. You’ll be surprised by the amount of time and effort saved because of fewer returns.
Product Reviews
You will likely get good reviews from your buyer if you meet their expectations such as providing the exact part that they need, its functionality, and all. As sellers, we must be on top of the game and meet customers’ highly specific demands. Buyers will surely be delighted when they find a seller who can deliver. Then, they are more likely to leave positive product reviews.
Repeat Customers
If you can attain the above-mentioned advantages, there is a higher chance of getting repeat customers. They will not look for somebody else online because they already know where to go and get the exact items they want. You can build trust and they will keep coming back to you. This is one beauty of having an MPN on your listing.
Final Thoughts
To cap it off, a Manufacturer Part Number (MPN) is a unique code used to more easily identify parts. It helps unlock better opportunities for many Amazon sellers to boost their discoverability as well as improve their conversion rates.
Put yourself in the shoes of the buyer or customer. If you are looking for a specific part with an MPN provided, chances are, you are getting the correct item. Time and effort spent is saved because it eliminates the guesswork that may eventually lead to a poor customer experience.
An MPN can dramatically improve your Amazon sales, so take the chance to go beyond by putting an MPN in the optional field on your listing, and perhaps also in the title or on product photos and see the difference for yourself.
The post Amazon Manufacturer Part Number: What Is It For? appeared first on AMZ Advisers.