If you’re a business owner, transitioning your business to be exclusively on Amazon can be a daunting choice. The good news is that there are lots of resources like FBA loans and marketing resources available to help you. Here are a few reasons why it can be beneficial to your business and tips for how you can get started.
Why Is an Online Business Better Than Brick and Mortar?
Selling things online rather than in a brick-and-mortar store can save you a lot of money, time, and resources. It also allows you to expand your business to include customers that live outside your geographical area. You’ll also have an advantage over other businesses in your market that don’t have a presence online.
Recent consumer trends have also shown that people prefer shopping online. With the growing demand, moving your business online can be very profitable. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated this growth. In 2021 alone, e-commerce share grew from 17% to 20%. That’s three years’ worth of typical growth in just one! While that growth tapered off a little bit in 2021, online sales still grew by 14.2% in 2021. Of those sales, about 43% of those came from Amazon.
How to Sell Things on Amazon Successfully
With Amazon holding so much of the market share in online sales, it’s a great place for brick and mortar merchants to start selling their goods. To be successful in doing so, there are a few things you as a merchant need to do.
Secure funding to help your business grow
Growing your business on Amazon takes money to do things like marketing and paying for online ads, shipping, and Amazon’s fulfillment fees. Without working capital, it’s hard to expand your business very much.
Advertise your products
To get people to find your products on Amazon, you need to invest in good advertising and marketing. This includes optimizing your listings for search engine optimization (SEO). Research the keywords that you want to rank for and optimize your listings for those keywords.
You can also buy sponsored product ads from Amazon. When you pay for these ads, your listings are guaranteed to show up near the top of a user’s search for your desired keywords. As you do this, also analyze what your competitors are doing. If they’re ranking ahead of you, see what they’re doing and do the same things. Analyze the text in their listings for which keywords they are using and at what prices they’re selling things. Then use this information to update your listings so you can stay competitive. If you have the proper funding, you can hire a marketing assistant to do these things for you.
Set competitive prices
When transitioning your business to be on Amazon, you not only have to stay competitive with other brick-and-mortar businesses in your sphere but also other merchants who sell on Amazon and other places online. After analyzing other merchants’ prices, list your products at rates that are still competitive but that won’t lose you too much money. It helps to have a properly organized record of all your business finances. Many bookkeeping services similar to Seller Accountant work specifically with e-commerce sellers, helping them analyze and optimize their finances. When you have an optimized budget, you’ll be able to go even lower than your competitors. But if your price is still on the high end, you could always add some perks like free shipping to entice buyers.
Provide fast shipping
If your shipping isn’t fast or free, you’re not as likely to get someone to click on your listing. Many people coming to shop on Amazon will be more drawn to merchants who can fulfill their order and get it to them in just a few days. While this can be a pain to do on your own, paying for someone else to take care of fulfillment can make it a lot easier.
Use Amazon’s FBA (Fulfilled By Amazon) services
Having your orders fulfilled by Amazon can help you achieve many of the previous things on this list. This means that you can store your products in an Amazon warehouse and the workers will pack and ship things for you. With all the packaging requirements that Amazon has, having someone else fulfill the orders can free up a lot of your time to take care of other important aspects of your business.
Amazon provides the “Fulfilled by Amazon” perks with just a few extra fees. These include:
- Free shipping for your customers
- Fast, two-day shipping
- A better customer service experience for your customers
- A warehouse to store your products
- An easier way for customers to return products.
What Are FBA loans?
Getting Amazon to fulfill your orders requires you to pay some extra fees, and marketing help doesn’t come for free. This is where an FBA loan can come in handy. FBA loans, also known as Amazon seller loans, are working capital that business owners selling things on Amazon can use to expand their business. Besides paying for Amazon fees and advertisements, you can also use FBA loans to hire more employees to help you sell things online.
With the growing popularity of online shopping, bringing your business online to Amazon is a great opportunity for you to help it grow. With the above resources, you can easily help your business to grow and succeed online.
Infographic Created By Corcentric – A B2B Payment Solutions Company
