An Amazon FBA seller account with high sales is a healthy account.
Velocity of sales helps with everything on Amazon: Account health metrics, rankings, and bring in more cash.
So if you're looking to increase your sales, this post will go over 7 tips that will give you FBA sales a boost to keep you on the path of growth.
Tip #1: Get Brand Registered
We're officially at the point on Amazon that if you have not registered your brand on the platform, you are at a severe disadvantage compared to other sellers that are registered.
While the benefits of being registered are numerous, let's list out the biggest things you're missing out on if you're not brand registered:
- No video content. Video is available to brands on Amazon on their listing photo section and for advertising. Without being registered, you cannot upload any videos at all.
- No Enhanced Brand Content. If you've see those listings with the really long descriptions with tons of pictures and comparison charts, that's what you're missing out on if you're not brand registered.
- No access to powerful tools. Amazon provides a lot of tools to brands that are registered that help strengthen their listings and even provide deeper insight to keywords, like Amazon's new Amazon Search Terms report.
- No access to 2 out of 3 advertising types. If you're not brand registered, you only have access to Sponsored Products ads.
If you're not brand registered and don't know where to start, don't fret! We've got a great guide on getting brand registered that will allow you get get your brand trademarked and registered on Amazon in as little as 20 days.
With a registered brand, you can really open up your account to useful tools and better listings.
Speaking of better listings, let's get to our second tip.
Tip #2: Update and Improve Your Listings
Do you frequently update your listings?
If you're the type to create a listing and never return to it, you're missing out on potential sales.
Here's a couple of listing updates you can perform for your products.
Listing Update 1: Content + SEO Refresh.
When you initially made a product listing, you likely filled it with as many relevant keywords as you could to help you with organic rankings and pull in the right traffic to your product.
If you've done that, then that's great! However, as time passes, there will be new keywords discovered that you might not have thought about when you first made the listing.
A couple of places to get inspiration for new keywords:
- Search Terms reports in ad campaigns. For your ad campaigns, especially automatic campaigns, there will be a search term report that shows the actual keywords customers typed in the Amazon search bar to find your listing. Browse through, look for anything relevant not on your listing currently, and integrate it into your copy.
- Reviews. Your customers over time will leave reviews for your product, and in those reviews you'll start to notice a pattern of people repeating the same keywords. Check for any that aren't integrated into your listing already and add them.
- Competition. The longer you sell a product, the more you'll be aware of your competitor's listings that closely match your own. Check their listings for keywords they ranking for (tools like Helium 10 and Jungle Scout are great for this kind of thing) and see what keywords you might have missed out on.
Once you've identified some new keywords, you can give your listing new life with access to more keywords. You can repeat this process every few weeks/months to discover new keywords all the time.
Listing Update 2: Photographs and Images
Updating your images is something a lot of sellers don't really do, either.
If you've never updated your photos for your product, now is a great time! Here's some ways you can update your photos to help your sales:
Use Every Photo Slot (and video Slot) Available
If you aren't already, make sure you're utilizing every photo slot (and video slot if you're Brand Registered). A complete listing is more favorably looked at by Amazon's search algorithm, so filling out every photo slot not only helps customers learn the most about your product, Amazon looks for metrics like that on a technical level.
Update Your Main Image
It's easy for anyone to say "Just update your main image!" but there could a be a few ways to update it that you might not have thought of.
Test new image variations with an online poll
You can test different main product images with a site like Pickfu that allows you to submit images to an online panel of participants and they vote on their favorite picture. This can help you find an image that resonates with people that is free from your own personal bias.
Consider going with 3D Renders for your main image
While Amazon guidelines say you should use a real photograph of your product for its main image, these days 3D renders are so indistinguishable from the real thing that no one can actually tell the difference.
3D renders can have perfect lighting, don't require any kind of studio setup, camera, and can actually be produced for less money than a professional photoshoot.
Make sure your main image is technically sound
A good main image will follow these technical guidelines:
- White background around the entire image, especially at the edges
- 2000 x 2000 pixels
- Square image
- Approved image file type (.jpg or .png is best)
- Uses proper file name rules (no special characters, uses ASIN for the file name)
Update Alternative images
Alternative images are any product photos and images that come after your main image.
Check our product photography guide for ideas on updating your alternative images, but essentially it comes down to:
- Breaking down the technical aspects of your product
- Creating lifestyle images of your target customer persona using your product in the ideal setting
- Infographics for explaining features and benefits
- Highlighting what makes your product stand out from others (materials, feature, unique quality, etc.)
Add Video if You're Brand Registered
Amazon is getting very cozy with video content, and there's a few ways you can add videos of your products.
Not everyone can shoot a good video, and if you feel like you can't, there are many on-demand video creation services where they will make videos for your products for a reasonable fee. Check marketplaces like Upwork and Fiverr, as well as Amazon service agencies.
Uploading any kind of video on Amazon requires being Brand Registered, if you aren't yet, check our handy guide to get your brand registered as fast as 20 days.
Tip #3: Give your products a ranking boost
Ranking well among other products on Amazon is pivotal to your success.
However, it's not exactly apparent to know which levers you have to pull to influence your product rankings on Amazon.
If you need a deep dive on boosting your rankings, check our guide on how to rank your products on Amazon guide.
To summarize how to boost your rankings, and in turn rank your sales:
- Tweak pricing to be in line with competition. Having a product priced much higher than what is on the first page of results for a search term will not be good for rankings. While you don't need the cheapest product to rank well, having something within the ball park of other offerings is important.
- Run more ads. Anything you can do to positively influence sales rate will also give your rankings a boost. Amazon PPC is more important today than it ever has been, and provides benefits which includes your organic ranking.
- Update listings. Going back to Tip #2, giving your products an SEO refresh and Product Photography refresh can help give your rankings a boost by increasing search relevance and conversion rates.
- Improve packaging. Improved packaging will reduce the rate at which your customers return products to Amazon, which will positively influence your rankings.
- Don't go out of stock. Staying in stock on Amazon is crucial to maintaining rankings. When you go out of stock, there's no way to measure the damage done to lost sales and the work you'll have to put in to regain rank after getting things back in stock.
- Consistency across images, descriptions, and delivered product. When your images match what your description says, and the final delivered product looks like your images, customers will be pleased, which will net you positive reviews and fewer returns, and thus better rankings.
Tip #4: Start taking PPC Seriously
PPC is the main driver for growth on Amazon today. PPC can help with boosting rankings fast for a product launch and to maintain top rankings for your entire product line. You can reach customers in more ways than you can with organic.
Amazon generated $21 billion in revenue in 2021 alone through PPC. Safe to say, PPC is here to stay and Amazon is going to place more importance on it as time passes, so as a seller that means you NEED a budget for PPC and you need to be running ad campaigns all the time.
If ads hurt your margins too much, raise your prices slightly to make up for it. You absolutely need ads to grow on Amazon today.
If you already have some basic campaigns created and are looking for some ways to dive deeper into ads, check our 6 Tips to Optimize Your Amazon Campaigns post, check Amazon's official Amazon Ads page for resources to learn more on running campaigns, and (get ready for it) make sure you're brand registered to have access to all 3 advertising types rather than just Sponsored Products.
Tip #5: Get Familiar with Promotions
There are not a ton of ways to run a promotion on Amazon for your products, so knowing what is out there can always help give your sales a boost.
If your margins allow for it, you should always have some kind of promotion running that you can mix and match with to always manage the rate of your sales, especially if you want to give them a boost.
Here are the types of Amazon Promotions you can run:
Launch a Coupon
Coupons are really easy to launch (check out our guide to set up an Amazon coupon in 5 minutes) and probably one of the most effective promotion tools on Amazon at the moment.
They have a really nice green box to entice shoppers to click on your listing, and shoppers can easily "clip" the coupon.
If you want to get more impulse buys and stand out from other products, consider a coupon.
Lightning Deals and 7-Day Deals
Running a lightning deal or a 7-day deal is a great way to get a lot of sales in a short amount of time.
You can access both deal types on the Create a new deal page on Seller Central
Lightning Deals are run for 4 to 12 hours, and is promoted on Amazon through their Deals page and they will sometimes push notifications to Amazon Mobile App users about the deal going live if they think that particular customer will be interested.
7-Day Deals are similar, but they are promoted on Amazon's Deal page for 7-days instead of a few hours.
Placements and promotion vary between the two deal types and it's entirely dictated by Amazon.
7-Day Deals are limited to Brand Registered businesses only, so once again, get brand registered!
Prime Exclusive Discount
Prime exclusive discounts are great because they'll show a slash through your listing's price and then show the lower, better Prime-only pricing more prominently.
You can find the page under the advertising tab and clicking Prime Exclusive Discount.
In combination with a coupon, this can provide a powerful visual appeal to shoppers to generate more sales.
Other Promotions: Social Media, Percentage Off Code, BOGO
The last promo types, while I believe not as effective, have their place and could work with your product mix. You can find them on Amazon's Promotions page.
Let's quickly go over the remaining promotion types:
- Percentage Off. This is a simple percentage off and is a bit tricky to get right. I feel like coupons have mostly replaced this promotion in terms of usefulness
- Social Media Promo Code. This promotion creates a landing page for the product you're promoting so that social media users can click a link, go to a landing page, see your product with the discount already applied, and can purchase it without having to enter any codes. It's convenient and tailored for promoting to groups of people on other website.
- Buy One Get One. This one is exactly as it sounds. Be careful setting this one up so you don't give away too much by accident!
Tip #6: Start Marketing and Advertising Off of Amazon
Just because you sell on Amazon doesn't mean that's the only place you can market and promote your products.
Anything you can do to inform others of your brand off of Amazon can only strengthen your brand as a whole and help your business long term.
Brand Website, SEO, Content
If you have a website for your brand, creating a content strategy, pulling in customers through Google, and leading them to your Amazon listings is a great way to drive purchases from outside of Amazon.
Social Media
Do your products have a theme or resonate with a certain type of person? If you can become a thought leader or influencer on a topic, industry, or product your target customer is interested in, it can lead to huge sales increases.
Advertise off Amazon
There are many other platforms that run ads, name Google and Facebook. If you can run some experiments pointing potential customers to your products on Amazon, and the cost is in-line with your Amazon PPC spend, then you've just found another source of revenue.
Amazon YouTuber Adam Heist has a great video tutorial to use Google Ads to send people to your Amazon listings:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/EonIs-c5JeA
By the way, Amazon loves it when sellers bring in traffic to Amazon from other sources.
Tip #7: Expand Your Product Line
There will come a point where you will hit a ceiling with the amount of product you can sell within a 30-day window.
You should always be seeking to expand your product line, as that is the biggest driver for growth you will see for your Amazon Seller account.
There are many ways to get inspiration for how to expand your product line, here are a few:
- Ask your manufacturer. If you're selling on Amazon currently, you likely have a main manufacturer, and they likely have a large product catalog and make a lot of products for other clients. See what else they have that would fit your brand, and ask them any questions you can think of to get inspiration for new products.
- Check your competition. You are likely aware of your competitors if you sell on Amazon, and you can also learn the kind of products they sell. Check them periodically if you can find a product you can launch as well.
- Customer feedback. If your customers have any way to reach out to you, they will let you know about the kind of products they want to see.
- Find what people are talking about online. If your products have an active community around them, see what annoys them about products that exist currently and how you can improve on them.
- Find variations of your best sellers. If there's some tweak you can make to an existing product you have that could sell, it could be worth a test. See your product mix and how you can alter certain aspects into completely new SKUs.
Thinking of new products should be a continual process you're always engaged in, and will be one of the most valuable parts about your Amazon brand.
Conclusion
With these 7 in-depth tips, you should be able to increase your sales by significant amounts. Make sure you've got the margins and cash flow to support your growth, and you will see your business go to 6-figures, into 7 and even 8-figures.
