6 Ways To Make Your FBA Business More Profitable In 2018

FBA businesses are growing steadily in popularity, and the opportunity Amazon offers is almost too good to be true. You get to make money, and tap into an engaged customer community like Prime members?  It’s a no-brainer.

However, this also means that the competition is increasing. How can you stand out from the crowd in 2018, and simultaneously make your FBA business more profitable? Discover our six key tips for success.

Define Your Niche

How long have you been running your business for? If you haven’t started yet, then you are at the perfect point in time to choose a solid niche to focus on. If you’re already up and running, when was the last time you stopped to think about your business focus?

For a business to be successful using FBA, you ultimately need to sell the right products to the right people at the right price. Just like the bookseller who pops up every Sunday afternoon as local people are strolling past with their coffees and brunch-laden bellies: you need to be available and spot opportunities for making a sale.

By choosing a niche to focus on, you can fulfil a specific need, potentially expand your business, and become the expert that people come to online.

Competition is so great on online marketplaces that without a niche your business is unlikely to succeed. You will be trying to reach too broad an audience with too vague a product offering. Don’t try to become a one-stop shop (Amazon has that covered) — become the destination.

Competition within niches can also be high. Undertake some research through past sales history and use  tools like Google Keyword Planner to make sure your intended niche is likely to offer reasonable opportunity for satisfactory reward. Other big players in your niche may influence what you specialize in, and be realistic about who you can compete with.

Here are some more niche-finding pro tips.

Find Higher Value Products

As an FBA seller, your margins per sale are going to be squeezed. Rather than peddling low value products, try to focus your business energies around higher value products instead.

Think about production or wholesale costs too — which products are cheapest for you to produce or source. Can you replicate any of these lessons or methods across your product catalog?

Try to shift towards stocking better, more exclusive products and improve your margins through bundling.

Invest In Social & Email

FBA sellers tend to not put a lot of effort in marketing outside Amazon, but you could be missing a trick here by not building a brand.

If you already use social media for your FBA, perhaps it’s time for an audit. Analyze all of your existing social media properties, comparing them against the stats for engagement, and even the pages of your competitors.

This will give you an idea of what has worked well previously, highlighting relevant trends in your social media data. You can even review the content of comments and messages to your page to give you an even deeper insight into what your customers want.

Once you have these insights, use the data to define an ongoing social media strategy. Some platforms may be more, or less, relevant depending on your niche. You should prioritize a few, whilst maintaining an integrated and aligned approach to managing your social media profiles as a whole.

For example, if you are selling Business books, then LinkedIn may be a great platform for your brand to establish a voice on. If you’re instead selling wooden toys for toddlers, then Facebook would be a better choice. However, social media platforms update their algorithms on a regular basis. Facebook has recently announced it will be prioritizing user content as opposed to brand posts.

In addition to investing in social media, make use of other marketing channels to tell your brand story and increase your share in your chosen niche. And in light of those recent algorithm changes, don’t miss out on opportunities to use channels which you really do have control over.

Email marketing is a great example of this. You totally own your email data and campaigns. Whether or not a follower of yours will actually see the content is entirely in your control and not at the whims of an algorithm.

By using email, you are building a communication channel with your customers and potential customers. This adds brand value, and may go above and beyond the type of useful content your competitors are creating, giving you an edge

Before you start sending email campaigns, you’re going to have to build your subscribers. Make email sign-up a natural and easy part of your website’s or blog’s user journey. Think about the type of content you will send in your emails that will really appeal to your audience, and encourage them to sign up with exclusive offers and insight.

Once you have built your list, use a platform like MailChimp to design and send powerful email marketing campaigns. The statistics offered in these email platforms is incredible, with full tracking, allowing you to tweak campaigns and really work on your conversion rates.

Use Great Content To Supercharge Listings

Ultimately, great content still adds a huge amount of value to any business who really invests in it. This is especially important for ecommerce businesses, including those using FBA. Your product is at the heart of your content; are you doing your best to really show it off?

A picture tells a thousand words, and no more so is this obvious than in web and social media stats. Embrace the power of image and produce original, professional-quality graphics to really help sell your FBA products. See this as yet another opportunity to build on the strong brand image you are creating for yourself within your niche.

Invest in professional photographs, graphic design and video to accompany your brand and help sell your products.

Start with a product, and create beautiful content to tell its story. Encourage and highlight user reviews, and collect up a big bank of valuable FAQs.

Just look at Amazon’s own product listings for Echo to see how far the Amazon listing can be taken:

Make The Most Of Data

If you are just starting out with your FBA, now is the perfect time to ensure you have systems in place to track valuable insights going forwards.

If you already run a FBA business, are you making the most of your data? There is so much data available to all entrepreneurs running FBA businesses, and the most successful will be the ones really using all of that data available to them.

First of all, Amazon is not forthcoming with numbers about sales and customers. Instead, use tools such as Google Adwords and other paid SEO products like SEMrush to get hard data, useful to your FBA business’s growth.

Don’t forget about the other elements of your marketing strategy. Set up Facebook Pixel to track social media conversions all the way through to your checkout, and delve through your MailChimp campaign reports to see which links people are clicking in your emails.

Widen Your Scope

Don’t become a one-trick pony. Embrace multichannel selling in order to become a more profitable ecommerce outfit. Hook your listings up to other marketplaces, or start selling through social media as well.

You may also want to widen the scope and run a dropshipping business from home alongside your FBA one. These two business models are very easy to run concurrently and will give you more autonomy. Key differences as explained on Quora here.

There is no doubt about the huge potential FBA businesses offers. As others see these opportunities, competition will increase. Instead of worrying about this, see it as a chance for you to take advantage of a niche and make your mark. Use an integrated marketing strategy with content at the core to really make your FBA successful.

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