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Mistakes That FBA Sellers Can’t Afford to Make

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A lot of people who are looking to make their entrance to the business world are constantly on the lookout for the way to make this step as simple as possible. One of the best ways to do so is to team up with Amazon through the FBA (fulfillment by Amazon) program. This gives Amazon the freedom to handle the picking up, packing and delivering of your products to your buyers without having to involve you in the process. Still, no matter how simple and idyllic this may sound, it’s not all sunshine and roses in the world of FBA sellers either. There are so many opportunities to miss and mistakes to make. Here are several of them you need to avoid at all costs.

1. Failing to understand the position of their own products

First of all, you need to understand that your thoughts and impressions on how well your products perform won’t be measurable until your products actually hit the shelves (figuratively speaking). No matter what you expected from them, some of your products will be key drivers of profit, while others will be key drivers of loss. The worst thing about this is the fact that some retailers make a faulty initial assessment and then avoid making changes for a prolonged period of time, hoping that this product is actually going to live up to their expectations on a later date. Be wary of walking into this trap.

2. Ignoring the potential of PPC

One thing you need to understand about Amazon is the fact that it’s an incredibly populous and competitive marketplace. This is why you need any way possible to gain a competitive edge. Fortunately, a lot of startups and small companies are drawn to this field due to the fact that they can do a lot with minimal investment. This means that they sometimes tend to avoid investing actual resources into marketing and stick exclusively to free or DIY methods. This means that a company that can utilize a proper PPC campaign gets an instant boost when compared to others in this field.

In general, learning a thing or two about Amazon sponsored product ads would be a great idea that could do wonders for your business. Seeing as how they appear on most pages that your potential customers will visit, it will improve their visibility and give your customers a way to discover them on their own. While it may not always appear so, these sponsored product ads are a perfect compromise between inbound and outbound marketing.

2. Ignoring the returned goods

A lot of first-time entrepreneurs prefer to take the best case scenario as their starting point. In this scenario, there are no lost or defective items, same as there are no items that the customers simply aren’t content with. Back to reality, however, this is not a likely thing to happen, which is why ignoring this entire mechanism is a horrible idea. In order to mitigate the potential damage of this, you need to A) introduce quality control and B) look for a service that helps with Amazon seller refunds. This way, you’ll make your position here much stronger.

3. Don’t overdo it with coupons

Before we get deeper into this, it’s important to mention that coupons are a great way of boosting your sales, however, by overdoing it with couponing, you can cheapen your brand so much that they actually start losing you money. A polar opposite of this could be seen in the fashion industry, on the example of the luxury brand Louis Vuitton. This is a company that never actually has sales but instead burns all the leftover items in order not to devalue them. Sure, this may be extreme but it’s still a fine example of a different approach to the issue of sales, discounts, and coupons.

4. Failing to adjust

In the first section, we talked about the discrepancy between what you’ve expected and what you’ve encountered in the field. Even if your business model seems flawless in the beginning, the situation will change with time and your ability to adjust may make all the difference in the world. One example of how this works can be seen in the automation of e-commerce marketing tasks, while others may require you to change your pricing strategy. Either way, even the most ironclad model will require some alterations at one point and your reluctance to introduce them may harm your business in more than one way.

Conclusion

Just because you have a somewhat easier job in running your business as an FBA seller it doesn’t mean that you can just add your item on Amazon marketplace and wait for profits to start coming. Success requires effort and this is a business world fact that doesn’t change, regardless of your own industry, target demographic or business model. This alone is a reason why these five major mistakes need to become a primary focus for FBA sellers.

About the author

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Mark Armstrong

Mark started off as a business consultant for small SEO and web design companies. Soon enough, he got more and more involved in the actual management and editing of the websites that he used to consult, which woke up his writer side. From time to time he always tries to contribute to the community and write articles that will be helpful and informative.