A Strategy Tailored for Your Business

Part 3 of 5 – This is the third part of a multi-step guide on how to create a successful strategy on the Amazon platform. In this part, I'll go through how to build a strategy that's tailored specifically to your business.

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On the blog, you can read all about the basics of succeeding on Amazon, what drives sales, and how all the elements fit together. Now, it’s time to create a strategy tailored for your business. This post won't introduce much new information but will instead combine the different elements I’ve previously discussed.

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The Strategy That Makes You a Winner on Amazon

The strategy I’m about to present is not revolutionary, but it works, and there’s no better alternative. It’s the execution that will determine whether your business succeeds or not. Many companies, both large and small, have nearly the same strategy. However, they often skip parts of it, leading to lost potential. The strategy itself is generic, meaning you can apply it regardless of products, company structure, size, brand, etc.

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1. Choose Products and Market

The first step in an Amazon strategy is obviously selecting the products you’ll sell. If you have an existing product range, this involves conducting a market analysis of your current products and deciding which to launch on Amazon—possibly all of them. For those without an existing business, this step is larger, but the goal is the same. You must decide which product(s) you’ll sell at launch.

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Then, you need to choose where to sell your products. A market analysis will also help with this decision. You can, of course, launch in multiple markets simultaneously, but I strongly recommend starting with one market and expanding quickly from there. This often leads to better results and, in the long run, can be quicker.

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2. Optimize Products and Product Pages

Once you've selected the products to sell, the real work begins. The first part of this work involves optimizing everything related to the products. This primarily means writing product descriptions that convert and are SEO-optimized, creating high-quality product images, and finally listing the products on Amazon. However, it’s also a good time to consider any packaging changes you might want to make to minimize Amazon’s FBA costs.

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At this stage, it’s also crucial to start setting up elements related to your brand on Amazon, particularly the “Store,” which is your brand's dedicated storefront within Amazon. But more on that later.

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3. Launch Products

Once the initial work on Amazon is done with the product pages, it’s time for the launch. Here, advertising is key to start bringing in the first wave of orders. If possible, this is also a good time to start working on external traffic and promotions to give your sales an extra boost. External traffic refers to traffic you drive from outside Amazon to your Amazon product pages, such as through newsletters, social media, or a website.

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The goal of this step is simply to start building the momentum I discussed earlier. The initial sales give your cart a few extra pushes up the hill, helping your products begin to rank. Over time, as they start to rank, you’ll begin receiving organic traffic via Amazon, and if your product page and offer are good enough, the orders will keep coming in.

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4. Continuous Optimization

Advertising

At this stage, your products are up and optimized, and advertising is driving traffic. Hopefully, your products have started to rank on Amazon. But this isn’t enough if you want to succeed on Amazon. And you do, right? Then you need to keep optimizing various elements to, first and foremost, climb the Amazon rankings, but especially to maximize profits. The part you need to optimize from day one (almost) is advertising. Ads work extremely well on Amazon, but they can get expensive quickly. Without proper system optimization, you lose a lot in terms of growth opportunities, rankings, and money.

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Product Pages

Not only ads can and should be optimized. You should also be on the lookout for potential improvements to the product page, brand work on Amazon, the products themselves, and the offers. Unlike advertising, these elements don’t need to be optimized as frequently. Reviewing and optimizing them once or twice a year should be sufficient.

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Your product page may need updates with information customers frequently ask for, or you might want to emphasize the advantages that customers are most satisfied with. In the worst case, if conversion is poor without any other clear reason, you may need to start from scratch. How well you did the initial work and how well you know your customers will determine this.

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Your brand is certainly part of the product page, but it deserves its own focus. Is the brand being highlighted enough? Are complementary products from your brand being showcased? Brands are rarely built on Amazon, but leveraging your brand’s strength to the fullest can be a significant competitive advantage that requires ongoing work.

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Naturally, the offer is important and becomes even more critical when there is little difference between your product and competitors’. You should review everything from the product’s price to potential multi-packs or kits that you can offer your customers. Gather data and review temporary offers you might consider running during short periods, such as Prime Day, Black Friday, and other major shopping days. Which offers will bring you the most money in the long term? It’s impossible to answer without testing and measuring.

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Products

Last but not least are the products themselves. It’s not uncommon for adjustments to be necessary here as well. Of course, this is a bigger step and not as easy to execute as the previously mentioned optimizations, but it’s just as important. If customers are not satisfied with your product, you won’t receive repeat orders from them. Instead, you risk receiving negative reviews and, in the worst case, returns. So make sure to review what customers are saying in their reviews.

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Are they dissatisfied with something specific? If it can be fixed, do it. If not, consider whether this issue should be mentioned on the product page. Even minor things like packaging might need adjustments. Perhaps to minimize Amazon’s costs, which are partly based on packaging size. Or maybe something as simple as updating the instructions on the packaging to improve customer understanding of the product.

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The important thing to understand about optimizations is that everything must be done to minimize costs, satisfy customers, and maximize volume and conversion. This leads to better rankings and sales, which in turn leads to greater profits for you and your company.

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5. Expansion

Winning strategies can grow, and if you want to increase your profits, you’ll want to get your business to do just that. Either by expanding your product range or by expanding into more markets. Likely both. When you reach a level of sales that allows for expansion, Amazon is a perfect platform. Increasing your range doesn’t require larger warehouses or system upgrades. Instead, you can use Amazon’s already established size and system for this.

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As I emphasized in the previous post, good margins are often a goal you want to aim for before expanding. And that’s exactly what you’ve done in the previous steps by focusing on optimization. However, margins can only improve so much; they won’t continue improving indefinitely. So when you’ve reached good levels, it’s definitely time to expand.

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More Products or More Markets?

Should you expand by adding more products or by entering more markets? The answer is both, assuming your company has the capacity. But what should you prioritize? It’s difficult to say. It depends entirely on your company and brand. Perhaps adding more products isn’t a good fit for your brand, in which case geographic expansion should be your priority. Or maybe your company only has one product, and your customers are clamoring for more complementary products. In that case, you should obviously focus on expanding your product range. You need to consider your company’s position and opportunities.

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One way to look at it is purely mathematical. Expanding into a new market requires support staff, tax management, someone to translate products, etc. These are things and roles needed regardless of how many products you bring to the new market. Expanding the product range requires work on product pages, images, etc. It’s roughly the same amount of work for each product. So calculate how much it would cost to expand into a new market and how much it costs to develop one or more new products.

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Then estimate the potential revenue and profit from both options. Focus on the option that gives the best return. You’ll likely find that geographic expansion is a better option if you already have a large product portfolio. Meanwhile, product expansion gives better numbers if you have fewer products.

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Adapt and Repeat

There’s the foundation for your strategy. You will repeat the strategy every time you launch a new product or expand into a new market. First, choose product and market, then set up good product pages, launch, continue optimizing, and then expand.

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Once you have a clear picture of the strategy, it’s time to adapt and specify the different parts so they fit your business. Of course, the first step is setting a goal.

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What Goals Should Your Strategy Aim For?

To build a strategy tailored to your business, it’s important to know where the strategy should lead. In other words, what your goal is. The goal mainly depends on conditions like existing market presence, budget, time, etc. Before you perform this step in practice, you should have conducted a market analysis. The market analysis will help you understand the market size and competition. It can be crucial for budgeting and market selection going forward.

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Your goal should at least specify a profit target with a timeframe. “We aim to make X dollars in profit within Y years.” From there, you can work backward, using a market analysis to show the sales potential for your company’s products. By looking at your product margins, you can easily calculate how much you need to sell to reach your profit target. When you review how much the existing market is selling, you can see if there’s potential for your products to reach those levels and how many products you need to sell to do so. Once you know how many products need to be listed and how much they need to sell, you can also start calculating initial costs for SEO, copywriting, images, and ads.

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It’s impossible to get exact figures. Everything is an estimate, and that’s okay. The above are just initial goals, and you’ll need to update them several times based on changing conditions, results along the way, etc. Even when you start calculating the initial costs, you might want to adjust the newly set goals, which is reasonable. If the costs are too high, you may need to lower the goals slightly (at least until you see results). And if the costs fit comfortably within your budget, you might want to raise the goals.

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Set Milestones

Regardless of your company’s size and goals, you should break your goals into milestones. If your goal is to make a million in profit within two years, there are many milestones to reach and things to do before then. For example, you need to get your products listed on one or more markets, set up ads, possibly take new photos, write new Amazon-optimized product descriptions, etc. You may also need to hire new staff, freelancers, or an agency. To reach your goal within two years, it’s also good to have identified roughly where you need to be after, say, 6, 12, and 18 months.

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Why break the goal down this way? Unfortunately, it has been shown that we humans are terrible at estimating how long projects will take and how much they will cost. The larger the project, the harder it is to estimate time. So by breaking the project down into milestones, it becomes easier for you to make a good estimate. This will prevent you from missing your goals or being left without enough budget when it really matters.

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When creating your milestones, make sure to include all the important steps that need to happen for you to reach your ultimate goal. Below is a checklist of things you should include, but be sure to set a date for when each milestone should be completed. Remember that every company is unique, and you may need to add many more things and milestones—or remove some.

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Checklist for Milestones

• Market analysis
• Margin calculation
• Product & market decisions
• Budgeting
• Product manufacturing
• Product quality control
• Shipping
• Product images
• Product descriptions (SEO & conversion optimized)
• Amazon registration
• List products on Amazon
• Advertising structure
• Accounting system
• VAT registration / Sales Tax management
• Trademark registration
• Build a “Store”
• Launch
• Other PR activities (influencers, campaigns, etc.)
• Sales goals after X months
• Support management
• Advertising optimization
• Market expansion
• Product portfolio expansion
• Hiring new staff
• Hiring freelancers or agencies

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Right Person for the Right Job

When you’ve set your goals and milestones, you should have identified the areas that need to be covered. For example, copy and SEO, ads, images, administration, etc. Then, you need to identify who will handle each area. Be as specific as possible. Instead of writing that your company will handle account administration internally, write the name of the person responsible. Instead of writing “agency” for the one who will handle advertising, write the name of the agency or agencies you want to take on the task.

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By being as specific as possible, it will be easier for you to identify potential bottlenecks and problems in the strategy. The last thing you want is to be caught off guard without the time or knowledge when it’s time to perform, for example, the SEO work. Instead, identify the needs and who will perform the work early and address areas you can already see are not covered.

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Set a Plan for Execution

Once you’ve set your milestones and identified who will take on which role, it’s time to set a proper execution plan. Since you’ve already identified dates for when each milestone should be achieved, there’s not much left to do. The remaining task is to set a start date for when each milestone must begin. Ensure that every person and actor you want on your team is involved and has input on this. A person who has worked with advertising or SEO often makes better time estimates for those tasks than someone without the same experience.

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If you or the team members responsible for the different milestones don’t have previous experience in those areas, be sure to do some research before setting the timeframe. You can, for example, contact someone you know with more experience, and/or Google your way to approximate answers.

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I have now covered the essentials of how to build a strategy tailored to your business on Amazon! Don’t miss the last two parts of this multi-step guide for a complete insight into creating a successful Amazon strategy.