Urtasker has long been regarded as experts in aiding sellers on Amazon to thrive, expand their revenues and propel their businesses. Our team of marketing experts has always been dedicated to the success of our clients and when COVID-19 dramatically changed the face of online commerce, and retail commerce alike, we rose to the challenge.
Thankfully, our clients were not the only ones to notice. Recently, major media outlets such as NBC affiliates, FOX news and others covered our PR to provide awareness to our efforts.
When Amazon issued a letter to sellers informing them that shipments for nonessential products fulfilled by their FBA (fulfillment by Amazon) services were stopped, third party sellers were immediately impacted. It was then that Urtasker clients sought and found stability from the creative, strategic, and methodical full marketing services that Urtasker offers.
Read the full news at any one of the below media links. Urtasker stands ready to assist our clients under any economic condition, stable, turbulent or unprecedented.
Recently, Urtasker has been featured on numerous major media outlets talking about our specialized digital marketing services. We’re dedicated to providing a broad range of services to small businesses on Amazon and other eCommerce marketplaces and are delighted to have had our brand covered by some big-name publications including New York City Post, FOX News, WRCB NBC Affiliate and more.
We know that the current challenges the world is facing have left small businesses lost and in desperate need of efficient solutions, which is why we are doing more than ever to pick up the slack for business owners.
Considering this, we wanted to share these services far and wide to give small businesses the hope they need to continue growing and expanding during these difficult times and beyond.
Unlike most agencies who only offer services to cover a small part of a client’s business, we specifically tailor solutions to each individual need. Our experienced team of assurance managers, copywriters, digital marketers, PPC managers, and graphic designers are well positioned to provide solutions to every need a small business might have.
Our goal is to free up time for small businesses so they can focus their efforts on growth and profit generation.
The press release was eagerly picked up by a large selection of major outlets. Over 100 publications have already shared our story and services with their audience, with many more features in the works. It’s already generated 137 search results on Google and we expect this to continue to increase as more outlets get their hands on the press release.
Here is a selection of publications that have featured Urtasker and our dedicated services so far:
We continue to roll out our specialized digital marketing services to growth-minded small businesses around the world. This is just a taste of what we can offer – to find out more and start the conversation about how we can help you, contact us today.
Amazon reviews are a highly trusted source of feedback from other customers.
Not only do they provide social proof for your store, but they are one of the key factors taken into account in Amazon’s search listings. The more positive reviews you have, the higher your product is positioned.
Developing a proper shipping strategy will help you to balance price, speed, and reliability and delight your customers. Putting some effort into understanding your various options for sending products can help you stand out as an E-commerce merchant and keep your customers coming back.
Selling on Amazon has changed dramatically this year.
Not only have selling fees taken a sharp upward climb, but there’s also the coronavirus pandemic to contend with. A surge in online shopping has led to disrupted supply chains, huge delivery delays, and unhappy sellers.
At first, Amazon paused shipping for non-essential items, leaving sellers high and dry with no way to get their goods to paying customers. This meant that an increasing number of FBA sellers turned to 3PL warehouses to ship their goods, and the trend seems to have stuck, adding an extra cost to the already rising price of selling via Amazon’s FBA program.
Understanding the outgoings of your business is vital for growth, pricing strategies, and stock management.
A lot of Amazon FBA sellers consider the COGs their only expense and consider the leftover money profit. But with fees (however small) lurking around most corners, costs can start adding up. All of a sudden, your business isn’t as profitable as you first thought. A lot goes on behind the scenes so, if you’re wondering what the real costs are for FBA sellers, from storage and shipping to monthly fees, here’s a helpful guide.
The Basic Fees for FBA Sellers
Before shipping, storage, and other fees are taken into account, Amazon FBA sellers have to pay standard FBA costs and referral fees.
FBA Cost
This is a monthly fee – kind of like a subscription cost – that sellers might need to pay through the FBA program. It’s free for a personal seller account, but this will incur a $1 flat fee for every product sold.
If you sell more than 40 products a month, it’s worth upgrading to the professional seller account. This is $39.99 a month but doesn’t require the $1 flat fee for each product.
Referral Fee
On top of this Amazon also takes a cut of revenue (it does this for non-FBA sellers, too). Usually this is around 15%, plus a $3 fee to handle and ship the product.
Your referral fee will fluctuate depending on what category your products fall into – some are far more costly than others. For example, Amazon device accessories have a 45% referral fee, gift cards have a 20% fee, and groceries have an 8% referral fee. Most other categories fall somewhere between 12% and 15%.
FBA Hidden Fees: Other Costs to Consider
Once the basic fees are out of the way, there are several other costs involved in selling via Amazon’s FBA program.
1. Weight of Product
Amazon ships products through its FBA program, which is great because you don’t have to sort out the logistics. You can put everything in Amazon’s hands and they sort it all out for you.
It costs to ship items, so understandably Amazon puts some of those costs back onto the seller. And, because it costs more to ship large, heavy items, the shipping fees are higher for weightier and larger products.
Amazon rounds up the weight of a product, so you’ll usually end up paying a little more than the real weight of the product. In 2020, this fee is going up by as much as 10%.
2. Storage Fees
Sellers that use the FBA program ship their products to Amazon’s warehouses. From there, Amazon deals with the rest.
This means that Amazon charges a fee for storing products in their warehouses – and rightly so. For the most part, there is a flat fee depending on the size of your product. The thing to note is that the price changes at different times of the year.
From January to September, standard sized items incur a storage fee of $0.75 per cubic foot and oversized items are $0.48 per cubic foot. From October to December, standard sized items cost $2.40 per cubic foot to store and oversized items cost $1.20 per cubic foot.
3. Long Term Storage Fees
If your products don’t sell, you might find yourself paying long term storage fees. For items that are in fulfillment centers for between 181 and 365 days, there is a monthly cost of $3.45 per cubic foot. For items in fulfillment centers for over 365 days, you’ll be charged a monthly fee of $6.90 per cubic foot.
4. Shipping Goods to Amazon’s Warehouses
There are many benefits of using Amazon’s FBA program. You simply ship your goods to them and they handle everything from there. But, as you probably know by now, it costs to ship products.
Amazon has a number of warehouses dotted around and they usually ask you to ship your products to several different warehouses. The costs can really add up.
As a general rule, it tends to cost around $3-4 per empty box and then between $0.20 and $0.50 per pound depending on where your items are being shipped to.
One way to keep costs down at this point is to ship your first batch of products to one warehouse, your next to another, and so on. As long as your products arrive in every warehouse Amazon needs them in at some point, you should be fine.
5. Returns
No one likes to talk about returns, but here we are.
One of the reasons Amazon is so popular with shoppers is because it’s incredibly easy to return goods. This is great for the buyer, but not so much for the seller.
As a result, the return rates on products can be quite high. When a product is returned, you don’t get the FBA fee or referral fee back, which means you tend to end up out of pocket. A lot of Amazon FBA sellers forget to factor in this cost and it can come as a nasty surprise when the cost of returns keeps on adding up and adding up over time.
6. Overheads
Aside from the FBA fees, there’s also the costs of running a business in general. These are often known as overheads and can be listed as expenses. However, they should always be taken into account when you’re calculating your true profit.
Overheads might include costs like:
Product photographs and copy – especially if you get these done professionally (this can range anywhere from $50 for a low-budget service to thousands of dollars for a high-quality professional service)
Seller permits (often you won’t need these as most products sold on Amazon aren’t Federally regulated and are consumer products that don’t need government approval. However, if you’re selling something that is regulated, you’ll need to look into permits both nationally and locally)
Product liability insurance and general business insurance (product liability insurance spans a range of prices, depending on how many units you sell and what they are. The average cost of product liability insurance for low-risk products is $0.25 per each $100 in revenue)
Trademarks (obtaining a national trademark typically costs around $300-$400 for each class of products you want to protect)
Any staff or contractor costs (this cost will vary hugely depending on how many staff you have, how often they work, and what roles they’re taking on. A seller with one part-time member of staff will pay far less than one with two full-time members of staff)
These can add up if you don’t keep a close eye on them. For example, a professional photo shoot for your new product line might help you sell more products overall, but make sure you factor the cost into your per-product profit.
7. Intermediate Warehouse Costs
Sometimes, you might want to send your products to a processing center to undergo quality control testing before they are sent on to Amazon’s warehouses.
This means you’ll need somewhere to store them in the interim. Which, again, incurs costs. The costs here will vary depending on where you decide to store your goods and how long you’re storing them for before shipping to Amazon’s warehouses.
8. 3PL Companies
Amazon is now allowing non-essential items to be delivered in an acceptable time frame after pausing the process for a while at the start of the coronavirus outbreak.
However, many Amazon FBA sellers are organizing their own shipping anyway via third-party logistics companies. This gives them more control over how and when their products are shipped, but it does cost to do so.
The fees here will vary depending on the 3PL company you choose, but as a general rule, going to a third-party works out to be more expensive than having Amazon ship your products directly.
9. Amazon Getting it Wrong
At the end of the day, no company is perfect, and a company as big as Amazon is bound to make a mistake or two at some point. Unfortunately, this can end up costing you. They have been known to lose shipments (in fact, this happens quite often), lose products in the warehouse, fail to ship on time, and damage goods in transit.
These are things you can’t account for in your fees calculation, but it’s good to have them in mind as a buffer just in case.
The last thing you want is to go into the red because of something out of your control.
10. PPC and Advertising Costs
If you want to get eyeballs on your products, there’s a good chance you’re going to have to splash out on some advertising. The competition on Amazon is high, so every little helps when it comes to your marketing strategy.
Amazon has an in-built PPC or Sponsored Products feature that lets you target specific keywords related to your products to attract more buyers. These can be a great way to boost exposure on your products and get more sales, but they cost money to run.
The costs here will vary considerably depending on the keywords you choose to target (some come with a higher price tag than others), the audience you want to reach, and how much money you can afford to pump into them.
The key is to keep your advertising costs below the cost of your products.
For example, if you’re selling a $25 product on Amazon and we use the typical Amazon conversion rate of 10%, that means that for every 10 people who click through onto your product, one of them will make a purchase.
This means you want your ads for this specific product to cost no more than $25 per 10 click throughs – and actually, you want the cost to be far lower than that if you want to make a profit of any kind.
It’s worth taking other advertising costs into consideration here too. You can market your products on Facebook, via Google PPC campaigns, YouTube ads, Instagram ads, and various other ways. Determine which methods will work best with your products and go from there.
11. Manufacturing Costs
Manufacturing is likely to be a big cost for FBA sellers, but again this will depend on the kind of items you’re selling. Not only do you have to produce a glut of products to get you up and running, you’ll also need to consider the costs of ongoing production.
First of all, you’ll need to find a manufacturer that produces the quality of product you want to sell. Sites like Alibaba can connect you up with affordable manufacturers, but even to order a sample you’ll have to pay out (this is usually around $100 per sample, but it’s worth it for finding the right, reliable producer).
Once you’ve chosen your manufacturer, you’ll need to bulk order for your inventory. This works out cheaper than buying each product individually when a customer makes a purchase.
On average, products sold via the Amazon FBA program cost around $20 and can often be manufactured for less than $5 each.
12. Inspection Costs
You might decide to get your products inspected before they leave the factory to ensure they’re of the highest possible quality. This isn’t mandatory, but it means you can have peace of mind that you’re selling a great product.
There are two options here:
You can hire an inspection service which costs around $300 (this is a static cost and doesn’t change regardless of the size of the order you want inspected)
You can ask your supplier to run a self-inspection and then get them to send you a full report. They can then ship you a finished sample, which costs around the same of a usual sample ($100)
13. Damaged and Lost Reimbursement
Amazon runs a Lost and Damaged Reimbursement Policy to reimburse sellers who have had a product lost or damaged either in the fulfillment center or by the designated carrier.
The issue to bear in mind with this is that you won’t always get the full amount of your product returned back to you.
Instead, Amazon take into account:
Your sales history
The average FBA selling price of the product on Amazon
The sales history of the specific ASIN
They will then grant you a refund based on this information. While you’ll get some money back, it’s worth noting that it’s usually not the full amount you paid out. For example, the reimbursement cost won’t include the FBA fees you already paid out for the product.
14. Early Reviewer Program
The Early Reviewer Program is a great way to promote your products by getting reviews for them. It lets you submit one of your product SKUs to be promoted by Amazon for review by a specific, pre-chosen (and pre-vetted) reviewer.
Taking part in this program costs $60 per SKU.
Again, it isn’t mandatory, but it can really give your products a boost in the listings. The payment isn’t taken until you get at least one review, so you don’t lose any money if the reviewer doesn’t uphold their part of the deal.
15. Lightning Deals
Lightning Deals give you a chance to run flash discounts on your products and get more sales. Amazon charges a flat fee to run a lightning deal. This is usually $150, but it can vary depending on the week you’re running it and if that clashes with any major selling holidays.
You’ll be charged the fee for every Lightning Deal you run.
To qualify, you have to be a Professional Seller, have a sales history, and have more than a 3-star seller rating.
Amazon also requires that you give at least a 15% discount on products included in Lightning Deals, so be sure to work out how much profit that leaves you with after you take all the other fees into account.
Amazon’s FBA Fee Calculator
If the thought of trying to work out all these costs on your own is overwhelming, you’re not alone.
Luckily, Amazon has an FBA calculator that helps sellers compare the costs of using the FBA program and FBM (fulfilled by the merchant) option. It also allows you to simply calculate the fees that go into selling via the FBA program.
Here’s an example of Amazon’s FBA calculator in action.
As you can see, the two columns let you compare the costs of Amazon fulfillment and your own fulfillment. It takes into account the costs of shipping and any basic FBA fees to work out how much profit you’re likely to get from each method.
It’s Important to Know Your Costs
2020 will be an interesting year for Amazon sellers. Fees are set to increase by quite a large margin, and the coronavirus pandemic has forced sellers to switch up their strategies.
But knowing (and, more importantly, understanding) the true costs of selling via Amazon’s FBA program is vital for figuring out the bottom line of your business, increasing profits, and long term growth.
Did you know that small businesses account for 99.9% of all United States businesses? It’s true. The vast majority of markets are made up of the little guys. Mom and pop shops, artisans, and teams of close-knit startups are all essential, contributing drivers of the economy.
Every day, hundreds of thousands of customers visit Amazon and place millions of orders. Some are loyal to specific brands and are looking only for those brands when they open their browsers. Many others, however, know what type of product reviews they want but don’t have a strong preference towards any particular brand.
Thanks to Amazon’s A-to-z Guarantee, customers know that they can safely try out products from brands that they aren’t familiar with because their purchases are protected by Amazon. If anything goes wrong with the shipping process or the product, or even if they simply aren’t satisfied, customers have 30 days to return their item for a full refund. With this in mind, there isn’t much risk for them to try a new brand.
So how do you entice a customer to choose your brand and product over the rest? There are of course plenty of factors that can help to convert a potential customer into a buyer including keyword optimization, a clear title, and a competitive price. But one of the most important factors of all is product reviews.
When presented with a handful of similar options, a product’s rating will often be the deciding factor for many consumers. Product ratings with a higher number of product reviews are considered to be more legitimate and easier to trust than those with just a few. For this reason, Amazon sellers are always looking for new ways to bolster their product reviews.
Many methods used to gain product reviews aren’t legal
Unfortunately, most of the methods that Amazon sellers have come up with in the past are not allowed within Amazon’s Terms of Service. Amazon has strict rules against generating product reviews that are either inauthentic or left in exchange for some kind of compensation.
For example, paying for product reviews or agreeing to exchange positive reviews with other sellers is strictly prohibited. These methods are obvious enough breaches of the rules as they are designed around boosting review counts with fake reviews. But did you know that it is also illegal to offer free products or discounts in exchange for positive reviews?
Anything that is explicitly designed to incentivize positive reviews is against Amazon’s rules. Even when you ask for a review using a legal method like an email campaign, you aren’t allowed to ask for a “positive review”; you can only ask for an honest review. With such serious rules in place, it is best to stick to legal methods of acquiring product reviews to avoid any account penalties or suspensions.
Email Campaigns are legal and effective
The vast majority of customers will not leave a product review; many don’t have the time and many don’t even think to. Unfortunately, there are a lot of consumers that only think to leave a review if they are dissatisfied. If they are happy with their order and it works as expected, they don’t think to say anything about it.
This is what makes email campaigns so effective. A gentle reminder that product reviews help both Amazon sellers and other Amazon customers is often enough to push a buyer in the right direction to leave a review. Sending these emails after every purchase is a great way to generate product reviews, but doing so manually would take up a ton of valuable time.
Fortunately, there is a better way. Services like FeedbackWhiz help Amazon sellers to fully automate the process. Unique email campaigns can be built for each product, and smart tags like [PRODUCT NAME] will populate with order-specific details so that they come out looking customized without having to be built one at a time. Once you have your campaigns set up, they will run like clockwork and work with every sale, leaving your time freed up to use on other matters.
Sending out the first email right away
Instead of jumping right into a call to action, one method to use when creating an automated email campaign is to send out an early email just to establish a rapport with your customer. This email can be scheduled to go out as soon as an order is processed or shipped on Amazon. For example, the first email might look something like this:
Hello,
Thank you for your purchase of [PRODUCT NAME]! We are glad that you decided to give our product a try and we’re sure you are going to love it!
Your order is currently being prepared and should be shipped out in no time. You can use this link to track its progress! [SHIPMENT TRACKING LINK]
In the meantime, please don’t hesitate to reach out and send me a message if you have any questions about this order or anything else in our product line. We here at [COMPANY NAME] are always here to help.
Thanks,
[SELLER NAME]
Asking for a product review when the time is right
Now that you’ve established a relationship in the first email, you can make a call to action in the second. Before sending out the second email, make sure that the customer has had enough time with their product to actually have the chance to formulate an opinion on it.
For example, a new toothbrush will be used daily right away, so a buyer will likely know within a week how they like the feel of it. On the other hand, you might want to wait two or three weeks before asking for a product review on a set of crafting beads as it may take a little while for the buyer to have time to work on a new project.
With FeedbackWhiz, you can schedule emails to go out in specific time intervals such as “two weeks after the item was received”. Each product in your catalog can be customized with unique email templates and automated schedules.
Here’s an example of the second email:
Hello,
It’s [SELLER NAME] again! Hope everything is going well. Our records indicate that you received your [PRODUCT NAME] two weeks ago. We’d love to know what you think of it!
Product reviews are an extremely valuable part of the Amazon experience. Feedback helps customers to make more educated shopping decisions, and it helps sellers know what we are doing right and wrong. If you have the time, please leave a product review here.[PRODUCT REVIEW LINK]
And as we mentioned in our last email, we here at [COMPANY NAME] are always available if you need anything. Let us know!
Thanks,
[SELLER NAME]
Of course, these templates are just examples. Depending on your brand and the products you sell, it might make more sense for your templates to include fun images and GIFs or detailed instructions on how your customers can use their new product. Regardless of how you set up your automated email campaign, consistently asking customers for product reviews will lead to more reviews coming in. And those extra reviews could be what separates you from your competitors.
As an Amazon Seller, the last thing you want is having your account suspended or even banned. Your valuable business coming to a screeching halt and your income depleting to a stand-still is every Seller’s worst nightmare! Yet we see it happening all too often to the best of us.
So what’s the solution? Prevention is better than cure!
The Requirement
The need for effective functional, growth and development solutions in online business and eCommerce through a refined, revolutionary and winning approach is utmost crucial. Understanding, applying and maintaining this dynamic, whilst obtaining consistent success with valuable resources, tools, knowledge, and a results-driven approach is what is truly necessary.
Here are some fundamentally common reasonswhy even the best, most profitable and highly reputed of accounts on Amazon can get suspended or banned when one least expects it:
Poor product quality
Selling products that are restricted or prohibited by Amazon
Opening a new account when the old account was suspended
Shipping related issues
Creating more than one Seller account to sell the same products
Poor performance metrics
Negative customer reviews or soliciting for good reviews
Illegal or banned substances
Not meeting the product listing guidelines or uploading inaccurate listing
Dangerous goods
Intoxicants or narcotics of any kind
Copyright infringement
Poor customer service
Canceling orders
Now, given the above critical areas that can cause Amazon account banned or suspension, it is important to maintain healthy account metrics. It all boils down to that! How do you accomplish this? We discuss below.
Healthy Account Metrics
So how does one determine a healthy, strong, viable and effective set of metrics that adhere and align with Amazon’s TOS (Terms of Service) policies, without infringing the rules, guidelines, and protocols outlined for Sellers?
Amazon considers the following stipulated metrics and parameters that regulate and robustly determine a Seller’s account legitimacy and its health:
Order defect rates
Valid track rates
Cancellation rates
Buyer message-response time
According to Amazon, all sellers should be working towards achieving and maintaining a level of customer service that meets the performance targets. Failure to meet these targets does not necessarily put your seller account in negative standing, but failure to improve may negatively affect your account.
Order defect rate: < 1%
Pre-fulfilment cancel rate: < 2.5%
Late shipment rate: < 4%
These are baseline goals. Sellers with exemplary performance have the opportunity to distinguish themselves to buyers through the feedback rating that appears next to each of their listings.
Most sellers are exceeding these targets, so the better your performance, the better your chance of building a stronger, more competitive business. Amazon state you should monitor your customer metrics closely on a regular basis. This is because the report informs you of the following:
Your Customer Metrics indicate how you are doing with respect to customer satisfaction. Monitor your metrics frequently so you can spot and resolve operational problems promptly. Excessive order defect rates (negative feedback, A-to-Z Guarantee claims, and chargeback) can cause account suspensions and even account closures.
Check your feedback and A-to-Z Guarantee claim pages daily, and proactively resolve any issues.
Getting Help
In business and eCommerce in general, time is money. What you save on time, you directly save and increase in money. Thus, Urtasker.com has accomplished this by providing businesses with highly trained and skilled E-commerce specialists that handle the daily tasks, processes and crucial functions of various aspects of the business – virtually and in real-time from anywhere in the world!
This has helped business owners gain more time to work on growing their businesses, whilst seeing increased productivity, decreased downtime, lowered costs and unparalleled profit generation.
As a truly unique, professional and globally relevant eCommerce end-to-end business solutions provider, Urtasker.com takes immense pride in our passion for helping its clients reach their goals.
It doesn’t require heavy upfront fees or long-term contracts/commitments. Its rates are very affordable, and its clients are rapidly growing small-medium sized businesses at a dramatic rate.
Urtasker’s elite team of eCommerce and Amazon Specialist and Experts will help Sellers with:
Free account audit
Provide a plan of action
Trained team is aware of all prohibited activities
Manage and monitor performance metrics
Follow-ups and consistent optimization
Customer service
In Conclusion, one of the biggest trending Amazon seller concerns is Seller Account banned or suspension scenarios. It is no doubt the most dreaded issue for Amazon sellers.
The first approach should take to protect the Amazon seller account from hackersis to prevent suspensions and bans altogether. Most sellers get in trouble because they don’t stay on top of their customer metrics.
The consequence often is that you lose the Buy Box share for some or all products, losing your account altogether to suspension or worse such as a ban! It’s always advisable to save time, money and hassle by enlisting the help of a professional E-commerce specialist agency that knows exactly what areas your business could use help in.
Being an online business owner or e-commerce seller means one needs to give more detailed thought into how the business is going to be managed on a day to day basis. This will invariably depend on individual circumstances, resources, time constraints, overall objectives, preferences as well as service and production needs.
Marketing is a powerful business tool. The internet age has provided a whirlwind of opportunities for every hardworking dreamer that wants to fly without wings. The world of eCommerce and internet has proven to be a lucrative arena for those who want to benefit from the promises it beholds.
Regardless of the parameters, one thing is certain: online business owners crucially ‘need’ to plan and manage resources effectively, to ensure continued profits, growth and consistent success. And one of the most vital of these resources is the art of Marketing!
Here are 5 ways online businesses and e-commerce entrepreneurs can successfully market and grow their businesses while increasing profits:
Social Media Branding
Make sure your company’s vision and products are effectively communicated online via powerful branding.
Make the branding of your company, products, and services on social media visually appealing!
Human beings are creatures of visual stimulation. We thrive on it. And we act on it.
Think about ads on television about fast food; the way they trigger your visual senses with close-ups of juicy burgers on a bun, splash of ketchup and mayo, steamy golden fries and cool soothing soft drink! It’s all visual; making your mouth water!
Thus, make your visual branding inviting to look at – since if the ad didn’t invite and entice the eye, no one would read it!
Post daily across major platforms like Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and others for maximum audience engagement and brand positioning.
Knowing Your Audience
Knowledge is power! Being aware of the “market landscape” and knowing who your competitors are and what they are offering, is a powerful weapon!
Whether it’s running FB ads, sending Emails to your list, writing Landing or Sales Pages or simply promoting a Blog post, the art of persuasive social media marketing and attention-grabbing content depends on understanding your audience!
Do your research on what are your audience’s pain points, their needs, wants, desires, struggles, preferences.
A successful e-commerce social media marketing strategy should understand people, have a strong insight into their needs and wants and be empathetic towards providing a solution to their problems.
In essence, great social media for e-commerce business and the associated marketing is simply a direct conversation between you and the consumer.
Remember, writing something doesn’t mean that you’ve “communicated” it.
For example: if you’re selling a mattress, then communicate the benefits of the mattress to the audience (relieving back pain, uninterrupted good night’s sleep, etc).
Customers don’t buy products, they buy the experience, the vision and the benefit THEY believe they can get out of them. And it’s your marketing efforts’ job to MAKE them believe of it!
Keep Track of Costs for SMM
SMM (Social Media Marketing) is your backbone for global audience engagement, lead generation, brand recognition, product visibility and other integral factors that determine your success as an eCommerce business.
So, keeping track of your SMM costs is crucial. You don’t want your costs to negatively impact your SMM.
To make your SMM tactics and campaigns more effective, you need to:
Layout a clear plan for your goals and objectives with all your social media presence
Dedicate a strong team to manage your social media channels and platforms
Assign a realistic cost range to each social media outlet for advertising and promotions
Use measuring tools to keep an eye out on progress and social media effectiveness
Utilize Google Analytics and other resources to keep you in the right direction
How to Create Catchy Social Media Posts
As human beings, we are creatures of emotion. Love, hate, jealousy, fear, pity – all are forms of emotion that make us beings of empathy and intellect. We use that intellect to make decisions via ‘Free Will’. Human behavior can be controlled if the free will can be controlled.
How do you control free-will? Through the power of sheer persuasion! And words have the ability to fuel persuasion via creating beliefs, images, stories, and narratives that captivate the heart and consume the mind.
So for your social media marketing, if you’re writing to persuade, you have to hit the gut before you get anywhere near the brain. The part that decides “I want that” is emotional and often subconscious. If your premise doesn’t work emotionally, logic will never get a chance to weigh in.
If you flip that emotional switch, the sale (or other action) is yours to lose. Because our logical minds do eventually step in (usually in a way that makes us think we’re driven by logic in the first place). If your premise is not credible (as in it’s too good to be true), you fail.
Create catchy posts by:
Using powerful and interesting images, captions, headlines
Use audience psychology and pain points address their concerns and problems
Offer solutions and features/benefits, by differentiating yourself from competitors
Use easy to read the language, no technical jargon or complicated words
Use Paid Promotions
Paid promotions are powerful for generating warm traffic that is already looking for what you’re offering online. Platforms like Google, Bing, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and AdWords are critical when it comes to harnessing successful results from paid promotions.
Paid promotions give you:
Large audience outreach, connecting you to millions of people
Brand positioning by enhancing the visibility of your product to the masses
Opportunity to build credibility and trust
Earn higher profits through solid lead generation and sales
If you don’t have paid promotions already in your Social Media Marketing strategy for E-commerce, you need to do so as soon as possible. It will be game-changing and will pay dividends down the road.
E-commerce is one of the most lucrative ways to earn big returns on investment.
Whether you’re selling on Amazon, Shopify, Etsy, eBay or elsewhere, the power of E-commerce is a great arena to attract a great number of qualified leads.
There’s no reason why any self-driven, passionate, goal-oriented and disciplined individual cannot become a successful, knowledgeable and inspiring Ecommerce Guru’ in their own right! All it takes is the right mindset, tools, resources, and an insatiable hunger to succeed while harboring a vision that knows no bounds.
The world is rapidly evolving – from technology and gadgets, medicine and travel, to how we do business and consumer goods. Any form of online business, particularly Ecommerce, is no different, and is here to stay!
Any successful online business guru knows one key fundamental recipe. This recipe involves professionalism, skills, reliability, knowledge, strategy, cost and overall ability to harness productivity in an utmost effective way.
Being your own boss or an E-commerce Guru is not just a matter of name but a constant struggle from no one to a BIG ONE!
With a strategic and educated approach, hard work, competitive foresight and a never-say-no attitude, you can become an Ecommerce; helping yourself and your clients, while also enabling others who want to learn from you – the right way! Without the hype.
Here are 6 tried and tested tips, insights, and techniques that can make a legitimate and proven eCommerce Guru (and not a hyped up fake-preneur!)
1. Learn from Mistakes
Failure has a truly ‘negative’ vibe by its very name. We think of it as something that ‘should not’ be a part of our lives.
Also, a big misconception we often harbor about big ‘Gurus’ and ‘Experts’ is that they are invincible superhumans with the strength of roaring lions.
That is incorrect. They are humans just like us. They love cute little cat videos on YouTube, they feel hungry at midnight and they don’t enjoy paying bills. Just like us.
Mistakes or failures are part and parcel of the game. Naturally, embracing the fear of making mistakes or ending in failure certainly isn’t ever an easy situation. With focus, knowledge, and learning, the impending dread of failure can become an enviable asset you can use to your advantage.
How so? Well. Mistakes are a precursor to success. They form the breeding ground for growth. Unless one makes mistakes, one cannot embrace the definition of success. It is a definition that evolves throughout our entrepreneurial lives and is uniquely distinct to everyone.
2. A Strong Backend Support
As an E-commerce Guru, you cannot reach, sustain and compete at the very top of the food chain ladder, if you don’t have ‘strong legs’ to lift you up or support you.
What this means is you need to develop, cement and maintain a strong Backend Support mechanism to your enterprise that can function as the very basis to your entire business.
Backend Support essentially entails various control and regulatory areas such as: Dashboard, Administrator Management, META Data Control, Crawler Control, Sitemap, Tracking, Store Management, Order Management, Customer Service, Shipping and Social Media engagement, to name a few.
With these elements in place, an E-commerce Guru can focus on building and growing not just his or her business, but also helping those who want to learn the tricks of the trade and advance in the world of E-commerce successfully – without dead ends!
3. Using a Funnel Approach
The truth is that even if you devote thousands of dollars in finances to send traffic to your eCommerce website or product listing on Amazon, chances are that the visitors will ‘not’ be ready to buy your product right away.
For anyone to be a successful Ecommerce Guru, it is important to figure out how your marketing and sales efforts can ‘work together’ to grab your audience’s interest and incentivize your prospective customers to buy! Using an effective sales funnel can accomplish just that.
So how does using a funnel work?
The simple purpose of a funnel is to: Attract (Strangers), Convert (Visitors), Close (Leads) and Delight (Customers).
Attract: Provides marketing or advertising which attracts visitors to your product page or official site.
Convert: Establishes unique offers which inspire those visitors to ‘willingly’ share their contact information. This willingness is based on genuine interest.
Close: Culminates into proactive efforts which support those leads to ‘close’ and transition into paying customers.
Delight: The most important phase. Superb customer service that satisfies your customers, keeps them happy and makes them send you referrals. Word of mouth advertising works its charm here!
4. Be Unique in Selling
Make your E-commerce selling original. It’s OK to be creative. There’s plenty of boring listings on Amazon, don’t let yours be home for content like this.
For example, if you’re selling fingernail clippers, don’t give them the same uninspired content typically associated with products like this. Give it some personality and explain the benefits of using them.
Use Amazon business reports to measure your conversion rates. Once you have your essential content in place, you can look at your statistics in the reports and establish a baseline conversion rate for your product.
Furthermore, showcase to the world your ‘Unique Selling Proposition”. A unique selling proposition (USP) refers to the unique benefit shown by a company, product or brand that enables it to ‘stand out’ from competitors!
5. The Power of Compelling People
Compelling people is your biggest strength. Persuasive business communications and powerful copywriting are forms of art. They are literally art forms that normal human beings simply cannot replicate – unless you’ve had specialized training.
If you can effectively influence your customers, you can have a successful year in business for 2019.
They decorate the canvas of your imagination like the stroke of a paintbrush, and create a picture that incites interest, grabs attention, evokes desire and inspires action!
The art of effective persuasion and compelling people is about ‘consuming’ the audience’s imagination.
The human imagination is one of the most liberating things in the world; it takes us beyond our wildest dreams and traverses all boundaries, transcending limits we never thought were possible.
AIDA – Attention, Interest, Desire, Action >> these are the pillars upon which marketing and advertising are built upon – and copywriting is the crucial glue that binds them together. If you can master these as an Ecommerce Guru, you can easily compel people to listen to you, respect you, buy from you and keep coming back to you for more!
