Three Initiatives for Growth on Amazon in 2018
The holidays have come and gone, bringing about extreme chaos followed by a brief moment of calm before the new year. Now that you survived and thrived through 2017, we are here to make sure you have your best foot forward in 2018 – here are three high-level initiatives to get you started:
Amazon’s “inventory cleanup” takes place on February 15th. Any additional inventory that is still in Amazon fulfillment facilities will be charged long-term storage fees. With almost one month to go before these fees take effect, we suggest an investment in more strategic areas of your account.
Instead of spending the money to remove your inventory from fulfillment centers, reallocate that spend to invest in advertising efforts that contribute to the product’s long-term success. Strategic advertising helps to generate organic growth, increase brand awareness, and elevate product ranking (not to mention avoiding the additional logistical fees tacked onto the long-term storage charges). While it may seem like reallocating that budget is risky, the benefits in the long run are endless. If executed properly, you can move through a sizeable amount of inventory before these fees take place.
The proof is in the numbers. Completing a full catalog audit to kick off Q1 provides valuable insight into your account’s success. Use this data to better develop your catalog listings in 2018 by targeting the proven effective tactics, tweaking content, and advertising based on your account’s historical success metrics. At Macarta, we measure success by the following metrics:
- Sales: Ordered product sales, inventory health, buy box percentage
- Advertising: ACOS, click-through rate & ad-attributed revenue
- Traffic: Conversion rate, sessions
- Performance: Order defect rate, late shipments, seller rating, product reviews
Invest time, money, and energy into developing a solid baseline for new products. With this foundation, products can gain traction and experience growth more quickly. Tweak your growth and sales tactics based on the metrics revealed in the audit and apply these changes to the new products. Backing up your products with the below line items are a sure-fire way to grow your listings and reduce the headache in the long run. Keep in mind, a product is never completely done – we highly encourage consistent testing, tweaking, and reformatting on a semi-regular basis.
- Strategic product descriptions
- High quality, detailed product images
- Backend converting keywords
- A+ Content