This week’s guest blog is written by one of our partners, Rich Insight.

Here’s the key element you are all missing, Digital Marketing Managers, owners and ecommerce Directors. There’s a reason why your efforts with that Digital Marketing agency are struggling to support Amazon marketing effectively. Here’s why we are so special; nobody is thinking holistically. But let’s ease into that. Before we arrogantly explain why so many of you either have the wrong partner or only half the power to effectively run your Amazon marketing strategies, let’s flirt on the basics together first. How are you? That’s a nice pair of shoes. Do you work out?

Jeff’s empire is expanding all over the globe. To ignore it is to have half an ecommerce marketing strategy. Many experienced Amazon sellers know the perks Brands and Manufacturers have received on Amazon. If you register your trademark with Amazon, you get special tools resellers or non-trademarked sellers don’t.

Lets briefly go over some of these special tools:

Enhanced Brand Content

(EBC) allows you to make product pages look pretty. You can add extra images, banners and copy in the description area which Amazon tells us causing a 10-15% sales bump on the ASIN. That rate is questionable, but it’s a tool to leverage. EBC is the tip of the iceberg. Near, far, wherever your Amazon listings are, we need to let go of the fears of embracing Amazon’s tools. Akin to fighting the tide, sellers don’t really have a choice but to paddle into the hot and cold currents of this vast deep ocean of buyers.

Similar to Google’s PPC engine from 2008, you can bid on keywords to drive extra paid-for traffic to your listings. There are many ideas out there on how to use this tool. Most of them are incorrect, but we’re here to give you all the correct (and best) information. Why pay Amazon a cost per click, on top of the 10-15% sale commission, on top of the monthly fee? Well, again, it’s firstly a herd mentality; if you don’t, others will. More critically, those others will have an advantage over you which over time will become harder to claw back.

Brand Display Ads

You’re likely to see these more and more on Amazon while you order those Nespresso capsules for next day delivery. When you enter in a search, at times you’ll see a little banner appear below the search bar. That’s what we’re talking about. At this point, many Amazon sellers might think that’s it. Nope. Grab a coffee or tea or whiskey because like a rash that won’t fade, Amazon’s marketing tools give you another way to burn more money for itchy traffic – Display Ads.

Landing pages

Otherwise known as Store fronts, these are little pages you can customise to showcase a product, how great your Brand is or combinations alike. I guess at this point it’s profoundly simple – Amazon are creating their own mini internet entirely focused on driving a buyer to a product. Do the Words ‘Global Domination’ ring in any one else’s mind?

Now that we’re all on the same page, lets loop back to why your efforts are curtailed despite your best efforts. It’s easy to think of these as separate tools. EBC and Landing pages are more for the Marketplace design team, as they are all about listing content and presentation. Amazon PPC and Brand Ads are akin to traditional marketing tools you use to drive traffic to sites. However, these tools are not siloed, they feed into each other. They need to be used together, and need a holistic strategy which aligns them, uses them together, and allows the ability to take gains from one element to augment the other. They are all part of the same woven Amazon tapestry, and all need to be used in tandem.

Marketing in 2019

Here are some of the things to watch out for when selling on Amazon:

  • Old dying products – if those items didn’t sell well historically, they won’t sell very well now either. You can drop prices, but that is not always a possible strategy for Brands needing to price establish or to keep their wholesale department happy. Amazon PPC is one way you can avoid a race to the bottom, but what about a Brand Display ad and a landing page too, with some EBC? Why not line it all up for best effect, instead of just throwing money at a small piece of it?
  • Competitor targeting – everyone is targeting Brands and specific models from Brands to bring buyers to their items. You can directly compete on very detailed phrases or terms. But do these activities get real-time examination from the Marketplace team to augment their side? Likely not.
  • Brand protection – Despite the stories, you can leverage Amazon’s own tools and system to protect your name. There are several brands already doing this effectively, but the vast majority of Brands are not, and even if they were, don’t even have a store front landing page to drive the traffic towards! If you want control over your Brand on Amazon, you need to BE on Amazon and running this.

How this fits into an ERP software

As mentioned, a combined strategy, and working with a company to help you develop and follow through on that strategy, is best to maximising presence and sales on Amazon. But you can’t do all that, and have that strategy in place, if you are lacking the fundamentals of running a business; a core application to organise and keep track of key business processes. An ERP solution can do just that, by allowing you to control all parts of your business, from stock to couriers, in one application. With a cloud-based ERP solution enables you to work remotely from anywhere in the world with a good internet connection. Everything is synced up to Amazon from an ERP solution, so you have full control of what is listing on your channel, but can also sit back and relax, with the knowledge that this all automated for you.