5 Reasons Why Amazon Marketplace Is A Asset For Small Business Vendors

Amazon is without a doubt one of the biggest online marketplaces around. With around $72.4 billion in sales in the last quarter of 2018, Amazon started this year with a whopping market capitalisation of $755.7 billion! This just goes to show the staggering hold that Amazon as a brand has on the global consumer market. Amazon store management services cater to all kinds of sellers and a wide range of products, with the prime aim of customer satisfaction.

Just this year, Amazon came out with some 50 revised provisions mainly aimed at small and medium-sized enterprise vendors to promote increased vendor participation. Considering that half of all products sold on Amazon are from SME vendors it comes to an as little surprise that Amazon wants to capitalise on this budding product resource with well-timed initiatives.

While there are certain challenges that small business vendors usually face, such as price cuts due to reselling, high commission cuts, and storage and shipping rents, the pros of having an Amazon merchant membership do outweigh the cons. With the right strategy, adequate branding tactics, and a well-executed product arrangement, you could well be on your way to milking profits from your Amazon tie-up.

Here’s looking at a few ways that could benefit small business owners on Amazon.

Wider reach

Any small business owner can only hope to reach his town, city or at the most, his immediate surrounding regions, even with the best of marketing. It simply isn’t possible to reach millions of people with traditional marketing techniques. Amazon Store’s SEO practices allow a wider outreach and provide business vendors with a readymade platform for marketing their products. With over 100 million Amazon Prime subscribers, there is an assured loyal customer base already in place that you can directly tap into. Moreover, if you try to set up our own eCommerce site to draw online consumers, it still will not be as lucrative as the Amazon marketplace. With promotional offers, end of season sales, discount coupons and other incentives, Amazon attracts huge flocks of crowds like nothing else.

Easy to register

Amazon also makes it extremely easy for new business owners to create vendor accounts on the site. Now with recent developments in Amazon’s store management services, it is simple and quick to get your registration done and start selling your merchandise. To begin with, you need to first gain an idea about the fees and charges for a seller account. Once you set up your business account and submit your credit card details, you need to choose the right pricing for your product. If there’s one thing all new business owners need to bear in mind, it is that pricing competition is a real issue in the Amazon marketplace. Due to resellers and product distribution policies, a pricing war is a common occurrence on the site. As such, choosing the right price to match your competitors is important. It is also imperative that you define your product well and put it under the right category for users to find. And with the correct Amazon store SEO tactics and appropriate content marketing, you should certainly attract buyers.

Brand building

All the rules of online marketing apply here too, and it pays to have your social media connected to your Amazon account. Little practices such as leaving your social media account links in the customer care emails or on the product boxes, helps in increased customer generation. Amazon provides a variety of tools to aid brand building. Tools like Profit Bandit help you compare Amazon price listings for similar products while also taking into account Amazon seller fees and cuts. This can help you choose the appropriate price range with a profitable margin. Also, even if you were to opt for the FBA delivery, you could still customize your packaging boxes, flyers, logos and labels, as a means of brand building. As Amazon places great emphasis on customer relationship, interacting with consumer comments and attending to queries in a timely manner will earn higher ratings and ensure customer loyalty. Once you have a solid stable consumer base, you can use the platform to test new products and gauge their reception.

FBA policies

FBA or Fulfilment by Amazon refers to its efficient warehousing, packaging and delivery services. All the products available on Amazon, whether they belong to Amazon Retail or external vendors, have the option of being packaged and delivered by Amazon. This means that for small business owners who might not have enough resources for mass packaging, Amazon’s FBA could be a saviour. Initially, Amazon had a fixed monthly rent in lieu of services provided, however, as a part of the revised incentives for small business owners, it has now waived off the rent. This means that venders can experiment with new products too without having to worry about the storage cost. Moreover, if small businesses choose to use the FDA, they may attract more customers by the inherent free shipping!

Incremental profits on unique products with veritable margins

Amazon’s appeal to consumers lies as much as in its credibility and reputation as in the lucrative promotions, offers, and schemes it entails. For small vendors venturing into the online marketing for the first time, this belief in Amazon’s services and product quality results in higher engagements, and with the right marketing, higher conversions. Amazon provides sellers with analytics data, sales reports and logs, to read, research, and analyse consumer behaviour to help them make timely changes. If you offer a unique product or present it in a unique way, it ranks higher, doesn’t fall into the price cut competition, and attracts higher margins, helping you establish your brand firmly, thus taking advantage of Amazon’s incremental profit model.

Amazon’s store management services now also allow Global Registration Experience, enabling users to tap into a worldwide consumer base for their customers. With Amazon’s reliability, guaranteed timely deliveries, high product quality, and constant promotional deals, all vendors on Amazon get to reap the benefits of these perks.

Amazon as a marketplace offers a great platform for budding small businesses owners to put their products out into the world and earn high revenues from it. With dedication, patience, commitment and a strong marketing and pricing strategy, small business owners will definitely build a profitable income channel through their Amazon stores.