Insights, mistakes, breakthroughs, and valuable takeaways to increase your sales on Amazon. Online entrepreneur Jacopo Lombardi is sharing some tips with us and will run a conference “5 things I learned selling on Amazon (and 2 things you should too)” on October 19th in Luxembourg-city.
(Photo by Piotr Cichosz on Unsplash)
Why selling on Amazon?
Amazon has been since over 20 years one of the smartest and fastest growing channels to test nearly all types of consumer products. Amazon provides everyone all the tools to start a fully functional eCommerce business, and to compete with (and even outsell) the big brands. Still very few know how cheap is to reach an audience of hundreds of millions of Amazon buyers, compared to most offline and other online channels. And it’s a very valuable 24/7 Online Marketing MBA for those willing to learn, from the physical products business, to publishing and even more.
What are your tips to increase the sales on Amazon?
In my 3-years experience selling physical products, I believe that a great buyers’ traffic is still there, still relatively cheap to reach, and still growing year after year. So sales are achievable by everyone, in theory. But sales can only come after having created good products with good reviews. And ideas for good products can usually come only after having done some research first. Special rules do apply, but also common sense. Some say “sales fix everything” but no product should be launched with a nicely sustainable profit margin. The perceived quality of a product can still be increased with very cost-effective ideas. So a low initial budget is no excuse for not trying to differentiate, stand out and price higher than all competitors. All marketing and sales development strategies make sense only after having tested and launched good products first. Many ideas for good products are still to be found in the biggest as much as in the smallest Amazon Categories, for those who do the research. So much more can be said at strategic and tactical level, but I’ll keep to these above.
What are the main mistakes to avoid?
Ah, I’m surely a specialist of making mistakes. And making some is quite inevitable. What matters the most is to learn from them, to move on and to be persistent. Here are the two main mistakes I made. First, not travelling more often to meet suppliers and business partners, not going to Amazon Sellers networking events: but I’ve done better, lately. Second mistake, not trying to set up a small mastermind of like-minded European Sellers, and to organize events like the conference in Luxembourg.
