Whether you’re a first-time private label seller on Amazon or are already established and looking to expand, launching a new product takes time and careful planning. After all, you don’t want to end up investing all your resources in a new product that doesn’t sell or give you high margins. Instead, you want something that will win you the Buy Box and set your private label business on a path for long-term growth.
To help you get there, follow these five tips for launching a new product on Amazon:
1. Choose An Attractive Product & Price
It goes without saying that you want to sell a product that will actually, well, sell. If you’ve been selling on Amazon for a while, you likely have an idea of what’s in demand. But in case you need a refresher — or if this is your first time selling — do some research. You can look on Amazon (or even Alibaba) to see what the top-selling products are or consult a product research tool to do the heavy lifting for you.
Once you decide on what you’re going to sell, you have two price-points to think about: the sourcing cost and the selling price. For the former, you want to pay the lowest possible price to have your product made — that means comparison shopping and negotiating with suppliers. For the latter, you want a price that will attract sales, win you the Buy Box, and give you high margins — that means researching competitors prices, looking up the price history for a similar product and/or using a repricer tool.
Your last step here is to create a stellar product detail page that includes everything a customer needs to familiarize themselves with your product: high-resolution images, product demos, accurate and thorough descriptions, etc.
2. Manage Your Inventory/Supply Chain
Once you’ve chosen your product and price, you need to stock up so you can avoid a stockout. That means developing an inventory management strategy to determine how much product to order at the start plus how much to have on hand at any given time in the future.
Understanding this information will not only prevent you from running out of stock, it will also keep you from buying too much at one time. Not only that, you’ll know when and how much to reorder as business picks up.
As important as it is to manage your inventory, it is equally important to be on top of the supply chain as well. That way, you can streamline the reorder process and not run up against any surprises or delays when it’s time to place a new order. So establish a rapport with your suppliers and stay in frequent communication with them — i.e. don’t just reach out when you need more product.
3. Create Buzz
Generate interest in your product before it’s actually listed so that when your listing is live, you don’t have to work as hard to get customers. You can do this by teasing its release on social media or your own website if you have one.
Then follow up the pre-release marketing with a Sponsored Product campaign on Amazon. To really create a lot of buzz, you can offer a new product special, for example a discount for the first 100 customers.
4. Generate Reviews
Since online shoppers can’t preview or test your product in person, they rely on feedback from previous customers before making a purchase decision. But you can’t necessarily launch a new product with reviews. Unless, that is, you have a separate ecommerce channel you can launch on first.
In other words, if you have your own ecommerce website, consider launching there first and running a marketing campaign on social media and other channels outside of Amazon. From there, you can solicit feedback from your customers and build up reviews on your website.
Then, use those reviews in your marketing campaigns for the Amazon launch, directing people to your Amazon listing. After your Amazon launch and as you start making sales, you can solicit feedback from your Amazon customers.
5. Get Cash
Launching a new product isn’t cheap, especially when it’s a private label product. After all, you have packaging and branding costs to budget for in addition to everything else.
If Amazon’s payment delay has left you in a cash flow crunch, don’t worry. With Payability — a financing company for high-growth marketplace sellers — you can cover your product (and other) expenses with ease.
Payability’s Instant Advance product gives you a large lump sum of cash at once. Here’s how it works: Payability buys a portion of your future receivables at a discount and the total cost depends on how long you take to pay back. For example, they would purchase $5,000 worth and give you $4,000 of it today. Repayment is expected within 16-20 weeks and each week’s cost is 1% of the $5,000. If you pay back the full $5,000 before 20 weeks, you’ll get a rebate of 1%/$50 for each week it’s early.
If, in addition to a large lump sum of cash, you are interested in daily payments, Payability has another financing solution — Instant Access — that pays you your Amazon income one business day after making a sale.
More than 2,000 marketplace sellers have benefited from Payability since the company launched in 2016. In fact, Payability customers grow 2.5 times faster than their competitors — this one has even tripled her Amazon business.
To learn more about how Payability can help you fun a product launch and grow your business, visit go.payability.com/fbamaster and get a $250 sign on bonus. You can find out even more about Payability on Retail Dive, Fit Small Business and Glassdoor. For the latest news on ecommerce financing, you can follow the Payability Facebook, Payability Twitter and Payability YouTube.