A best practice guide to Amazon and eBay marketplaces

Without a solid marketing strategy, your marketplace ads will struggle to be seen in search results.

When it comes to Amazon and eBay, it’s not as simple as just listing yourself. You need to have an ongoing plan that maximizes campaigns, fulfillment processes, and optimization, to name a few.

Amazon:

Sponsored products: If you choose to use a sponsored product ad, your product will be featured on a relevant results page. For example, if you sell watch straps, your sponsored product could appear in the results of a user looking for watch straps. Sponsored product ads tend to have higher-quality clicks and RIO as users are already searching highly relevant keywords.

Sponsored brands: If you’re hoping to target consumers who are in the research stage of their buying journey, sponsored brand ads could be just the thing for you. These tend to be banner ads promoting your brand in search results.

Amazon coupons: If you’re looking to promote discounts, you can create promotions in the form of digital coupons. These show up in marketplace search results.

eBay promotions manager: Promotions manager in eBay works much the same as a traditional ad programme. The promotions manager allows you to create offers, deals and incentives to rewards shoppers.

eBay promoted listings: Working much like Amazon’s sponsored products and brands, promoted listing with eBay get you seen by consumers. Ads can ‘follow’ users on their buying journey in search results, product review pages and related items. You only pay once a sale has gone through.

Just like any other form of content, your marketplace ads should be optimised. That includes product titles, descriptions, images and keywords. The more you understand what your consumer wants and is interested in, the better chance your ad has of appearing in results.

It’s all well and good creating the perfect ad but they aren’t going to perform well if you aren’t connected with your audience. Make sure to regularly check any reviews and respond no matter if positive or negative. This is a chance to establish your brand on the platform.

Similarly, make sure you have reasonable response times. If you’re slow to reply to customer messages or interactions, they will quickly lose interest. If you’re late to the game or even ignore messages and interactions, your account could be suspended.

Finally, make sure you have an excellent returns policy. Even if a customer has a negative experience, if the returns policy is easy, quick, and hassle-free, they are more likely to return in the future. This can be a massive game-changer in turning a bad experience into a good one.

One of the best ways to grow quickly with Amazon or eBay is to automate as much as possible. Forget manual spreadsheets, these can be fully automated to take the groundwork off your hands. The more that is automated, the quicker and more efficient your processes become.

Automated shipment tracking will automatically mark a package as ‘shipped’ as soon as delivery is initiated. This means that buyers have up-to-date and accurate information about their delivery.

Intelligent order routing enables each order to be sent to the most effective fulfillment partner. This is determined by shipping speeds, delivery fees, and warehouse locations – to name a few factors.

Automated inventory management keeps track of inventory levels and is updated across multiple marketplaces. This ensures that the correct inventory number is always displayed.

Marketplaces are ever-changing platforms with prices changing seemingly by the hour. To be efficient, it’s important to constantly be monitoring and checking your shipping options. Therefore, it’s beneficial to use multiple carriers, rather than relying on just one. When it comes to logistics, you have three main options in a marketplace:

Fulfillment by Amazon: This is where you use Amazon’s fulfillment centers to pack and ship your goods to customers. This means that a high standard of delivery and returns are met.

Third-party logistics (3PL): This uses third-party fulfillment centers who pick, pack, and send your goods for you.

Dropshipping: If you’re looking for quicker expansion, this option allows you to never actually store any inventory yourself. Instead, products and goods are bought from third-party providers as and when an order is completed via your marketplace account. This is then shipped directly to the buyer without you having to ever stock your own inventory.

BOSCO™ uses a sophisticated data model to estimate your search metrics, in order to provide a recommended channel budget split across paid, organic, and marketplaces to achieve better efficiency. If you would like to try BOSCO™ for free or for more information on how you can become a partner, register here. If you are interested in connecting your own data, send us an email at team@askbosco.io