The price here is per Marketplace.

Successfully selling online requires knowing the ins and outs of the channels you sell on. But when you look under the hood of a marketplace, there’s a lot to be learned.

Managing multiple marketplaces gets even more complicated—just when you think you’ve got one channel figured out, another one is bound to bring its own surprises.

Despite this, it’s always a good idea to diversify your sales channels. A good multichannel strategy protects you from being over-reliant on any one channel for 100% of your sales, plus grants you access to new audiences.

There are also steps you can take to mitigate the challenges of multi-marketplace management. Keep reading for strategies on how to simplify your work, even as you expand to new channels.

Top Challenges of Ecommerce Marketplace Management
Let’s first look at the common challenges that sellers face when it comes to managing their sales channels. Even the largest brands may find themselves combatting some of these issues, which include:

Poor inventory control – Inventory mis-management is a trillion-dollar issue each year and can stem from overselling, overstocking and other errors. Inventory issues often become inflated when multiple channels are involved, and sellers have to make sure that inventory is synced accurately across them all.

Redundant work – When you’ve got one item listed on multiple channels, you may quickly find yourself keying in the same thing over and over again when you want to make a small change or create a new listing. This not only causes burnout, but also leaves room for human error.

Listing and ranking – Each ecommerce marketplace has its own way of categorizing, organizing and ranking items that are listed for sale. Many online sellers become hyper-focused on understanding the rules of engagement for their primary sales channel (usually Amazon) and neglect to learn them for others, putting them at risk of leaving money on the table.

Demand forecasting – Of course, when you’re selling on multiple sites, you need to have enough inventory to fulfill all the orders. But predicting how many sales you’re going to make is tough, and you’ll have to account for varying lead times, production costs and storage fees.

Change management – Ecommerce never sits still. Likewise, marketplaces are constantly updating their algorithms and listing requirements to improve the shopping experience on their sites. Many sellers today lack an efficient, scalable solution for this, and their businesses are disrupted whenever a channel makes a sudden change.
Strategies for Making Your Job Easier
Given the above challenges, what can you do to alleviate the stress of online selling? Take a look at these tips and see what you can put into motion.

1. Centralize Your Catalog
The easiest way to manage your multichannel listings is to have your product data located in one place. This creates one source of truth for your team to reference. It also saves you the hassle of logging into each marketplace individually in order to post a product up for sale or to perform (what should be) quick tasks.

Beyond this, you’ll want to be able to centrally manage your inventory, analytics and other essential apps (such as your WMS). This can be achieved through a multichannel ecommerce platform, which makes sure that all of your apps communicate with one another.

Multichannel platforms can range drastically in their capabilities, as well as the channels they support. You can use this checklist to track your requirements and keep notes about every platform you demo.

2. Standardize Your SKUs and Listings
Aside from having your catalog located in one place, you’ll want to define a standard way of formatting your SKU codes. This will make it easier for your internal team to track, reference and use SKUs to their advantage when managing your inventory.

SKU codes can be arranged in a variety of ways. One popular method is to denote the brand first, then describe the style, color, size and other attributes that your customers or vendors care most about.

example of a sku naming formula
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Keep in mind that SKUs are different for UPC codes. UPCs should be purchased directly from GS1 and are not readable by humans, whereas SKUs are custom to your company. SKUs can be paired with a barcoding system (as an example) so that you keep track of what’s in your warehouse and what needs to be ordered. SKUs can additionally be helpful when you’re using a listing software and need to quickly search and pull up a listing to edit.

Another thing you’ll want to standardize is your process for creating titles, descriptions and other components of your product listings depending on the channel (and/or category). Each marketplace has unique guidelines. Observe these recommendations in order to put yourself in the best position for ranking and make it easy on your customers to explore your catalog.

3. Invest in Listing Automation
Listing automation is especially critical when you’re a multichannel seller. Aside from improving efficiency in your day-to-day work, it can prevent or help to quickly resolve listing errors before they hurt your sales.

Zentail, for example, automatically categorizes and formats product data for you. This ensures that your listings are mapped properly on each channel and optimized for marketplace SEO. You can also spend more time tweaking your copy, prices and/or advanced attributes as opposed to getting the basic data in to further increase your odds of being ranked on the first page.

Read Also: The Listing Quality Flywheel: Explained

Listing automation tools range from free to premium solutions. The most advanced solutions offer one-click listing in addition to bulk editing, business rules and pricing management. Beware of platforms that advertise multichannel automation but still require you to manually create your own templates per channel. Find a solution that lives up to its promises and can safeguard your product data from errors.

4. Leverage Kits and Bundles
Many marketplaces these days are sensitive to price parity. In other words, your channel may suppress your listing if it finds that your product can be found at a significantly cheaper price on any other site (whether from you or another seller).

One way to get around this limitation, plus increase your average order value (AOV), is to experiment with multipacks and bundled products. These allow you to list your products as separate SKUs, each at different price points.

Both kits and bundles additionally offer a competitive edge. Customers will feel like they’re getting extra value for the money they spend, and potentially be more willing to try new products when bundled together with their favorite products.

Pro tip: Other ways to avoid violating price-parity rules include only offering a certain portion of your catalog on some channels. For example, you could sell your newest products on Amazon, and any overstock or last-season models on eBay.

5. Invest in a Good Inventory System
As mentioned earlier, inventory could easily get out of hand when you’ve got multiple ecommerce channels to keep your eye on. Unlike brick-and-mortar stores, your online channels are open 24/7 and therefore present new challenges to inventory management.

Other factors, such as whether you sell finished goods versus manage the entire manufacturing process, will affect your requirements for an inventory system. At minimum though, you’ll need something that syncs your inventory across all of your channels.

This means that when an order comes in on any channel at any time, your system will know to reserve the right amount of stocks and deduct it form the available quantities on other channels.

Other than this, you may find that you need extra assistance forecasting demands, managing purchase orders, managing suppliers, and more. If so, there’s an inventory management system out there for you—you’ll just have to do your due diligence and research all your options.

6. Register Your Brand (If Applicable)
The ugly truth to selling on marketplaces is that there are counterfeiters and unscrupulous competitors on every channel. This has been a known issue on Amazon, which has already cracked down on billions of counterfeit products in the past.

To further protect your brand, you’ll want to register your brand wherever possible. Amazon, for instance, maintains a Brand Registry that enables brand owners to police their ASINs, report any fraudulent activity and access advanced marketing tools.

Similarly, Walmart’s Brand Portal helps brands identify (and fight against) IP infringement within the marketplace. Needless to say, registering your brand is a responsible step towards safeguarding your brand on channels where millions of other sellers compete.

Free Ebook: 6 Brand Control Strategies for Marketplace Merchants

7. Consider Outsourcing Fulfillment
On channels like Amazon, it’s almost a necessity to participate (at least in part) in a third-party fulfillment program. Nearly three-quarters of all Amazon Sellers use FBA, not because they can’t fulfill orders on their own but because winning the buy box or first-page status relies on having Prime status.

On other channels, you may need to outsource fulfillment in order to keep up with seller performance standards, like two-day shipping expectations or fast customer service.

With all that said, you never want to put all your eggs in one basket. Use FBA and other marketplace programs when necessary, but look for a 3PL or someone detached from the marketplaces to help you achieve fast shipping too. Don’t leave yourself vulnerable to surprises, such as when Amazon FBA pulled the plug on non-essential products when the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

The Bottom Line
Ecommerce marketplace management requires juggling dozens of different responsibilities, requirements and strategies all at once. Fortunately, the above tips can help to alleviate the burden on your shoulders.

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What Is Amazon PPC?

Amazon PPC is an advertising model in which advertisers pay a fee to Amazon when a shopper clicks on their ad (pay-per-click). There are 3 Amazon ad types available: Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display Ads. The latter is a new and extended version of the former Product Display ads – PDAs.

Sponsored Products – keyword- and ASIN-targeted ads similar to Google Adwords, that enable you to promote individual products within Amazon search results and on product detail pages. Sponsored Products are the most popular ads on Amazon.

Sponsored Brands – ads for brand building that allow brands to promote a custom headline, brand logo, and up to 3 products in their ad in the top spot above Amazon search results (and other placements), with the ability to send shoppers to their Amazon Stores page or a custom landing page on Amazon. Newly available are also video ads linking to product detail pages.

Sponsored Display ads – ads that send shoppers to Amazon product detail pages. They deliver relevant ads both on Amazon and on external websites to shoppers who are visiting or visited (remarketing) specific products on Amazon.

Where do Amazon PPC ads appear?

Sponsored Product ads appear in two locations on Amazon: within search results and on Amazon product detail pages as part of an ad carousel close to the top of the page.

Sponsored Brands ads are displayed in different spots in the Amazon search results page, including the ‘top real estate’ placement above the search results. Sponsored Brands ads can also appear on product detail pages. Read our beginner’s guide to Amazon Sponsored Brands to learn more about using this ad format.

Sponsored Display ads appear below the “Add to Cart” button on Amazon product detail pages, next to and below search results, or on third-party websites and apps depending on the chosen targeting method (product/views targeting).

Who can use Amazon PPC ads?

Both vendors and sellers can use Amazon PPC ads (however sellers need to be enrolled in Amazon Brand Registry, see the table below).

What’s the difference between vendors and sellers? Sellers (sometimes referred to as third-party sellers) sell their products directly to Amazon customers. Vendors (sometimes referred to as first-party sellers) sell their products directly to Amazon in bulk, then Amazon sells them to its customers.

Amazon PPC ads can be used for both FBA and FBM products.

Here’s an overview of all eligibility criteria across the different Amazon ad types:

Is Amazon PPC Worth It?

Well-run Amazon PPC campaigns help you increase your sales, improve your organic rankings, and build brand awareness. If you’re using Amazon as a selling (but not as an ad) platform, you’re probably missing a huge opportunity.

Why should I try Amazon PPC?

In comparison with other ad channels Amazon PPC is generally very effective because it allows you to reach shoppers where they actually make purchases, i.e. on Amazon.

Amazon PPC allows you to promote your products with highly visible placements on Amazon, with ads appearing on desktop and mobile browsers as well as on Amazon’s app.

With Amazon PPC, you’re able to choose from different Amazon ad types depending on your goals, you can control and flexibly set and scale your budget, and you are easily able to see how your ads have performed with a variety of detailed reports.

Amazon PPC offers a portfolio of different targeting methods from keywords to categories, brands, and products (ASINs—Amazon Standard Identification Numbers) as well as remarketing on external websites to ensure that your message is reaching the desired audience.

What are the Amazon ads pricing / fees?

Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and Sponsored Display ads are purchased on a cost-per-click basis and displayed at no charge – views or impressions are free.

You pay only when a potential customer clicks on the ad. You’re in control of the amount that you’re willing to spend per click and hence the amount you spend on ads.

How does the PPC auction work?

The cost-per-click (CPC) for each ad on Amazon is determined in a so-called second-price auction. Each advertiser submits a default bid (the maximum they are willing to pay per click) for their ad.

The highest bidder wins the highest ad position (ad rank #1) and will also pay the highest CPC, but the highest bidder does not pay the amount they bid. The highest bidder pays only $0.01 more than the second-highest bid.

In the above example, Advertiser 3 wins the auction with a bid of $4.00. If their ad is clicked, the cost of the click charged to Advertiser 3 will be $3.51. This logic also applies for all following ad ranks, e.g. Advertiser 1 (ad rank #2) pays $3.11.

What is the average cost per click (CPC)?

On Amazon.com, the CPCs typically range from $0.02- $3, but your average CPC can vary greatly depending on the product category, marketplace, as well as the ad type. See CPC benchmarks below or in our free Sellics Amazon PPC Benchmarker [Beta].

Are there any hidden fees associated with Amazon PPC?

The short answer is: no. The pricing structure here is transparent and straightforward. You only pay for your Amazon ads only when someone clicks on one of them; and because you set your bids and daily PPC budget, you have total control over how much you spend.

As mentioned above, the exact amount that you pay per click will be determined by the second-highest bidder in the ad auction. If you are the highest bidder you will win the auction and pay $0.01 more than the second-highest bid.

Does Amazon PPC improve organic rankings for my FBA and FBM products?

Yes, it can. Unlike in Google Adwords, Amazon PPC sales have a direct influence on a product’s organic ranking on Amazon. Therefore, more sales generated via Amazon PPC ads will have a positive effect on the organic ranking of your FBA or FBM product.

This effect is especially important for new products. New products generally lack a sales history, and therefore performance data, which in turn negatively affects organic ranking. Amazon PPC can change that by driving traffic to your FBA or FBM product listing and thereby boosting sales as well as generating reviews to drive further conversions.

The Basics of Amazon PPC (Things to Know Before You Start)

In order to run successful Amazon PPC ads, you need to familiarize yourself with the basic building blocks of Amazon PPC. Below we’ve summarized the key concepts and terminology sellers should know when starting out with Amazon Sponsored Ads:

Important building blocks of Amazon PPC (basic terminology)

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Buy Amazon SEO Services, Amazon SEO, SEO of Amazon, Seller SEO, Amazon Search Engine, Amazon a9, amz SEO

The price here is per product.

Amazon SEO: How to Rank Highly for Amazon Searches

Ecommerce Strategy

All too often, when we think of SEO, we only think of Google. And of course, you want great rankings in the search engines.

However, your website isn’t the only place on the web where you may be selling your product. If you have a product page on Amazon, you want it to be found by customers just as you would want your site to show up on the first search engine results page (SERP) for your industry keywords.

Failure to do Amazon SEO right, just like with regular SEO, will result in less traffic and fewer sales.

It’s vital to understand that Amazon’s search algorithm works differently than any Google or Bing algorithm in surfacing results. In a nutshell, there are way fewer ranking signals or factors than with typical SEO, which some say includes as many as 200 factors (though others dispute this).

You might think that this makes ranking in Amazon easier, but it’s not that simple. If you’re trying to analyze Amazon SEO from a web-SEO standpoint, you’re going to have a hard time. That’s because Amazon is primarily a buying platform, first and foremost.

A multi-channel ecommerce strategy is an effective ecommerce strategy. Download our free guide to Google Shopping and start spreading your brand today!

An Intro to Amazon’s Search Algorithm

Amazon’s search algorithm is referred to as A9, just because the company of the same name that handles SEO for the company, which is a subsidiary of Amazon, is named A9. In its own words:

“We manage search and advertising technologies that are scalable, highly available, and cross-platform for our parent company, Amazon, and other clients.”

Understand that Amazon, as the world’s biggest ecommerce site, only cares about one thing: its bottom line, and therefore selling as efficiently as possible to its millions of customers.

While people perform all kinds of different searches on Google, many of which are informational searches, pretty much every Amazon search is transactional. That’s why its algorithm actually comes down to only a couple of things:

• Relevance
• Performance

If you optimize your Amazon product page for these two, crucial ranking factors, you’ll end up converting and selling more on the site.

Both relevance and performance can be broken down into additional sub-categories, so we’ll look at each one in more detail.

Relevance-Related Amazon Ranking Factors

Good news: You’re able to influence these ranking factors directly by the strategic use of relevant keywords in the following areas of your Amazon pages.

Your Product’s Title

Probably the most important element of Amazon SEO, as far as relevance is concerned, is the product-title ranking factor. You’ll want to put the most relevant keywords for your product in the title.

The top 3 Amazon results for “mortar and pestle” all have those words in the product name

Here are some tips to optimize your Amazon product name:

• Include your brand name
• Include a clear description of what your product does
• Mention a specific ingredient or essential material
• Specify the color of your product
• Clarify the size of your product
• Make a mention of the quantity of your product (if applicable)

As in the world of white hat SEO, avoid keyword stuffing in your title, as that will harm your search rankings on Amazon. If you keyword-stuff, you run the risk of composing a title that doesn’t read naturally, which can look spammy and have a negative impact on your click-through rate.

Your Seller Name

Consider the impact of your seller name on your relevance as a ranking factor. Some marketers have observed that they can get specific products to rank higher in Amazon’s organic search results if they include the main keywords for the product within the seller name.

Let’s look at an example. If you search Amazon for “American flag ties for men,” the first result comes from a seller called “Man of Men.” The word “men” in the seller name could very well be helping them out with that ranking. (If you remove “for men” from the search query, you get different results.)

So pay attention to your seller name to eke out more gains in Amazon’s SERPs.

Your Amazon Backend Keywords

Backend keywords are essentially “hidden” keywords that will only be used in your Amazon Seller Account’s backend section. Their function is to tell Amazon’s algorithm that a specific product listing is targeting a specific keyword on the site.

If you’re looking for an analogy to search engine SEO here, think of these backend keywords like the meta tags that tell Google what your webpage is about, which helps the search engine figure out when to show the page to people searching for specific information.

There are five fields sellers can fill out with their backend keywords. Each line has a 50-character limit. If you go over the limit, your backend keyword won’t be indexed by the site.

Here are five rules to keep in mind to successfully fill out your Amazon backend keyword fields:

• Don’t repeat any words
• Avoid quotation marks since they’ll limit your overall character count
• Don’t include too many variations of the same word
• Commas are ignored
• Include variations in spelling or synonyms

Your Brand Field

A product’s brand field always shows up on the product page (right above the title or headline) and links to various search results for additional products from the same brand. As you list your products, be meticulous about spelling your brand name exactly right.

Typical user behavior on Amazon is for shoppers to search for a product based on its brand name, which is why it’s vital to always include an accurate name.

If your product has various brand names that you could conceivably use, get some help from a keyword tool to help you determine which variation is the most searched for brand name and use that.

Your Product Description and Bullet Points

These go hand-in-hand. Both tell your customers more about your product, so this is your chance to be very detailed, as well as persuasive. Of course, you’ll need to include your most important keywords here, too.

For the description, work hard to make the copy readable, natural and convincing from a pure sales standpoint. Follow ecommerce landing page best practices. This will resonate with potential buyers beyond the SEO power you’ll get from including your keywords.

As for the bullet points, the same applies. Bullet points are easy and quick to read because they’re scannable, so your customers are going to look at this area with priority. Tell your customers about the benefits of your product (not just the features) and include crucial information like ingredients or dimensions. Work your relevant keywords into these bullet points in a natural way, so as to add value to each tidbit of information about your product. Check out your competition and make sure they’re not including more thorough information than you.

Performance-Related Amazon Ranking Factors

Performance factors are a bit harder to directly exert control over because additional considerations beyond keywords come into play. Still, it’s vital that you have an understanding of these, too, for optimized Amazon SEO.

Your Product’s Price

It goes without saying (at least it should) that how much you charge for your product significantly impacts your Amazon conversion rate and how many units you move on the site. If your price on Amazon is competitive compared to other sites selling your product or products similar to yours, then your conversion rate should be positively affected.

One aspect of this that’s sometimes overlooked is how your price compares to similar products in the same category on Amazon.

If many products in the same category are selling for less than yours, then two things likely will happen:

• You won’t sell as many as those similar products
• Amazon’s algorithm will prejudge that your product likely won’t sell as many as the others

Long story short: In either case, you’ll suffer with a lower Amazon search ranking if you charge too much relative to similar products, so don’t price yourself out of the Amazon market. Carefully compare what your competitors on the site and other sites are doing, and set your price accordingly and competitively.

If your price is higher, there should be a very clear reason why (such as more and better reviews).

Your Amazon Conversion Rate

Intimately linked with price, your product’s conversion rate is another highly significant performance factor in your search ranking. Unfortunately, it’s going to be challenging to learn how your conversion rate compares with much certainty, as you don’t really have access to Amazon’s analytics in the same way you would with analytics on your own ecommerce site.

The best you can do for conversion data is to check Seller Central’s Detail Sales Page and Traffic under Business Reports and Reports. Here, you’ll want to look at the Unit Session Percentage, which is essentially the number of units that are bought per visit. It’s the closest you’ll get to a pure conversion rate for your product page.

If the conversion rate is unspectacular and you believe your product should do better, then it’s time to revisit some of the aforementioned relevance factors to see if you can appear higher in Amazon searches and/or persuade more people to buy with better product page copy.

Your Product Images

Products that feature high-quality images consistently have a higher conversion rate, studies show. The same principle applies to your Amazon product page.

Amazon itself recommends bigger images in its Seller Central Product Image Guidelines, writing:

“Images should be 1,000 pixels or larger in either height or width. This minimum size requirement enables the zoom function on the website. Zoom has been proven to enhance sales. The smallest your file can be is 500 pixels on its longest side.”

Include high-quality images that follow these guidelines, and help ensure that your product listings aren’t relegated to the end of the search results, which makes conversion rates suffer. And when your conversion rates increase due to these optimizations, your Amazon search-results rankings should do better.

Your Amazon Reviews

It’s safe to say that online reviews—which 85% of customers trust as much as personal recommendations—are another performance-related factor that figures into Amazon’s algorithm. Notice the correlation in Amazon’s search results and products with many reviews. The products that rank at the top for a broader keyword generally have more reviews, and higher reviews, than those lower down on the list.

From this, we can conclude that having more reviews has an impact on click-through rates and can lead to more sales, which in turn has an impact on overall product ranking on the site. Of course, Amazon has in recent times cracked down on fake reviews to ensure better integrity, so don’t try to cheat the algorithm.

If you’d like to get more of your customers to leave reviews on your Amazon product page, simply send them follow-up reminder emails after a purchase, asking them to leave a review for what they just bought from you.

If your Amazon reviews are negative, take a look at what people are complaining about and work to address the problems with your product. Here are some more tips on getting more and better Amazon reviews.

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