9 Tools to Accelerate Growth on Amazon

Chances are, as a business owner, one of your key goals is growth on Amazon as a seller. Not only that, but also scaling quickly. How do you actually do that?

Thinking about a strategy for long-term growth on Amazon can be overwhelming, especially when you’re running the day-to-day operations of an e-commerce business. From managing stock to fulfilling orders to responding to customer inquiries (and everything in between), it can feel like there’s little time and/or brain power left to think about the big picture.

Thankfully, there are a number of tools and resources that aid growth on Amazon. These tools help sellers scale by streamlining or automating key business areas — all the while allowing you to focus on maximizing your margins and sustaining long-term growth on Amazon. Here are nine such tools:

1. Product & Keyword Research Tools

First things first: you can’t grow if your product isn’t selling. There are several reasons why it may not be selling, but the first one you should consider is if the product itself is in demand. Rather than play the “test and learn” game here, you can find out your product’s selling history on Amazon by looking into a product research tool or using an Amazon scanner app.

Not only will you find out how well a product has been selling, but you’ll also get a sense of what keywords are the most successful. In other words, you’ll see what customers actually type into the search bar when looking for your item. Then you’ll get a good idea of how much to sell it for.

2. Repricers

Your selling price can make or break a sale, so you have to make sure it isn’t too high. At the same time, you don’t want to price too low — after all, you have your margins to think about. Finding the right balance between the two can be a challenge, especially because there are several variables to consider, such as your competition’s price as well as seasonality. But finding this balance is a key to growth on Amazon.

Rather than spend your time playing the price matching game, consider using a repricer tool that does the work for you. They’ll not only tell you how to price your products, they’ll update the price as needed so your products are always priced right.

Pro Tip:

Your selling price is just half of your pricing strategy. To maximize your margins, you also need to think about your buying price. That means negotiating with your suppliers — maybe even shopping around — to ensure you’re getting the best deal.

3. Inventory Management Software

After your products and price are squared away, you should start getting orders and, therefore, need to make sure you have enough inventory to fulfill them. In addition to the inventory tracking reports in Seller Central, there are several inventory management tools that help you monitor your stock levels, understand your sales cycles and sales velocity, determine how much inventory (at a minimum) to have available at a given time, calculate your reorder point, and more. At the end of the day, these tools help to ensure that you don’t experience an Amazon stockout or, on the flip side, have all your cash tied up in too much inventory.

Pro Tip:

Understanding the aforementioned data points should give you negotiating leverage with your suppliers. In other words, if you can guarantee a certain size and frequency of orders, they may be willing to give you a better deal on unit cost, shipping, etc. Balance in this area is also key to growth on Amazon.

4. Marketing Optimization Tools

To help your listing get visibility in search results, you should be working on your Amazon SEO strategy. In addition, you should also consider Amazon’s marketing offerings, like Sponsored Products (which promote individual listings) or Headline Search Ads (which promote your entire storefront and its full suite of products).

To make sure you get the best possible ROI on your marketing campaigns, you may want to consider a marketing optimization tool that will help you decrease your overall ad spend and increase your sales.

Pro Tip

If you have a dedicated website and/or social media channels, you should be using them to promote your listings and any special promotions you may be running. Use a social media management program to prep and schedule your posts ahead of time.

5. Customer Experience Tools

A surefire way to accelerate growth on Amazon is by winning the Buy Box, and part of your Buy Box eligibility relies on your customer experience. This includes (but is not limited to) having positive customer feedback, few to no A-to-Z Guarantee claims and chargebacks, plus a shopping experience that lives up to Amazon customers’ expectations. In other words, Prime benefits, competitive prices and great customer service.

To streamline and/or improve your customer experience, there are a variety of customer support tools that help with everything from feedback management to product reviews.

6. Listing Tools

If you’re ready to expand your product line, or if you add new products often, a listing tool can help automate the administrative “busy work” involved in getting your listings posted. So rather than manually adding everything from product names to keywords to product descriptions, you only need to provide a UPC code or scan the product’s barcode and — voila! — your full listing is created with everything it needs.

7. Expense Management Tools

Tracking your expenses is important for more than just tax time. Seeing how much and where you’re spending will also show you where you could be cutting back to push growth on Amazon. Spending less ultimately means your margins and chances for growth will improve.

But keeping track of every expense on a regular basis is a daunting and time-consuming task. Thankfully, there are a number of expense management tools that automate the process for you and even help you understand your financials as a whole — profits, sales, ROI, expenses, tax tracking, etc.

8. FreeeUp’s Outsourcing Tool

As a business owner, you’ve likely identified where your strengths and weaknesses are. Maybe you’re great at crunching numbers but not as skilled at marketing. Or maybe product listing and optimization is your bread and butter, but you have no time to manage your seller metrics. Whatever the case may be, wouldn’t it be great to outsource the work you either don’t like doing, don’t have time to do, or aren’t as skilled at doing? That way, you could focus on the areas that really matter to you — like growth on Amazon.

With FreeeUp, you can hire top freelance experts in categories like Amazon selling, marketing, customer service, and more. In fact, there are more than 65 skills that freelancers on the marketplace cover. Plus, they’ve all been interviewed and vetted. Simply submit a request online, have a quick chat with the appropriate candidates, and make a hire.

9. Cash Flow Management with Payability

It’s hard to expect growth on Amazon without capital — after all, you need cash to invest in certain areas of growth, whether that’s expanding your product line, launching a marketing campaign, hiring freelancers, or trying one of the above growth tools. But as an Amazon seller, having the cash flow you need to make investments like these is hard to come by when you have to wait two weeks for your income.

Luckily, there’s a solution: Payability, a financing company that pays Amazon sellers like you in real time. Rather than wait two weeks for your income, Payability gives you access within one business day of making a sale. It’s not a loan or a cash advance — it’s just your money as you earn it.

See how one Amazon seller has used Payability to grow her business 3x. Then visit go.payability.com/freeeup to claim your $200 sign on bonus and see how you can have the same — or greater — success. To see what even more customers are saying check out Payability on Tamebay, TrustPilot and BBB.

Want to join the Payability team? Learn more about opportunities such as the Head of Custom social media content and strategies for top technology brands such as Skype and Samsung.

This post was contributed by Victoria Sullivan of Payability. Victoria holds a degree in Advertising from Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. She can often be found in a yoga class or working on her fashion blog.