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If your Amazon sales have plateaued or market share has started slipping, you’re not alone. Many brands face the challenge of sustaining growth in an increasingly competitive marketplace. What worked five years ago isn’t enough to keep pace today. The good news is, with the right strategies, there’s untapped potential in your catalog waiting to be unlocked.
This guide is for mid-sized brands navigating the complexities of Amazon’s marketplace ecosystem. We’ll outline actionable tactics to help you optimize your catalog, leverage cutting-edge tools, and position your business for scalable growth.
Identify the Opportunities Hidden in Your Catalog
Many brands focus their efforts on best-sellers, leaving a significant portion of their catalog underutilized. Here’s how to rethink your approach:
- Segment Your Products: Classify products into tiers (A, B, and C) based on performance metrics like traffic, contribution to overall revenue, and conversion rates.
- Focus on B- and C-Tiers: While A-tier products often receive the bulk of your advertising budget, incremental improvements to B- and C-tier products can yield faster revenue gains. For C-tier products, start with low-cost advertising campaigns, creative refreshes, and SEO updates and to test their potential.
- Dynamic Pricing for Competitive Edge: Leverage automated tools to fine-tune pricing. Experiment with strategies like charm pricing and anchor pricing to improve click-through and conversion rates. Even minor adjustments (e.g., a 1% price change) can significantly impact profitability.
Optimize Advertising Beyond the Basics
Amazon’s advertising ecosystem has evolved. Staying competitive requires advanced tactics:
- Leverage Search Query Data: Use Amazon’s Search Query performance dashboard to analyze historical trends, discover underutilized keywords, and track share over time. For smaller brands, identifying these high-opportunity keywords and targeting them in focused ad campaigns can generate previously unrealized returns.
- Maximize Advertising ROI: Shift budget allocations to underperforming products with untapped potential. Start small with test campaigns and gradually scale what works.
- Integrate AI and Machine Learning: Predictive analytics can identify winners before traffic trends catch up. Utilize these insights to proactively allocate ad spend where it matters most.
Scale Smarter with Data-Driven Decisions
Amazon provides more data than ever, but sheer volume can overwhelm even the most experienced teams. Simplify and act with purpose:
- Centralize and Visualize Data: Build dashboards that consolidate performance metrics like TACoS, click-through rates, and conversion rates. This allows for quick, informed decision-making.
- Conduct Regular Catalog Audits: Use a structured approach to identify missed opportunities, such as seasonal spikes or dormant products that can be reactivated with strategic advertising or SEO improvements.
- Utilize Predictive Tools: Machine learning models can help predict elasticity in pricing and demand. This insight allows you to react faster to market changes and optimize for profit, inventory, or sales velocity depending on your goals.
Prepare for Amazon’s Future: Conversational Commerce
Amazon is evolving toward more interactive, intent-based shopping experiences. The introduction of conversational search tools means brands must shift focus from just keywords to context-rich content.
- Optimize for Contextual Use Cases: Enhance product listings with imagery, videos, and text that directly address buyer intents. For example, include lifestyle images that showcase real-world applications of your products.
- Stay Agile as Amazon Enhances Shopping Experience: Ensuring that Amazon’s new shopper assistance tools understand your products is critical. For example, you should test Amazon’s Rufus assistant to confirm it is providing the correct responses to inquiries about your product. If it isn’t, update your listing copy, imagery and Q&A until it does.
Turn Insights into Action
Mid-sized brands often struggle with bandwidth, but success on Amazon doesn’t require hiring massive teams. Instead, leverage free and lightweight tools to automate data collection and reporting. Build processes that allow your team to focus on strategic execution rather than manual tasks.
Take Control of Your Amazon Growth
The path to sustainable growth on Amazon starts with making smarter decisions, leveraging untapped potential in your catalog, and staying ahead of emerging trends.
Ready for an easier path to success on Amazon? Download our tools to access insights that help brands just like yours scale from six to seven figures and beyond.