Former Amazonians Share Planning Tips and 2018 Trends

With the first month of Q1 already almost under our belts, it’s crunchtime for third-party sellers to get on board with 2018 Amazon trends.

To help you navigate the remainder of the year seamlessly and capitalize on tactics that will position your Amazon business for success, Feedvisor teamed up with ex-Amazonians Brad Moss and Tim Hughes of Product Labs for a webinar. In this post, you’ll discover new Amazon best practices and strategic business tools to implement for 2018.

Strategic Business Planning for 2018

1. Set Goals

Goals should be SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. As a seller, you should identify your current size and analyze how much profit is coming from each product that you have inside Amazon. Next, look at the size of the market and opportunity as a whole in order to understand what the top competitors in that specific segment are doing and to make sure the goals (including growth rate and potential) you set are realistic.

Lastly, the goals need to excite and engage you if you want them to translate into tangible results such as hitting thresholds in a new product category or line extension and increasing revenue, profit margins, and number of orders.

2. Set KPIs

In order to set strategic key performance indicators, Tim and Brad suggest that you:  

• Isolate control points (the stages of your selling process that you have control over)
• Understand the metrics that you should be tracking (most importantly sales, inventory levels, and customer satisfaction feedback)
• Take actions and get people to track hiring and plan completion dates. Additional metrics to track include average price point, both organic and paid page views, conversion rate, FBA fees, and advertising spend.

3. Execute

Before acting on your goals and KPIs, it’s important for you to put together a calendar that includes the timing of all major selling events such as Prime Day, Black Friday, and any holidays that historically have high-volume sales for your categories. After that, you should detail out control mechanisms such as pricing, page views and conversions.

Then, compile a list of resources that are needed to achieve your goals such as a customer success person, finance bookkeeper, photographer, etc. Deadlines are next. Don’t let these sneak up on you! Put them all in one place so that you can refer to them throughout the year. Lastly, brainstorm and compile “plan B’s” for any issues that may arise (additional product lines, alternative marketing avenues, etc.).