Scaling an Amazon business all by yourself in 2021 is a rather uphill struggle. Find out from experts like Gilad Friemann how hiring an Amazon virtual assistant would make the process both seamless and profitable for you in the long run.
In 2021, hiring an Amazon virtual assistant is the best way to scale your business.
Amazon is one of the most successful online marketplaces in the world. Entrepreneurs from all over the world sell on Amazon, and your company is no exception. It is undoubtedly a location for any online seller to be, with over 310 million active buyers. And as more and more sellers realize this, the market is becoming increasingly fierce — so much so that obtaining conversions now necessitates excellence in all areas.
To optimize sales and profits while staying ahead of the competition, you’ll need to devote time and effort to your Amazon company. If you want to catch customers’ attention, everything from your product listing to the quality of your product, customer service, and shipping method must be on target.
Responding to feedback, answering inquiries, fulfilling orders, and making product listings all necessitate ongoing vigilance. Managing an Amazon company is a difficult task in and of itself, particularly if you do it alone.
You need to hire a virtual assistant who will assist you with all of your regular business management duties, allowing you to concentrate on your core business activities. Consider hiring an Amazon virtual assistant if these and other activities become too time-consuming.
Still undecided? Wait until you read the next section where special guests from the podcast – Gilad Friemann, Nathan Hirsch and Tomer Rabinovich – help you understand why getting an Amazon virtual assistant is essential.
An Amazon virtual assistant (AVA) is a virtual assistant that assists you in running your Amazon FBA (fulfillment by Amazon) company from a distance. The services range from routine tasks like those mentioned in the previous section and many others, such as answering questions about inventory management, supplier relations, marketing, and advertisement.
Broadly categorizing, an Amazon VA would help you in a variety of ways, as mentioned below.
Time is money, and no one understands this better than an Amazon seller.
If you spend all of your time on non-core business activities, like setting up product listings or dealing with routine customer problems, you’re not getting the most out of this valuable resource.
Although non-core tasks are necessary, doing them on your own is not a good idea. You need to devote time to tasks, such as developing successful solutions to grow your Amazon company, planning marketing strategies to improve customer loyalty, identifying target audiences and so on.
“As an entrepreneur, you must value your time over your money. Delegate tasks to your VAs by recording a coaching session with one of the foremost VAs, and when hiring subsequent ones, simply show them the recordings and ask them to draft their own SOPs from what they understand, rather than wasting time writing them yourself. The best way to teach someone something is to make them do it first-hand,” says Tomer.
And you’ll only be able to do that if you employ a virtual assistant to handle simple Amazon store management for you, freeing up your time. And that’s exactly what an Amazon VA does.
An Amazon virtual assistant will dramatically improve your conversion rate. You can have your VA update your listings regularly and promote your items on Amazon as well as other social media sites. As a result, the Amazon store will see an increase in traffic and conversions.
Hiring a virtual assistant to run your Amazon store is significantly less expensive than hiring an in-house staff.
A virtual assistant will assist you from afar. As a result, you won’t have to spend money on office equipment, workspace, salaries, or other employee benefits. You’ll simply have to pay your VA for the tasks that he or she completes.
This saves you a lot of money to put into other important aspects of your e-commerce business.
You’ll never have to think about handling your Amazon store again if you have an Amazon virtual assistant by your side. Your virtual assistant can handle everything from adding new items to your e-store to inventory management and customer support.
Finally, you can sit back and relax while everything runs smoothly and with little effort on your part.
See how hiring an Amazon virtual assistant will help you handle your Amazon company and your life? But hold on, the experts have more to say.
A virtual assistant can help with a variety of tasks. That’s what you’re about to find out now!
Determine the functions that take up the most of your time, are boring, and that someone else might do better than you before beginning your quest for an Amazon virtual assistant. This way, you’ll know what to look for in an Amazon virtual assistant in terms of experience and knowledge.
“I’ll go as far as saying that when I’m allocating tasks to my VA, I ask myself: ‘As the founder of this FBA business, is it only me that can make this decision? Is it only me that can handle it?’ If it’s something that someone else can do on behalf of you, just delegate,” says Gilad.
The following are some of the most common tasks that an Amazon virtual assistant can help you with, freeing up resources so you can concentrate on scaling and increasing your FBA company.
Customers who are happy and pleased are the lifeblood of every company. If you want your online business to flourish, one of your top priorities as an owner must be offering excellent customer service. How well you represent your customers can determine your conversion rate and customer retention rate.
Quality customer support now necessitates a significant time and effort commitment. It requires someone who can devote themselves to answering customer questions, assisting them with shopping needs and checkout, and so on.
If you employ a virtual assistant, you can easily manage all of this customer service. Your Amazon virtual assistant will handle all customer concerns and customer-related issues on their own. You can have a service level that helps distinguish your FBA company and improves customer loyalty by delegating customer support to an Amazon virtual assistant.
Here are the specific tasks the experts had in mind:
Responding to customer inquiries is essential, and Amazon gives you 24 hours to do so. To save time and answer quickly, develop standard responses that relate to the majority of customer inquiries.
A buyer on the verge of making a purchasing decision may require a quick response. It also increases customer trust in your company and goods. Choose an AVA who can quickly become knowledgeable about your product and respond to questions courteously and professionally.
To respond to positive and negative feedback, choose an AVA with a good customer service history. They should respond to negative feedback quickly and effectively, preferably within minutes of the review being posted.
Consumers nowadays demand responses to both positive and negative feedback. Customers may believe you don’t care if you don’t answer quickly and absolutely.
Have you ever got a negative review and had no idea why? When you match orders to feedback, you will find out who the customer is and contact them to fix the issue.
If you get a bad rating, don’t freak out. An experienced AVA will devise a strategy based on the guidelines you’ve developed and then respond. Is there a way to update the analysis and make it positive? Is it possible that the consumer misunderstood your product?
You can either submit your inventory to Amazon for fulfillment and pay the fees or ship it yourself while selling on Amazon. If shipping orders yourself takes too long and you aren’t ready to delegate delivery to Amazon, consider hiring an AVA.
There are occasions when it is necessary to remove undeliverable goods or transfer inventory to a non-Amazon warehouse.
Customers request refunds and transfers for a variety of reasons. It’s possible that the product arrived defective or that it doesn’t meet their requirements. When selecting an AVA to handle these tasks, look for someone who understands how to manage them properly, including partial refunds when necessary.
If you’re selling on Amazon, this is a must-do. Unconfirmed orders will not be paid for by Amazon.
If you don’t have enough stock to fulfill an order, cancel it as soon as possible and inform the customer.
The management of your FBA product inventory is critical to your success. The aim is to avoid overstocking and squandering too much money on inventory, as well as stockouts that impede fulfillment and reduce sales potential.
Amazon sellers use a few tactics to expand their market. One way is to increase the number of products available. Brand expansion necessitates preliminary research, testing, and preparation, but it may result in a substantial increase in sales when done correctly. It’s important to hire an AVA with experience with product procurement and vendor relations to handle this for you.
Finding the best goods to sell necessitates conducting market research and collecting samples to compare. You’ll discuss terms with the manufacturer or supplier and handle invoicing once you’ve chosen a product. An AVA will help you with any or all of these tasks.
Consider private-label goods if you want to create your own brand rather than reselling others’. These are items that you can brand and sell under your own name.
A constructive, forward-thinking approach to supplier interactions, rather than responding only when a problem occurs, leads to a good partnership essential to supply chain management.
One of the most important fundamental elements of a successful Amazon company is optimizing product listings. If you don’t strictly adhere to Amazon’s optimization guidelines, Amazon will severely restrict your products’ ability to be fulfilled by Amazon or to appear in their search results.
As your company grows, product listing optimization is an ongoing, labor-intensive process that necessitates the use of a dedicated resource, such as an AVA.
The product page you create for each item you sell on Amazon is known as an Amazon product listing. It includes product details, a title, and photographs. Getting this right is critical to the success of your FBA company.
One of the keys to a good FBA company is a copy that is distinctive and attention-grabbing while still being concise and insightful. Look for professional copywriters who can produce this type of content while concentrating on SEO (search engine optimization), which we’ll discuss later.
A+ Content on Amazon lets you distinguish your product and brand in their crowded, competitive marketplace. To get the most out of A+ Content, you must understand how to use it and create content that encourages visitors to choose and trust you as a seller and your brand.
Use emails to strengthen buyer relationships, increase sales by promoting click-throughs that result in conversions, and solicit feedback and positive reviews. You’ll need to create an email plan and hire a copywriter who will manage the campaign and help you meet your objectives.
In the Amazon marketplace, all you present and how you present it to potential customers matters. The title, definition, and photos of your product listings can all be optimized to help you stand out from the competition and drive sales.
Keywords are words or short phrases used by searchers in their queries. To decide which listings appear at the top of their marketplace search results, Amazon uses keywords. Top keywords and phrases on your product page make it easier for searchers to find your product.
Your Amazon listing’s backend keywords appear at the bottom of the page. Amazon uses them to make sure the correct items show up in relevant search results.
When it comes to online shopping, we are a visual culture that heavily relies on photographs. Not only can high-quality photos help you stand out from the crowd, but they also impact your sales and Amazon rankings.
How do you know the pictures and copy can convert the best? Consider A/B checking, which involves displaying two versions of a website to various predefined visitor segments at the same time to see which version generates the most conversions.
To get credit for your purchases, retain your FBA status, and provide a positive customer experience as an FBA company, you must follow Amazon’s guidelines.
You risk losing your FBA status if your goods run out of stock. While it is possible to regain your ranking, once you have lost it, your product will no longer appear in Amazon’s search results, which can significantly affect sales.
Here are a few fulfillment tasks you’d need an AVA for:
It takes a long time to submit FBA inventory. By delegating this role to an AVA, you can devote your time to what you do best: growing your company.
For each item you send, you’ll need shipping labels and Amazon barcodes. Another boring activity you can assign to an AVA is downloading these for each device.
Know where your shipment is on its journey and when it will arrive. You may ask Amazon to investigate if the customer does not receive an order.
Amazon advertising, as well as external advertising options such as Google Ads, social media ads, and Microsoft Advertising, could be appropriate for you if you want to raise brand awareness and increase sales and revenue.
If you’re using Amazon advertising or external digital ad campaigns, like Google Ads, Facebook, Instagram, or all three, an AVA with the experience to build and track these campaigns will help you boost conversions and get the most out of your ad spend.
To attract customers in the right segments, build a custom audience for your Amazon ads.
Campaign research, which is aided by digital advertising reports and metrics, allows you to make informed, data-driven decisions in your advertising.
When you track and refine an ongoing campaign to best drive brand recognition and revenue, you do not need to start a new one.
As you can see, there are many things to do with an FBA company, and the benefits of using an Amazon virtual assistant are important.
If you have a lot of work to do across various tasks that involve different AVA skill sets, you may want to hire several AVAs. It’s critical to choose the right AVA to suit your needs, regardless of how many AVAs you need to run your FBA company successfully.
“It is critical to evaluate your VAs with a 20-40 minute interview before you go ahead and hire them to see if they suit your needs perfectly. This would save you tons of time in the future,” says Nathan.
Norman Farrar Entrepreneur and businessman Norman “The Beard Guy” Farrar stands at the forefront of the economic mega-machine known as Amazon Marketplace. As a leading expert with over 25 years of product sourcing, development, and branding expertise, Norm is an advisor to many and an inspiration to all.
Norman Farrar Entrepreneur and businessman Norman “The Beard Guy” Farrar stands at the forefront of the economic mega-machine known as Amazon Marketplace. As a leading expert with over 25 years of product sourcing, development, and branding expertise, Norm is an advisor to many and an inspiration to all.
