Amazon Marketplace Management Worth It?

Amazon may seem like a lucrative sales channel for your brand. As one of the world’s top eCommerce platforms, it certainly can be. However, Amazon’s marketplace is complex and ever-changing. Your business faces heavy competition, as well as challenges managing Amazon’s fees and policies.

This often means that you need to add resources and skills in order to keep pace. Your brand management team must stay current with the latest policies or risk ever-increasing charges and penalties. Worse, an unmanaged Amazon channel can easily degrade your overall pricing policies and brand reputation.

That’s why you should invest in Amazon Marketplace Management for your brand. If your Amazon channel is left unmanaged, it can lead to several problems for your brand:

Channel Conflict

Because of its size, growth rate, and visibility, Amazon is an appealing channel for “entrepreneurial” resellers looking to break into new products and brands. It has happened to many brands;  these unauthorized resellers purchase your products on another channel and sell them on Amazon with minimal content and often times below your minimum advertised price. . If you cannot manage the pricing and content for your brand, you risk disrupting the brand’s current sales from some of its largest customers in other channels.

Those unauthorized resellers on Amazon can also damage your brand presence. On Amazon, it’s especially challenging to manage who is representing your brand and selling your products. If a customer has a bad experience, will they blame the reseller or your brand?

Without a well-thought-out marketplace strategy and effective management, you can quickly find yourself fielding calls from your best partners and customers complaining about your brand’s presence on Amazon. Effective Amazon marketplace management reduces channel conflict and helps prevent these problems. 

MAP Violations

If your Amazon pricing is unmanaged, it can sometimes become a “race to the bottom. Amazon shows shoppers the cheapest prices in the “Buy Box.” This means that Amazon sellers who are breaking your Minimum Advertised Prices may crowd you and other authorized resellers out, winning this prime placement.

As a result, your brand’s profitability can quickly disappear.. You also risk harming your metrics and overall brand presence on Amazon — not to mention losing out on potential revenue.

If you do not have control of your pricing, this could lead to erosion or muddling of customers’ perceptions. By investing in Amazon marketplace management, you can ensure that your Minimum Advertised Prices retain their integrity.

Brand Control and Content Optimization

Without a conscious effort to ensure otherwise, your brand could be misrepresented by third-party sellers. As long as they have the ASIN, they can create listings on the Amazon Marketplace.  Those sellers basically determine how your products are represented and how much content is developed for those ASINs. Imagine the possible harm to your brand’s reputation if those sellers are releasing poorly written product descriptions, fraudulent claims, or other off-brand content.

Amazon brand registry allows you to organize and optimize your product content. Keep in mind that brands ASINs since any seller can edit the information associated with a particular ASIN. Other sellers can effectively modify your listings and distribute potentially confusing information, images, and videos.

AMS + AdWords

The world of Amazon marketing and SEO continues to evolve at a rapid pace.  What once was an extremely efficient advertising channel has now become fiercely competitive. Knowing the best keywords is not enough. You now need to carefully align your budget with  the right keywords for the right audience 

Amazon advertising requires a high level of knowledge and expertise. Your marketing team may find it challenging to stay on top of shifting trends. Everything from your product names and descriptions to ads and landing pages must align. Otherwise, you risk losing traffic to competitors or potentially not ranking for your brand keywords.

Optimizing and aligning your Amazon marketing is much easier with dedicated Amazon marketplace management. 

Product Reviews & Rankings

Product reviews and rankings play extremely important roles in the sales velocity of your products. Just as a good review can raise your brand reputation, a bad one can drag you down. Amazon is well-known for its reviews — and they can come at an unprecedented rate. 

You need resources constantly watching and responding to the reviews that come in. This will allow you to tweak your marketing to address common pain points or answer frequently asked questions. Plus, maintaining a helpful brand presence can only improve your results.

In short, regular reputation monitoring is crucial to ensure the success of your products.

Benefits Of Working With A Marketplace Management Team

Amazon marketplace management companies offer specialized teams who stay current with the latest in Amazon’s policies and rules. They have the right set of resources to optimize your brand presence on Amazon.

Therefore, rather than diverting energy from your own employees, you can leverage an Amazon marketplace management company as an extension of your team. This frees up your team’s valuable energy and ensures that you get a better ROI from your Amazon marketing. 

Because they are specialized in the Amazon Marketplace, they will help:

• Ensure that your brand is protected and well-represented across this high-visibility marketplace.
• Generate and optimize the content on your products.
• Police unauthorized sellers and enforce your MAP pricing policy.
• Reduce your Operating Expenses by cutting down on chargebacks, Amazon support tickets filed for issues such as lost products, etc.
• Improve the customer experience by monitoring and responding to customer reviews.
• (as needed) Place purchase orders and help with the logistics, fulfillment, and marketing of your brand’s products.

In sum, you can protect and grow your brand’s Amazon presence more effectively with an expert Amazon marketplace management firm. It’s the best way to stay competitive as the platform continues to grow and evolve.  

Phelps UNITED checks all the boxes in eCommerce! Check out our services at Phelps UNITED to learn more about how to makes Amazon and other marketplaces work for you