Listing optimization is one of our specialties at Amazing At Home. Our listing optimization services are proven to help your brand rank at the top of your niche. With our experience and testimonies from hundreds of satisfied customers – your Amazon listing transformation is not just a promise, it’s a guarantee.
We also understand you may have some questions that a Google search won’t be capable of answering. This is the reason behind the Amazing At Home Private Mastermind Group – to provide a venue for asking questions that a search engine can’t answer. To demonstrate, today, we are sharing a video where AAH CEO, Amy Wees answers one of the more difficult questions on our group page – i.e. how do we edit Amazon listings for a product we’re selling under a brand we don’t own? In short – how is listing optimization done for wholesale products?
If you sell wholesale, you are probably aware that optimizing – or simply editing – your product listing is not that simple. Amazon is known to have rigid protocols for wholesale/distributor businesses. Unlike private label listings – simply editing your wholesale listing in your Seller Central account sometimes won’t go through. Still, with a few tweaks and considerations, it can be done in a way that is acceptable to Amazon. Amy shows us how in the video below:
How To Optimize An Amazon Product Listing of a Brand You Don’t Own
Wholesalers of products under well-known brands are familiar with this dilemma. It’s the agony of maintaining a product listing with bad photos and bad (or non-existent) copywriting. It’s the truth – some big brands do not feel the urgency of proper SEO. Perhaps because their products sell successfully on Amazon anyway – the brand sells the product. And while this may be true to some extent, what some big brand owners fail to consider are the missed opportunities when you have a non-optimized listing. Amazon is the largest eCommerce marketplace in the world. There could be better reach, targetting, and a higher conversion rate with proper optimization in place.
There’s a part two to this dilemma – the actual editing of the listing. Amazon’s protocols for editing listings for brands you don’t own are trickier than editing private label listings. After going into Seller Central to make your edits, you will be required to prove that they are true and accurate product information. Amazon will ask you to submit a link to the website product page in reference to your listing. They will cross-check the accuracy of your claims and copywriting. Why is this a problem? Imagine selling a Procter & Gamble product as a wholesaler (and remember that consumer P&G products are not sold on the P&G corporate website – they are sold by distributors). You may have a hard time scavenging the internet for any product information published officially by P&G. So what now then? If you can’t provide any reference from the brand owner, there’s a chance that Amazon won’t allow your edits to take place.
It’s a head-scratcher. But there is a way around this. It requires some leg work – but the results are worth it. Here are some of Amy’s tips mentioned in the video:
- Your first priority is to build a relationship with the brand owner. This is a necessary step before you can take any of the succeeding actions we are mentioning hereafter.
- Explain – why is it urgent for them to optimize their listings? What is the hurdle you have to face as a seller – but not a brand owner – of their product? What can you do together to grab all those potential sales falling off the cracks?
- Let the facts speak for themselves – research the number of visitors that Amazon gets every day. Dig deeper and get the stats from your niche. Check their ranking for relevant keywords and keyword phrases.
- Bring out your competitive analysis. Analyze your competitors’ performance. Show them which keywords the competitors use and how they help with conversion. Use tools like Helium, Zonguru, Data Dive, etc.
- Present a game plan. What do you plan to do and how are you going to do it? Get them onboard in the easiest, fastest, and most convenient way. Keep it simple – Amy suggests writing a listing as close to their existing product page/catalog as possible – and inserting keywords where relevant. Avoid friction with too many complications.
Power Up Your Listing with Amazing At Home Services
At Amazing At Home, we have a suite of services and courses tailored to every seller’s needs. This includes guidance for optimizing product listings – employing copywriting, curating images, and other techniques. Below are our listing optimization services for you to choose from:
- Our FREE listing review is simple, straightforward, and non-committal. Just send us a link to your listing and we’ll get back to you via email with our feedback and recommendations – no charge!
- Our listing optimization services are provided by our team of conversion copywriters. We get back to you with a fully-optimized product listing for Amazon using a unique keyword optimization strategy.
- Our listing optimization masterclass will teach you our process through videos, templates, and pro tips.
Besides these, we offer various other services to help you through your eCommerce journey! There’s plenty of support available for those who want it. So get in touch with us asap!
Transcription
Amy Wees: So I received a question from Andre, about listing optimization and how do you optimize a listing when you don’t own it? So Andre is a wholesale seller, he found out about listing optimization through listening to Dylan Carter’s podcasts, I had an episode on there. I still, that was a couple of years ago, but I still get a lot of feedback from that episode. So I’m glad that that was really helpful for people. So Andre says, I have a question for you. I’m selling wholesale and I sell on tons of listings, which can be improved a lot. Yeah, I know, I know, the feeling of selling on listings with one bullet point or with one low quality photo, the products are doing great, but there’s room for improvement. So I first of all, I totally get that. There are so many listings of big brands across Amazon, that that are not that are selling well, because they’re a big brand. And people are searching for that brand. But they could be so much better. You can have so many more eyeballs on them, if you could just put the right keywords in the listing. So he says how can I edit the listings? What’s the step by step process, I tried to edit some listings by clicking in Seller Central inventory, edit, edit the listing, but and saving, but nothing happens. So yeah, you’ll get the message pop up that says, you know, your your changes are being processed, Amazon considers, you know, all sources for this and your listing may or may not be updated is basically the message you get. And so he also says that he submits photos from all side of the package. And then you need a website from the brand owner. But Andre is saying how can I do that because if it’s a Procter and Gamble product, it’s not possible to find it on their website to go a little deeper, I’m selling some brownies from a small brand more like private label brand. But maybe they have 20 different products, including these brownies. And they don’t have the products on their website, because they’re not selling it. They have distributors shirt that their website is about their story when they started their team future plans. That’s it. So how can I edit and optimize listings in 2020? Thank you so much. Okay. So as you mentioned, when you want to edit a listing, you either have to be the listing owner, the person who created the listing, or you have to submit a website from from the brand owner. And that website has to be of that product page that they can compare. So that that is one thing that a lot of people run into, right, because we private label sellers, we sometimes run into this, even when we’re trying to edit our own listings, if we’re not brand registered, we have to submit a website of you know, this particular product from the manufacturer, which is us. And so what I often have people do is have them create product pages on their website, so that when we want to update their listing, and they’re not brand registered yet, we can just go ahead and submit that product page to Amazon. And it’s a very quick listing update. But this is a problem if you’re selling a product. The best, the best results I’ve seen a wholesaler sellers get is when they develop a relationship with that brand. So being able to for example, even if you were to have a relationship with the distributor, or the small brands with the brownies, for example, giving them a call and saying hey, you know, acting is one of their distributors, because basically, that’s what you are, you’re one of their distributors, you are selling this product online. And you would have the potential to sell so much more product if their listing was improved. So this is as simple as having them. Basically, you could rewrite the listing for them, and then having them update one of their their pages on their website with this information. And then you would submit that link to Amazon to get it updated. The problem with the photos of all sides of the package is that Amazon is going to expect that package to basically match the title and description of the product that you are trying to submit. So that can also become a problem. I know I’m not giving you a lot of solutions here. But the answer is really to develop a relationship with that brand. And explain Hey, you know There’s a lot of potential for you to reach Amazon’s massive customer base. But in this case, you know, we’re not making the sales that we can make. And what I used to do is I would call up these brands. And I would tell them, hey, this is your competitor, they are selling x number of products per day on amazon.com. This is the reason that they are selling more, because they’re focused on advertising. And because they’re listing, their product listing has all the right keywords and key phrases in it. So a massive amount of customers are able to see their listing instead of yours. In your case on Amazon, people have to search for your brand in order to see your product. And you know, I would actually show them, you know, if you search for, you know, let’s say brownie pan on Amazon, your listing isn’t showing up at all, but the hundreds of 1000s of prime shoppers on amazon.com, when they when they’re looking for a brownie pan, they don’t even get an option to buy yours, is that what you want for your brand? Okay, here’s how we can work together to help you sell more on amazon.com. And that’s when you get together and you’re able to get them to either update their website with a product page. Or to you know, to have, have them be able to submit, you know, those requests directly to Amazon, I know that it’s hard, it’s hard being a wholesale seller, because you’re not, you’re just representing the brand. And the problem that you could have is you could develop this whole relationship with this brand. And you can become their Amazon arm. And you could sell a lot of products. But if you do really, really well and they see the potential in Amazon, they can take it back from you in a second. So that’s that’s also the hard part. And I’ve seen that happen to some. But the bottom line is the best thing to do is work with that brand to edit the listing. And if you’re a private label seller, and you’re having trouble editing your own listing, having a webpage with that product information on it, you don’t have to necessarily have the product for sale on that webpage, just having a product information page is all you really need. And that can be submitted to Amazon. And you can get the listing updated by doing that. So Andre, I hope this is super helpful for you. I know it’s really difficult when it’s, for example, a Procter and Gamble product. What I have done in the past is I’ve tried to find, especially for the bigger Procter and Gamble product pages, I’ve tried to find at least a product and information page about that product. And I would try to make the listing as close as possible while still including the necessary keyword phrases. And I would submit that to Amazon and I have gotten things improved in the past doing that. And then where the product where it’s a smaller brand where they don’t have an information page, reach out to them and set up a meeting and explain say, hey, you know, I would like to talk to you about how I can sell more of your products for you. And they’re going to be interested in learning about that and take the time to study their competitors take the time to kind of put together a presentation with them, get them on a zoom call, and really talk them through. I have never had a brand when I was doing wholesale. I’ve never had a brand tell me no. I mean, I’ve called them up, of course did my research ahead of time, but I would call them up and say hey, this is the situation, I want to sell a lot more of your product, but your competitors are beating me and us because of XY and Z. This is your potential the amount of products you could be selling on a daily basis on this sales channel. And this is why you’re not selling them and just say hey, can you work with me and let’s get this thing going. Where you know, I can sell a lot more your products online and your brand can be better represented online as well. So that is the answer to the question and and I apologize that it doesn’t get any easier. But it’s definitely doable. And I wish you the best of luck in your wholesale business.
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