If you’re a fan of The Amazing Seller Podcast you’ll recognize right away that this is not your normal episode. Scott and his Dad, Papa V., were driving a moving truck to Scott’s new home and decided to use the time on the road to record an episode of the podcast. It’s a fun ramble around the topics of business building and pursuing a particular market niche for your business. You’ll hear Scott and Papa V. brainstorm product and content ideas live as they drive (hey, that rhymes), on this episode of The Amazing Seller Podcast.
It’s a great thing to get your private label product onto Amazon and get it selling. Good for you. That’s the way to take action. But just because you have one product that is selling doesn’t mean you have a long term, sustainable business yet. You’ve got to do some strategic thinking around that product to discover the vertical products or related products that you can offer to build an actual brand. When you’re able to do that, you have a long term business that can serve you and your customers over the long haul. This episode of the Amazing Seller features Scott’s ramble about how to get started moving toward a brand and building that long term business.
You remember the kid in elementary school who was always bragging about the things he could do or had done? Nobody really believed him, did they? That’s because it’s much more impacting to have others praise you. That “social proof” serves as credibility for you that doesn’t have to come from your own mouth. That’s the power of reviews and testimonials - and once you’re able to get them flowing, you want to keep them coming, because when potential customers see that other people have purchased and enjoyed your products, they are more prone to trust you too.
Amazon is great. You’ll never hear Scott saying otherwise. But he has seen enough to know that having all your eggs in the Amazon basket is not a good long term strategy. You need to be able to sell your products on a platform that you control so that you can have greater margins and greater flexibility in how you interact with your customers and serve them with new products. The first step toward that is building your own website. When you do that and begin getting customers on to your sales list, your sales can increase exponentially every time you have a new product or an addition to your product line. Listen to how Scott recommends you go about setting up your website on this truck-cast episode.
When you are able to establish your own website that features your products, you’re ready to begin collecting email addresses from your customers. But Amazon doesn’t allow you to communicate directly with your customers - so how do you get their email addresses? One way to do it is through adding inserts to your products that ask your customers to register their product for future customer service benefits or information. That allows you to communicate directly with them without having to go through Amazon’s systems. Imagine what you could offer your customers if you could communicate directly. And you can do it if you take action on the things Scott has to share on this episode.