6 Tips to Do Social Media Marketing for your Private Labels on Amazon

Private label marketing can seem like an easy venture, and ideal for entrepreneurs. Find products that are selling well on Amazon, and then resell then yourself with better marketing. A great way of passively making an income. But while it seems straightforward there is more to it than meets the eye. It needs to be understood that this is not a get rich quick scheme. Like any industry, it takes patience, diligence, experience and talent to make it work. You first need to research and select a product and the competition, find and contact a supplier, create an appealing logo, packaging and design and create good copy to sell the product. This is the hardest part complete but the work is not over yet. After this is done you need to know how to market significantly better than the original retailer in order to make any reasonable amount of income. And a large part of this marketing involves social marketing. No matter what kind of industry you embark on these days, social media is king and the key to a truly successful business. Some go as far as to say you will be out of business if you do not use social media, as it seems to be the way forward. It is a way for sellers to interact directly with consumers with immediate feedback in the form of comments, likes and shares on many platforms. Social media is a dream for commercial analysts as this type of unstructured data is yet unmined and reveals many patterns about consumer behavior. Below are 6 tips which can help increase the bottom line of any business through social media.

Tip One – Patience

Social media is built on trust. And trust is built over time. Do not expect to open a social media account for a product and get a number of organic followers the next day. If you get artificial friends on social media they are not really any good for the business or product, as they have been bought inorganically. Build up the social media profile of your business/product, make it relevant to people’s problems. Play the long game in terms of social media. It takes a long time to establish trust and very little time to break it. The idea of calculating an ROI in terms of social media is ridiculous and does not make sense, yet many business owners try to put a price tag on it. Loyalty and branding are quite difficult to quantify in terms of sales and returns.

Tip Two – Focus

Focus on one, or perhaps two, social media platforms. More than this is wasted effort, as it is simply too much to keep up with. Keep your efforts focused. In the case of social media accounts less is definitely more. And you do want to generate excess data, this will lead to a loss of interest over time. It is not really possible to get feedback and data from many social media sites at once, which is another benefit to focusing on one or two primary accounts instead of three of four. It is important to be aware that some platforms are more suitable to different types of business. Twitter is orientated primarily towards individuals including celebrities, politicians, writers, artists, musicians and the like.  LinkedIn is for professionals, including businesses and corporations, more of a professional networking site than a social media platform. And Facebook is for individuals who are personally involved with their own business, so this is a good platform if you are starting off a small-time operation. All your friends and family will give you support. While the lines are not strictly drawn, you can post more casual and personal data on Facebook, while LinkedIn is more for professional, down to business statuses. Thus, if you were to start a small time local pet grooming business, lean towards Facebook. If you are building a financial software company, you need to start networking with LinkedIn professionals. If you are a creative writer, then you need to be on Twitter. And If you have a really niche business, such as selling Roman era antiques, Pinterest is the perfect social media platform.

Tip Three – Keep it Relevant

Related to tip two, you want to focus on things that are relevant to your brand. People do not want to hear your political opinions or what you had for dinner. Your business brand is your business brand, not your personal twitter feed. You need to focus on the promotion of the brand and why it can help consumers. This goes for all brands. Being a jack of all trades is never a good idea. You have your product, market it until the bitter end. You have to believe in the product and encourage others to do the same. Create interesting, engaging content at all times.

Tip Four – Acquire Email Addresses

Email Addresses are still the key to making sales. They are the online equivalent of having phone numbers. A mailing list with a targeted email and relevant email campaign is the quickest way to make money. In fact, it can’t fail to make money. Amazon prohibits sellers from using its platform as a means of acquiring email addresses. Social media does not. There are many ways to get people’s email address. But the best is to offer them a freebie of some kind in return for a subscription. This could include an eBook, a free trial or sample of the product, or a discount. In this way, you are giving them something they want and getting an email address in return. You now have a consumer who is interested in a niche, what every seller wants. This email list can be kept down the line for other products that you may wish to advertise. Do not spam this email as you could lose key consumers. These are not to be sent daily blog posts. They are customers who are interested in a particular part of the market. They will opt out/unsubscribe if they are emailed too often.

Tip Five – Creativity

Show how the product can be used in different circumstances. If you can creatively and organically advertise your product you are most certainly onto a winner. People will share and it could take off. When consumers become marketers, there is little that has to be done except watch the product sell. You could show how you use the product every day in your own life, or how helpful it can be in day to day living. There is no real limit to how creative you can get in terms of advertising your product, whether it is a picture, an online video, a slogan etc. Keep looking for ways to reinforce the idea that your product is the best at what it does. You can even retweet the competition if they have relevant data. Creativity is a skill that is not inherent to every business owner. But there are many online sites which offer freelancers with certain skills which you may not have. This includes Freelancer and UpWork, where freelancers of all kinds can be chosen to work with your business. These sites can be filtered for freelancers who have creativity selected as a skill, and they can be hired for one off projects. Freelancer is more competitive in terms of value for money, unfortunately it runs incredibly slowly due to too many widgets on the page, and its UI leaves much to be desired. UpWork is an all in all safer and better recommendation.  If you are unwilling to hire a freelancer, then query friends, family members and other business owners to find out what works and what they would like to see.

Tip Six – Allies

In any marketing venture, you need to ally your business with other businesses. They can share your product and you can share their product. This is very organic form of advertising, as you will by and large be in the same category of products. And it looks much more authentic. If teams of social media marketers worked together and marketed each other’s products it could work very, very well. You can also learn from each other and cooperate in terms of what works and what does not work. Network with the best players in the market if possible. Networking is an essential skill in all business and all aspects of lift. It is always best to be polite and tentatively reach out to other business owners, and see whether they are open to any connection. And they generally are, if you reach out appropriately. After all, it is usually the same industry and it is only natural that both parties will desire an organic connection. LinkedIn is one of the best social media outlets for networking. If you have an online English teaching school then you can simply network with the same type of businesses on LinkedIn, as well as with teachers who have English teaching qualifications. On Facebook, local businesses in different niches complement each other personally.  A small gym owner could share how great a local hairdresser is, and vice versa. On Twitter two musicians could share how great each other’s music is, as creativity is not really a competitive industry in the same sense as practical businesses are. While people may only go to the gym once a week or the hairdressers once a month, they will buy two albums if they really like the music.

Always remember that no matter how well done the marketing and research is for your private label product, you need a reliable supplier to actually ship it. There have been many instances where a seller has done everything right, only to have the business sink due to an unreliable manufacturer who could not deliver on the product. Do not overlook this side of the business.

Author bio

Sarah Kaiser is a digital marketing manager at casino global sourcing, the sourcing division of a French retailer Groupe Casino. godirek.com is the product catalog of casino global sourcing, which offers helps and tips from product sourcing, cost saving to sales boosting for Amazon third party sellers . She’s a fan of water sports and has studied business management in France. Her works have been published on dozens of websites and blogs.

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