Are you looking to start selling grocery products on Amazon? Got yourself a grocery product that you think could really multiply your profits if you start investing outside of your own website? Then you’ve come to the right place. Here’s a comprehensive guide to selling grocery products on Amazon.

 

Selling Grocery Products on Amazon

 

1. Pre-Amazon Checklist

 

Before you jump headfirst into selling on Amazon, it’s important to make sure you have a few things in place.

• You’ve done all your product development. This includes perfecting the ingredients, packaging and overall branding so you have a fully formed product before starting to sell on Amazon. Top Tip: Only use EAN/Barcodes purchased from official locations such as GS1.
• Register your brand with the correct governing body (UKIPO, EUIPO, USIPO). This will be crucial for product listing.
• You’ve registered your food business.
• Check for any category gating and documents you might be required to supply. Do this by searching for the item category on Amazon (usually easier to do while you’re adding a listing) and see if adding products to this category is restricted to approved sellers. If the category is gated, you’ll see a ‘Show Limitations’ button and must request approval to list and sell it. Beer, Wine & Spirits is an example of one that requires extra documentation. To see all the requirements, you need to have an Amazon Seller account which is frustrating for new sellers considering joining Amazon. If you don’t want to set one up just yet, drop us an email and we can let you know all the paperwork you might need for your particular product.
• Have an HACCP plan in place – it’s possible Amazon might ask for this so important to have.

There is absolutely no point in beginning your Amazon journey if you haven’t got these basics in place. You’ll only end up finding yourself facing delays and knock backs during set up.

 

2. Research & Analysis

 

Provided you have all those pre-Amazon points in place, the next thing to do is a profitability check. You need to ensure that after the various Amazon fees are deducted you are still making a profit. When you sign up to a professional seller account, there’s a £25 fee (excluding VAT) per month plus selling fees. You need to take these into consideration before you start selling.

Amazon has a revenue calculator that will help you estimate your revenue. This is based on the product details and fulfilment costs you enter. It will then give you a comparison between choosing FBA (Fulfilled by Amazon) or FBM (Fulfilled by Merchant). It looks a bit like this.

 

It’s actually a really handy guide for checking revenue possibilities but, as they state at the top of the calculator, should only be used as a guide. Many businesses don’t make it past the first 12 to 18 months and one of the biggest contributors to that is profitability. Make sure you do your calculations. Click here for the Amazon Revenue Calculator.

Once you know you can make a profit, you need to conduct a category search and analysis as well as competitor price analysis. The Amazon categories are very crowded so there is certain to be some competition out there. As soon as your product is online, there will always be similar ones that start to crop up. Conducting research allows you to analyse how viable it is for you to start selling grocery products on Amazon. Is your product different enough to stand out? Can you compete with the pricing of your competitors and what will your pricing strategy be? Are there specific competitor brands that you’re looking to move in on? Really you need to consider what the scope of the opportunity is.

 

3. Opening your Amazon account

 

If you’ve conducted your research and discovered this is the right path for you, next up is opening your Amazon account. It’s a deceptively simple step-by-step process, which carries several hurdles if not completed correctly. Amazon will require several pieces of information to verify the account, such as Personal ID, statements, beneficiary information and VAT information. When supplying scanned copies of ID, it will need to be in colour with none of the corners cropped. Provided your product, bank details and personal information are all organised and check out, your account could be up and running quite quickly. Please note, this is just opening your Amazon account. This doesn’t include the process of listing your products just yet.

 

4. Register your brand

 

To make the listing process run smoothly, you will need to register your brand with the Amazon Brand Registry. It’s means taking a little extra time but it’s designed to help identify brand owners and protect their brands. Plus it’s completely free! It can help Amazon detect counterfeit products and brands to protect registered businesses from potential copyright infringements. You simply have to submit your trademark details.

Registering your brand also opens up extra tools such as A+ Content, Sponsored Brand advertising, Brand Stores and Brand Analytics. These are all really amazing tools that can help your brand stand out. Without registering your brand with the Brand Registry, you’ll have to submit an application to sell the brand, which will then require you to supply real world images of the products, invoices and manufacturing documents. It’s a far more complicated process if you choose to skip this step.

 

5. Account settings and integrations

 

Once your account is set up, you can go into your account settings and configure and integrate your Amazon Business account. What this essentially means is that Amazon will then be able to access and transfer data between itself and your business. This will allow you to manage all the data related to your products, customers, orders and other essential information all in one place. You’ll also be able to provide faster order fulfilment with access to Amazon Prime shipping.

Integrating your business can be quite a tedious process but it helps streamline your future operations. Some of these popular connections are listed below

• QuickBooks / Xerox (Finance)
• Veeqo (Stock Control)
• Brightpearl (Full business suite)
• Taxomate (Handling of tax between software)

 

6. Listing your grocery products

 

You’ve finally made it through the admin work! Now it’s time for the fun part – the Amazon listings.

We’ve written copious, in-depth blogs on how to write a killer Amazon listing – one of which you can see here – because we know what works. It’s so easy to just write the bare minimum because you don’t have time or you can’t be bothered. But successful products are only as good as their content. That’s everything from your brand voice to product details, the quality of your images to product reviews.

Here are the three main elements of a product listing and what you should consider when creating your content.

 

1. Amazon copy

 

The goal is to get across exactly what your product is, what it’s used for and think why your customer would be searching for your product. What problem are they trying to solve? Is it a cooking ingredient, drinks mixer or food topping, for example. Is it vegan or gluten free? What are the ingredients? Is it low fat or keto? These are all important points that can also lend themselves as potential keywords.

Once you’ve written your copy, read it back to yourself out loud. It’s amazing what mistakes or clunky sentences you find when you read something out loud compared to in your head. In your head, you naturally correct words or skim read. Is your copy readable and engaging whilst highlighting your USPs?

It’s super important to remember whilst writing, everyone’s favourite topic – SEO! We know it sends shivers down many a spine but it’s actually really simple. You just need to think of what words people might use to search for your item and then include them in your copy. You should try to include the keywords multiple times for them to be more effective but without overstuffing. It’s really obvious when people have just tried to cram them in and it doesn’t make a pleasant read. Here’s a really helpful blog on the best practices for SEO and some great, simple tips for finding keywords that you can implement straight away. Take a look at our grocery product example below and see if you can work out what the keywords are.

2. Amazon image sets

 

The window to your listing is the images. Chances are people are more likely to look at pictures and watch videos rather than read a wall of text. So you need to make sure yours are high quality and informative. There are a couple of technical Amazon image requirements that you need to adhere to, which are stated when uploading your content, but we want you to consider the content itself.

You need to have at least one image of your product on a white background with nothing else in the frame. You also need to show it from all angles so that the packaging and ingredients can be seen clearly in your images. Those are the Amazon must-haves, as you’ll notice all Amazon products use these for their main image.

The remaining images you can upload are down to you, but we’d definitely recommend using them all if possible. You might think, well what on earth can I do with this bag of coffee? Grocery products and brands are great for creating lifestyle shots of the product in use. Do you have photos that include your target market enjoying the product? In particular, any with them looking at the camera? This can really draw people in as it looks like the person in the image is interacting directly with the potential customer. If your product targets children, definitely include kids in your photos.

Another thing to consider is do your photos include visuals of the USPs? This might be hard to physically do sometimes if particular ingredients are involved, so why not turn a simple product image into an infographic? Add some bullet points or short, snappy USPs as copy on your images. This will help get your main points across potential customers instantly, especially important if they choose not to read all the details of your copy.

Videos are also an important tool nowadays to include in your marketing material. Amazon are starting to favour products and brands that use video over still images. Take a look at our blog on making the most of your Amazon images, and in particular why you should be using video on Amazon, for more great tips on getting your brand and listing to stand out. And yes, that does include more SEO!

 

3. Amazon A+

 

If you’ve joined the Brand Registry, you’ll have access to the premium A+ content. This can be slightly more time consuming to create but it really makes your listing stand out compared to those who don’t have it.

It’s a lot more visually appealing than a black and white product description and gives you the opportunity to go into more detail, with access to great visual tools like videos, hotspots, carousels and comparison tables. The templates make it so easy to create engaging content, so use them all! This gives you a chance to create a more well-rounded brand voice and look which can link in nicely with your Amazon Brand Store.

 

7. Creating your Amazon Brand Store

 

If you’ve registered your brand, you’ll be able to create an Amazon store. This essentially looks like a website and acts as a homepage for your brand. Here it will list all of your products in one place and customers will be able to click through to your store from any listing. It looks incredibly professional if you complete it properly.

You don’t have to be a coding whizz – there are plenty of templates to help you. The content should follow the same process as it does for your product listings – copy, images and videos. This time, however, your focus is primarily on your brand, your voice and your brand story, with the opportunity to highlight a few best-selling products along the way.

8. Refining your Amazon keywords

 

Whilst you may have looked into these when creating your product listings, keywords are something that require constant analysis. Things are ever-changing, so you can’t just set things up and leave them to it.

As well as researching your own keyword opportunities, you can also use the Amazon Search Query Performance Dashboard on competitor listings. This way, you can find out how customers are discovering them and potentially use their keywords to enhance your own listing.

You can also use any data that you collate from your Amazon Advertising to put back into your search terms. You’ll then need to go through your copy, in particular your product title, to ensure your hero keywords are included to their maximum effect. Half the time using keywords is about trial and error so does require a little patience.

 

9. Conduct A/B Testing

 

Amazon offers A/B testing on various elements of product listings, which is a really useful tool for you to trial different types of text or image to see what works best for selling grocery products on Amazon. You can test the main image (example below), the product title, bullet points, description and your A+ content. You can then analyse the results, which includes reach, click-through rates and future predictions, and use these comparative pieces to improve your listing organically.

10. Check expiry dates

 

For grocery products, it’s important to ensure there is enough date on the product so it doesn’t expire at Amazon. This will incur frustrating disposal and removal fees. Check the FBA minimums, put into place a tracking shipment sheet and use promotions to shift ageing stock. There’s a comprehensive guide available on Seller Central and policies set out by Amazon which covers label requirements and how to prepare products with expiry dates. You can only access this once you have a seller account. If you’re not at that stage yet, get in touch so we can run through the requirements with you.

 

11. Promotions

 

You should be using promotions to help with your product and brand’s visibility, particularly when there’s lots of competition in your category and during Amazon sale days, such as the illustrious Prime Day. You should consider when your busiest times are and plan promotions around those timescales. Is your product giftable? Great for birthdays or Christmas presents? Or is it a summer product? Planning promotions around times your target market are most likely to be searching for a product like yours will make the most of your sales opportunities.

Here’s a handy tip from Brand Monkey. You want to have a ‘castle wall’ pattern to your pricing (full price/RRP, promote down regularly, then back to RRP). This will give a ‘shark tooth’ pattern to your sales – a spike as the price is lowered, but with a trailing off once the pricing returns to RRP. Every time there’s a spike in your sales, it improves the sales rank and visibility on Amazon, which in turn means more sales come in at full price following the promotion. It’s important to remember that you do not have to offer deep discounts. There are several tools which allow you to offer coupons, timed promotions with the options to set smaller discounts, and “Buy One Get One at XX”.

12. Importing to the US

For UK food brands looking to branch into the US, there are further due diligence checks, processes and expected costs that need to be considered. Take a look at this handy video from Primority Ltd that gives a clear overview of the UK to US process. Alternatively, you can find a comprehensive document of the process involved here.

And away you go! One thing to bear in mind with selling on Amazon is not to expect overnight success. You always hear of success stories like that but they really are rare and often come with a lot of work behind the scenes that we haven’t seen. We’ve written a guide about what to expect from your first year of selling on Amazon, which you can read here. This will give you a more realistic perspective of the platform and managing its twists and turns, which we think is more important than pretending it’s an easy, fluffy rainbow kind of journey.

That’s all for our handy guide to selling grocery products on Amazon. Hopefully that’s given you a structure for your next plan of action. If you’d like any help with setting up your business on Amazon or dealing with Amazon Advertising, we are just an email away. We’ve worked with many grocery brands on Amazon, from honey to tonics to chilli sauces. We know our way around the tricky ins and outs of Amazon when it comes to selling grocery products, so get in contact for all your Amazon needs.