An 8-Month AMZ FBA Case Study
Selling online is hard. You could be a multimillion dollar business but you could still face difficulties selling online!
However, we were able to…
“Grow a $5,127/month Amazon FBA business to $67,404/month and made $425,361 in just 8 MONTHS!”
But, before we get into the details - let’s take a quick review of the results produced.
SUMMARY OF RESULTS
GRAPH: MONTHLY PAGE VIEWS & REVENUE
In this post, we will walk you through each and everything you need to know in order to start and grow a multimillion dollar Amazon FBA business in an efficient way.
Most importantly, we will throw light on how we were able to supercharge this business’s growth through integrated solutions that are absolutely essential to any Amazon FBA business’s success.
Keeping in mind the the complexity, competition and uncertainty that most Amazon FBA business owners face, we decided to share everything in an organized fashion.
So, without further ado - let’s get started.
About the Business
The business we took over is a family owned, very well established, leading brand which happens to be one of the largest and oldest food coloring manufacturers in North America.
The company aims to drive value for grocers, foodservice operators, bakeries and other food retailers by manufacturing superior-quality baking supplies and baked goods. They are known for delivering unmatched taste, service and quality.
On Amazon, they operate under the “Home & Kitchen” category.
OVERVIEW OF BUSINESS BEFORE MARKETPLACEOPS TOOK OVER!
Sales & Distribution
Directly to retail stores (major portion)
Online on Amazon (minor portion)
Due to confidentiality reasons, we cannot share the actual revenue generated via direct distribution to retail outlets.
However, on Amazon, the business was generating roughly 5000 USD per month in revenue.
1st Month: Detailed Analysis (Goals, Issues, Opportunities, Plan)
During the first month, we analysed the business very thoroughly. Our main objectives were:
Defining the goals
Figuring out the issues
Finding the opportunities
Incorporating the solutions and opportunities in a highly “growth & sales oriented” and “resource efficient” plan
Given the budget by our client, we were able to organize everything and move forward.
Even though the plans were very detailed and thorough, here is the summary of what we did:
1. SIX MONTHS GOALS:
We defined SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time based) goals for this project. The summary is as follows:
Hit 50,000 USD per month in sales
Launch 15 more products
Get at least 400 positive reviews by real customers (keep in mind that most people don’t leave reviews, so the sales were much higher than this number)
Note: These goals were defined based on the client’s budget.
2. ISSUES WITH THE BUSINESS:
Before defining the plan, we believe that it’s absolutely crucial to…
Figure out the existing issues with the business
Define proper solutions to eradicate those issues and then…
Layout a “growth & sales focused” and “resource efficient” plan that helps us achieve the business objectives
Keeping in mind the aforementioned, our team at MarketplaceOps got together and heads of each department were assigned the task of critically analysing the business and come up with a comprehensive list of issues that were causing hindrance in its online success.
In this regard, we focused on the following areas:
Amazon Account Management
Platform Use Maximization
After careful analysis, we were able to figure out the issues and based on what we had done in the past, we prioritized them in a proper order. This ordering and prioritization helped to ease the fixation process in our next stage.
We tabulated the issues and suggested solutions for each one of the problems we found.
The summary is as follows:
|AREA||PROBLEM(S)||SOLUTION / ACTION|
|Branding & Marketing Strategy||Branding issues for online audience.
Untapped opportunities in the existing market (found through competitive analysis.)
|Complete brand audit and positioning for online audience
Devising a marketing strategy for untapped market segments
|Optimization||Current listings were NOT optimized.||Re-listing and optimizing the images, enhanced brand content (EBC), keywords, copy, backend research items etc.|
|Catalog||The initially done product research for online audience was NOT “detailed” and “results focused”||The catalog was developed again keeping in mind the online audience|
|Advertising||The ads were NOT efficient. Meaning, more money was spent to get just a few sales||Revamped the ads campaign to yield more sales with less ad spend|
|Inventory & Logistics||Operationally the systems were not properly in place and it was really hard for business owners to get caught up in all the operational disorganization||We set up all the systems, automated the chain of steps, created methods to document and monitor each and everything. Everything can now be managed by the business owners|
|Brand Protection||Business owners had issues with brand protection and its enforcement across the platform||Ensured brand protection and its enforcement across the platform by taking all the necessary steps|
2nd Month: Getting Started (Making Fixations, Finding Opportunities, Initiating the Implementation) - 4X Revenue!
After devising the complete plan and understanding what needs to be done in order to achieve the organizational objectives we started to take action.
But, before sharing what we actually did, here is the screenshot of the results:
We produced results that showed growth but how did we actually do it?
This is what we did:
Fixed the issues
Found more opportunities
Results: We were now completely prepared to test our advertising campaigns.
In the second week of this month, our focus was to setup the advertising the campaigns and focus on sales.
After testing various campaigns during the second week, we finalized only a handful that were performing the best.
Results: A handful of launched campaigns that were performing the best were finalized. The criteria to be the best was simple:
This helped us stay very focused on our ultimate objective of generating revenue.
3RD - 4TH WEEK:
The campaigns finalized in the 2nd week were boosted in the 3rd and 4th week for further testing, monitoring and optimization for best results.
After the proper analysis of advertising campaigns in the 3rd and 4th week, we made some tweaks to maximize the results even further.
Results: High traction and conversions in the 3rd and 4th weeks helped us to rank for the main keywords that we were targeting. And…
“By the end of these two weeks we were dominating the first spots for most of the main keywords. Our competitors had been pushed down and we were the most dominant in our ‘food coloring’ niche.”
The category was “Home and Kitchen.”
Once we were sure of our campaigns, we started spending more budget in the 3rd month.
3 - 8th Month: Implementation, Monitoring, Improvisation and Repetition (65,763 USD in the 3rd month alone!)
By the start of 3rd month we had achieved two major objectives:
Everything was in place (fixations were done, basic setup was there etc.)
We had tested advertising campaigns that we could rely on to produce even better results
At this point, our main goal was: “sales”
Keeping this in mind, we increased our ad spend and the sales starting coming in.
“We hit an impressive 65,763 USD in the 3rd month alone and it has been consistent ever since. The combined revenue for the last 6 months is: $395,843”
But, there’s a catch:
At this point, we had to constantly tweak the ads in order to keep up with the dynamic market trends. And while it sounds simple to keep the monthly revenue at approximately the same value but in reality, it can be quite difficult. This is largely due to the changing market trends. However, the plan that we had laid out in the 1st month helped us easily achieve the goals. But, it should be noted that it didn’t come without constant tweaking and adjustments along the way.
A Word About Adding New Products (Portfolio Expansion!)
During this period, we added 15 more products. The purpose of these products was to have more listings that would dominate the Amazon search. This approach has helped us considerably increase the total market share in the niche of food colors and the results speak for themselves.
However, this is not the end. We will continue to add more relevant products in order to keep growing. 15 products is just not enough!
We would ideally like to hit at least 1 Million USD per annum real soon!
Stay updated for the news!
Our plan now is to devise highly efficient and sales focused ad campaigns for all these 15 new products and make sure that we are the major leader in this niche on Amazon. Of course, this would be done alongside of adding new products.
So, while we continue to manage and grow this business, we would love to hear your reviews about this case study and if you have any questions - please feel free to contact us and we will surely get in touch.