It’s not uncommon for a brand to get to $1-10m in sales and see sales go flat. No matter what marketing tricks or the next “new thing” some guru Amazon podcaster suggested, sales aren’t moving.

The best thing to do in this scenario? Launch more products.

There are some private label sellers that are launching new products every week. That is aggressive and feasible after experience. You also need the right people in the right position. 

We’re going to assume that that’s not you. 

Launching new products has effort and risk involved. So we want to make sure that we are launching in a smart way. 

Launch in Related Categories

This seems common sense. Let’s look at the brand Copper Pearl. They make baby clothing and started with just one line, swaddles. Then they moved to beanies, then to bows, then to blankets and bibs. This has in turn given them incredible brand loyalty and “Copper Pearl” gets thousands of searches a month. The best way to build a brand as opposed to a product is serve your audience in many different ways.

Many categories if done right have repeat purchase rate, not just supplements.

So how do you find related categories? One of the easiest ways to do this is to look at SmartScout’s Subcategories tool. There is no better tool on the market for seeing how Amazon’s category tree plays out with a glimpse of revenue right next to it. Now your tangential markets are obvious. You can see your opportunities spelled out right in front of you.

Another obvious advantage is that usually related products have similar materials. You can already utilize your existing supply chain to make this a reality. Sometimes suppliers have a catalog of products they can create. That’s a win-win synergy. 

Use Frequently Bought Together to Understand your Customer

The Frequently bought together widget is a true breakdown of how customers think and shop. Do they need more than one product to make something happen? What are your complementary products? What are your competitors’ complementary products. These are things that you will want to know. 

A reverse engineer of the Frequently Bought Together widget can turn this exploration exercise into a science. SmartScout has a tool called Traffic Graph that does just that. You can see how the Frequently Bought Together happens in a visible form. It’s inspiring to see how your category works when instead of thinking of search-based traffic you consider browse-based traffic. The arrows below are showing what product is featured as the frequently bought together product. 

Use Variations to ensure Success

You likely spend money to get your customers to your product page. You want to maximize the chances of that money converting into a profitable situation for you. One of the best ways to do that is to have multiple offers on a single page. Variations are taking off on Amazon for many reasons. 

1. They share reviews and ratings. It sure won’t look like a new product if it already has a few hundred ratings.
2. You allow for customers to consider more styles than just what you initially considered. 
3. If you have a stockout situation of one of the styles, fortunately you’ll have more inventory and your page won’t go completely dark. 

Launching new colors, sizes, quantities of your product is definitely the easiest way to scale. You want to be creative here, but not too creative that Amazon breaks apart your variation. Check their guidelines if you have any questions. 

Competitor Research and finding an innovation

To disrupt the market, you need to know the market. If you’re innovating, and “pulling the future forward” you have a chance to really succeed. There’s so many ways to succeed. The easiest place to look at innovation is in the supplements space. I recently advised a good friend on how to disrupt this specific product below. This is a supplement for endurance athletes. 

Marketing

This is everything from the color, images, style and messaging. People package the same product in different ways all the time. This image for example has many ways to improve. Some supplements will show a spoonful of the product just below to give a 3d view and let people see what it looks like. This is e-commerce, people want to know without actually being able to touch a product

Pricing

You can price up. You can price down. Both send different messages to the customer. As Jeff Bezos once said “Your margin is my opportunity”. Ouch. Don’t be too greedy. That can invite competition. 

Functionality

You can adjust the composition of a supplement. The perfect combination of ingredients might be up to you. Maybe you want to add a booklet of ingredients, extra chop sticks or a widget to your product to make it stand out. This probably requires a whole new article to figure out new functionalities. 

You can use SmartScout to look at the market share for any of the products in a given category and then find ways to disrupt them. That’s a strategy used by thousands of sellers today. 

Don’t get stuck with flat revenue. Increasing your product line is a fantastic way to grow your pie on Amazon. These are only a few of the ways you can do this. Happy Selling!