Rae Danielson of Agency Onethree: Five Things You Need To Know To Run A Very Successful Amazon Business

Fulfillment by Amazon — This is a great insider tip for a few reasons, one, they house your entire inventory for you. Two, you do not have to worry about shipping your own products which saves you a large amount of time and energy. Three, products can be offered as prime delivery which is an additional bonus for those who need it quickly. As Amazon Fulfillment offers so much, there is a downside of a percentage of sales taken for handling all the work, however this makes for a great opportunity for those wishing to start a side business or even pursuing it full time. Amazon is capable of handling any level of growth in your business while removing a majority of the stress off your plate.

As a part of my interview series about “Five non-intuitive things you need to know to run a very successful Amazon business, I had the pleasure of interviewing Rae Danielson.

Rae Danielson is an expert when it comes to the meticulous side of digital marketing. Her attention to detail, strategy, gap analysis, targeted techniques, and result-driven focus aids in producing strong outcomes. With new trends always hitting the web, Rae keeps a close eye on the latest up and coming platforms, digital trends, and training opportunities to provide the best for her clients.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you share with us the “backstory” about what brought you to this specific career path?

I’ve been navigating the work-from-home realm for over six years due to the hopes of making a stable income while raising my little girl. After joining a digital marketing agency, I began to have many new doors of opportunities open for me; business operations, human relations, and of course, digital marketing. I quickly began learning the ins and outs of paid advertising and social media. Both of these fields really excited me on what more I could offer the company and the clients requesting these services. Being in a field where I can focus on all the details and help provide results is an amazing feeling that keeps my motivation at a high level on a daily basis.

Can you explain to our readers why you are an authority about selling on Amazon.com?

As I have had the amazing experience to learn from other strong successful marketers in the paid advertising industry, I realized how interesting and successful this platform can be for our clients. Being a data driven girl myself I became very passionate on how detail-oriented and number focused this industry can be.

Can you share the most story that happened to you since you started this career?

It’s a great feeling when you open your clients eyes and provide them larger opportunities that they were not even aware of. In one instance, by simply educating a client that they could expand with opening multiple storefronts in other countries, it would increase their revenue. This information from Amazon’s data helped support our recommendation on being able to gain new sales from other countries. In just around two months we saw an increase of nearly 30%!

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

I highly recommend dotting all your i’s and crossing your t’s anytime you handle client work, however, there was a time where a client’s image was uploaded upside down on their Amason listing. When mistakes happen it is an incredible moment to learn and grow, (hopefully so that it is corrected in time before anyone else notices) and so in this case a quality check (QC) was created and put in place immediately to avoid any future hiccups.

Are you working on any exciting projects now? How do you think that will help people?

Currently, we are in the works on developing new partnerships that could expand beneficial resources and propel our niche in eCommerce businesses. A collaboration such as this would open the door to support local Ecom Businesses with access to trending and successful opportunities to incorporate into their companies methods.

Ok. Let’s jump to the core of our discussion. You are a seasoned Amazon expert. Can you share with our readers five, nonintuitive, insider tips, in order to be as successful as possible on Amazon? Please share a story or example for each.

1. Image Quality — Make sure your product images are TOP quality. Amazon has high standards and it’s crucial to follow the guidelines to make the submission process as easy as possible without encountering any rejection. Within the last year of Amazon’s changes, we moved our client’s products over to a new country storefront, and to our surprise they were all rejected due to the new image standards. The funny thing is they were all approved from current product listings. So we had to get creative and put everything together in our digital office by taking images of them in order to hit the deadline.
2. Product Match — Make sure the items you’re sending your customers directly matches the imagery you have on your listing. People can already be very skeptical when ordering off of Amazon as they assume it’s not from the original company and think it could be a knock off. By not having the product and image match, you could receive plenty of negative reviews and returns as this happened to one of our clients. The labels did not match and people spammed their page that the quality was not the same. This created a big clean up as well as damage control for both us and our client.
3. Keywords — When it comes to search, these will help you gain the most out of your product and advertising. This is a large factor. You will want to make sure you have a good mix of keywords, such as ones that are more broad for the top of your funnel. These tend to be relatable products/services and the brand or exact match keywords for the bottom of the funnel, these are product or service specific names. An example to share would be selling a beauty brand shampoo and using the incorrect keyword of makeup. Not only does this waste the customers time as it’s not the category they are looking for, but you could lose out on sales due to not showing up in the correct category of the shampoo section.
4. Product Reviews — Staying on top of your item reviews. An average of 50% who shop on Amazon read at least 3–4 reviews before deciding to make the leap of a new product purchase. This is very common as they can be weary if the items are actually authentic. When they follow through with a new purchase, it’s always beneficial to submit a request on the sellers end from each purchase to ask the buyer to provide a review. Amazon even offers a bulk option to ping many reviewers at once. Sadly, we’ve seen customers take the shortcut of paying third party platforms to leave positive reviews in hopes to boost their store, but unfortunately this backfires and can ruin their product pages not to mention coming off as deceitful. You never know what you’re going to get when taking the “easy” way versus taking the authentic route which is a successful yet slow and steady approach.
5. Fulfillment by Amazon — This is a great insider tip for a few reasons, one, they house your entire inventory for you. Two, you do not have to worry about shipping your own products which saves you a large amount of time and energy. Three, products can be offered as prime delivery which is an additional bonus for those who need it quickly. As Amazon Fulfillment offers so much, there is a downside of a percentage of sales taken for handling all the work, however this makes for a great opportunity for those wishing to start a side business or even pursuing it full time. Amazon is capable of handling any level of growth in your business while removing a majority of the stress off your plate.

Amazon sellers have a reputation for being great guerilla marketers. Do you use any clever and innovative marketing strategies that you think large legacy companies should consider adopting?

Absolutely, as this market is always changing and expanding, a successful angle right now is targeting Influencer Marketing. Using people from social media or Fiverr can help you generate a great buzz with their large following and content creation of your products. Since phones are already in everyone’s hands it’s a better strategy for these times we live in instead of a large guerrilla marketing plan.

Because of the position that you are in, you are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

It would be wonderful to help women realize the flexibility of work they can actually do while providing resources, support, and empowerment. It’s all about strengthening your potential and that with dedication and passion to never settle so you can be independent and happy in what you do.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

“If plan A doesn’t work, the alphabet has 25 more letters — 204 if you’re in Japan.”

― Claire Cook, Seven Year Switch

This speaks volumes to what it’s like in the digital marketing realm as there will be constant moments of trial and error, challenges, creative options and tricks to provide for your clients. Always trying to stay ahead, you have your sleeves pulled up and ready to adjust when needed and move forward again and again.

Some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them :-)

We would love to partner with Shopify!

Thank you so much for these great insights. This was very enlightening!