In 2020, almost half of American selling partners integrated Fulfillment by Amazon or FBA into their businesses, entrusting Amazon to store, pick, pack, and ship orders on their behalf. And sellers who made this decision are benefitting — a report from Small Business Empowerment shows that sellers saw an average of 20% to 25% increase in sales after using Amazon FBA.

Although Amazon FBA helps businesses get off the ground, it still comes with challenges. For one, using Amazon FBA means selling on Amazon, a highly competitive online platform with over 200,000 sellers. This status quo poses challenges for sellers in the electronics and nutrition supplements niches as these two are the most saturated, making it difficult for new or small entrepreneurs to stand out and secure market share. 

Teaming up with an Amazon FBA virtual assistant increases your business’s chances of success. They’re slowly revolutionizing how business is done on Amazon as their specialized skills allow them to accomplish FBA-related tasks efficiently.

What is an Amazon FBA Virtual Assistant?

An Amazon FBA virtual assistant is someone who utilizes their Amazon expertise to help online sellers manage and scale up their Amazon businesses. They can handle different tasks, ranging from SEO and keyword research to content creation and photo editing.  

While it’s easy to find online resources to learn how to navigate the competition on Amazon, implementing everything you’ll know can take a lot of time. Instead of devoting weeks or months to maximizing Amazon FBA, hiring a professional with years of industry experience is a smart business decision. 

Working with a virtual assistant for Amazon FBA will give you the confidence to run an online business on Amazon, even if you’re still a neophyte. Plus, they’ll save you resources from going through several trials and errors.

3 Signs You Need to Hire an Amazon FBA Virtual Assistant ASAP

Amazon FBA virtual assistants aren’t known to every online seller, which is why many are still hesitant to hire one. If you share the same sentiment, take the time to answer the following: 

• Are you spending too much time listing products or maintaining your Amazon account?
• Do you often feel frustrated because you don’t have enough time to actually work on your business?
• Have you received several complaints from customers due to a bad experience or poor response time?

If you answered “yes” to at least one question above, hiring a virtual assistant for Amazon FBA  will benefit you. Spending long hours completing mundane tasks that can be delegated to others is one of the biggest reasons why some Amazon sellers struggle while others succeed.

How Can an Amazon Virtual Assistant Help Your Business Grow?

To scale up your online business and stand out from the competition, you need to invest in help, like an Amazon FBA virtual assistant. Working with one will make your life easier as an online seller as you can offload the following tasks to them:

Conduct Keyword Research

Search Engine Optimization or SEO forms the groundwork for online business, regardless of size and kind. As an online seller, you probably wouldn’t know what are the best keywords to use to gain visibility. But a virtual assistant for Amazon FBA would. 

Virtual assistants can help with different types of research, such as keyword research. Product listings with the right keywords have a better chance of appearing on top of the search results, increasing the amount of traffic and sales the online store receives.

For example, if you’re selling dog food on Amazon, a virtual assistant can determine the keywords users type when making online searches. They can identify whether users are adding “grain-free dog food,” “dry dog food,” or “hypoallergenic dog food” to their queries and make necessary changes to your product listing so it ranks higher.

Content Creation

How your product description is written can affect your success as an online seller on Amazon. According to Salsify’s “Cracking the Consumer Code” report, 87% of shoppers use product descriptions in making purchase decisions, and 50% have returned an item they bought online as it didn’t match the product description. 

If you’re not confident of your skills in putting together a high-quality product description, don’t take chances — let an Amazon FBA virtual assistant take over. Content creation is a common skill most virtual assistants possess, which means they can assist in your content writing needs.

Because Amazon FBA virtual assistants have a good grasp of keyword research, they can introduce the right keywords into your product descriptions without making the content sound too promotional. They can also write articles highlighting how your products can solve customers’ pain points and draft emails that entice recipients to open them.

Customer Service

For any online business to succeed, it needs to consistently provide excellent customer service. Businesses with superior customer service generate 5.7 times more revenue than competitors that lack customer service. Moreover, customers are likely to spend 140% more after a positive experience with a business than customers who report negative experiences. 

Even if you’re not online 24/7, you can still provide customer service around the clock when you have a virtual assistant for Amazon FBAas they can:

• Answer queries any time and provide accurate information, like details about your products, shipping information, warranties, and others;
• Create templates for responding to clients to improve turnaround time;
• Deal with exchanges and refunds; and
• Monitor customer reviews by responding to them and checking their legitimacy (to ensure reviews aren’t fake).

Listing Optimization 

Creating a product listing on Amazon is easy, but making sure that it’s visible online isn’t. An unoptimized product listing will prevent you from reaching customers and making sales. As a result, your online store ends up being stale, and worse, you’ll incur losses instead of profits.

An Amazon FBA virtual assistant has a specific skill set that makes it easy for them to optimize your product listing. They’ll know which steps to take and how to complete them so your listing reaches millions of Amazon customers.

Photo Editing

A picture paints a thousand words but can also impact your performance when selling on Amazon. A March 2018 survey conducted by Field Agent revealed that 83% of US smartphone users find product images and photos extremely influential in the buying process.

Hire a virtual assistant for Amazon FBA to ensure that all your product photos are high-quality and edited properly. They have the skills and tools to enhance your product images, remove the background and fix imperfections to make your products look their best online.Additionally, using the best photos for your products online should be a priority as visual search technology is on the rise. This means customers worldwide are using images to make queries online. By relying on a virtual assistant to edit and post your product photos, you can adapt to this trend and ensure that your online store still ranks high in the SERPs.

Product Review Requests 

Positive product reviews are excellent social proofs for your products on Amazon. Positive comments prompt customers to generate emotional trust and increase confidence in the product, which creates a strong persuasive effect. In short, customers are easily persuaded to pay for products with plenty of positive reviews over a listing without any. 

If your previous customers haven’t left any reviews about your product, ask your Amazon FBA virtual assistant to collect those reviews. They can do that by going to Amazon Seller Central and clicking the “Request a Review” button. This is an Amazon-approved and 100% safe way of asking for customer reviews. 

Asking for reviews should be part of your virtual assistant’s to-do list. The more positive reviews your products have, the easier it’ll be for new customers to trust your business.

Run Ads

One of the most effective ways of building brand awareness, increasing your sales, and expanding your organic search rankings is by running ads on Amazon. Whether it’s sponsored brand or product ads, or product-display ads campaigns, ads can boost your visibility online and drive more sales and customers.

Running ads is another area where an Amazon FBA virtual assistant can help, especially if this isn’t your cup of tea. They can set up a pay-per-click campaign using various techniques, like adding call-to-action, selecting a bidding strategy, and using the right keywords. 

With a virtual assistant managing your ads on Amazon, you can save resources from spending on clicks irrelevant to your business and monitoring analytics by yourself. This increases the effectiveness of your campaign while giving you more time to complete bigger tasks.

Let a VA Catapult Your Business to Success

Managing an Amazon business isn’t easy — either you take the role of a business owner or tend to mundane tasks daily. It’s impossible to do both long-term, so start looking for a virtual assistant for Amazon FBA. Their skills and experience in the industry will help maintain your business while you focus on things that matter more to your business.