The concoction of different kinds of businesses on Amazon is what makes it so unique and efficient at the same time. From high-tech products to daily necessities, big to small businesses- Amazon has it all. But, finding your place in this massive pool of uncountable products can be challenging. The Amazon Launchpad program is designed to give you the chance to introduce your creative product to the world.
Amazon Launchpad is specifically engineered to help small businesses create their place in the market. It provides the small business owners with all the essential marketing tools they need to promote their startups and flourish in the business world. Let’s dive into the basics of Amazon Launchpad to get a clear picture of how it works.
What is Amazon Launchpad?
Amazon Launchpad is an internal marketing program designed by Amazon to help new startups and small businesses reach their potential customers through Amazon. Their goal is to help create brand awareness for these startups. We can sum up its functions in the following ways-
- Helps to make the products discoverable to its target customers through calculated marketing placements in a section of the site dedicated for Launchpad.
- Gives sellers the opportunities to customize their webpages with appropriate content. The A+ content helps to attract potential customers to the site. This module also allows sellers to avail features like carousels, larger images, images with hotspots, etc.
- Gives sellers the access to a special interface called The Brand Portal. This interface guides the sellers on how to launch their products, how to optimize the content, and so on.
- Helps to expand into other global Amazon locales. It does so by helping the sellers with the general issues sellers have while doing business in other countries.
Who can apply for Amazon Launchpad?
Amazon Launchpad is really for anyone with innovative and unique products. They encourage the participation from entrepreneurs who have businesses with Climate Pledge Friendly products and certified Black-owned businesses. But remember that they welcome products with an emphasis on the word “innovative.” So, to qualify as a seller on Amazon Launchpad, you must have the following-
- Owner of a unique and innovative business.
- Must have a professional seller account.
- The professional seller account must have been active for less than 4 years.
- The account has generated less than $5 million in gross merchandise annual sales on Amazon.
- You have to be a relatively new seller on Amazon.
- Your first product should be listed on Amazon less than 3 years ago.
- You have to be the brand owner of the products you have listed on Amazon.
Steps to take during your participation in Amazon Launchpad
Now as you can understand, Amazon Launchpad is not available to every kind of seller. It requires some special qualifications. The intention is to filter out the newly formed startups and to help them jump-start their businesses. There are a few things you have to do to maintain your Amazon Launchpad-
- Carry out all the customer orders for the products with the help of Amazon FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) or Seller Fulfilled Prime.
- Formulate a professional selling plan and stick to it to maintain the consistency of sales.
- Your account should maintain an Order Defect Rate of 1% or less, Cancellation Rate of 2.5% or less and Late Shipment rate of 4% or less.
What are the Benefits of Amazon Launchpad?
There are several advantages you can reap from Amazon Launchpad. Let’s look at some of these tools and how they might benefit your business.
Provides an Amazon Support Consultant
Availing Amazon Launchpad will provide you with an Amazon Support Consultant. The consultant’s job is to help you understand the mechanism of how things work on Amazon, guide you on the different processes and share different helpful tips to flourish on Amazon.
Provides Sponsored Products Advisor
This person’s job is to help you navigate the advertising tools on Amazon. They can help you with your PPC (Pay-per-Click) campaigns, optimize your content and familiarize you with how the algorithm works on Amazon.
Access to Premium A+ Content
All registered sellers on Amazon have access to only A+ content. The Premium A+ Content is usually only accessible for premium sellers. But fortunately for the Amazon Launchpad sellers, they get to avail this feature.
Additional Marketing Placements
The focus of Amazon launchpad is on discoverability owing to the newly formed startups it deals with. To better promote and display these products, it has multiple extra marketing placements for the products. Some of these are- the Amazon Launchpad new releases page, the Amazon launchpad category page, the Standard new release page, etc.
Email Newsletter Marketing
The Amazon launchpad member can access this feature. It allows Amazon to include the seller’s product on the mailing list. This helps to promote the products to the target audience on a larger scale.
Self-service Business Insights Report
Amazon Launchpad Provides you with analytical tools to review your product metrics. These market intelligence reports help you to gain an understanding of how your product is selling.
Cost of Amazon Launchpad
The first step to become an Amazon Launchpad member is to apply. They take about two weeks to review your application. Once you have been accepted to the program, you need to agree to a 12- month minimum commitment to the program. After you have joined, Amazon adds a 5% premium to the Referral Fees. This fee applies to all the sales made from your account. Within the 12 month agreement, if your brand manages to exceed a sales worth of $1 million, you might be given a chance to reduce the fee to 3%. Remember that this negotiation between your brand and Amazon has to happen at Amazon’s discretion.
Amazon Launchpad Products
There are no boundaries to the category of products you can sell on Amazon Launchpad. All you have to remember is that your product is expected to have an innovative kick to it. It should offer a new and unique solution to a problem. The target audience for Launchpad is usually the new tech seekers. Therefore, the top five categories for these products are- Health & Personal Care, Home, Grocery, Toys and Kitchen. Surprisingly, they are all traditional categories of products. Launchpad is also seen to promote products from the categories of Electronics, Sports & Outdoors and Clothing and Accessories.
Is Amazon Launchpad worth it?
Different brands require different approaches to build and scale their businesses. Some brands require assistance in dealing with logistics, while the others need help navigating the ways of Seller Central. Amazon Launchpad provides various benefits for budding businesses. It helps them with discoverability on the world’s largest eCommerce site, helps to connect with all the required resources and access the services needed for them to flourish.
However, it’s also comes with its own sets of challenges. As a small vendor, it might be quite challenging for you to keep up with Amazon FBA. It can be nerve racking to ship off your products to the fulfillment centers as a new business owner. You have no control over what’s happening to your inventory and that often becomes a huge disassociation for new entrepreneurs with their startups.
But overall, it has been specifically built to cater to the needs of such developing entrepreneurs. The all-encompassing approach of Amazon Launchpad can truly take the burden off of the small business owners and let them focus on the important aspects of their businesses. Therefore, while this model may not be a utopian solution to all your business problems, it definitely is worth a try.
Conclusion
If you are a new business owner on Amazon and looking for a way to increase your brand’s visibility, Amazon Launchpad might be the key. Nonetheless, you should always be wary of the cons of a model before completely investing in it. Do your research, measure out the pros and cons and then make the decision.
