Amazon Has a House Party, and Your Local Business Needs an Invite
May 26th, 2015 by
To compete with Angie’s List, Craigslist, Yelp, Home Advisor and other marketplaces, Amazon has recently launched its own marketplace called Amazon Home Services.
What makes this platform different from the others? How could it help you, as a local business, with an increase in leads and improved Google rankings?
Amazon has its own ecosystem: loyal customers and Amazon Prime members. Being a part of this ecosystem means being exposed to 85 million potential customers. “In less than 60 seconds, customers can now browse, purchase and schedule hundreds of professional services from wall mounting a new TV to installing a new garbage disposal to house cleaning, directly on Amazon.com,” according to the company’s recent press release. And your business can be a part of it.
In contrast to Google, which ranks services in terms of the most accurate answer to the searcher’s query, Amazon ranks services in terms of what product the searcher is most likely to buy. This functionality is easier for small businesses. Indeed, Amazon’s algorithm will automatically show the best service to match what the searcher is looking for. In other words, when a searcher is looking for a television on Google, the result will include everything in relation to televisions except a list of local services, while Amazon will include all the repairs/installation services related to a television based on the searcher’s geolocation. That is why it will potentially make it easier for small businesses to rank on Amazon. But there is a catch: to be part of that ecosystem, you need to be invited by Amazon.
So how can you get invited? First, you need to have a strong Web presence, a good strategy for displaying information about your services, a good reputation and finally, great online reviews from your customers. (But really, you’d want all of these things anyway.) On top of that, you need to be licensed and insured.
Are you ready to apply? Don’t jump to it too fast! Google just announced it is going to open its own marketplace for local businesses, which means more visibility for you as well as more leads, since most people search on Google.
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