Make Your Brand Shine in the Amazon Jungle

As a seller on Amazon, you are a member of the Internet’s most expansive mega eCommerce platform and one of the largest companies in the world. Amazon puts you in touch with over 300 million potential customers in a market that generated $232 billion in 2018 alone. While it may seem that the market is saturated, Amazon continues to grow by a rate of $15 billion annually. The opportunities to sell your product are wide open.

Yet, with all the potential you have to market and move your product, there are several challenges that you and millions of other Amazon sellers face. Perhaps the greatest challenge is distinguishing your company from the myriad of competitors in your category.

 How do you set yourself apart in a sea of aggressive retailers who are all vying for a larger segment of the Amazon platform? How do you get buyers to notice your company? How do you create a unique connection with your audience?

 The answer is innovative business branding.

 You have heard it said before: People don’t buy products. They buy brands. Branding is the #1 approach to gaining a foothold over your competitors.

 What is branding? By definition:

 A marketing practice in which your business builds a name, symbol, design, or business culture that people instantly identify with as belonging to your company. Through your brand, consumers begin to recognize your products or services. Branding illuminates what you have to offer and gives it higher value over your competitors’ products. It is the most authentic reflection of who you are and how you want to be perceived.

So, if you are looking for a strategy for selling more products, the first step is selling your brand. To put it more bluntly, if you don’t sell your brand, you won’t sell your product.

The Biggest Obstacle to Branding on Amazon Is... Well... Amazon

Now that you understand the key to selling your product, you’ll need to establish your brand on Amazon.

When it comes to constructing a company brand on Amazon, however, there’s a reality check that you as a seller must confront: Amazon is making it increasingly difficult for you to establish your brand on their eCommerce platform.

 The question is why and how is Amazon making it difficult for sellers to implement a branding strategy that capitalizes on the Amazon eCommerce site?

 The why is simple: Amazon is highly protective of its own brand. Thus, the company wants to remind buyers and sellers that they are the corporate catalyst (and the only catalyst) for the $232 billion in generated revenue last year. Amazon has made great efforts to have a substantial and visible influence over how buyers discover, evaluate, and buy your products.

 What about “the How?”

 Amazon continues to dominate its influence across countless online and offline markets in the following ways:

Price Degradation

Amazon sets few limitations on price competition between sellers that vie for consumers in the same markets. Consequently, the idea of a ‘fair’ market price doesn’t exist. Amazon also sells its products at below market prices, settles for low-profit margins, carries brand name products, and sells its own products at rock bottom prices. All of these aspects give the Amazon brand a towering advantage over seller brands.

Product Creation and Promotion

Amazon continues to develop and promote new products nearly every day. Their products and services can be found in almost every segment of every major and minor market worldwide.

Google Searches

Just over 50% of Google product searches in the U.S. result in Amazon products ranking higher than all other products. Amazon listings also crowd price-comparison shopping sites. Websites that participate in Amazon affiliate programs heighten Amazon’s exposure even more. The result? Amazon makes it difficult for sellers to appear in any search both on their platform and on any Google search.

Aggressive Competition in All Market Arenas

Amazon competes with the very manufacturer brands they sell. They compete through display advertising, behavioral retargeting, on-site advertising, and by partnering with other eCommerce sites. Amazon is everywhere.

Your Amazon Seller Strategy: Get Bold About Branding

Now that you understand Amazon’s strategy, it’s time to brainstorm and develop your own innovative strategies for building your business brand to become a successful seller on Amazon. How do you get buyers to recognize your business? How do you build a customer base from square one? What do you need to incorporate into your branding strategy to get people to start talking about your products and services on the Amazon platform?

 Let’s look at some ideas.

Revisit Your Core Business Fundamentals

Stuck in the old mindset of the way things used to be on Amazon? Step back and rethink your game plan. Go back to the core fundamentals of why your company, product, or service exists. Ask yourself these questions:

●     Why does my company exist? Why did I launch this venture?

●     What do I bring to the table that buyers want?

●     What are/is my core values/philosophy as a seller?

●     What is unique about my product, my company, myself?

●     What is the business image I want to project? How do I want people to perceive my company or my product?

●     What are my goals and objectives?

●     Who are my people? What is my target demographic and audience?

 The best way to answer these questions is with tangible, measurable, concrete answers. Dig into the details and specify what it is you want, what you want to achieve, and where you are headed.

 By reinventing yourself, you’ll have a clearer vision of who you are, what your company is about, and what your product can do. That sets the basis for your brand.

Stop Competing. Start Innovating

Do you know what the difference between two competitors is?

 Absolutely nothing.

 Competitors play the same game on the same field utilizing the same tools, strategies, and notions to reach the same finish line. There’s nothing new or unique about competitors. They feed off of each other, anticipate each other, react to each other, and steal each other’s ideas. They only exist to outdo each other. Every move a competitor makes is in relation to their closest corporate antagonist. Eventually, they burn out because their opponent has nothing left to fuel them with.

 Innovators, however, see what all the competitors are doing and forge a path in the opposite direction. They have no desire to fit in. Instead, they want to stand out.

 If you are going to create a successful brand on Amazon, then you need to stop competing with every other seller regardless of the amount of success they have achieved on Amazon’s platform.

 Take some time to look at how other sellers operate. Look at their strategies, their products, their brand, the enhanced content page, and the way they conduct business. Now ask yourself, How would I do it differently?

 What would you do with...

 ●     Customer service

●     Photos and images

●     Product descriptions

●     Pricing and deals

●     Products and services

 ...to set yourself apart.

Start Small and Build Slowly

While the fast track to big money on Amazon is appealing, you may discover that it’s not sustainable. Buyers don’t respond to brands immediately. Instead, they gravitate to a company that they can trust to deliver quality products and services consistently over time. It takes a while to create and polish an image that people will understand, identify with, tell their friends about, and return to time and again.

 So, start small and begin with the fundamentals that we discussed earlier. First, create a quality product that fulfills a need. Second, continue to refine your brand. Next, create a roadmap for long-term growth. After that, continue to foster a trustworthy relationship with your customers. Finally, stay consistent and persevere. Consistent action over time will eventually yield results.

Get the Word Out About Your Product

If you limit your marketing efforts to just the Amazon marketplace, then you’re only tapping into a tiny segment of the world market.

 Find other avenues for selling your product. Here are some ideas:

 ●     Build a website and create your own marketplace through a popular eCommerce platform such as Shopify, Magento, or BigCommerce.

●     Promote your products on social media. Start a Facebook page, Twitter account, or Instagram feed.

●     Partner with local retailers or businesses to sell your product in their stores.

●     Look for online businesses that will sell your product.

Put Your Brand on Everything

Remember, the key to your company’s success is not your product — it’s your brand. It should be the element of your business that is etched into the buyer’s mind long after the newness of the product has worn off.

 An excellent place to start promoting your brand is in your product packaging. Put your company name, logo, and website on the outside of every box that you ship. Print stickers and add them to every order. Add your logo to your product design. Put your company name and logo on all paperwork, receipts, invoices.

 Follow these tips for creating an umbrella brand design:

 ●     Use a unique font for your company name.

●     Create a logo that doesn’t look anything like any other company’s.

●     Collaborate with a brand designer who can help you come up with a unique concept.

●     Create a brand design that reflects your values and personality.

●     Keep your demographic/market/audience in mind when developing your brand.

●     Come up with a color scheme that no one else is using.

●     Keep the design simple, straightforward, and clean.

●     Project both the science and the art behind your concept to appeal to both sides of the brain.

Keep Your Brand on the Move

If you ever feel that you, your company, or your brand ‘have arrived’, then you should immediately sense that something is wrong and you need to fix it right now. It means that you’ve become complacent. Thus, your brand is no longer in motion. It has died.

 Branding is a verb. Meaning, it is always in action. So must you be.

 Never assume that your customers will latch on to your brand or your product and stay there indefinitely. Customer loyalty is at an all-time low in today’s overcrowded market. So, the only way to retain your current customers while expanding your market base is to keep innovating.

 What can do you to keep your audience wondering what is coming next? How can you add the Wow! factor to every new product, marketing campaign, social media post, video, email, or announcement? How are you using your online platforms and tools to keep your message fresh and constant? What are you doing to keep your audience engaged?

One Last Thing

If you are going to be a highly-successful seller on Amazon, then you have to think beyond the Amazon platform. Amazon may feel global, but your seller account is no more than a cramped closet in an endless expanse of cramped closets.

 To go next-level with your business, Amazon must part of your game plan, but not the end game.

 Like any other business, Amazon is not concerned with your success. Therefore, if you want to sell your product, you must be proactive and uncover creative ways to build your brand on Amazon and everywhere else. Your brand is the cornerstone upon which your entire business is built.

 

Shiko (Moshe) Ohana Co-Founder & CMO

[email protected] 

Mosaica, Inc. is an international payment and fintech solutions firm ready to take your business global. With the backing of strategic relationships from the world’s leading foreign exchange brokers and banking institutions, Mosaica empowers business owners and executives with the tools they need to reduce risk and safeguard profit margins. Contact 1-(212) 359-9363 to learn how your business can benefit from currency management.