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Learn how to scale brand sales on Amazon. Seven tips for growing your brand on Amazon in 2022…
For many consumers, Amazon is their first port of call when they’re looking to buy a new product. Due to the search engine’s huge reach, it’s also the place where customers are likely to discover new brands.
As a seller on the platform, your brand presence is crucial. But a solid brand presence isn’t just about a nice logo and pretty social media (although they’re both important), it’s about creating a stable foundation to scale your business.
Many businesses struggle to scale their business on Amazon, finding that investment and costs can erode away any profits. This is because they aren’t taking the correct approach to scaling on Amazon.
When companies successfully scale a brand, they add revenue faster than they take on new costs. For example, an Amazon company that is scaling efficiently may gain £40,000 in new revenue after only spending £4,000 on marketing.
Having a scaleable business is the secret to success, so it’s important that you take the correct approach when scaling on Amazon.
There are several approaches to scaling your brand sales on Amazon. Obviously products, categories and markets vary, and the platform is fluid – so there’s no right or wrong way to approach this goal. However, our team of Amazon Experts have highlighted the following 7 tips, which are sound ways to help scale your brand sales. They don’t just focus on spending cash on marketing.
It can be helpful to view these tips as building blocks. Together they can create a solid foundation to help your business to flourish. Without this foundation, you will be swimming against the tide when scaling your brand on Amazon.
TIP 1: TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR BRAND
On Amazon, branding and intellectual property is key. Unless you have a registered logo and name, the platform won’t even consider your business as a specific brand – so getting these two elements in place first is important.
It has never been more important to own your brand on Amazon. There is a concerted push from Amazon for verified brands to sell directly on the platform. Failure to take control of your brand on Amazon will mean that certain doors and protections are closed to you. Don’t be surprised if you find yourself lower in Amazon’s search results than resellers.
You also need to control your brand from the ground-up so that means overseeing: content, images, text, all self-generating social media and other IP (intellectual property).
TIP 2: MAKE A COMMITMENT
Like anything in life, the more you put in the more you get out. Amazon isn’t something you can “dip your toe into”. Amazon is a pay-to-play service, as are most successful platforms and services on the internet. You need to make a full commitment to the platform to enjoy the best results.
We’ve seen hundreds of businesses attempt to start small on Amazon and build their presence over time. Whilst this can form the basis for a sustainable business in other areas of life, unfortunately, this approach rarely works on Amazon.
TIP 3: CREATE A STRONG PRESENCE
Whilst it’s important to make a strong commitment in terms of ad spend, many new brands make the mistake of throwing money at Amazon advertising without having the key basics for listings in place first. In order to build a strong presence, which will drive customers to your site and brand, you need to make sure you’ve invested in the following first:
TIP 4: FEED OFF YOUR INFRASTRUCTURE
It may sound obvious, but don’t forget the bigger picture. Namely your Amazon infrastructure. Set up channels to drive traffic to your brand page, this should include organic traffic through your main website, social media and key word optimisation.
More and more businesses are investing in driving traffic direct to their Amazon listings or Amazon Storefronts. Why would you pay to drive traffic to Amazon rather than your own website? The answer is simple, Amazon is the biggest online marketplace in the world, so it makes sense to have the strongest presence possible on the platform. It almost goes without saying that Amazon will always have more shoppers searching their marketplace than your website will.
TIP 5: LISTEN TO YOUR CUSTOMERS
Amazon is a fast-moving market and it’s important to listen to what your customers want. Gather information from Amazon’s data analytics tools to see what’s driving sales and listen to feedback. Importantly, use data to pinpoint which sizes, colours and styles are missing from your current product listings.
Listening can help to grow your business. If you don’t have the right product, and you don’t look after your customers, you can throw all of the money in the world at your Amazon listings, without achieving success.
TIP 6: PLAY BY NEW RULES
Existing marketing strategies for your brand may not work on Amazon because it’s different to any other channel. You need to be prepared to play by new rules and take a fresh approach.
For example, consumers don’t care as much about big established brand names on Amazon. What they’re looking for is a quality product that matches the listing, a good price-point, free or fast delivery and first-class customer service. Not necessarily in that order.
Brand experience is key, but even unknown brands can deliver excellent brand experience on Amazon. For example, consumers are also interested in small, boutique brands with a compelling backstory, so it’s crucial to have a brand narrative and strong social media to engage buyers.
To get onto the first page of search results and dominate the buy box, you may also need to create unique SKUs by offering a travel size or a specific bundle.
TIP 7: NETWORK WITH PEERS
The internet can be a great source of information, but there’s also a lot of misinformation on the web about Amazon branding and growth. As well as listening to your own data, it can be a good idea to create, or link in, with a network of peers who are helping each other to keep up-to-date with Amazon tactics.
A good place to meet peers can be via a webinar, at a face-to-face event, or conference within your industry. Or by creating a private group on social media.
There are no shortcuts on Amazon. It’s the biggest online marketplace on the globe and, as you would expect, has become highly specialised and competitive. As such, anyone handing out shortcut advice should probably be ignored.
Optimizon is of course always on had to navigate the world of Amazon on your behalf. Keeping you up to date, and fully optimising your listings.
Amazon is a unique platform for creating sales and branding. However, it moves quickly and has become highly specialised.
Be prepared to put in the effort, time and revenue to create a strong brand both off and on the platform to help drive your sales, and success.
For more information and specialist help, contact the Optimizon team.
