Here’s Your Guide To Compete With Amazon

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If you’re a new brand, would you sell your product on Amazon? Too apprehensive to compete with Amazon and set up a direct to consumer business model, most brand executives across the world grapple with this question every time they get ready to launch their products online.

Retailing on Amazon seems like the most logical step for any new brand to take, given Amazon’s massive customer reach, logistical strengths, GenZ’s preference for the platform and the fact that setting up shop on Amazon takes mere minutes. However, the DTC approach has taken fast favour among a number of emerging brands today and with good reason.

Here’s how the DTC brands of today can compete with Amazon and beat the eCommerce juggernaut at their own game:

1. Focus on niche

Brands focus on creating products that cater to a very specific niche, like small batch coffee, for example, or car audio systems. Brands can design a site experience that is immersive and focused solely on the product.

Amazon’s vast catalog might be convenient if you know what you’re looking for, but cluttered and confusing when you don’t. So brands should take advantage of this and deliver site experiences that are centered around the consumer.

2. Create SEO optimized content around your niche

Content creation isn’t just about educating your customer base about how to use your product. It’s about ensuring that you are present when consumers who don’t know your product are searching for it. By creating SEO optimized content via blogs and product pages, brands have the opportunity to own as many Personalized Search Engine Result Pages as possible.

Visibility is vital when you’re competing with the likes of Amazon. 

3. Step up on customer experience and post sales service

Today’s customer isn’t looking for products as much as she is looking for experiences. Did you know that 41% of customers are willing to let go of a brand because of poor customer experience?

When a brand sells on Amazon, they are losing their customer relationship to the platform. Consequently, they lose the opportunity to become memorable to their customer.

On the other hand, brands that sell through their own channels have complete control over their customer’s experience. They can customize it to their customers’ preferences. Brands also get a chance to make a positive impression. This consequently, boosts Customer Lifetime Value when they can provide all-hands-on-deck customer service that can guide customers with their purchase from the moment they land on site to checkout and post sales.

4. Forge a strong identity

Amazon’s customers are Amazon’s customers. Brands must be cognizant of this. Selling on Amazon makes it impossible for brands to craft their own identity and stand apart from the sea of brands and sellers who already occupy the eCommerce behemoth’s platform.

Selling on Amazon might make sense as a distribution strategy, but it will never be a sustainable way to acquire customer loyalty. With new sellers added on the platform every day, discoverability becomes incredibly difficult and competitive, especially for newer brands. The ease of setting up on Amazon enables the rise of fake goods, which can destroy the brands’ hard-earned reputation.

For brands that are starting out, especially in today’s post pandemic scenario, selling on Amazon might seem like an easy way of breaking into the market. However, the effortless set-up and the established audience that runs into the hundreds of millions shouldn’t lure brands away from thinking about their long-term future for which they will need both control and growth. And marketplaces will give them neither.

D2C brands that have not hesitated to compete with Amazon have reaped success over the past years.