Building a Brand in the Amazon Marketplace: Be Where Your Customers Are
Building a brand in the Amazon marketplace is not limited to those eligible for Amazon Brand Registry. This is the third in a three-part series, where I’ll talk about how a multi-marketplace strategy helps your brand, that both 1P and 3P sellers can use.
For most of North America, the end of August signals the end of summer heatwaves and forces us back into a schedule. For online sellers though, it is the beginning of the ever-earlier holiday prep season.
A few weeks ago, we were quoted in an online article by Internet Retailer describing the behavior we saw among Amazon sellers during the thrilling 48 hour Prime Day shopping period. The big headline: nearly everyone is upping their advertising budget during these big buying events. That means that advertising alone is not going to be what makes you successful this holiday season.
That’s where this series of brand building culminates. Being successful as a brand generally comes down to this:
- Know your customers: In the first blog in this series, I shared how understanding your customers starts with knowing who your buyers are and that once you understand who your customers are, you can start to understand their behavior, and their needs.
- Delight your customers: Meanwhile, committing yourself to customer delight is a key second step for building a strong brand. In my second post in this series, I imparted that, it’s easy to forget that the customer’s experience with you doesn’t end once the product is in the hands of the delivery carrier. There are lots of opportunities to delight the customer after they click “buy.” It is these opportunities that will build a relationship with a buyer, and make them a loyal customer.
- Go where your customers are: Read on for more.
It’s so easy to get caught up in the washing machine that is Amazon – its endless ToS changes and policy updates swirling about you, drowning out your pre-planned strategy for success. But you have to come up for air and realize that your customers are on Amazon, but that’s not the only place they are.
We released an interesting infographic recently, and a few of the statistics jumped out at me. A bulk of sellers are selling somewhere in addition to Amazon, but the clear winner isn’t yet chosen. That should, in part, remain true because sellers need to know their customers.
Selling on multi marketplaces
In the infographic I mentioned, 80% of sellers are on another platform. A whopping 52% of them claim eBay, and a small group of 17% claim the Walmart Marketplace. With Walmart and Target both making strong overtures towards 3P sellers, it’s time to do some research on where to spend your time.
If you’ve followed my advice and gotten to know your customers, and their demographics, you have a good idea of what other marketplaces or shopping platforms might appeal. If you haven’t yet, it’s time to start researching your niche or category on the available marketplaces – because, like Amazon, early entrants to these emerging marketplaces have a longer runway for success.
Advertise in other places
Do holiday advertising costs keep you up at night? That’s no surprise since our initial data from Prime Day revealed that sellers doubled their daily spending for this huge buying event. So it’s probably worrisome to think about spreading that budget across any other advertising platform.
But again, consider your customers and where they are shopping. Does an average buyer do their research in a Facebook group before landing on your product listing? Perform a Google search? Or do they truly start and stay on Amazon?
Let that decide where you put your money. Maximize the channels where your target customers already are and you’ll see better results.
Automate Amazon where you can
You have only so much time and resources to dedicate to promoting and operating your business. Amazon is already a major part of that, but if you’re ready to start moving to other platforms or marketplaces, take advantage of the automation available for your Amazon business.
Make sure you’re using tools that help automate things like advertising and customer service today so you can build those strategies wherever else you target. Get started with Seller Labs Pro – the comprehensive Amazon seller plan for reporting, keyword research, reviews, and advertising.
Maria is an SEO Content Specialist at Seller Labs. Once captured by digital and content marketing in her student days, she keeps living and breathing it ever since.
