5 Tips for Building Your Amazon Brand
If you were given a random product to sell, could you?
Some people have the gift of selling. They could sell sand in the desert or ice in the Arctic, but for most people, they need to have some passion for the product before they can make a sale.
On Amazon, far too many people try to sell random products, but in order to really be successful, you need to build a brand. Gone are the days where the goal was quantity – now Amazon is all about quality. Scaling sales on Amazon now depends on branding, just as it does with other e-commerce sellers who build their own websites or online stores.
To build your Amazon brand successfully, you should start by asking yourself a few questions:
1. Who do you want to reach?
2. What items will your customers need regularly?
3. How could you expand in the future?
4. How can you make yourself stand out?
5. Who do you want to be?
How you set up your business will depend on how you answer these questions.
1. Who do you want to reach?
It may feel a little counter intuitive to consider who your future customers will be before choosing what products to sell, but that line of thinking is almost guaranteed to help you get your business off on the right foot. If you want to be sitting pretty, you need to decide on your audience before you even select the first item to sell.
That doesn’t mean that you should try to get into business with something that you don’t know anything about just because you think it will be profitable. Believe us, building your brand around something that you are passionate about can significantly decrease the learning curve that comes with starting a business.
Before you focus on that product that you know and love, however, look toward the potential audience. For example, if you are passionate about camping spoons and think everyone should own one, start by envisioning the kind of people who would buy them. Once you have a clear picture of that kind of person, you can tailor your business model to meet that person’s needs.
Some questions you could ask yourself include:
– Do you have a design idea that could solve an intrinsic problem with current camping spoons designs?
– Is there a significant buzz in the camping community calling for a product that would solve x, y, or z problem?
– What could you do to make the avid hiker/camper want your camping cutlery over any others on the market?
2. What items will your customers need regularly?
Ezra Firestone’s cosmetic company BOOM! is built on the idea that women will always need to keep buying makeup. Firestone is not only a marketing guru in the online retail world, but he has also established himself as a brand that continues to expand while pushing consumers back into the sales funnel to purchase even more products.
When you’re just starting, you should pinpoint a single, mid-priced product that needs to be purchased repetitively instead of focusing on a higher-priced, one-time-purchase product. In the camping world, trail food or fuel canisters are always things that campers need more of, versus a tent that is generally a one-time purchase. Identifying a product that your audience will need to purchase more than once can turn a positive customer experience into a loyal customer base.
Choosing your first product can be difficult. You need something that has a comfortable profit margin, preferably around 50% to 75% of the customer’s price. You might be a bit surprised by how high this suggestion is, but you need to be able to cover all of your expenses while you develop your brand, and then you can shift into a smaller margin as you become established. Be sure to do your research on your competitors, however, because competitive pricing is crucial when you’re up against other, more established brands.
Read your audience. Your product should be a logical choice for the audience that you’re selling to. If you’re selling to campers, a specialized, ultra-light $400 tent is typically not going to be their first purchase. Instead, maybe build a starter kit that contains basic supplies for entering the hobby. If you target the newcomers in your audience, you can get away with selling items that are priced in the mid-range, while you gradually work your way up to the higher-priced items.
3. How could you expand in the future?
Once you have narrowed down your audience and a starting product, consider how you will expand your business. Keep in mind that most hobbies require more than one item to participate effectively. If your hobby has a wide variety of product opportunities (low to high prices, one-off products to refills and replacements, etc.), then you’re well on your way to finding multiple products that you can put into your product line.
4. How can you make yourself stand out?
If you’ve wet your feet before in the world of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), you know that Google and Amazon algorithms, while similar, are not the same. To make yourself stand out from the competition, you will need to optimize your listing on Amazon first and foremost, and then focus your attention on other organic optimization through Google and social media. For some detailed ideas for how to optimize your Amazon marketing strategies this year, read through this article.
If you want sustainable long-term income, it’s important to build your brand consistently. Pick the right marketing channel, and be persistent in producing content. Gaining traction takes time with content marketing, so be patient and diligent.
5. Who do you want to be?
Building your brand ultimately depends on what you want to represent. In the digital age, brands depend on the story of the company as much as they depend on great products. Make sure to spend the time building up a stellar website that lets your customers get to know you and what you stand for. Word of mouth is a powerful force in the online world, so if people like who you are, they are likely to spread the word.
For more tips for building your brand, consider attending an Amazon seller event. Prosper Show is an annual conference that helps Amazon sellers take their business to the next level. Attendees can get fresh ideas from some of the biggest names in the e-commerce industry and network with other Amazon sellers and solution providers.
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