How to Market an eCommerce Site in the Age of Amazon

Marketing your online business in 2014 is harder than ever. Years ago many brick and mortar stores saw their profits shrivel up with the rise of internet retailers. We saw stores like Circuit City transform from a bustling one stop shop for electronics into abandoned red cubes with the letters peeled off. Now as Amazon continues to tighten its stranglehold on online sales, existing internet retailers are being forced to adapt in order to stay in business.
It’s no secret that Amazon is dominating online sales. In fact Amazon is larger than the next 12 largest online retailers combined thanks to it’s huge inventory and it’s Amazon Prime service. In order to compete against Goliath you need to focus on more than just search engine optimization and have a rock solid online marketing strategy that focuses on all stages of the consumer buying cycle. Here’s what you need to know in order to carve out your piece of Amazon’s pie.

Define your niche

Have you ever heard the saying “Jack of all trades, master of none?”. That’s exactly what Amazon is. They sell so many products that aside from books they are not really good at selling any one type of product particularly well. They are successful because they offer so many products and they are able to keep their prices low because they buy in massive quantity giving them the advantage of economies of scale. The disadvantege of this, however, is that Amazon has spread itself too thin in many areas. Therefore, you should clearly define the niche you are going after. For instance don’t just sell clothes online but say “I am going to be the number one source for high end, American made women’s clothing”. Defining your niche allows you to differentiate yourself from others and will add value to your brand.

Be an expert in your industry

Once you have defined exactly what your niche is and what differentiates your store/products from the competition you need to establish yourself as an expert on what you’re selling. Unless you really have an extremely efficient supply chain you will never be able to beat Amazon on price alone. Most consumers don’t know exactly what they want when they first start searching for a product and they do an incredible amount of research before they are ready to complete a purchase. Position yourself as an expert on what you’re selling by blogging on industry trends, comparing similar items you offer, and offering advice on how to pick a product that is right for you. Create guides for how to use your products and feature them on your website. Let’s say you sell stereo equipment for example, content about how to choose between analog or digital sound, how to set up a 7.1 surround sound system, and how to choose speaker locations for best sound will all be extremely helpful to your customers.

Create your own products

Positioning yourself as an expert is a great way to gain the trust and business from visitors to your website. Unfortunately, there will always be a percentage of people who are shopping purely on price alone. The best way to combat this problem is to create a product line that is unique to your brand so that Amazon cannot compete with you directly on price. Creating your own products can often mean that your margins on your products will be higher which leads to higher profits and gives you more flexibility with offering discounts and promotions.

Offer excellent customer service

As big as Amazon is it still fails to provide great customer service, especially regarding answers to specific items. They sell so many things that often times they don’t know a single thing about the products they are selling other than the product descriptions which are already listed on the website. Be available to answer your potential customer’s questions and help guide them towards making a purchase. If possible, incorporate live chat on your website so you can respond to consumer’s questions as they are on your website and at the end of the buying funnel. People who talk to you on live chat are much more likely to convert and complete a purchase on your website. Make sure your return policies are clearly stated and make your best effort to respond to complaints in a timely manner.

Build a loyal customer base

Building up a following means turning one-time buyers into lifelong customers. You need to talk to your consumers during all phases of the buying cycle. Expand your exposure by sharing your blogs, guides, and insights on social media. Guide users to purchase by providing advice on what products best fit their needs. Increase interaction with your customers after purchase by following up with them to make sure everything was satisfactory through email responders.
Build up your social media fan base by offering special offers for your followers alongside meaningful, relevant content. Increase the amount of repeat customers you have by offering special offers only available to email subscribers. The return on investment for email marketing can be as high as 4,000% or more because of the low cost to send out thousands of emails at once through something like Mailchimp or Constant Contact. Providing an excellent buying experience will ensure that people will stay subscribed to your email list, and promote your brand both on and offline.

Enable rich snippets

While competing against Amazon in search is no easy task and could easily be its own blog post, enabling rich snippets is one way to stand out and steal business away. What rich snippets allow you to do is display useful information in Google search results such as reviews, price, and if an item is in stock. Because Amazon is so large it hasn’t enabled rich snippets for all its products and there a number of opportunities for you to have a more complete search result than Amazon. Take a look below at a search for a specific watch and see how Amazon’s result does not include as much information as Overstock.com’s Rich snippets that will allow you to a get a larger percent of clicks from results pages and take away business from Amazon even if they rank higher than you.

Remarket to your visitors

Everyone who has been around internet marketing long enough has heard the statistic that only 2% of visitors will ever convert the first time they visit your website. Remarketing or retargeting as it is also called allows you to follow visitors to your site with display banner ads across the web as they browse other websites. Since people only spend 5% of their time online searching, the other 95% is spent consuming content. Make sure you reconnect with your potential customers by retargeting them with specific display ads and offers that they would be interested in. Experiment with sending them directly to the product they were last looking at or sending them to a page that has specific offers such as sale items or site-wide discounts on particular products i.e. All men’s pants 15% off.
It’s not easy, but it can be done. Follow these steps and you will have the basis for a targeted approach to take on Amazon and everyone else that stands in your way.
 
Need help marketing your eCommerce site? The team at Trellis is happy to help you rise above your competition. Contact our expert team today for more information.