4 Steps to Take Control of Your Amazon Strategy

It’s no surprise that if you’re looking to grow your U.S. ecommerce business, you most likely need to be on Amazon. The site’s reach alone is incredible—servicing over 300 million active customers each year.

As one of Amazon’s top sellers and the leading ecommerce accelerator, Pattern provides brand partners significant resources, from distribution and logistics to creative, advertising, and data-driven insights, in order to crack the code that gets brands from good (or even not-so-good) to great on Amazon and other global marketplaces. And a key piece of advice for any brand looking to sell on Amazon, now or in the future, is to control your Amazon strategy before your lack of strategy controls you.

Because Amazon US is a powerhouse in the ecommerce space, if you’re not prepared, you can get steamrolled pretty quickly with things like price erosion, the Profitability Death Spiral, and fall far behind with a weak seller strategy. So, how can you get ahead with Amazon? Here are four steps to follow in order to gain control of your brand before it’s too late.

1. Discover Your True Brand Presence

We hear a lot of brands say “I don’t have to worry about issues on Amazon—we don’t even sell there!”  But if you think you’re not on Amazon, it’s probably time for you to think again. Do a quick Amazon search for your products. (Your customers are likely already doing this—it’s reported that 74% of consumers start their product search through Amazon.)

After a brief search and seeing the results, most brands we meet with are shocked to discover that rogue, unauthorized sellers are unknowingly offloading their products, often at below MAP prices, and potentially hurting their other selling avenues, from D2C to brick and mortar. It’s important that every ecommerce brand that wants to be successful on Amazon knows how their brand shows up to consumers first. Before you can begin to control your Amazon strategy, you need to truly know how your brand is represented on the marketplace.

2. Develop a Strategy

For brands completely aware they are available on Amazon, you probably have one of three relationships to Amazon: you’re living in blissful ignorance of how your brand stands there, you’ve got contracted selling going on with authorized Amazon sellers, or you’re fully on-board, locked and loaded with Amazon as a major distribution channel for your brand (in a 1P or 3P seller relationship).

If you happen to be a brand that just discovered your Amazon presence isn’t what you were expecting (surprise—your brand or some version of it is on Amazon), you might be tempted to stand up right now, gather all of your available resources, and spontaneously react to the issues you’ve just uncovered. But before you reactively spark to action, we want to caution that there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to Amazon.

Before you can work on improving your brand presence (or official launch), you need to understand the right strategy for your brand. The last thing you want to do is waste your valuable resources.

At Pattern, we have the experience, proprietary technology and tools to effectively evaluate a brand’s presence and meet each partner where they’re at to develop a go forward strategy on Amazon. Based on historical Amazon category and product-level data, we provide analysis and recommendations that allow us to customize an Amazon launch—or relaunch—strategy, including a seller approach, for most brands that optimizes long term profitability.

3. Commit Resources

We’ll let you in on a secret—the truth is, not all brands need to be completely committed to Amazon right now, or are able to do so. If you really want to start distributing your products on the marketplace in the right way, it’s a big investment to get started (or improve your presence) there and to do it right.

Many companies that make the mistake of committing too much too soon end up exacerbating problems for their brand instead of solving them. But if you do decide that now is the right time to start selling on Amazon, you need to make sure you have sufficient resources in place to execute the most profitable way for your brand.

Starting your strategy off right will help you establish a lasting foothold in the market and keep you available to other marketplace and retail growth opportunities in the future as your brand develops and changes. At Pattern we have ample resources to improve a brand’s presence on Amazon. From brand strategy to advertising, from invoicing and fulfillment to product listing optimization and more, we know how to meet brands where they’re at and do what it takes to make them successful across digital marketplaces.

4. Conquer Brand Control

Now that you know where your brand truly stands on Amazon, you have developed a strategy, and dedicated the right resources to profitability, it’s vital that you prioritize taking control of your brand presence. The brands that take off on Amazon are those that move beyond the bare minimum of meeting the basic requirements of the Amazon algorithm in order to achieve top rank, have high product page conversion, and positive reviews.

At the end of the day, it’s important to remember that you’re selling real, quality products to real people. So, in order to win in the long run, you need to drive traffic to your page, which means customers have to be able to easily find your listings. Then, they need to connect with your brand, easily learn about what you have to sell, decide to buy, and have a great product experience.

Pattern grows brand equity for hundreds of brands on Amazon and other marketplaces. From optimizing SEO and winning organic site traffic to developing product descriptions and image stacks, managing customer reviews, setting MAP pricing, working with an eControl firm like Vorys Law to eliminate unauthorized sellers, and consistently controlling the Buy Box all combine into a great customer experience and better brand affinity for you.

Partner with an Ecommerce Accelerator

Regardless of how you show up on Amazon today, most brands recognize Amazon is an essential aspect of a successful ecommerce strategy, but the expertise and resources needed to execute can be very daunting for many growing brands.

As an ecommerce accelerator, Pattern has the experience, team, and unparalleled marketplace knowledge to help brands find their footings on Amazon and other marketplaces as they grow their distribution and maintain brand equity in a healthy, sustainable, proven way. Ready to address what your Amazon search revealed? Contact us to set up a meeting.