A 5-step guide to stop getting Amazoned!
From Aug. 19, 2013, through Aug. 22, 2013, marketers from around the nation convened in Boston for the Inbound 2013 conference, hosted by HubSpot, the leader in inbound marketing software. During the four-day event, Sam Mallikarjunan, the head of eCommerce marketing at HubSpot, headed up a session titled, “How to sell better than Amazon.”
To say the least, the session was busting at the seams with attendees.
During Mallikarjunan’s 45-minute presentation, he focused on the nearly $100 billion-in-annual-sales gorilla in the room. And although he didn’t necessarily say that eCommerce companies should avoid selling through Amazon, he did say that there are better ways to generate sales.
1. Enable long-tail searches on your site.
Can visitors to your site search for something as specific as left-handed purple kitchen scissors? Amazon’s can. And it should be a priority for you to offer the same to the shoppers that visit your site. The good thing is that tools exist for that very purpose.
By making use of third-party search engine plugins, like Solr and EasyAsk, e-retailers can enhance their search capabilities to help shoppers find what they need. Essentially, the tools index your catalog and parse for keywords, enabling a site visitor to find a product with specific descriptors.
2. Put the customer at the center of your universe.
“Most marketers aren’t as customer-centric as they think,” Mallikarjunan said. “You can’t call yourself a ‘customer-centric’ company if your customer isn’t the center of your universe.”
So how do you hone in on your customer? You start by understanding who they are. By creating buyer personas, a marketer can better envision what content will resonate with a certain type of customer and what channels are best for grabbing their attention and influencing their shopping behaviors.
Believe it or not, Amazon doesn’t put their customer on a pedestal. Because let’s face it; you, the seller, are their customer. What they’re doing instead is solving for your customer. And they’re not doing it with great content that was created with them in mind. They’re doing it with low prices, fast shipping and a wide selection.
3. Don’t get involved in a pricing war.
“If you’re competing on price, you’ll always lose,” explained Mallikarjunan. “Competing on price alone is a broken model.” And that’s because there’s always someone who’s willing to make less than you are. When it comes to the race to the bottom, Amazon has already won, and Mallikarjunan says that we should all be OK with that.
4. Send relevant content to your customers.
Amazon and too many other eCommerce sites have gotten into the habit of e-mailing anything and everything to their customers. Mallikarjunan’s example included getting e-mails from Amazon about buying back-to-school supplies even though no one in his household is actually going back to school.
When the right analytics are applied to content creation, customers will thank you for the messaging that is not only relevant but helpful. Their gratitude will come in the form of purchases and return visits.
5. Solve for the customer.
One of the biggest takeaways from Mallikarjunan’s presentation was to take a customer-centric approach not only when creating content, but also when calculating marketing costs. Instead of determining the average order value and cost of transaction acquisition, he suggests that eCommerce businesses solve for the lifetime value and the cost of customer acquisition instead.
In the end, companies who work with Amazon pay the marketplace 15 percent of their business. And because 15 percent is quite a big piece of the pie, the time is now to put your own marketing team to the test. When taking Mallikarjunan’s advice to heart, there’s a good chance that they’ll be able to produce better results.
To get any level of assistance when it comes to Amazon, be it selling through Amazon or cutting all ties with Amazon, get in touch with team at NetSphere Strategies.
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