When most consumers think of shopping online, there’s one website that comes to mind before any other.And unfortunately, it's probably not YOURS. Amazon has dominated the e-commerce world since the 1990s. In fact, the Bezos behemoth dominates about half of all online shopping. If your business website has an e-commerce system, that’s some pretty big competition to go up against.Fortunately, it’s still possible to gain a foothold against the e-commerce king. You just have to make sure you go about it in the right way. Learn how you can make your small business strong enough to compete with Amazon and you just might find yourself the "good guy" in a modern-day David and Goliath story.
What Should Retailers Do to Compete With Amazon?
Online retailers who successfully compete with Amazon do so by taking advantage of Amazon’s primary weakness. Everything about Amazon likes to show off the fact that it sells EVERYTHING. You can find all sorts of items on Amazon, and even the subtleties in the online retailer’s logo suggest that it has everything you could imagine, from A to Z. This is often seen as their greatest strength, but it’s really their greatest weakness.With their enormous inventory, Amazon strives to appeal to everyone. This is where a smaller retailer can compete. Instead of mass, broad appeal, focus on developing your niche. Amazon sells everything, but they’re not good at everything. If you sell items within a particular niche, you can get exceptionally good at that niche, offering products and services Amazon simply can’t match. Rank for your niche’s keywords. Perfect your niche’s products. Dominate your niche’s content marketing, and Amazon won’t be able to touch you.
How Can an E-commerce Business Compete With Amazon?
Content marketing is just the beginning of what e-commerce businesses have to do to keep up with Amazon. You’ll have to focus on another aspect of marketing that Amazon completely fails at, and that’s personalization. Make sure you’re collecting data on your smaller customer base and ensuring each and every one of their experiences with your brand is as personalized as possible. People know that any personalization attempt from Amazon is just an algorithm, but you can offer a genuine connection — even if you’re using an algorithm as well.By personalizing your services and focusing on a specific niche market, you can effectively create a community of loyal and repeat customers. People buy from Amazon because it’s convenient. People will buy from you because they feel like they’re a part of your brand. When you have a brand that’s focused on personalization, quality, and a positive company culture, you’ll find that people are often willing to wait longer and pay more for your products compared to Amazon.
Competing With Amazon on Price
One of Amazon’s biggest advantages is their low prices. There has probably been a time in which you decided to not buy something at a retail store because Amazon was offering it cheaper. This is very common, so you need to make sure your prices are competitive enough to not send people away by default. This can be hard to accomplish considering Amazon’s extensive resources, but there are some things e-commerce businesses can do to close the gap.By adding personalization and expertise to your brand, you increase the value of your products and people are willing to pay more — but there’s more to closing the gap than trying to justify higher prices. One of the best things you can do is to exceed expectations. Undersell your services and overdeliver on your promises. Ship items faster than your customers would expect. Add bonus items to some orders for repeat customers. The more you can deliver without being explicitly asked, the less important your price gap with Amazon will be.
Up Your Digital Marketing Game
For any e-commerce business to go head-to-head with the "Big A," they’ll have to push their digital marketing to the absolute limit. Content marketing, social media marketing, and more are absolutely necessary to stay competitive in the market in general. That’s where Symphonic Digital can help. Our digital marketing experts have extensive experience optimizing all sorts of online campaigns using data-driven techniques and results. Contact us today to learn more about what we can do for you.
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