Don’t Just Sell Products, Build Your Brand
More than 350 million.
That’s how many products are floating across Amazon.
In this sea of products, the average consumer isn’t looking for just one more. They have plenty to choose from. What they need is a brand they can get to know and come to trust.
At the same time, when brands intentionally invest in strategies that grow credibility and foster a relationship with consumers, they are more likely to increase both their acquisition rate of new customers and their long-term value. Those repeat customers will spend, on average, 31% more than they did the first time around, and the brand that took the time to build a relationship with those customers will see a continued impact from their initial investment each time those customers repurchase. (source)
So, in Amazon’s crowded marketplace, the path to success isn’t just about selling products. It’s about finding a way to stand out and stay top of mind. It’s about building trust and familiarity with a consumer. It’s about long-term value. It’s about brand building.
What is brand building?
Brand building is the process of creating and establishing a unique and distinct image and reputation for a company, product, or service in the mind of consumers. It involves 3 key activities:
Creating a memorable brand identity.
Developing brand messaging, communication, advertising, and marketing strategies that support your brand values.
Crafting customer experiences that reinforce those values.
These brand building activities run throughout the path to purchase, working to establish more about who you are, what you’re about, and why your product can make a difference in the lives of your customers.
What does brand building look like on Amazon?
Every interaction with a consumer is an opportunity to build your brand.
You have plenty of avenues to create interactions within the suite of media options available through Amazon Advertising. Amazon continues to create more opportunities across Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Display, Sponsored Brand Video, STV, and DSP to give brands the chance to tell their story throughout the customer journey.
At the same time, brand building is much more than advertising. Amazon gives brands a chance to build beyond their advertising with things like...
A+ Content
This gives brands a chance to add rich media and storytelling elements to their product detail pages. Using media-rich A+ content helps your brand make a stronger impression and creates a fuller digital shopping experience.
Since A+ Content is designed to move consumers to engage on your product detail page, the success of your A+ Content could be measured in common KPIs like...
Conversion Rate: The percentage of visitors who complete a purchase after viewing the product detail page.
PDP Engagement: the level of engagement with the product detail page, including the length of time spent on the page and the number of clicks on product images and information.
Bounce Rate: the percentage of visitors who leave the page without viewing other pages or making a purchase.
Cart Additions: the number of times the product is added to the shopping cart by visitors.
Add-to-Wishlist actions: The number of times the product is added to a customer’s wish list.
Amazon Brand Stores
These are digital storefronts designed as an immersive experience to introduce consumers to your story, mission, and products. Best of all, your competitor’s ads can’t penetrate the brand store, which gives you the full attention of the shopper.
Since brand stores are designed to represent the broader catalog of products, success could be measured in other common KPIs like...
Overall traffic metrics: the total number of visitors to the brand store, how many are repeat visitors, and the dwell time associated with each visitor (i.e. - how long they spend in the store).
Brand Awareness metrics: this measures the extent to which customers are becoming familiar with and recognize the brand through metrics like brand searches and share of voice.
Conversion metrics across multiple products: this would include metrics like Units Per Order, Average Order Value (AOV) and Gross Merchandise Value (GOV) to measure sales per customer on the brand store.
Amazon Posts
Amazon Posts is a free social-media-like opportunity where you can share an image and caption, publishing them to your product detail pages and brand store. The purpose is to help brands get in front of customers more often, helping communicate your brand story, value proposition, and point of difference.
Our team put together some helpful background and insights into Amazon posts in a previous article. As a preview, here’s a quick list of ways to optimize your amazon posts:
Highlight your product’s value. Show your product in use in its natural environment to illustrate how it can benefit customers in their everyday lives.
Keep it simple. Avoid collaged and crowded images as well as wordy captions.
Keep it clutter-free by not overlaying text, graphics, and icons on top of the image.
Tell your brand story. Use the combination of a compelling image with supportive text to let your story shine.
Manage Your Customer Engagement
Manage Your Customer Engagement (MYCE) lets you set up email campaigns to engage directly with Amazon customers who follow or purchase from your brand. The MYCE program can deliver email communication to those followers and past purchasers about new product announcements, 7-day deal details, and gift event guides.
Once you start using MYCE emails and meet some additional criteria (i.e. - sending 10 emails with at least 1000 contacts and averaging a less than 1% opt-out rate), you can potentially access more nuanced audience segments, like:
Repeat customers – Those who have ordered your brand’s products more than once in the last 12 months.
High-spend customers – Those who spend in the top 25% of your customers in the last 12 months.
BONUS TIPS: If you’re going to send out emails, make sure you include these 2 things to maximize the impact:
Create a clear call to action so that the reader knows exactly what you want them to do.
Utilize a coupon to create a direct tie to purchases.
Amazon Influencer Program
Influencer marketing expanded to a $16.4 billion industry in 2022 (source). Amazon’s Influencer Program steers into this growing trend by allowing content creators who have a meaningful following across any platform to earn commissions based on the products they recommend on Amazon.
The success of your influencer marketing could be measured with a mix of common KPIs like...
Brand Awareness: measuring the extent of brand searches that occur during the same time as your influencer marketing campaign is running.
Social Engagement: measuring how consumers are engaging with content in the influencer campaign and, if applicable, how many followers your brand gains from the campaign as well.
Referral Traffic: measuring the number of PDP views and Brand Store visits that occur during the campaign.
Click-Through Rates: measuring any engagement on links provided throughout the campaign to specific products or pages.
Conversions: measuring the growth of sales throughout the campaign.
Don’t forget... Brand Protection Opportunities
If you’re going to do all the hard work to build your brand on Amazon, you’ll need to prioritize the protection opportunities available to you as well. This includes things like:
Brand Registry - Amazon Brand Registry helps you protect your intellectual property (IP), manage your listings, and grow your business, regardless of whether you sell in our store – for free.
IP Accelerator - Registering your intellectual property (IP) is the first step to protecting your brand. Brands enrolled in IP Accelerator also get quicker access to Brand Registry benefits.
Transparency - Transparency protects your brand and customers by ensuring that every unit shipped is authentic.
Project Zero - Project Zero uses the power of Amazon technology combined with brand insights to detect and remove counterfeits.
What is brand building ultimately for?
Brand building makes you sticky—driving brand recognition and loyalty. In today’s crowded marketplace, a sticky brand is crucial for those looking to stand out, create an edge for their products within each category, and ultimately drive success and profitability.
Brand building is a complex long game and doing it on Amazon has its own unique blend of challenges and opportunities. If you’re wanting to take the next step in building your brand on Amazon, you need a partner who knows the nuances of Amazon and prioritizes the long-term value of brand building. Let’s chat and see if we might be the right fit for you.