The Power of Branding on Amazon

Branding on Amazon is hard for many sellers, but it shouldn’t have to be!  I like to look at heavy hitters like Nike, Wayfair, and Coach.  What does each of these have in common?  Incredibly visual branding that you never forget.  For Nike, it’s the swoosh that makes you come alive to knock out a workout. 

For Wayfair, it’s to know you are outfitting your home beautifully on a budget.  And for Coach, stunning, luxurious purses elevate your fashion game.  Between their respective imagery, how they write on their product listings, and advertising strategies, their brands are powerful and hard to forget. 

Amazon sellers should take their cues from these powerhouse companies and apply the same principles to their companies. Today, I’ll break down the power of branding on Amazon and how sellers can take simple steps to deliver a specific, focused brand to their customers.  

For example, if you sold in the outdoors category, your mission statement might be “Creating products that reignite the love for the great outdoors.”  With this mission statement, your photography and video production would be hyper-focused on using outdoor imagery.

A strong Amazon consultant can be helpful with this. Every aspect of your branding would elicit a response of excitement when thinking about this product in the great outdoors. This mission statement would also prevent you from launching any new product that doesn’t fit the brand’s message. The real power here is branding focus and ensuring that potential customers are buying from a company with a passion like theirs.  

Developing a Loyal Following

The real benefit to a loyal following is repeat customers and seeing viral traffic due to social shares. To achieve this, you need much more than a random product doing well on Amazon. You need your A+ content setup, Amazon store polished and optimized, beautiful photography, and catchy video clips. In a way, your goal is to create a “tribe” around your brand. Once you have developed a tribe, these customers will inevitably tell their friends and family about your products and share pictures on social media channels raving about your brand.  This is powerful as it’s FREE marketing.  The best type of “business proof” is a large following talking highly about your products and their quality.  A loyal following is also very useful when it comes to holiday sale promotions and garnering a large number of reviews upfront for new product launches.  

Out Branding your Competition

A strong brand presence and wide catalog set you up for taking out your competition and staying on top. If you look at any category on Amazon, the top five sellers will have beautiful photography, videos, and strong branding messaging.  By developing your brand, you have the upper hand on Amazon and will shoot to the top five slots relatively fast compared to your competition.  Many sellers put up boring pictures without any real value.  Instead, focus on adding branding call-outs to your pictures and talking about how your product makes the customer’s life more enjoyable.  Consistent color themes and text fonts are critical for this.  Customers on Amazon are demanding this level of branding.  Your job is to deliver it and watch your revenues soar.  

Positioning for an Exit

If you speak with any of the top e-commerce brokers out there, they will tell you that branding is one of the top five metrics potential buyers are looking for when considering a business purchase.  A strong brand implies a loyal customer base and brand awareness both on Amazon and on other channels.  A potential buyer likes to see this brand already set up so they can expand the brand with their team as times go on.  Potential buyers don’t want to do all the upfront work, starting and growing a brand.  This is why they buy Amazon businesses.  They want turnkey brands that they can expand relatively easily.  

Brand Searches by Customers

One of the most amazing things that happen over the life of a brand is the snowball effect of customers starting to search by your brand name instead of the keyword.  For example, instead of searching “radios”, they may search “Airways Radios” to find your products faster.  Due to brand loyalty, the customer now does not want to bother buying from a new brand.  They trust you, your product, and your mission statement.  This can only happen if you have a strong brand and reputation to back it up.  Another plus is that these are organic sales, so no extra PPC costs are needed to reach these customers.  It’s a big win for the brand and its revenues.  

Related Product Purchases

Once you have an established brand, customers inevitably like to buy other products from you related to other products from the same brand.  Take a computer mouse, for example.  Let’s say you sold innovative, futuristic computer mice and also sold high-end, interesting-looking mouse pads.  Since these two products are part of a cohesive brand, customers will be more prone to buy both products from you.  This is truly powerful because instead of allowing this customer to buy from other brands, you are capturing them for the sale of more than one product.  Another big benefit is that you will pay less pick and pack fees to Amazon since multiple products are being shipped out in one Amazon box.  Branding is not only incredibly powerful in terms of revenue creation but also fee reduction for your business. 

Strong Branding Equals Higher Selling Prices

A brand like Coach is known for premium prices due in part because they are a premium brand.  They have justified to the consumer that their prices uniquely reflect their high-end brand. You need to do the same with your brand.  Competing with the lowest-priced sellers is a loser’s game.  Instead, by focusing on strong branding and driving home the message of premium quality, you can demand higher prices, thus higher margins. Another benefit to higher brand value is that you will have to make sales far less often.  Take a look at any high-end brand and you will notice one consistent theme: they are not consistently blasting their customers with coupon codes or sales.  The goal is to get a multitude of customers to pay full price for products.  To achieve this, branding is everything.  

Baby Steps

So, now that you’ve learned about the power of branding on Amazon, where should you go from here?  The first baby step is to decide on your brand’s mission statement.  Don’t get frustrated if this takes weeks.  That’s completely normal!  Once you have the mission statement finalized, take a good hard look at your product lines and decide if everything fits this mission statement.  Then, with any new idea, filter through it as well.  Another question to ask yourself is, “does my photography and videos deliver on my brand’s mission statement?”  If not, then it’s time to redo your media assets.  This all may sound like a lot of work, but it will pay dividends in the long run and allow you to establish your brand as an authority in your category.  You won’t regret it.  

Additional Read :

10 Best Amazon Marketing Strategies Proven to Boost Sales

8 Tips to Future-Proof Your Brand On And Off Amazon

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