For many businesses, branding stands as one of the most important aspects; large or small, retail, or B2B. Having a good brand strategy gives you a significant cutting edge in the ever-increasingly competitive markets. Wondering how? Not so fast, let’s first understand what exactly “branding” refers to. And how does it affect a small business like yours?
What is branding?
In a nutshell, a brand is a promise to customers. Brands tell customers what to expect from your products and services. It also distinguishes what you are offering from your competitors. How you define yourself, who you want to be, and who people perceive you to be is what defines a brand.
A successful brand can get you customers, and enable you to keep them at the same time. Also, by keeping your buyers satisfied with your products or services, they will remain loyal. Telling them what your brand is all about is the first thing you should keep in mind.
Jack’s story:
Jack is a merchant who has been selling coffee on Amazon.com for quite some time. For a long time, it had been his dream to expand his own brand website-jack.com.
The logistics seemed to outweigh his dreams at first. It was until we came to his aid, that he realized that building a brand doesn’t have to be rocket science.
Jack’s Challenges:
As a seller, Jack’s main challenge was that when customers buy on jack.com, he had to ship the orders to their customers’ preferred location by himself. Some of his customers shied away from buying from his site, worrying about how their purchases would reach their doorstep were they to buy on Jack.com
Second, to the list of Jack’s worries was how he would ship orders that are placed on his brand website immediately.
“Customers are usually skeptical about the arrival of their orders,” he confessed to us.
Another issue that seemed to rack his mind was how to allow customers from multiple supported countries to buy his products. His worries kept increasing as the sales ramped up.
Jack’s Solution:
Jack was quick to approach us at AiHello with his challenges of becoming a 9-figure eCommerce company through his brand. We recommended to Jack to host his brand on Shopify or Woocommerce to which he gladly obliged.
We then advised him to use AiHello.com to copy inventory from Amazon to their marketplace. After an in-depth discussion and illustration of AiHello’s functionalities with Jack, he was moved to believe it would be a great idea.
One fact about AiHello that excited Jack was the auto-fulfillment of orders feature with rules set for stock-keeping units and country.
Jack settled for Woocommerce after a discussion with their internal team members. With this selection, AiHello was able to help them copy their inventory from Amazon to Woocommerce.
Results:
- With just a few clicks, jack.com enabled customers from all their supported countries to buy their products from their websites. In no time, Jack was already selling on Amazon in the US, Canada, and European Countries, including the UK, Germany, France, and Spain.
- With AiHello fulfillment rules, customers in these countries could start placing orders and buying within an hour from the website.
- Order status was automatically synced between the brand website and Amazon.
- Orders that were canceled by customers on the website were also canceled on Amazon automatically.
- The pilot phase was two weeks to achieve 95% of fulfilling all orders within 4 hours. It exceeded the expectation of the customers.
Importance of having your own brand website
Opening your online store comes with many benefits such as growing your business beyond the realms of Amazon. Reality is that Amazon is great to sell products, but it’s difficult to expand your brand using a platform like this. The whole operation promotes the Amazon brand, rather than that of the seller.
- Personal branding – your entire customizable branding as a seller on Amazon is lost behind the Amazon brand. You have full control over your brand to distinguish your company from other eCommerce stores when you open your website.
- Analytics – With your eCommerce, you can access insight into your customers’ behavior on your site and use this information to make improvements.
- Great UX (user experience) – you completely control your customers UX on your website. You can change a page if it isn’t right for your customers, to increase conversion rates, and make more sales.
Remember, it’s a simple process:
- Leverage your Amazon experience
You can utilize the knowledge you have gained from selling online for your online store. Make use of what you’ve learned to make a successful business model for your company.
- Design your online store
Creating the perfect online store doesn’t necessarily mean sales, but it gives a hand. To enable your customers to navigate quickly, you need to design a user-friendly website. Several options exist for creating your site.
- Establish your brand
Considering the size of your business, you can either choose to create a whole new one or build upon your existing brand. This is the ideal chance to work out any kinks in your brand and set your company apart from all others. An essential part of growing your business involves making the transition from being a faceless Amazon seller to having your personalized brand.
- Market your store
An SEO strategy will need to be adopted just like with Amazon to optimize your online store and boost rankings on search engines. Fierce competition is at hand even though Amazon increases the visibility of its products. In the same way, you have dealt with the competition, and you need to bring this sales knowledge into your eCommerce store to boost sales effectively.
Jack’s End result:
- Jack had his own successful brand website.
- Jack’s site ramped up sales by 30%. Amazing! Isn’t it?
Just like we helped Jack, AiHello can similarly connect your website to your Amazon account seamlessly. If a customer buys a product on your website, the order is automatically placed on Amazon behind the scenes and the product is shipped to the customer by Amazon (although the customer bought it on one of your sites website)
Conclusion
Most people that I frequently come across understand the need to have their own branded website. The common worry is that they get scared by the mere thought of having to generate traffic on their own.
The reality is that launching your brand website is a longer-term project than selling on Amazon, but the reward is far greater. I strongly recommend you start thinking along such line if you haven’t. AiHello is here to lead you every step of the way.
Changing from Amazon to having your eCommerce store is the next big thing. Besides, you can apply the experience you have gained in selling on Amazon to sell on your website as they are not that different. Though there are some slight differences, using a multichannel approach will put your sales through the roof.
Amazon is like a drug that gives you instant sales, but it can be taken away at any time. In the long run, you need to think about building up your brand and creating an eCommerce business that is built to last.
