6 Amazon Growth Strategies for Brands in 2021 - Luzern

A whopping 42% of brands generating at least half of their eCommerce sales from Amazon alone in 2020  and with U.S. eCommerce sales estimated to reach $843.15 billion — 15 % of total retail sales in 2021. The battle to get customers to choose your buy box on Amazon, instead of your competitors’, is going to be greater than ever.

To succeed in doing that, brands must hone their Amazon sales strategy to adapt to new trends as they happen.

Here are six areas to focus on:

1.    Know your customer…

Customers buying motivations are constantly changing. Understanding shopper behaviour, especially what fuels purchases and how those drivers may change down the line.

Using tools that deliver operational intelligence to understand more about your customers, their sales journey and how they like to shop. Knowing your customers helps to tailor product offerings to suit your target buyer and to discover new customers. Fine-tuning helps differentiate your offering whilst meeting their wants and needs.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) will continue to gain traction in 2021 and beyond. Brands will need to go one step beyond just analysis on a dashboard and, more importantly, find technology providers that give the capability to take immediate action on the insights gleaned from their analysis. Solutions with smart decisioning automatically takes action based on the data-driven insights. They will need automated functionality to pro-actively manage sales margins, position against competitors, and drive conversions, in real-time.

For example, if you know customer preferences, you can innovate with offerings such as bundling products together at a discounted price point. Bundling not only keeps the customer happy, it also increases your AoV (Average order value) A win-win for you & your customers. You can continually refine to see what you can do differently to attract customers. This brings us along to…

2.    …know your enemy

Equally important is knowing who you’re up against. That means having the right analytics solution to help you understand, position against and beat competitors. With online competition only increasing in 2021 and beyond, it’s vital that you can benchmark performance against key competitors. Gain visibility into the longtail of your competition and understand which competitors are out-performing you, and why. With Data insights using Luzern’s proprietary algorithms, specific to your brand and buyer behaviours, you can understand the landscape and outrank competitors by not just selling more, but selling smarter.

3.    Make sure the price is right

It’s no secret that the right product at the right price makes all the difference to driving those coveted conversions. Many of your competitors are already using pricing tools to leverage the marketplace. While repricing (via automated tools) is a common strategy, there are other factors you can focus on to get customers to pay a price that not only is attractive for your customer but fits with your pricing strategy to maintain profitability.

The recent past has led to even more Brands finding themselves under extraordinary margin pressure when selling to Amazon directly (1P), which is generally triggered by a price war to win the buy box. Amazon will, of course, seek to maximize their margins and push the best sellers. They then make demands on the Brands for better prices or they may stop ordering some or all of the products. This can equate to millions in lost revenue in list suppression and stock-outs if the “demands” aren’t met.

However, implementing a Hybrid 1P/3P strategy with a trusted third-party provider (such as Luzern), Brands have price autonomy over their products as it facilitates independent price changes to suit your pricing strategy. A Hybrid approach delivers flexibility and gives more control back to the Brand.

4.    Ads work – Amazon Advertising is a must for 2021

To be successful, you need to adopt the correct strategy and have the performance marketing expertise to constantly analyse and optimise results to ensure you are getting the appropriate return for your Ad spend. Programmatic advertising will gain importance as will video advertising. The in-house team at Luzern can give you all the help you need to make the most of your investment.

5.    Optimize your listing with content that converts

Optimizing your product pages to present your products effectively has never been more important. Not only to improve the visibility of your products on Amazon but also to improve the customer experience of your Brand. Compelling product descriptions, clear feature bullets and strong imagery with clear product photos improve the shopping experience for the customer and increases the likelihood that they’ll buy from you. Invest in making your listing look as professional and appealing as possible. Video can be especially effective here for brand and product awareness. Luzern’s SEO Specialists work side-by-side with our Amazon Marketing Experts to deliver a fully optimized Amazon listing that combines your product keywords with compelling sales copy to create a truly effective product listing.

6.    Shipping – Improve delivery from the warehouse… to their house

FBM (Fulfilled by Merchant): If you have stock in your own warehouse or even at another location you can still meet the demand from your customers by using FBM.  A third party partner, like Luzern, can integrate directly to fulfil orders. When a customer places an order it can be shipped directly to them. By using the FBM/ Dropship model, brands have more control over inventory and ultimately can keep the business moving. This Fulfilment model enables you to build up listings and history, growing sales and margin, protecting any existing direct relationship with customers, avoiding channel conflict or any “race to the bottom” pricing battles. Luzern, as your 3rd party provider, can assist with warehousing, order processing and delivery, ensuring supply, in stock and ready for sale on Amazon.

Put these strategies to work and partner with an e-commerce expert, such as Luzern, and no matter what the future holds in store, your business will thrive on Amazon.