It is somewhat disconcerting how many businesses are closing because of the e-commerce takeover by Amazon. It is hard to compete against a company that ships you all of the products you may need the next day at the lowest prices. The first suggestion that appears in the search engine when you type “how to compete” is “against Amazon”. So, we know it is a task that we all want to achieve, but is it possible? Well the cold hearted truth is no, you cannot compete against Amazon on all levels. Instead, try to outperform them in a specific areas.
Here are some options:
Find a Niche: Although it may be great that Amazon sells anything and everything, they cannot personalize any of their products. This is where you step in. Instead of trying to compete with Amazon’s prices, curate your products to precisely what your consumers are looking for. From here, use content marketing to promote your products. Another thing that Amazon does not do well is content marketing. By optimizing these things you are looking at success!
Utilize Customer Data: Amazon does a very, very good job of tracking their customers and gathering data. This is amazing since they have 300 million customers. According to kissmetrics.com they track things like: product recommendations based on previous searches, wishlists, and order history, kindle book recommendations based on data from Goodreads, one-click ordering based on user profiles, anticipatory shipping (their patented model) based on user profiles, supply chain optimization based on customer locations (user profiles), product pricing optimization based on search inquiries and competitive data, cloud storage optimization (Amazon Web Services) based on user data. Thus, you should track your customers as well. From there you can customize your social media ads, and improve areas such as customer retention.
Subscription services: Amazon offers various subscriptions that seem to keep many customers satisfied. Adding a subscription service will add a lot of perks and convenience for your customers. Research shows that businesses with subscriptions increase revenue twice as fast as their competitors and see 2x the overall growth. Some ideas for a subscription service could be curated boxes of frequently purchased products, membership discounts, or shipping deals.
Customer service: Lastly, offer the best customer service ever. Customers appreciate when there is a real human on the other end of the transaction that they can go to with their problems and concerns, so get rid of the impersonal computer interface!. Additionally, increase your response rate on your social media platforms. If you see customers expressing feedback on their social media accounts, take the time to respond. This personalizes the consumer experience and increases the likelihood of them buying from you again.
Overall, Amazon achieves extraordinary success, making it seem impossible to succeed in the e-commerce world today. But when the situation is further analyzed there is still a good chance for your business.
We hope this blog provided some insightful information for you and your business. Contact us today with any further questions!