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As we've said numerous times, the world of marketing and sales continues to change very rapidly, and e-commerce is one of the major drivers of those changes. In fact, Nielsen predicts that 70% of all consumers in the USA will be buying some of their groceries online by 2022.
And who is at the forefront of this e-commerce earthquake? Amazon.com of course! It's no wonder that one of the hottest topics clients are asking about these days is how to deal with Amazon!
Amazon has transformed the world of retail in unimaginable ways. Consider this...More than one third of all shopping visits to the internet are on Amazon alone! It seems as if 90% of the time, the price of an item on Amazon is cheaper than at retail. And with just a few clicks, the item can be ordered and then delivered seamlessly.
This past year, Amazon's stock price shot up by 50%, and once Amazon purchased Whole Foods, it quickly lowered Whole Foods' prices on almost all of their items. As companies watch this, people lose sleep over the fact that in an instant, they could wake up one morning having lost half of their business!
The key question for businesspeople is...how does/will all of this affect you and your business? Let's have a look....
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7 Amazon Survival Strategies for Your Business in 2018!
1. Recognize the Shifts Within your Category (Which are often becoming seismic) - Amazon is affecting almost every retail category. Do you know how it is affecting yours? And even if you're a B2B, you're likely being affected in some way indirectly. If you're not at least tracking your category on Amazon, you'd better start as there may be seismic shifts occurring right in your blind spot!
2. Defend Your Business vs. Your Competitors on Amazon - One of the hottest questions clients are posing to me these days is as follows..."People are selling my products on Amazon at prices lower than we sell them for ourselves. How do they do this and how can we protect ourselves? If you don't know how to answer this question, reach out to us or someone qualified to help guide you!
3. Defend Your Business vs. Amazon Itself
- Amazon certainly does a great job selling products, but you can distinguish yourself with things like product details, video demos, special one off promotions and customer service focused FAQs on topics such as shipping and return policies.
4. Go on the Offensive! - I have a number of clients who have grown their revenue base so fast through Amazon, that it is today one of their top couple of distribution channels! The payoff for those who know what they're doing can be enormous. Think Amazon paid search, sponsored product ads, value bundles, and "Buy Box" features.
5. Explore the New "Amazon Stores" Feature to Highlight Your Own Product Line
- These are new multipage store options that provide an enhanced brand centric shopping experience on both consumer's desktop computers and mobile phones. Great for customizing your own product collection, and enhancing the consumer's shopping experience.
6. Analyze the Successful Players in Your Specific Industry - For example, in CPG, look at what Clorox has done. Last year, they grew their e-commerce business +50% overall and +98% on Amazon alone.
7. Explore Advanced Technologies
such as dynamic "pricing". Based on market supply and demand, Amazon often reprices certain items every 15 minutes. But dynamic pricing software can help you do this as well to change prices in real time and generate the most revenue possible.
Bottom line
....Are you taking advantage of this amazing new source of revenue yet? The payoff can be enormous! But at a bare minimum, you need to watch and protect your flank, so you don't wake up one day having lost 50% of your revenue.
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Good Luck and Good Selling
Hope you enjoy my newsletter, and if you do,
why not share the newsletter with a few of your friends or business colleagues?
So until next time, good luck and good selling in rest of 2018! And have a wonderful spring!
Yosi
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Yosi Heber is the Founder and President of Oxford Hill Partners, LLC, a strategic marketing firm specializing in traditional marketing strategic planning, and in helping companies maximize their digital, website, social networking, and mobile marketing revenue potential. His clients include many of the world's most famous corporations including Procter & Gamble, Novartis, Pitney Bowes, Nestle, Hyundai, UnitedHealthcare, Textron, Krispy Kreme, and Readers Digest, as well as many small-medium sized clients in both B2C and B2B. He also currently serves as Outsourced VP-Marketing and Interim CMO for a number of companies.
Yosi spent many successful years in senior executive positions at Kraft and Dannon where he invented the $900 million dollar kid yogurt category, and as CMO of the Entertainment Division at Barry Diller's interactive conglomerate - IAC/InterActiveCorp, where he worked with Expedia, Ticketmaster, Lending Tree, and Match.com.
Yosi is a highly sought after speaker at many major conferences and universities, including Harvard, Columbia, and Wharton Business Schools, The DMA, ad:tech, Conference Board, and IIR. His work has been featured in publications such as The New York Times, USA Today, CNBC, DM News, and Advertising Age.
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An Executive's Guide to Artificial Intelligence (McKinsey)
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Staying ahead of the curve in the accelerating artificial intelligence race requires executives to make informed decisions about how to employ AI into their business. Click Here to read the essential guide from McKinsey on how to do it.
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