Have you found yourself wanting to grow your business beyond Amazon with your own Direct-to-Customer (DTC) brand? If so, it can be difficult to know where to start (let alone what to do after you’re up and running.)

There were over 256 million digital buyers in 2020, and many of them shopped with Amazon. That’s a huge audience with a large amount of potential. 

So, what if you could utilize Amazon’s audience to grow your brand? 

To answer that question, we’ve made the following guide to help you establish your own DTC strategy. This is something that businesses can seek after while still utilizing the Amazon marketplace. 

Use Amazon to Build Trust 

Customers already trust Amazon. When they purchase a product on Amazon, it’s not the seller they’re trusting. It’s Amazon. 

That said, a reputable company on Amazon is extremely valuable and there are ways you can build customer trust through Amazon too. 

Think of selling on Amazon as an opportunity to showcase your products. Brand exposure raises the awareness of customers. Should they purchase, sellers can incentivize the customer to buy more from the brand.

One way they can encourage customers to do this is directly from their brand website rather than Amazon. 

Although this method may not be profitable in the short term, the long-term trust it builds between customer and brand is invaluable. Trust is what converts an Amazon store customer to a direct customer.

Building this trust takes time and the effort to engage your customers to interact for long after you’ve made the sale. 

So, treating Amazon as a vehicle to build direct customer relationships is the first step to DTC sales. What’s more, it can be more effective than high-cost marketing efforts off of Amazon. 

Start Direct Relationships With Your Amazon Customers

Typically, you have no opportunity to re-engage a customer on Amazon. You can make sales, but there’s no means to acquire actual customers. 

However, if you’re conscientious of Amazon’s terms of service, there are still means to engage your Amazon customers outside the platform. 

Engaging customers through email and text messaging campaigns are the most effective ways to interact. You only need to add value to your products that get customer consent to interact beyond their Amazon purchase. 

Lifetime warranties, content clubs, free products, anything that adds value and directs customers to sign up for your leads list works for this. As long as the added value is part of the product, it remains safely within Amazon’s terms of service. 

A/B test these add-ons to determine which attracts your target audience best. Then it’s merely a matter of marketing to keep them engaged with your brand.

Remember, once a customer has reached this point, they expect more value. The higher the value, the more likely they will convert to a direct paying customer. 

Source Reviews on Amazon

With millions of reviews from customers, Amazon has a well-established review system that has customer trust.

Brands can leverage this system to establish their credibility and customer trust. 

Push for positive reviews on your Amazon listings. Any positive reviews you accumulate will offer an opportunity for your marketing campaign. You can then use these reviews in ads, email, and social media as positive testimonials about your customer service, brand, and products. 

Through these off-platform marketing campaigns, featuring trusted Amazon reviews, you can then offer your target customers incentives to purchase from your brand. These can take the form of coupons or other deals applicable specifically to your brand’s website. 

A compelling Call-to-Action backed by trusted reviews is more likely to convert than one without them. 

Amazon as Marketing

Amazon is a competitive marketplace. Between high fees and intense competitors, it can be difficult to make a profit. However, it can also be a cost-effective marketing channel. 

Shifting to this strategy is the most likely to convert Amazon customers to direct customers. What’s more, it can be more cost-effective than the immense cost of sinking funding into acquiring direct customers off the platform.

Take the opportunity of showcasing your products on Amazon to learn about your customer base. Find out what drives them. Innovate around what you learn. 

Even taking losses on specific products on Amazon may well be worth the traction of initial sales. Rather than profits here, you are looking for the opportunity to convert these sales into long-term, direct paying customers. 

Conclusion

Converting customers and developing your DTC brand can be challenging. Let alone managing your Amazon Marketplace in the process.

Contact us today for help doing just that. The services we provide range from education to the total handling of your Amazon profile. This frees you to work on the important parts of running your brand. 

Your profits are our profits because we don’t get paid unless you do. What are you going to do with all the extra time you have after we come in?