Have an e-commerce business and are debating whether to join Amazon or not? The largest e-commerce site in the world, Amazon is well known for protecting its consumers and bringing millions of products and services to their fingertips. It has been a game changer for thousands of businesses, either in a good way or bad way. For some businesses, the platform has given them a new sales funnel that literally produces more business than all others combined. For others, the platform almost put them out of business. 

Everyone has different opinions on e-commerce sites and their benefits. Your company may offer something that does not work on the site and therefore you will not invest a lot of time into adding it to your marketing strategy. However, if your business would benefit from building an Amazon store, should you do it? 

Adding Amazon To Your E-Commerce Strategy 

Being a seller on Amazon comes with plenty of headaches. There are fees, impatient customers that the company will always side with, major competition and rules to market and manage your business that have to be followed. It’s a lot of work to build these stores and optimize them to perform at their very best. Here are some of the advantages that you need to consider about the site: 

• Major consumer base: If there’s a customer base online that has an interest in your products, there’s a good chance that consumer base is also on Amazon. It’s never a bad idea to have your own site and set up shops on multiple platforms, but this one has the largest and most trusted consumer base on the web. 
• Organic rankings: Yes, just like with SEO and Google rankings, you can manage your page and improve your organic rankings on e-commerce sites as well. This is just as important as it allows you to generate fast traffic and sales from a committed audience. 
• Paid marketing options: If organic results will take too long then do not forget there are plenty of paid options. One of the main benefits of this option is that the platform allows you to target based on its user data meaning your targeting will be much more accurate. 
• Great targeting options: Again, because the platform is advertising to its own users it can target them better based on their interests, what they usually buy, what they are looking for and more. 

Being able to target someone who buys a product over someone who just does a lot of research is a big advantage in targeting that e-commerce offers. This means that while you may have to pay a bit more per lead, you can see stronger conversion rates for each group of customers. Also, because they are able to buy through the main site, it allows them to use platforms they are familiar with rather than visiting your site directly. 

Change In Marketing?

Adding Amazon to your e-commerce strategy can be a great move for your business. However, it is going to change your marketing strategy. Some people like the idea of keeping the new store separate and not marketing for it. This is a mistake because the more success you have early on with the site, the more it will benefit your business in its entirety. That’s why you need to let your customers know and here’s how to alert them: 

• Email marketing: Send out a quick email with a link letting your customers know that they can now purchase your products on this site. Allow them to browse and see if they can get better deals on shipping, faster shipping or something else. 
• Search engine optimization: If you optimize the pages well you should see improved rankings, not only on the main store but on Google and other search engines as well. Because these pages generate so much traffic, they still get organic rankings in search engines, especially if that’s where they are primarily sold. 
• Pay per click: Paid advertising is an effective way to drive traffic directly to your new store. You have the option of using the paid advertising within the site as well as other sites like Google. 
• Social media: Along with search engines, you can use your social media pages to drive in traffic to your new online store. This is also a cost-effective way to run promotions on your store and market them to a target audience. 

Most platforms allow for easy marketing, especially if you want to drive traffic to a major e-commerce site. If Amazon has the potential of improving your sales numbers, it’s up to you to work with your marketing team to explore your options and see what will benefit you. Fees and regulations can be an additional challenge, but if you get sales, they’re worth it. 

Does It Make Sense To Open An Amazon Store? 

Each business is different and you have to look at the competition and your current position to determine if it makes sense. However, if you see a potential benefit from making the switch and opening up a new store, there’s no reason to delay, especially when it can work as part of a major marketing campaign.