Could a branded e-commerce business model be the right solution for you? Just a handful of years ago, many business owners found success working as drop shippers. The opportunity to do well in this market remains, but most have had to make some changes to improve their edge as competition grows. This is especially important in situations where margins have become so small. That’s where e-commerce has changed, and entrepreneurs are finding success through branding.
How can you make it in this still competitive industry? Though there are plenty of tips and strategies out there, there are five key factors to focus on if you want to get the best possible results.
#1: Know How to Sell Your Product
This starts with knowing your product inside-and-out. If you want to brand that product and build a customer base for it, you have to know and understand its design, specifications, functions, and every other detail. Most importantly, you want to know what your product does for the competition, who your competitors are, and what factors influence customers to buy that product.
Ask yourself how this product fits into the lives of your customers. What does it do and what must it be good at in order to be seen as valuable and a good fit for the buyer? Also, look at who your target customer is. Again, this comes down to knowing your product well.
#2: Find the Right Place to Build Your Product
For those who are planning to get the very best out of branded e-commerce, the process cannot be successful if you do not get the manufacturing aspects just right. This is a significant switch from drop shipping where you probably didn’t have to worry about the manufacturing process as much. With branded e-commerce, you need a manufacturing product who is going to actually create your product and, along with it, apply your brand to it. Of course, this brings with it challenges and a lot of fantastic rewards.
Manufacturing can be expensive, especially if you are not doing your due diligence to find the most affordable deal out there. The best deal, though, is not just the right price. To do well, you simply cannot have an inferior product. The cheapest deal is sometimes the biggest risk of having a product that isn’t what you need. It may be a quality or production problem that ends up costing you. Think about the company’s experience, location, logistics, and the reputation of the company you are hiring.
Nuanced Media is here to help you with this process. Talk to our team about how to get your branded e-commerce business set up.
#3: Build Your Marketing Across More Than Amazon
We know a lot about Amazon FBA and all of the promise it provides to e-commerce business owners. However, this is not the only platform out there. Your product, if it is truly to be a branded product, should be on as many of those platforms as possible. This is what is going to give you the reach you need to be successful. You’ll want to think about Shopify, eBay, and Amazon, as starting points.
Then, once you get your product out there, you need to make sure all of your branding messaging is the same across the board. In order for people to recognize what your product is no matter where they shop, it should have the same quality, design, features, logo, and other branding elements. All of this comes together to create the very best way to build recognition for your business.
One key to remember here is that it’s up to you to make decisions about what your brand is, what it will look like, and what your mission statement will be. Take the time to develop a cohesive plan that stretches across all platforms and selling points for your product.
#4: Get Fulfillment on Target
Now that you have customers buying your product, you need to ship it to them. That sounds easy enough, but there are various ways to get it done. It’s called fulfillment. With inventory on hand, you have to consider the process of how to move these items. In dropshipping, this is not something that you really have to consider. Most of the time, there’s help available to make fulfillment rather easy.
If you’re getting 25 or more orders a week, then you may want to consider outsourcing your fulfillment services to a company that specializes in this. At that point, you’ll want to minimize the risk of your product not doing well because you are not getting the product to your customers. Of course, at this point, you could be considering Fulfillment by Amazon, which can work well for you as your business grows.
#5: Work to Build Strong Feedback
Perhaps the biggest challenge for many people who are moving from dropshipping into the world of branded ecommerce is this one. To do well – and continue to sell – you need to pull in feedback from your customers. To do this, start with being a strong customer service-focused business. You want to ensure that you are doing what it takes to connect, too.
You’ll need to then generate reviews on the sites you’re selling on and across other platforms. The goal is to find ways to get people to say good things about your product so that other people want to buy it. It’s not easy, but a strong point of your business model needs to be branding your business with strong customer satisfaction. That may mean speaking to customers, requesting reviews, and interacting on social media – your goal is to get written and just overall good feedback.
With these strategies in place and a lot of hard work, you can create a very profitable branded e-commerce business. It really takes a focused effort on each piece of the puzzle.
Even better, you don’t have to do it alone. Our team at Nuanced Media is right here to help you along the best path forward for your business model. Let’s talk about the opportunities no matter which place in the process you are in.