Podcast Summary: Dominating E-Commerce, Branding and Strategic Amazon Presence
“Being approachable and having the ability to see the product within their lifestyle; that’s the most important thing to me.”
— Corey D Brown
Within the world of eCommerce, where platforms like Amazon, Walmart, and Shopify are the gold standard for brands looking to build their vision. Standing out require more than a quality product. Brands need to build out high level strategic branding, with consistency across all platforms. Corey D Brown, an experienced Amazon Seller and eCommerce consultant sits down to share his unique insights into the opportunities on Amazon and beyond.
From Apparel to eCommerce?
Getting into the eCommerce space began unexpectedly for Corey. While working for a custom apparel shop in Buffalo, NY, he found himself building out online stores for organizations, slowly replacing the antiquated order forms his bosses utilized. From the moment the first few sales rolled in overnight, from the huge increases in overall sales, he was hooked. This pivotal moment sparked his obsession with eCommerce, leading him to explore Amazon. After a few years working as an consulting assistant, he became the in-house eCommerce leader of a local business that quickly scaled into a top 1% Amazon seller.
The Importance of Consistency in Branding
Throughout the entire episode, it’s very clear that above all, Corey valued the importance of consistent branding. He continuously emphasizes that brands that struggle with getting organized, will ultimately struggle with high-level multi-channel brand management. Without a concise strategy, brand risk wasting time and resources on efforts that fail to provide results.
Two areas where this is easiest to feel this failure are creative visuals and advertising. Even brands that have some success on specific channels on in retail often falter by failing to contextualize their content for platforms such as Amazon. This misalignment can undermine growth and sales efforts, increasing wasted advertising spend in the process.
Bridging the Gap Between Platforms
The movement between platforms can be particularly trying. Often times, direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands are used to having freedom to express themselves in a variety of mediums. Adapting that content for Amazon or taking Amazon content and expanding for D2C can be a complex journey with many issues. Each brand needs to take a step back and assess how to enhance visibility while ensuring their brands core message resonates.
Overcoming Common Pitfalls
Commonly, brands are quite simply just too feature-focused. They build a good or great product but lack the same precision with their content, because purchasing is often times an driven by emotion. In order to achieve brand growth on Amazon, brands must take step back and look past product features. This means driving to the emotions and benefits of why the human viewing the product needs to have those features available.
Conclusion
Corey underscores the necessity of strategic planning, consistency, and flexibility in eCommerce. By deep-diving into the nuances of all platforms, while committing to cohesive brand tactics, a business can elevate it’s digital presence.
Key Takeaways
Get organized. Do the setup work, and roadmap everything.
Define your brand with brand guidelines, breaking down voice, visuals, and emotions.
Build a brand that customers see your products enhancing their lifestyle.
