Hey there!
A question that I see a lot is:
“Should you sell physical products on Amazon, or on your own website?”
The quick answer is both, but let me explain to you the advantages of each platform and the strategy around this.
Let’s start with Amazon:
1- Has A Lot Of Traffic Already
Amazon, Ebay and other large websites have already spent a lot of time and resources to get customers. By you having your physical product in there, you are getting exposed to a lot of customers that are most likely ready to buy, since they are already there searching.
If you only have your own website, you need to advertise on social media or facebook groups for example, and even with all the targeting, you won’t know for sure if they are looking to buy what you are offering.
2 – Easy To Get Started
You just need to set up the product page and have good images. It’s much easier to start out on Amazon, since on your website you need to set up multiple pages, payment processors, design, etc.
3 – Can Be Free Depending On How You Set It Up
Depending on what you need, you can start for free. But if you want Amazon to take care of all the logistics, that will have a price. I’m not going to detail each option here, but you can find all that information online.
4 – Amazon Pay Per Click Could Convert Better Than Other Advertising Solutions
When you are starting out, you will have zero sales and reviews. That will most likely make your product not show in the first pages for consumer searches, and because of that people won’t find your product.
You can have ads on Amazon that will put your product in the 1st page of specific keywords, and that will help your product to be seen by potential clients that are ready to purchase.
Because of this intent, these ads are most likely to convert in comparison with ads on social media for example.
5 – Customers are used to Amazon, and they trust it
Not everyone is willing to share their credit card information with an unknown website that they never saw before.
Now, since people don’t know your brand, you can leverage the comfort and security that Amazon brings to customers, making it easier for customers to try new products out.
Now let’s talk about the advantages of having your own website.
1 – You Own Everything
Remember that with Amazon they control everything, and if they want to, they can shut down your listing at any time. If you are 100% dependent on Amazon to sell your product, they essentially own your full business.
By having your own website, you have a place for customers to get to you if anything happens, and you are also able to control the full customer experience.
2 – You Have Your Own Customers, And You Can Contact Them Freely
On Amazon, the customers are Amazon’s customers. You don’t really have a direct line of communication with them and you don’t get to have any contact information if you want to talk to the customer after.
By having your own website, you get to have their contact information, so you can reach out to customers that have already purchased from you.
3 – Get All The Data That Comes From People Visiting Your Website
This point is similar to the previous one. Since it’s your website, you can use Google Analytics to gather information about people who visit your store and have a better understanding on what’s your type of customer. You can also use remarketing to try and convert people that visited your page but never purchased, or you can use email marketing.
There are almost no limits to what you can do by having all the information on your side.
Now that you know every positive side, I will share with you the strategy to do both things:
Strategy
Starting out, since you have no traffic to begin with, start using Amazon’s influence to get your product to potential clients that are ready to buy.
Add a flyer to your product that incentivizes Amazon clients that purchase your product to check out your website or social media platforms. It could be a simple downloadable PDF that will help them.
Make sure you have good photos and a great product description in your listing.
At the same time, start working on your branding by creating your social media posts, engaging with potential and current clients in any way you can.
While doing this, get your website up and running so people can check it out as well, or buy your products from you directly.
In due time, you should start getting more traffic to your own website, and for each sale you do on your website, you will end up getting better margins than selling on Amazon.
Your biggest issue will be the logistics of the operation, but you can find a fulfillment center outside Amazon and store your product there. They take care of all logistics, and usually with lower fees than Amazon FBA.
And this is it for the strategy. It’s a long play, but hopefully you want to build something that’s good and that can help people out.
What did you think about the strategy? Let us know in the comments below.
