Key Amazon Brand Positioning Strategies to Help Your Business Succeed

Establishing an effective Amazon brand positioning strategy helps you differentiate your products and communicate your unique value proposition to your customers. In the long run, this allows you to build, manage, and sell a more profitable and defensible Amazon business. 

In this article, we review several key elements to know about positioning your Amazon brand, including:

• What is Amazon brand positioning?
• Why Amazon brand positioning is so important for your FBA business
• Key Amazon brand positioning strategies to help you succeed
• How to develop your own Amazon brand strategy
• Important steps you should take to protect your brand on Amazon

“In this competitive environment, it is critical that you set your company apart from your competitors in the customer’s mind.”

What Is Amazon Brand Positioning?

When a shopper goes to Amazon to look for a product, they have the ability to quickly and thoroughly compare similar product options. As an Amazon seller, your product will be evaluated next to a range of competitors. 

In this competitive environment, it is critical that you set your company apart from your competitors in the customer’s mind. This is where brand positioning comes into play. By carefully defining and communicating the unique value your brand offers, you help to create a brand image.

With effective brand positioning, you are letting a customer know why they would be better off buying your products instead of a competitor’s. In this way, great brand positioning works to create an automatic association between your brand and a certain value proposition for your customer. For example, when you think of Apple you likely think of beautiful design, quality craftsmanship, and creative, cutting-edge thinking. 

Successful brand positioning requires a clear understanding and definition of your value proposition. Additionally, it requires successful communication of this proposition to your customers. This communication could happen on your Amazon listing, company website, or social media channels.

Why Amazon Brand Positioning is so Important For Your FBA Business

Every truly successful brand engages in brand positioning. First and foremost, brand positioning is important because it helps clearly define who your target audience is and how your product is uniquely valuable to them. This clarity helps as you strategize and plan your business operations.

Successful brand positioning helps your company to be perceived in a positive light by your customers. This can lead to the growth of social equity, or the social value, of your brand. In turn, once you have created a positive association with your brand, you will find it easier to gain new customers with your marketing efforts. 

Additionally, you will find that an effective brand image increases customer loyalty. Once a customer purchases one of your products, they are more likely to return in the future to buy more. All of these benefits combine to drive higher revenue. 

You must maintain clear and consistent messaging to your customers in order to be successful at creating your brand image. Whether it’s your Amazon listing, Amazon posts, website, photos, email campaigns, social media accounts, or other marketing channels, clearly and consistently drive your brand position home to your customers. 

“Once you have created a positive association with your brand, you will find it easier to gain new customers with your marketing efforts.”

5 Key Amazon Brand Positioning Strategies to Help You Succeed

There are many ways to set your brand apart from your competitors. In general, there are five common brand positioning strategies that are available to you. These include:

• Price
• Quality
• Convenience
• Competition
• Social or environmental responsibility

Each of these aspects highlights a potential area where you can draw a distinction between you and the other sellers within your niche. Of course, you could combine two or more of these factors to create a pitch to your customers. Keep in mind, however, that maintaining a simple and clear message often yields the best results. 

Price

While all companies compete on price, some companies seek to make it clear to their customers that they are known to consistently have the least expensive products on the market. Outside of Amazon, Walmart built a business empire by consistently delivering consumer products that were less expensive than other retailers. 

There are several things to think about if you choose price point as your main brand image. For starters, you may run into a price/quality trade-off when sourcing your products. If your reduced prices begin to become associated with inferior-quality products, you will encounter issues. 

Secondly, reducing your prices cuts into your margins. While this is not necessarily a death blow to your business, it may mean that you need to sell far more products in order to be reasonably profitable. Therefore, if you are just starting out, this could be a difficult game to play.

Lastly, your ability to cut prices depends largely on your ability to source your products cheaply. Since the price you pay for your inventory may depend on the size of your orders, more-established and larger Amazon sellers could have a built-in advantage in this area. 

Quality

Instead of focusing on price, you can choose to draw attention to the quality of your products when comparing them to your competitors. Of course, this requires you to have quality products to back up your claims. 

Convenience

Customers want their shopping experience to be easy and convenient. Many businesses choose to differentiate their brand by offering the customer the most convenient option possible. This could include timely delivery, easy returns, or any other aspect that improves the customer’s accessibility. 

However, the Amazon marketplace serves to level the playing field when it comes to convenience. By taking part in Amazon Prime, you ensure your products will be delivered quickly and returned easily if need be. For this reason, differentiating yourself through convenience may be challenging to do on Amazon.

Competition

With competition-based differentiation, you focus on certain aspects of your competitors and highlight how your product is different or superior to theirs. For example, if your brand’s products serve to address a common problem but do it in a slightly different way than the competition, this will help distinguish you from the rest of the playing field. 

Social or environmental responsibility

Consumers are becoming more focused on the environmental and social impact their purchasing choices have on the world. Creating more-responsible supply chains and products and communicating that to your customers can help distinguish your business from others in your field. Patagonia, an outdoor-gear retailer, is an example of a company that has used this strategy successfully. 

“Creating more-responsible supply chains and products and communicating that to your customers can help distinguish your business from others in your field.”

How to Develop Your Own Amazon Brand Strategy

There are several steps to take in order to create your own Amazon brand positioning strategy. These include:

• Learning about your target audience
• Defining your unique value proposition
• Conducting competitor research
• Creating your brand positioning statement
• Testing and refining your strategy

Learn about your target audience

First, you must learn who exactly your potential customers are and what motivates their purchasing decisions. By learning more about your target audience you will be in a better position to craft your brand image in a way that speaks to their needs. 

Conduct competitor research

Next, learn about what the competition is currently offering your market. What kinds of products do they sell? What is the quality and price point of those products? Is there any room to introduce a better or more unique product within the market?

By learning about the current market you will make it easier to successfully differentiate your brand. 

Define your unique value proposition

Get clear on what sets your brand apart from others. How will you better serve your customers’ needs? Will yours be the least expensive product around? The best quality? Or, will you offer your clients the peace of mind that they are buying an ethically sourced and environmentally responsible product? 

Whatever your selling point may be, make sure you can create an association between it and your brand within your customers’ minds. 

Create your brand positioning statement

After you have an understanding of your target customers and have defined the unique value proposition for your Amazon FBA company, it is time to draft your brand positioning statement. Be thorough, but keep things as simple and concise as possible. This document will help shape all communication and marketing strategies you employ. 

Test and refine your strategy

Once you have created your brand position, test it with your target market. Use the information you gather to further refine and improve your strategy. 

“By learning more about your target audience you will be in a better position to craft your brand image in a way that speaks to their needs.”

Important Steps You Should Take to Protect Your Brand on Amazon

Once you have created and implemented a successful strategy, it is important to protect your brand image moving forward. As an Amazon seller, pay close attention to copyright infringement issues. 

Protect yourself from copyright infringement issues

If you have created patented innovations for your products, be aware that competitors may try to replicate your features. For this reason, you could run into trademark infringement issues. If a competitor does infringe on your patent, don’t hesitate to take the necessary action to protect your brand.