Gaps That Hold Your Brand Back

We have seen that, in our model, success on Amazon comes from improving shelf space, or in other words visibility to Amazon customers.

But to do that, we need to understand the factors that hurt your products’ shelf space. We call these gaps, and in our framework, we identify six of them. Here they are in brief.

1) Catalog

Your catalog needs to be clear, easy to navigate, and tailored to Amazon customer behavior.

Messy organization, with missing SKUs/variations or too many of them, duplicate listings, and inconsistent brand representation end up confusing customers and killing conversions.

2) Optimization

Your content and images on your listing and brand store should be optimized for both customer conversion and search rankings.

Clunky or minimal listings, weak and unclear images, disappointing brand content fail to persuade customers to pick your product, drag down your brand perception, and lose your shelf space.

3) Reputation

Customers on Amazon look at reviews above everything else, and  bad ratings can severely hurt results.

Bad reviews that could be avoided with better content, fulfillment and customer service, as well as lacking a strategy to proactively generate good reviews, are a crucial issue.

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4) Advertising

A smart advertising strategy is Amazon’s growth engine, powering the flywheel and boosting your shelf space.

Spending without a unified, optimized strategy, missing proper brand defense advertising, or even worse having multiple advertisers compete with the same sales, only ends up wasting money and making your competitors very happy.

5) Pricing

Controlling your pricing is a necessary measure to preserve your brand value. If your pricing is all over the place, nobody’s happy.

Inconsistent pricing and MAP violations ruin margins, wreck the Buy Box, make your off-channel partners complain, and hurt your brand’s perception of quality, while also hurting your shelf space due to the instability.

6) Operations

Tight operations are not just nice to have, but are a necessary condition for long term growth.

Stockouts hurt your shelf space and customer confidence, while sloppy fulfillment practices hurt your reviews and return rates, reflecting badly on your reputation, overall making your brand less competitive across the board.

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Amazon is cutthroat, and one weak link in the chain is enough to sink the whole boat.

That’s why a fundamental step in our growth planning is to look deeply at each of these six factors to pinpoint the most important levers to pull to improve results. Then, we execute.

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