Do you know the feeling when you go on Amazon and find nearly all the products in your dropshipping store listed there for less than what you charge?
It is an unsettling feeling.
What's worse is seeing sellers move the same products by the numbers all while you can barely get customers to buy from you.
You think lowering your prices might do the trick but when you do it, nothing changes.
Aside from changing your dropshipping marketing strategy, there are a few other ways to keep Amazon sellers on their toes.
7 Ways to compete with Amazon as a dropshipping store
Ready to learn? Let's dive in!
1. Provide excellent, personalized customer service
Amazon's massive operation hinders it from providing personalized customer service.
You can see this from numerous cases of customers discussing their frustrations with the giant on social forums like Reddit.
A 2022 Calabrio report found that 60% of consumers said they switched brands because they had a negative customer center experience. Clearly, customers prefer businesses with excellent customer service:
Although a smaller dropshipping store means you have significantly fewer customers than Amazon, it allows you to personalize your customer service more than Amazon.
Now, there are two essential steps you must take to personalize your customer service:
- Acquire reliable customer data. You can collect data about customer interactions with your website using tools like Google Analytics. Customer surveys also let you solicit direct responses from customers.
- Understand your customers' journey. You must understand where your customers are in their shopping journey so that you can offer them personalized services. Is this the first time they are interacting with your brand? Are they returning customers? What is their objective in the current session?
If your business doesn't have initial customer data, develop a customer persona.
Then, run test campaigns on Facebook or Google to check whether your assumptions about customers match reality.
Assuming you have executed the first two steps correctly, you can personalize customer experiences through the methods we discuss below.
Personalized product recommendations
Send customers relevant product recommendations based on their purchase history a few weeks after ordering on your website.
Although email works well for this, you can go a step further and use their favorite communication channel.
If they prefer communicating via Instagram, talk to them there.
If you're wondering how to communicate with customers on several social platforms simultaneously, social media engagement platforms like Sprout Social or Zoho Desk can help.
They allow you to unify customer service efforts and save time.
Personalize your messages
A 2023 State of Personalization report by Twilio Segment showed that 56% of customers said they would become repeat buyers after a personalized experience.
Customers like to feel special when interacting with your brand and personalizing your messages is a fundamental way to do this. Instead of sending generic emails, mention your customers' names.
For instance, instead of this subject line:
We've restocked your favorite products!
How about:
Duncan, we've restocked your favorite products!
See the difference that makes? Doesn't it sound more personal?
The beauty of using Shopify is that it natively lets you customize email subjects and greetings.
You simply need to set it up for all your email campaigns. However, you can also use other email marketing tools to achieve this.
Create birthday discounts
A birthday is a special day, and all your customers like to feel valued on this day.
Using the Happy Birthday Shopify app by Union Works lets you send your customers a personalized birthday email.
The app also lets you offer customers an optional discount on their special day.
This fosters loyalty and increases engagement automatically with your customers throughout the year.
Notify customers when their favorite items are back in stock
You can inform customers when items are back in stock based on their purchase and browsing history.
It shows customers that you genuinely care about them and have them in mind.
Besides using their browsing or purchase history, Shopify apps like KB Back In Stock Restock Alert allow customers to request to be notified when specific products are back in stock or when prices drop:
Follow up with customers after an order
After a purchase, consider sending customers a follow-up message.
Follow-ups are crucial for a few reasons:
- You can help customers discover features of a product they didn't know about, which can increase customer satisfaction and foster brand loyalty.
- You can use that opportunity to express gratitude, strengthening your customer relationships.
- Customers can provide feedback that may help you improve your products or services.
- Connecting with customers on their social media can increase your brand's visibility on their network.
- You can grow your sales by promoting complementary products in a follow-up.
2. Niche down
Because ecommerce is broad and fiercely competitive, differentiating your business from your competition is challenging.
But niching down simplifies it for you. You can quickly stand out by focusing on a specific market segment or product.
How does this help you compete with Amazon?
Simple answer? Passion.
You can focus on products you're absolutely passionate about or those with minimal presence on Amazon.
Being passionate about a niche allows you to focus on the tiniest of details that mean the world to your customers.
Consider reading our comprehensive guide on how to find the right niche for dropshipping.
But keep the following benefits of niching down in mind as you read it:
- Niching down helps you reduce competition and increase your brand's visibility.
- Niching down lets you deeply understand your customer's needs, which helps you improve customer satisfaction, a key ecommerce metric.
- Niching down allows you to deploy cost-effective marketing strategies because you understand the channels and strategies that impact your customers most.
- Niching down lets you create a stronger bond with your customers because you share similar beliefs and interests.
3. Sell internationally
Amazon sells and ships products to over 130 countries globally. Selling globally exposes your dropshipping store to a broader audience.
A fantastic thing about the internet is that your website is instantly accessible globally as soon as you publish it.
While delivering to all markets where Amazon has a presence is great, what truly gives you an edge over it is delivering to countries where it doesn't.
Ensure your country or the country you're shipping from doesn't have active sanctions on those countries.
For instance, Amazon only ships to 19 African countries despite Africa having 55 countries. Out of these, only two (North and South Sudan) are sanctioned by the US. This means there are 34 markets you can tap into in Africa alone.
There are even more markets in Asia, Latin America and Europe.
4. Build a brand
Branding is an essential step in building a dropshipping business that:
- Stands out from the competition.
- Stands the test of time.
- Can charge higher prices than the competition on similar products.
- Customers trust.
- Fosters loyalty.
However, building a brand is a complex process that takes time and effort. This is evident from the Amazon brand, which has taken nearly three decades to achieve its current state.
Although building a brand for your dropshipping store is not required, building one for improved performance and longevity is best.
And if you choose to build a brand, we have a list of great ecommerce brand store examples to inspire you.
Additionally, we have amazing tips on how to brand your dropshipping store so you can have a competitive edge against Amazon and grow your business.
There's a saying: people don't buy products; they buy solutions to their problems.
And for most people, this is true.
Do you need to work remotely? You buy a laptop.
Is your back hurting from long sitting hours? A great solution is an orthopedic chair.
When people need solutions, they almost always search Google for them. This is why search engine optimization (SEO) can be a powerful tool for acquiring new customers.
People don't go to Amazon to look for solutions when their back hurts.
Using content, you can tap into your passion and expertise to provide valuable step-by-step solutions to people's problems.
You are more passionate about your niche than Amazon.
This is why acquiring clients in your niche who don't know about Amazon or simply trust you more than Amazon is possible.
Now that we know what content can do, it's time we understood what exactly it is. The first thing you need to know is that it's commonly produced in three main formats:
- Audio (podcasts).
- Visual (YouTube videos or images on Pinterest).
- Text (Blogs).
That's great! But what's the relationship between content and SEO?
When people search on Google, you want your content (solutions) to rank on the first page, at the very top.
This way, many Googlers can click on it and join your sales funnel. SEO is the series of steps you take to rank your content well so it's discoverable.
We have a comprehensive guide on SEO for dropshipping stores. Read it to learn how to grow organic traffic.
Aside from SEO, social media marketing is also a great way to market your dropshipping business. It leverages the power of social media to reach new customers and promote your products to them.
Wondering how you can do it? Don't fret; here's how:
Work with influencers
An influencer is someone in your niche with:
- A huge following.
- The ability to influence their followers' decisions.
Influencers have their followers' trust. Their followers will believe them if they say your product is good.
They can easily transfer the trust their customers have in them to you by promoting your brand or products at a fee.
Other than trust, influencers can help your product go viral on platforms like TikTok by starting and propagating trends that involve your product on social media.
Amazon doesn't do this to specific products.
Create product review videos
Photos are good, but nothing beats the authenticity and practicality of a video.
Videos are ideal for showing a detailed 360-view of a product and how it works.
Businesses are spending more on video because they see its impact on revenue, and so should you.
A 2023 Wyzowl survey showed that 91% of businesses used video as a marketing tool in 2023, and 70% of businesses that didn't use video were planning to do so in 2024.
Our guide on why you need video when dropshipping has plenty of reasons to incorporate video into your marketing strategy.
Write blog posts
Earlier, we discussed how solving people's problems can impact your business.
A blog is a powerful way to achieve this.
Address major issues your product aims to resolve, then position it as the ultimate solution to those problems.
Besides solving problems, you can write blog posts on fun and innovative ways to use your products.
6. Sell unique products
There is merit to selling unique products in your dropshipping store.
For starters, unique products have an innovative appeal. Their uniqueness has the potential to create a buzz around them.
A buzz around your product is good because it increases word-of-mouth marketing, increasing sales and revenue.
Another benefit of unique products is that they allow you to do targeted marketing.
Most unique products appeal to a specific demographic that's easier to target because they have tangible traits.
Unique products also differentiate your brand from your competition.
It's possible to find 50 sellers selling the same product and competing for the same clients on Amazon.
However, a unique product can help your brand stand out and attract customers.
Because we love it when our readers succeed, we created a list of unique dropshipping products to sell in your store and provided valuable tips for creating a unique dropshipping store.
7. Be transparent and ethical
Dropshipping is a business just like any other. And in business, trust is vital. Trust leads to all those conversions you crave.
Customers don't buy from brands they don't trust.
But how do you earn customer trust?
Easy, be transparent and ethical.
These words mean what you think they mean.
For instance, being transparent means informing your customers of all the costs they'll incur when buying a product from you.
If a customer in country A needs to pay import duty for a product because it comes from country C, let them know beforehand so it doesn't catch them off guard.
Failing to declare hidden fees will lead to numerous returns and bad reviews, tarnishing your brand image.
What about being ethical?
Being ethical is about doing what is right.
Did you promise to donate $2 for every $50 made to charity X? Ensure you do that.
In other words, don't cut corners to get things done or fail to deliver on your promises.
Being transparent and ethical will create a loyal customer base and foster lifelong relationships with clients. Your clients will give you good grace if you experience issues down the line. You'll need that grace because problems are a part of business.
Taking action
Reading and absorbing information and knowledge is great (definitely if it’s free!), but do you know what’s even better?
Taking action!
So, to help you with taking action with what you have learned in this article, take a look at the bullet points:
- Offer excellent customer service. It is one of the most important parts of your business. Combined with word-of-mouth, it can serve as a selling point that attracts more customers to your business.
- Pick a specific market segment or product and aggressively pursue excellence.
- Extend your marketing tentacles to reach international markets. Reaching a wider audience is a sure way to increase sales.
- Today, SEO and social media marketing must be part of your marketing strategy. If you fail to use SEO and social media, you will miss many opportunities to acquire new clients.
- Invest in finding or creating unique products to set your business apart from the market noise.
- Above all, be ethical and transparent with your customers; you owe them that much. It fosters healthy relationships with your customers.
Conclusion
Amazon is, without a doubt, a force in the ecommerce industry.
It is incredibly difficult to compete directly with it, but that doesn't mean you can't carve out a niche for yourself and become profitable.
In this guide, we've provided plenty of impactful information you can use to build a valuable and profitable dropshipping store. We hope this information works for you and rewards your effort.
Remember to leave your questions, if you have any, in the comment section below.
We'll gladly respond with all the help we can offer.
Want to learn more about dropshipping?
Ready to move your dropshipping store to the next level? Check out the articles below:
- How to Start an Online Niche Store in 2024 (7 Tips)
- How to Sell on Amazon Without Inventory (3 Strategies)
- 7 Tips to Beat the Competition of Your Dropshipping Store!
Plus, don’t forget to check out our in-depth guide on how to start dropshipping here!
