9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business

How to STAND OUT in Your Industry & Make Every Competitor Irrelevant

Brian J. Pombo

• Publisher: BrianJPombo.com LCC
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781649707888
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Decision Making
• Index: Business

Amazon.com, Inc. was founded in 1994 under the name Cadabra, Inc.Since that time, they have risen up and raked in over $200 billion in annual revenue, and they have completely taken over the field of online shopping.

Originally eCommerce meant selling electronically over your website on the World Wide Web. People would find you via your URL (an Internet address typed into a browser); or via a search engine, when they only know what they are looking for (the generic name for the product or service), but not who (your specific brand name).

Today, when someone knows what they are looking for, they will (most often) start out searching in two places:

#1 Amazon.com. So many have their app installed on their phone and will go directly there.

#2 Google.com. When using this search engine to find products, Amazon is usually among the first results shown.

If you sell products that are also sold on Amazon.com, you are left with only a few options:

#1 Partner WITH Amazon. Sell your products via Amazon and give them a huge cut of the revenue.

#2 Compete WITH Amazon. Build up your company to $200 Billion plus in revenue and build up a reputation that will garner the attention of Google.

Partnering with Amazon may work with certain products. Some larger companies MAY be able to compete directly with Amazon, due to their position in the marketplace.

Let's face the facts: neither of these options are optimal long-term. So, what other options are there?

The best way to beat Amazon, is neither to join nor to compete directly with them. The best way to defeat Amazon is to do the things they can not or will not do.

Amazon.com currently runs the eCommerce game due their fast service and cheap prices. So, where can YOU win?

Whether Amazon.com is competition for your business or not, the 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business that are uncovered here will make you impervious to ANY competitive force for the entire lifetime of your business.

1

1st Way: Determine Focus

You may be thinking, “Well, the type of products we provide are special. We don’t compete with Amazon.”

As I mentioned, you probably compete with somebody, whether it’s Jeff Bezos over at Amazon, or whether it’s somebody else, Amazon is a good foil for us to use.

A lot of people see Jeff as the devil and I don’t know whether he is or if he’s just an alien overlord that’s here to study us as a species.

I can tell you one thing: Amazon is moving things.

They’re moving the way things are done online, whether you like it or not. So, there’s a lot of things that they’re doing that are completely changing how we all handle business.

First is commoditization. Amazon is able to take a certain number of products and completely commoditize them. They’re able to make everything look the same.

When you think about commodities, you may think of meat or corn or other raw products that are on the commodity market. They all have one price.

What’s the difference between one guy’s beef and another guy’s beef that they’re selling? There’s probably a lot of differences in quality. There’s a lot of different characteristics, but for some reason they’ve been able to commoditize certain items and put them all into one package and say, “this is the price for this” and “this is the going price for that.”

That’s what a commodity is: when you’re able to lump everything together and be able to label it under one category. It’s an illusion, but it’s a reality of the world we live in.

Notice how easy it is for people to get stuck in this paradigm? Amazon retains control of the marketplace by keeping one branded item (regardless of how many different companies or individuals are selling it) all under the same ad, on the same page. They’ve been able to commoditize nearly their entire website.

How do competing retailers differentiate their product from the other seemingly identical ones?

You can’t highlight customer service. You can’t bundle it together with other items that you know would go well together. You can’t even communicate with the customer beyond the ways Amazon allows.

The only option they allow you to differentiate is on price. There’s only one direction you can take that price, and that’s down. Lower and lower and lower.

This in turn leads the customer the wrong direction. It distorts their vision away from caring about quality, service, and relationship with the seller to, “I’m just looking for the cheapest one.” Amazon, by design, forces people to look for the cheapest - and nothing else.

This is how Amazon has painted themselves into a corner. They’ve trained the sellers to provide the cheapest price and buyers to chase the cheapest price. The price has become the only determinant.

If you’ve been a slave to this system, it messes with your head, because you think you have to run our businesses that way. You have to make sure you’re the cheapest, even when competing with Amazon on your own website.

On top of that, in the long run this strategy creates disloyalty to brands. What reason do people have to be loyal to your product? They won’t, because they’re fixated on price. Even Amazon’s search engine is built so that shoppers can organize all their results by price. What real chance do you have of surviving if you aren’t the cheapest guy in town?

Walmart played the same game before Amazon. K-Mart did the same before them. Eventually, a cheaper dealer kills off, or severely damages the last King of Bargains. “Long live the king.”

There’s always someone pushing people into trying to play the cheap game. Stop playing that game!

In addition to commoditizing the world, Amazon is now known as “The Everything Store.” They provide EVERYTHING! Can you think of many items you can’t buy on Amazon?

This perception that they’ve created (in the minds of most people) has set up EVERYONE to be their customer. With Amazon Prime becoming so common, and distribution centers in or near most cities, they have created shipping expectations that are nearly impossible to compete with.

One time I was talking to the owner of a very large, very famous marine survival and safety supply company. He was the founder. They had been doing mail order for years and they also are now doing very good business online as well.

He was telling me about this “slavery” they now have to the now in-demand concept of “free shipping.”

The last time I looked, they’re offering free shipping for orders over a hundred dollars, or something like that.

That’s a common approach, as it’s about the closest a lot of other e-commerce outlets can do as when compared to Amazon’s f...

Table of contents

• Preface
• Acknowledgement
• 1. 1st Way: Determine Focus
• 2. 2nd Way: Be Consistent
• 3. 3rd Way: Be Different
• 4. 4th Way: Be Somebody
• 5. 5th Way: Offer Belonging
• 6. 6th Way: Offer Ongoing
• 7. 7th Way: Offer Bigger
• 8. 8th Way: Make Offers More Often
• 9. 9th Way: Be Everywhere
• 10. Wrap Up
• About the Author