December 27, 2011
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Company Culture
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Amazon.com is not a "friend" or 'foe' to small businesses.
It's in business, just like we all are to make money.
That money is made by selling something someone wants and making a profit. It's having great products, great customer service and whatever other things—marketing or hiring the right staff—that make our businesses competitive.
Amazon.com has an app, the Price Check app, that makes it easy for you to search for a price on a product and see the price on Amazon.com.
Amazon.com has caused some controversy in the small business retail world, politicians and advocacy groups by giving folks a 5% discount if they checked a local retailer's price on the app and then bought the product from Amazon.com.
Hard for retailers to compete against that? Sure. Sleazy? No.
People already check local retail store prices and compare them to what's on line. In fact Staples has been a leader in having computers, in plain view, in their local stores and encouraging you to check the web (albeit a Staples store) for the item in question.
Instead of getting angry, local retailers should use this as an opportunity to "step up" their retail game and compete more effectively, whether they have an online presence or not. Here are some easy steps they can take to compete with the online giant:
1. Build email lists of your customers (Vertical Response, Constant Contact, Mail Chimp, and others will be glad to help).
2. Build automated marketing campaigns to drip market to your customers (Infusion Soft and Marketo come to mind).
3. Build better websites with great navigation (Andigo Media, Technology Therapy Group and IT2Max would all love to help you).
4.Do great customer service with each and over customer - online and offline (Gary Vaynerchuck's "The Thank You Economy" comes to mind).
5. Hire great people who can execute well technically and from the heart.
6. Don't be afraid of lower prices. Every customer is NOT for you. Maybe someone wants a pair of jeans for $15 that you can only sell for $45 or more. That's fine. Happily direct them to a lower priced competitor and work hard for those who value your higher priced item and what it stands for.
7. See how you can leverage Amazon.com. Maybe you should sell some products through Amazon.com and partner with them as John Lawson spoke about here.
8. Stopping tinkering around with social media and leverage it as the deceptively powerful force it is.
Check your balance, review recent transactions and pay your bill on the go.
BOB PHIBBS 4 months ago
This is obviously written by a tech guy, not a retailer. Amazon is indeed any brick and mortar stores enemy. I covered this in a blog last month http://bit.ly/vBQgeB It is not simply, don't be afraid of lower prices - they aren't your customer. While Amazon has always had an app, coupled with their free shipping, no tax in many states and reputation to carry about everything, they can snatch your customer away just as they decide to buy. Customers can get it both ways, all the service of a bricks and mortar retailer with the lowest cost of a warehouse. Any retailer from the biggest big box to the smallest Main Street retailer who is paying attention sees the very real dangers to their profitability and ability to service their customers.