Getting discovered online is getting increasingly difficult - and expensive. Today, the brands that enjoy heavy traffic to their online stores typically have either a strong offline presence or massive online and offline marketing that’s driving consumers to their stores.For other brands and retailers, marketplaces are a must since that’s where most of the online traffic is.For those looking to sell to the US and Europe, Amazon is a must. Yet many brands look to avoid selling on Amazon.The competition is fierce and top sellers tend to compete by lowering prices and paying to list their products as ‘sponsored’. So how does a company take advantage of the benefits of being on Amazon, without sacrificing all of their profits?“The first step in being successful on Amazon without having to spend a lot on customer acquisition, starts at the beginning with having a really excellent product. You need a product that has a unique value proposition,” said Laura Meyer, who previously worked at Amazon and now is CEO and Founder of Envision Horizon, a consultancy that helps brands boost their performance on Amazon. It Starts with SearchOne of the things that differentiates Amazon from other marketplaces is that aside from being an ecommerce platform, it's also a search engine. About 74 percent of U.S. consumers begin their product searches on Amazon, according to research from Jungle Scout, a program for optimizing product performance on the marketplace.“I tell a lot of my clients to think of Amazon more as a shopping search engine than to think of it as a retail partner. If you can find a product that has enough demand in terms of the search volume, that's going to help you position your product within the Amazon ecosystem. There's plenty of tools out there, and Amazon now even has their own tools that can give you insight into what the Amazon consumers are searching for and what they are buying,” she said. “You do have to have some sort of advertising budget for Amazon's algorithm to ultimately give you visibility. But if you are doing a lot to build brand awareness off of Amazon, whether that be building a community through your social channels, or really leaning into various installations, pop up shops and so forth, that can create a natural demand for your brand on Amazon. We often see correlations between a TikTok post or a TikTok influencer endorsing a product - and instantly their Amazon sales increase. So to be successful on Amazon, you can't just upload products and hope that they sell, you have to be very strategic in the products that you want to sell. And having a keyword strategy tied to every product. This is the first step.” Differentiate or DieIn a highly competitive market, being different is a matter of product life or death. Anything that isn't clearly different will either be caught up in a price fight with other sellers or never be discovered at all.“If you do have a very unique product, and I'm not just talking about having greener ingredients in your cleaning product, because that's being done at all levels, I'm talking about something that can show very clear before and after results, or is something that's very, very unique. That's where there's still opportunity. “I work with a lot of clients who are in the beauty categories. In the beauty industry, every influencer and every celebrity is trying to market some sort of cosmetic or skincare brand it seems. Even if your product is high quality, you’ll still struggle to succeed. But if you have a flagship product that really drives awareness for your brand, that is how you can break through a lot of the noise,” said Ms. Meyer. Give the Market What it WantsEcommerce started with brands trying to sell their products on Amazon and then tweaking their offering in response to how it was performing on the marketplace.That’s now changed to a model where brands and sellers look to see what consumers are searching for and then develop or find products that meet that demand.“There is an entire underground world of these private label sellers, who start with the demand first. They do their keyword research first, and then they create products based on the demand that's out there. “CMOs (chief marketing officer) in larger organizations are actually becoming more and more involved in the product development aspect of brands because you have to do something to stand out from the very loud noise of advertising and influencers.”Lots of Sales, No Profits“If you play around with your pricing, you will absolutely see that Amazon's algorithm rewards you for having a lower price. So not only is there the reward of being able to beat out your competitors, but all of a sudden, if you have a lower price, Amazon's going to start giving you more impressions, and you're going to move up organically in their algorithm. And it's very, very tempting to fall into that trap. But then all of a sudden, you look at your payment statement and you're like, wait a minute, I'm not really making any money.“There are so many expenses tied to e-commerce, not just Amazon, but any ecommerce channel. Those costs are rising, for example increasing fuel prices make fulfillment more expensive and salaries for ecommerce talent are now up about 40 percent. Customer acquisition costs (CAC) have surged and now everyone is talking about Amazon's rising CPC cost. “So ultimately, the price can be a good variable if you can split test different price points. I have seen cases where we've lowered the price on a product and we end up netting more because our advertising fees could go down. There’s no simple formula. You need to keep testing and adapting to drive optimal results. However, if you are a multichannel brand, you need to be careful about offering a lower price on Amazon. In that case you have to start to pull on some of the other levers, which is really where the brand building activations have to come into play, whether that's within the Amazon ecosystem or elsewhere. ”Most Companies Overlook ThisAmazon can be a beast, but in an increasingly competitive online market mastering Amazon can genuinely 10X your ecommerce business. The key is a willingness to make that initial investment, not just of money but also of time.“For businesses that are in an early stage or smaller businesses, my biggest piece of advice as a business owner, is to personally take the time to study and understand the channel. As an Amazon agency, I see this all the time, where businesses think that they can just go and hire an agency or a contract and they’ll be able to shoot you to the moon.“Spend a few business days to really do your own research and build your own foundation, before you go out onto the channel and try to “tackle the beast”. Then when you hire an ecommerce manager, or you contract an agency, you’ll understand where you are going. Then you can check in with them to make sure that the business is going in the right direction,” said Ms. Meyer.While Amazon is the marketplace many brands love to hate, it remains foundational for both large and small brands who want to succeed in ecommerce. And despite the challenges, it is possible to win on Amazon - if you are willing to put in the work.