You’ve built your brand through hard work, social media, and frequent customer interaction. Through time, you’ve either stumbled upon or personally developed a product you believe in. After creating a product name, putting in the hard work getting in touch with vendors that will help manufacture and ship your products, and selecting an online marketplace and/or an eCommerce platform to list your brainchild, all that’s left is to rake in the money, right?
Well, of course profitability is the most important goal in the private label industry, but it takes a lot of hard work and a thick skin. There will always be another company out there selling similar products trying to steal your thunder. Competition is a given in the retail world, and to find success you need to know how to handle it… And how to crush it!
Keep an Eye on Them
If you think your biggest competitor isn’t keeping tabs on you and your company, often keeping up with your level of success and social media presence, you’d be mistaken. Make it a point to look up your competitors on Amazon. Take a look at how their product information is formatted, read up on their customers’ reviews, and how often they respond to questions. Follow them on social media; see how they interact with their followers. While the point isn’t to outright copy their methods, it’s to gain some insight on how your social media presence and product listing and visibility could be improved—and also learn what not to do.
Use Their Reviews Against Them
As we mentioned above, read up on the reviews your competitors’ customers have written. You can use their reviews against them by taking the suggestions and complaints about their products into consideration when improving your own. The people using your products on an everyday basis are basically free PR when they leave these reviews. It’s like access to a free control group. They’ll suggest improvements that would have increased their rating and you can implement those changes. This will help increase your own profit while also wooing the competitors’ buyers to your side.
Improve Your Product Presentation
To overcome the competition, you have to get the consumer to make the decision to click on your product page as quickly as possible. The first thing someone shopping online sees before considering a product is the image. And we’re not talking about just the main image, either. They need several shots of the product from different angles to ensure they will be getting exactly what they ordered. Take several high quality photos on a white background to prevent the eye from being distracted from what should be the main focal point: your product.
When shopping online, most people want as much important information as possible up front, but they don’t want to have to read a novel to find it. Keep your product descriptions to the point and as descriptive as possible. Use bullet points to emphasize the features and benefits of what you’re selling so the eye can catch it easily when quickly scanning a listing. By improving the quality of your private labeled products appearance and online market presence, you’re decreasing the chances that they’ll move on to check out your competitor.
Aim High on Profit Margins, Stay Low on Initial Buy-Ins
The amount of money you make and how quickly you make it is strongly affected by the profit you make on each product you sell. Also known as the profit margin, the higher it is, the more money you make off the product. Say you find a product you’re comfortable putting your own brand on and now it’s time to find a manufacturer. Through our live training events and the contacts we’ve gained over several years’ with trips to China, we would be able to introduce you to many vendors you could easily partner with. Research the one that can provide you the products at the lowest cost so you would be able to make the most amount of money while keeping your prices competitive.
Profit margins and buying smaller quantities upon initial launch is the best way to keep your profits high and your costs down. If you commit to buying 1000 units at a lower unit cost only to find it’s not taking off quite as you hoped, you may end up spending more on storage or getting rid of them than you initially intended. Start with lower initial buy ins so you can get a better idea of the market before making a bigger investment.
Your biggest competition is yourself, of course, so be ready to put in all the hard work and you will be better prepared to handle yourself when the competitors start popping up. We’re here to provide you with the tools and information you need to triumph in the private label game. So check out one of our live Private Label Blueprint Workshops or our FREE boot camp and let us help you stand up to those that challenge your success.
