Building Compelling Content to Compete With Amazon

Since launching in 1995, Amazon.com has expanded from selling books to offering just about every product imaginable, with revenues growing twice as fast as overall U.S. e-commerce. Virtually everything is presented and merchandised identically, like an online mega warehouse. Your opportunity to compete lies in stressing what makes your brand and products unique by forging personal connections with consumers and offering greater value. Amazon sells products; you can sell brand experiences.

The right combination of text, images, videos and user contributions can create a wholly unique and irresistible value proposition. The key is to match and then exceed customer expectations set by Amazon.

Build Best-in-Class Product Pages: Think Outside the Box
Before you can break out of Amazon's standard-setting product page format, you have to match the following must-haves — at least for your top 50 products to 100 products initially:

• short and long descriptions;
• full dimensions and other specifications;
• multiple images with zoom functionality;
• sharing tools (e.g., email a friend and social sharing links)
• customer reviews; and
• add-to-cart, add-to-wish list and add-to-registry (if applicable) functionality.

Above and Beyond: Custom Product Pages for Your Brand
To outpace Amazon, design and create content that caters to your specific audience. Tell the product story through demonstrations, testimonials, reviews of features and more. Unique product page components feature the following:

• an engaging voice that speaks to your target audience through both style and substance (Amazon features a bulleted list and product description to point out salient features of a dress by manufacturer prAna, while Title Nine's content for the same dress focuses on the retailer's core customer base of well-traveled, active women);
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• a product story through the use of text, pictures, videos or a combination of formats;
• shopping tools unique to the category beyond size charts and dimensions (e.g., specialized feature guides and comparison charts);
• proactive customer service messaging; and
• cross-sells with context such as additional product recommendations married to personalization data.

User-Contributed Content
Go beyond product reviews to tap a wide range of user-generated content that conveys your brand identity, from social media contributions to customer service support.

You can define your brand using customer contributions in a variety of formats and settings that Amazon can't match, such as the following:

• testimonials, not just reviews, deployed beyond the product page to convey the shopping and buying experience;
• social contributions that sell by encouraging followers to interact with products; and
• peer-to-peer customer support and advice functionality that lets shoppers seek and give information to each other.

Emphasize Video to Bring Brands to Life
If you do nothing else, make incorporating video one of your top priorities. More than half of the U.S. population — 180 million Internet users — watched an online video in January 2013.

Look for ways to incorporate video content into every aspect of the shopping experience. Here are some examples:

• Put products in motion by developing video content that helps guide the purchase decision. Examples include product demonstration videos that step through the features of a complex product or show how an apparel ensemble looks as a model moves, as well as "shoppable video" that creates an immersive experience with product links and displays built in.
• Go social to spur user-generated video inspiration. Invite your brand followers on social media to create video ads or submit six-second looping Vine videos you can combine into full-fledged creative campaigns.
• Use value-added videos to build lifestyle content. Hawaiian-based Crazy Shirts, famous for T-shirts and active wear, captures the brand's island lifestyle essence in this video of a photo shoot.
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Other ways to incorporate video to add value to your brand include "evergreen" how-to videos that answer frequently asked questions and help shoppers get more from your products, which can reduce customer service costs, as well as behind-the-scenes event excitement such as store openings, in-store classes, product demonstrations, charity events and product launches. You can also use mobile video apps such as Viddy or Vine to shoot on-the-fly, inexpensive footage.

Compelling content will give you an edge over Amazon. Invest in comprehensive, unique content to build brand value, attract loyal followers and win sales. Learn more by downloading the complete whitepaper, Competing With Amazon: Building Compelling Content.

Ken Burke is the founder and executive chairman of MarketLive. Ken can be reached at ken@marketlive.com.