February 24, 2025

Omnichannel Ecommerce Strategy: Expert Tips from Senior Brand Growth Manager, Jacob Smith

Omnichannel Expansion is the topic of the day for ecommerce businesses as they aim to maintain brand consistency and a seamless customer experience across multiple channels. Being present on various channels can often present challenges, from pricing issues to ensuring proper inventory management, especially as companies scale. But with the right approach, the benefits of omnichannel expansion are immense.

We interviewed Jacob Smith, our Senior Brand Growth Services Manager, to gain valuable insights into the key considerations for crafting a successful omnichannel strategy. Drawing on his extensive experience, Jacob delves into everything from optimizing inventory and managing pricing complexities to leveraging advertising tools, offering expert guidance on the essential elements that drive effective cross-platform growth.

As a Brand Growth Manager, what do you think are the top things to consider when creating an omnichannel expansion strategy?

There are quite a few things to consider when expanding, but I typically like to break the most important items into 5 parts.

You can ensure Consistent Branding Across Channels when your brand copy, images, and customer experiences are consistent across all platforms. This is key for a customer to get to know your brand, trust it, and have a great experience no matter where they go.
You need to have an Inventory and Fulfillment Optimization strategy in place (Amazon MCF, 3PL, in-house) to ensure seamless logistics, avoiding stockouts, and overstocking across platforms. This is obviously challenging, but there are more options like Amazon Multi-Channel Fulfillment (MCF) and Amazon Warehousing and Distribution (AWD) that can make this easier. 3PL ecommerce accelerators, like Spreetail, also make outsourcing logistics and fulfillment operations an easy task, so a brand can focus on its product.
Strive to maintain competitive yet profitable Pricing while ensuring Minimum Advertised Price (MAP) Compliance to prevent channel conflicts. This is something to think carefully about, depending on if you are selling 1P or 3P on Amazon. However, the goal is always to provide consistent pricing so you can uphold the brand value.
Any Advertising and Marketing Strategy Alignment you create should optimize PPC, DSP, and external traffic campaigns across platforms to drive growth holistically. This is where an internal expert or partner can come in handy to provide a unique, but consistent strategy across platforms. It is also important to leverage what you know from Amazon and DTC advertising to better kickstart other platforms.
Adapt listings and brand messaging for Channel-Specific Content Optimization based on each platform’s best practices (Amazon SEO vs. Google SEO vs. social media content). This can be time-consuming depending on the size of your catalogue, but thankfully there are tools out there that can assist in taking what you have already done and improving it per platform.

What are the best ways to measure the success of an Omnichannel strategy?

There are several key performance indicators that a brand can look at to determine success, but below are a few that should be at the top of the list.

Tracking revenue, order volume, and growth across Amazon, DTC, Walmart, Target+, and other marketplaces is best to measure your Sales Performance.
Analyze how different platforms perform in terms of traffic-to-sales conversion rates.
Track category rankings and Share of Voice across Amazon and other marketplaces. This Marketplace Share tracking is useful to see how expansion is lifting your brand among competitors.
Assess the effectiveness of Amazon Ads, Google, Meta, and other PPC efforts in driving profitable growth to determine your Advertising Return. Does your TACoS percentage or ROAS look better or worse in other marketplaces?
Examine Profit Margins by Channel to ensure that profitability remains strong while scaling across marketplaces. You need to look at fulfillment fees, returns, ad spend, etc. to truly understand if the expansion is beneficial to the growth of your business.

Considering its size as a stable e-commerce platform, what would be the benefits of having Amazon at the center of an omnichannel expansion strategy?

Amazon serves as a powerful foundation for an omnichannel expansion strategy due to its large customer base and credibility. With over 310 million active customers, it provides instant access to a global audience. Additionally, Amazon Ads, including PPC and DSP, offer powerful targeting options, while Amazon Brand Analytics and Search Query Performance provide deep market insights to refine strategies across channels. Global selling programs enable low-risk international growth, and its increasing investment in retail media, such as Amazon Attribution and Buy with Prime, allows brands to integrate external traffic sources effectively. A strong Amazon presence can also drive credibility on other marketplaces like Walmart and Target+.

To maximize Amazon’s role in an omnichannel strategy, brands should use it as a testing ground for their catalog. Leveraging the data there can help with refining marketing and pricing strategies across other platforms and marketplaces once Amazon operations are optimized.

What are some key challenges brands face when expanding to multiple channels, including Amazon, and how can they overcome them?

Expanding to multiple channels presents challenges like inventory complexity, pricing conflicts, brand consistency, fragmented advertising, compliance issues, customer retention, and data tracking. To overcome these, brands should leverage centralized inventory management, platform-specific content optimization, unified advertising strategies, compliance monitoring, and customer engagement solutions.

Hiring a team of experts or partnering with an experienced agency can streamline this process. You want to look for partners that can help your brand optimize listings, run efficient ad campaigns, manage compliance risks, and scale profitably across multiple marketplaces while maintaining a seamless customer experience.

Amazon is constantly innovating tools like Amazon Connect to enhance customer profiles and improve the overall shopping experience. As Amazon Advanced Partners, what other Amazon technologies or innovations do BBE agency strategists leverage to benefit their brand partners?

Amazon Advanced Partners, like Buy Box Experts, leverage a range of cutting-edge Amazon advancements to help brands optimize their presence, drive sales, and enhance customer engagement. These new features and tools continue to roll out at a break-neck pace, so it’s important you have a partner consistently testing out these new features and helping you tackle which ones are going to provide your brand with the best opportunity to grow. The following are just a few of the Amazon specific advancements that our team has mastered.

Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) provides advanced data insights, enabling brands to analyze customer behavior and refine their advertising strategies across Amazon Ads, including PPC and DSP.
Amazon Attribution allows brands to measure the impact of external traffic from platforms like Google, Meta, and TikTok, optimizing omnichannel marketing efforts.
Amazon Brand Analytics and Search Query Performance Reports provide deep insights into search trends, purchase behavior, and competitor benchmarking, allowing brands to refine their content, pricing, and advertising strategies.
Voice Commerce and Alexa Shopping Integrations open new opportunities for brands to engage customers through voice-activated purchases.