How do I use amazon & marketplaces to grow ecommerce sales?

The number that truly matters when thinking about Amazon for growth is two. As in, you need to operate two distinct storefronts: your own website and your Amazon presence. Many brands fail by treating Amazon as just another sales channel where they list products. To succeed, you have to treat it like a second home for your brand, with its own strategy for marketing and operations.

On an episode of the eCommerce MasterPlan, host Chloe and her guest Steve Honight really unpacked this idea. They explored how to use Amazon to grow your sales alongside your existing eCommerce site, and the conversation kept returning to this two-storefront mentality. It’s not about just pushing inventory to another platform. It means building out your Amazon Brand Store and using A+ Content to mirror the brand experience customers have on your own site. Without establishing that consistent environment, you are just a generic listing competing on price.

This approach has real tactical implications. As Steve pointed out, it requires thinking through consistent branding across all my sales channels to avoid confusing customers or diluting your message. That means having a specific strategy for Amazon Ads to acquire customers on that platform, which may be different from your Google or Facebook strategy. It also means Managing inventory across multiple sales channels becomes critical, because an Amazon stockout can hurt your rankings there, but over-allocating inventory to Amazon can starve your primary DTC site.

The hosts of The EcomCrew Ecommerce Podcast often discuss how to leverage Amazon infrastructure. Using Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) can be a huge asset for your second storefront, offloading some of the operational burden. But it still requires a plan. Ultimately, success on marketplaces comes from seeing them as an opportunity to introduce your brand to a new audience, not just as a place for low-funnel, unbranded transactions. When you run Amazon like a true second store, it becomes a powerful engine for brand growth, not just a source of extra revenue.