Proven tactics challenger brands use to win visibility, sales, and market share against deep-pocketed competitors.
Amazon should be terrifying for small brands. You're up against household names with decades of brand equity, massive marketing budgets, and distribution networks you can't match. They've got the recognition, the reviews, and the resources to dominate.
Except they're not dominating. Not really.
Here's the dirty secret about most big brands on Amazon: they're not actually being run by the brands themselves. They're being run by their distributors. And distributors are brilliant at moving boxes through wholesale channels — but they're fundamentally misaligned when it comes to digital commerce.
Big brands hand their Amazon operations to distributors as part of a broader distribution agreement. The distributor manages the account, lists the products, and treats it as another sales channel to extract margin from. Amazon becomes a secondary revenue stream — a nice-to-have rather than a strategic priority.
The problem? Amazon isn't a passive sales channel. It's a performance marketing platform that rewards speed, optimisation, and active management. Brand recognition gets you the first click. Everything after that — whether someone actually buys — comes down to execution. And most big brands, via their distributors, are executing poorly.
Not because distributors are incompetent. But because their incentive structure doesn't reward excellence on Amazon. They make money moving volume through wholesale. Amazon is just another line item. One of dozens of channels they're managing across multiple brands.
That's your opportunity.
Let's be clear about what's happening with most established drink brands on Amazon.
The brand creates the product. The distributor manages the commercial relationship. The distributor's eCommerce team (if they have one) handles the Amazon account. Maybe there's an agency involved for ads. Maybe there's a separate 3PL handling fulfilment. Possibly another consultant managing content.
That's three to five layers between decision and execution. Each layer adds lag time, communication friction, and diluted accountability.
When the brand wants to update a product image, it goes through the distributor, who passes it to their eCommerce manager, who uploads it... eventually. When a promotional opportunity comes up, it requires sign-off from multiple stakeholders, each with different priorities and timelines. When ad performance drops, no one's watching closely enough to react in real-time because Amazon is 5% of the distributor's business, not 50%.
The distributor isn't bad at Amazon. They're just not incentivised to be great at it. Their business model is built on wholesale margin, not digital performance. Amazon is a secondary channel. A place to mop up incremental sales without heavy investment.
For you, Amazon might be 30-60% of your revenue. You're watching it every day. You care about every conversion rate point, every wasted ad pound, every lost sale. That attention gap is enormous.
Big brands have the assets. Professional photography. Brand guidelines. Creative teams. The problem isn't capability — it's deployment.
Their distributor gets a bottle shot and a spec sheet. Maybe some lifestyle imagery if they're lucky. But no one's building content specifically for Amazon. No one's thinking about what makes someone click "Add to Basket" when they've never heard of your brand and they're comparing you to five other bottles in search results.
The result? Listings that technically have all the boxes ticked but don't actually sell.
Your advantage: You build content to convert, not to comply.
Here's what matters:
7+ images minimum, each doing a specific job:
Each image should answer a question or remove friction. Big brands have one bottle shot and call it done. You'll have seven reasons to buy.
Bullet points written for humans who've never heard of you:
Big brand approach: "Premium London Dry Gin crafted using traditional methods."
Your approach: "Juniper-forward London Dry with citrus and spice — perfect for a classic G&T or Negroni. Distilled in small batches using 10 botanicals including fresh pink grapefruit and cardamom."
Same product. Different impact. You're speaking to someone making a buying decision, not reading a press release.
A+ Content that closes the sale:
Big brands use A+ space for brand logos, generic lifestyle shots, and corporate history. Waste of space.
You should use it for:
This is free real estate to build trust and remove doubt. Use every pixel.
Video:
Most big brands don't have product video on Amazon. You can shoot something on your phone — a pour, a serve, a 20-second brand story — and immediately look more premium and engaged than brands 50x your size.
The big brands have better raw materials. But you'll have a better listing. And on Amazon, the listing is the product.
This is the biggest gap.
Most big brands on Amazon aren't running meaningful ad campaigns. Not because they can't afford it — because their distributor structure doesn't support it.
Running effective Amazon ads requires:
In a distributor model, none of this exists cleanly. The brand controls the budget. The distributor controls the account. No one's really accountable for ROAS. Ads become an afterthought, if they happen at all.
Your advantage: Even modest ad spend, executed well, makes you omnipresent.
Sponsored Products on your own brand terms:
Sounds obvious, but most big brands aren't bidding on their own name. If someone searches for your brand specifically, you should own that real estate completely. Top of search. Visible. Unavoidable.
Category keywords with exact and phrase match:
Don't chase "gin" or "tequila." Expensive, broad, low-intent. Go after "London dry gin for cocktails" or "organic reposado tequila." Specific. Qualified. Cheaper. Big brands chase volume. You chase profitability.
Sponsored Brands to look bigger than you are:
These banner ads at the top of search — with your logo and 3-4 products — make you look like an established player. Big brands should be using these. Most aren't. You can.
Sponsored Display for retargeting:
Someone viewed your product but didn't buy? Show them an ad when they're browsing elsewhere on Amazon. Most big brands aren't doing this because their distributor doesn't have sophisticated retargeting strategies in place. You can set this up in 10 minutes.
Active campaign management:
Test. Adjust bids. Add negative keywords. Monitor search term reports. Pause underperforming targets. Most big brands set campaigns and forget them. You can't afford to. That active management — checking in twice a week, not twice a quarter — is the difference between profitable and wasteful ad spend.
You're not trying to outspend them. You're trying to out-execute them in a channel they're treating as secondary.
Amazon has built-in promotional mechanics:
Big brands could use all of these. Most don't. Why? Because it requires active management, margin flexibility, and fast decision-making. Three things distributor structures don't enable well.
Your advantage: Promotions drive visibility and conversion.
Coupons aren't just discounts — they're visual differentiation. That little orange badge makes your product stand out in search results. Even a 5% coupon increases CTR significantly because it catches the eye. Big brands see this as margin erosion. You see it as customer acquisition cost.
Lightning Deals get you featured placement. Amazon promotes these on the Deals page, in emails, in the app. You're borrowing Amazon's traffic. Big brands could do this. They're not, because coordinating a time-limited promotion across brand → distributor → Amazon requires agility they don't have.
Subscribe & Save builds recurring revenue. Even if your product isn't high-frequency repurchase, offering subscription makes you stickier and increases lifetime value. Big brands don't push this because their distributor thinks transactionally, not about LTV.
Distributors see promotions as margin sacrifice. You see them as tools to win algorithmically and commercially.
Amazon's algorithm rewards listing completeness and engagement. The more information you provide, the better you rank. The more people engage with your listing, the more Amazon shows it.
Big brands often have:
Why? Because no one's actively managing the listing. It was set up once and hasn't been touched since.
Your advantage: You optimise continuously.
Backend keywords: Use all 250 bytes. Synonyms, alternate spellings, related search terms. This is invisible to customers but critical for discoverability. Big brands leave this half-empty.
Product attributes: Fill in every field Amazon gives you. ABV, volume, pack size, dietary information, occasion, flavour profile. More data = better matching in search.
Titles that work: Front-load the most important information. Brand name, product type, key differentiator, size. "Artisan Gin Co. London Dry Gin | Small Batch | 70cl" beats "Artisan Gin Co. Premium Spirit."
Answer every question: Someone asks about delivery time, ingredients, or taste? Answer within 24 hours. Big brands don't because their distributor isn't monitoring. You can't afford not to.
Respond to negative reviews: Not defensively. Constructively. "Sorry to hear that — we'd love to make it right" goes a long way. Big brands ignore these because their distributor doesn't monitor them. You can't afford to.
Every small improvement compounds. Better content + better ads + better promotions + better listing management = significantly better performance.
Big brands move slowly. Not because people are lazy, but because layers create lag.
Brand wants to test new imagery? Needs to go through distributor eCommerce team. Someone's on holiday. Someone needs approval. It happens... eventually.
Ad performance drops? The distributor's account manager might notice next week. Maybe they flag it. Maybe the brand approves a change. Two weeks later, it's adjusted.
New product launch? Needs coordinating across brand, distributor, agency, fulfilment partner. Eight emails. Three meetings. Launch date slips.
Your advantage: You can move immediately.
You see something's not working? You change it today. New product launching? You control the timeline. Competitor doing something interesting? You can test it this week.
Amazon rewards active optimisation. The algorithm notices engagement. Fresh content, updated listings, new campaigns, promotional activity — all signals of relevance.
Big brands could move fast, but their structure doesn't allow it. You can. That's a genuine competitive edge if you use it.
Here's the real gap: distributors are incentivised to extract margin from existing brand equity across multiple channels. Amazon is one channel of many. Performance on Amazon doesn't make or break their relationship with the brand.
You're incentivised to maximise every sale, every click, every conversion. Amazon might be 40% of your business. You're monitoring daily. Optimising weekly. Testing constantly.
When your incentives align with performance, execution improves. When they don't, you get competent mediocrity.
Big brands aren't losing because their distributor is bad. They're losing because their distributor is managing Amazon the way you manage a channel that's 8% of revenue — with moderate attention and acceptable results.
You manage it like it's 40% of your revenue — with obsessive focus and continuous improvement.
Big brands have better recognition, more reviews, bigger budgets, and established trust. Those are real advantages.
But they have worse content, no meaningful ad strategy, slower decision-making, and misaligned incentives. Those are real disadvantages.
You can't change the first set. You absolutely can exploit the second.
The brands that win on Amazon aren't the biggest. They're the ones that treat Amazon as a performance marketing platform, optimise relentlessly, and move faster than the competition allows.
Big brands could do this. But their structure makes it hard. Your structure makes it natural.
Shelfdrop is built for brands that want to win on Amazon, not just be present. We're incentivised to drive your performance — not mop up secondary sales. If you're ready to move fast and execute like Amazon actually matters, let's talk.
Quick answers to your questions. need more help? just ask!
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