🎯 The Most Important Conversation We Have

Before we dive into your account structure, advertising strategy, or content optimisation, we always come back to that question.

❌ Not “do you want to grow?” (everyone does).

❌ Not “do you want more sales?” (obviously).

But what does meaningful success look like for your specific brand, at this specific moment, with your specific constraints?

Because here’s what we’ve learnt: Amazon will happily let you ‘succeed’ in ways that absolutely gut your business. You can win the Buy Box whilst impacting your margins. You can drive massive volume whilst killing your brand positioning. You can hit revenue targets whilst your profitability circles the drain.

Success on Amazon isn’t one-size-fits-all. And if you don’t define it upfront, you’ll end up optimising for the wrong things.

📦 When ‘Being On Amazon’ Isn’t Enough

Just last month, we started working with a brilliant brand who’d been on Amazon for a few years through a distributor. They were technically ‘set up’ – products listed, inventory flowing, ticking over with modest sales.

But when we dug deeper? No advertising strategy. No content optimisation. No real plan for growth.

The distributor had got them onto the platform, but that’s where the support ended.

When we asked what success looked like, the answer was clear: they didn’t just want to be on Amazon.

They wanted to be a category leader. They wanted their products showing up when customers searched. They wanted control over their brand story.

None of that was happening. Because ‘getting on Amazon’ and ‘succeeding on Amazon’ are two completely different goals – and they’d only achieved the first one.

What success looked like for them: 

✨ Top 3 organic ranking for their main product category 

✨ Profitable advertising with clear ROAS targets 

✨ Brand content that actually reflected their premium positioning 

✨ A partnership that worked with their internal marketing team, not around them

🚨 When Success Means Surviving a Crisis

Not every brand comes to us with growth ambitions. Sometimes, success simply means ‘don’t let this disaster destroy our Amazon presence.’

We worked with another brand who got kicked off Vendor Central with very little warning. One day they’re a Vendor, the next they’re scrambling to set up a Seller account without the faintest idea how it all works.

For them, success wasn’t about optimisation or growth strategy.

Success was:

✨ Get the Seller account set up correctly before inventory ran out 

✨ Maintain their search rankings during the transition 

✨ Avoid a catalogue nightmare with duplicate listings 

✨ Keep their existing customer base from noticing any disruption

Ambitious growth targets? Not yet. They needed stability first.

They needed someone who understood the technical nightmare of a forced Vendor-to-Seller migration, and could guide them through it whilst their internal team kept the rest of the business running.

That’s success. Unglamorous, perhaps – but absolutely critical.

💷 When Success Isn’t About Winning (It’s About Not Losing)

Here’s where it gets interesting: sometimes success on Amazon means choosing not to compete in certain ways.

We regularly speak to brands who are getting hammered by cheaper alternatives. Their first instinct? ‘We need to drop our prices to compete.’

But when we ask what success looks like, the answer is almost never ‘race to the bottom on price.’

Usually, it’s something like:

✨ Protect our premium brand positioning 

✨ Maintain healthy margins (even if it means lower volume) 

✨ Attract customers who value quality over price 

✨ Build a loyal customer base through superior product and content

You can’t do any of that if you’re in a pricing war with products that cost half what yours does.

So success, in this case, means competing on value, not price.

It means world-class content, strategic advertising, perfect reviews management, and positioning that makes price comparison irrelevant.

That’s a completely different strategy than ‘win the sale at all costs.’

And if we hadn’t asked what success looked like first, we’d have optimised for the wrong goal entirely.

🤝 Why This Matters for Your Internal Team

It’s something we hear all the time: ‘We don’t want to hand Amazon over to an agency. Our team needs to stay involved.’

Good. That’s exactly what we want too.

Because the success conversation isn’t just about Amazon metrics – it’s about how Amazon fits into your broader business goals. And your internal team knows those goals better than anyone.

When we align with in-house teams, we’re not taking Amazon off their plate entirely. We’re taking the specialist execution off their plate so they can focus on strategy, brand direction, and the bigger picture.

Success might mean:

✨ Your marketing team has bandwidth to focus on brand campaigns instead of getting lost in Amazon’s advertising platform 

✨ Your operations team isn’t scrambling to understand Seller Central’s inventory quirks 

✨ Your leadership team gets clear, strategic reporting instead of drowning in Amazon data they don’t have time to interpret

We’re not here to compete with your team. We’re here to give them their time back whilst ensuring Amazon gets the specialist attention it needs to actually deliver results.

✅ So… What Does Success Look Like for You?

If you’re reading this and thinking ‘I’m not actually sure,’ you’re not alone. Most brands haven’t properly defined it.

Maybe success is aggressive growth. Maybe it’s protecting margins. Maybe it’s surviving a platform transition.

Maybe it’s finally getting Amazon to work with your existing team instead of creating more work for them.

But until you define it, you’re just hoping Amazon works out. And hope isn’t a strategy.

🦄 Ready to Define What Winning Looks Like?

Before we optimise a single campaign or tweak a product listing, we’ll work with you to define what success actually means for your brand. Because everything we do after that conversation depends on getting this bit right.

At Unicorn, we specialise in helping brands unlock their full potential on Amazon – but only after we understand what “potential” means to you. We’re here to help.

Contact the Unicorn team here 👉