WATCH: Betsy McGinn Advises on Amazon Tactics During COVID-19

Jeff Klineman

As COVID-19 has forced millions of consumers to stay home and limit shopping trips, Amazon and other online shopping services have become increasingly important to brands. The open-ended national grounding has combined with hiccups in the supermarket supply chain to turn home delivery into a necessary part of the selling strategy of most brands, regardless of size.

But the increased demand for products through online sellers like Amazon means that brands need to shift tactics — something that’s hard to do during a crisis. Companies need to make sure that their product is available to Amazon, and that may mean diverting stock to the retailing giant’s warehouse. Meanwhile, brands that have their own online shopping options are seeing wild demand swings. Amazon is also facing stress in its warehouses and delivery routes as the demand for food and beverage delivery increases.

Still, there are opportunities as well: smaller brands may even be able to take advantage of pay-per-click advertising that’s been largely abandoned for basic throughput by bigger competitors, notes Betsy McGinn, founder of McGinn Ecomm Consulting. One of the country’s leading authorities on prepping brands for work with Amazon, McGinn sat for a video interview with Jeff Klineman, BevNET’s editor-in-chief to provide important advice on how brands should approach their Amazon and broader e-comm strategies as consumer behavior takes a disruptive turn to online food and beverage purchasing.