Amazon or Your Own Website? Lessons From Marketing D2C Brands

Over the years I’ve worked on digital marketing for consumer brands including Mamaearth, Prestige Cookware, Ramsons Perfumes and Phool Agarbatti, along with many D2C startups. Much of that work sat at one crossroads: should the brand push customers to Amazon and other marketplaces, or to its own website?

The honest answer is that most growing brands need both – but for different jobs. Here is how I think about it, for Indian and US brands alike.

What marketplaces do well

• Built-in demand: shoppers already search there with buying intent.
• Trust and convenience: familiar checkout, fast delivery and easy returns.
• Faster first sales: a new brand can sell without building its own traffic.

What marketplaces cost you

• Margins: referral fees, fulfilment fees and advertising eat into profit.
• Customer data: the marketplace owns the relationship and most of the data.
• Competition on the page: rivals can advertise directly against your listings.
• Dependence: a policy change or listing problem can cut sales overnight.

What your own website does well

• Ownership: you keep the customer data and can remarket by email, SMS and WhatsApp.
• Brand story: you control the experience, the content and the offer.
• Better margins on repeat purchases: loyal customers who buy direct are usually your most profitable.

How we decide where to send traffic

Use marketplaces for discovery and volume

For products people already search for on Amazon or Flipkart, marketplace listings and marketplace ads often convert best. Optimise titles, images, reviews and A+ content, and track return on ad spend carefully.

Use your website for brand, bundles and repeat customers

Send brand campaigns, content, influencer traffic and email to your own site, where you can offer bundles, subscriptions and loyalty rewards. A fast, well-built store matters here – see our website development work.

Use SEO for both

In my campaigns we have often used SEO to send organic traffic to both marketplace listings and brand landing pages, depending on the product and the goal. Content that ranks for problems your product solves brings in customers who don’t yet know your brand.

Measure the whole picture

The mistake I see most often is judging each channel in isolation. A shopper may discover you on Instagram, research you on Google, and buy on Amazon. Look at blended metrics – total revenue against total marketing spend – alongside channel-level return on ad spend, and set clear target costs per acquisition for each.

A simple starting framework

1. List your products and check where each is already searched for.
2. Put high-demand, easy-to-compare products on marketplaces first.
3. Build your website around your brand story, bestsellers, bundles and repeat purchase.
4. Collect customer contacts wherever the rules allow, and build owned channels.
5. Review your channel mix every quarter as costs and results change.

If you run a D2C brand in India or the US and want help balancing marketplaces, your own store and paid media, get in touch or see how we approach social media marketing.

About the author: Antriksh Shah is the Founder & CEO of Psyber Inc, a digital marketing agency serving brands across India, the USA, Canada and the UK. He has worked in search marketing since 2009, is a Certified Ethical Hacker with a postgraduate qualification in cyber law, founded the startup–investor platform Startups24x7, and mentored founders as a Growth Mentor at IIT Bombay E-Cell. More about Antriksh.