Amazon is a bridge between buyers and sellers worldwide. For business owners, Amazon can provide an excellent sales and awareness channel without incurring the high costs associated with branding or setting up an independent ecommerce site.
One way businesses can compete on Amazon is to understand its shoppers. Instead of creating a need for their products, businesses on Amazon should focus on offering items that consumers are already looking for.
Customer research on Amazon can increase a business’s competitive advantage by providing valuable insights into buying trends and preferences, to help present your products in a way that appeals to your target audience.
Here are some of the strategies and tools I use, as a marketplace seller, to gain deeper insights into my target market on Amazon.
Amazon Best Sellers
Amazon Best Sellers is a good opportunity to see the hottest selling items, by category. It can be anything from a plastic fidget spinner to an anti-aging face cream. Amazon updates its lists of top selling products hourly, which helps sellers monitor consumer shopping trends and preferences.
This real-time updating also helps observe the sales impact of external events, such as the top-selling products during a storm, or during the Super Bowl. This can help track profitable products and services, as well as changes in demand.
Keyword Tools
Keyword tools provide frequently searched words — such as a product or service — from various search engines, including Amazon’s site search.
The keyword tool I use most often for Amazon is MerchantWords. It provides good visibility for high-value key phrases and words across most marketplaces. It also has flexible plans for different types of sellers. Investing in the right keywords will help your products show up organically in Amazon search rankings. Ultimately, this will generate more sales.
Seller Labs
Seller Labs helps businesses research customers and automate backend processes, via four products: “Feedback Genius,” “Scope,” “Ignite,” and “Quantify.”
An integration of the tools provided by Seller Labs can support the creation of a viable marketing strategy. This can also expand your customer reach.
- Feedback Genius automates the process of asking for reviews and feedback. Amazon sellers know the importance of customer reviews and feedback and how these impact your ratings, rankings, and, ultimately, sales. Moreover, feedback and reviews are a primary form of research and provide clear, unbiased perspectives on your products and service. Feedback Genius automates this process in a way that complies with Amazon’s terms of service.
- Scope is a keyword and product research tool for Amazon sellers. Scope allows sellers to view estimated monthly sales for products and product groups. Sellers can then isolate any item and see which keywords are driving the search for that product.
- Ignite is integrated with Scope and claims to “ignite” or increase sales by optimizing sponsored product campaigns. Keyword data for Ignite is generated through Scope. Track items in real time through an intelligent interface that prompts you to take action based on the data. Ignite’s automated algorithms sort through piles of data to find ancillary products to sell. Ignite isn’t directly related to customer research, but it can be extremely valuable for driving sales.
- Quantify is a business intelligence tool for Amazon sellers, to (a) manage where the opportunities are, (b) view trending products, and (c) obtain sales details. Quantify is a good reporting tool for your monthly item sales.
There are plenty of other tools for isolating customer data on Amazon and other marketplaces. Use these tools to understand consumers and the opportunities for higher sales.
Competitive Advantage
Customer research on Amazon requires the use of data analytics tools to discover new and upcoming trends. Product trends can be analyzed to understand the reason behind changes in sales.
Ongoing research of customers (and competitors) can help a business grow. Competitive advantage can only be obtained in the highly saturated Amazon marketplace by keeping up with new trends. However, it is important to remain within Amazon’s terms and conditions. So choose products that comply.