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Amazon FBA product research is becoming more and more important especially as data in the Amazon ecosystem is becoming even more developed.
Jon Tilley is the CEO and co-founder (with Adam Hudson) of ZonGuru an all-in-one software toolset to help Amazon sellers scale their business.
Background
TACTICS FOR MARKET RESEARCH
Problem 1: Using keywords and data to choose product niches
And how to visualise it when you do Amazon FBA product research.
As a private label seller, there are two factors in the product niche:
The data – 50% of the solution
The more creative skill around differentiation.
The data side
The data is becoming more and more important especially as the Amazon ecosystem has developed
- Paid search
- Ranking algorithms getting more and more important
The key areas
- Exact search volume from customers. In partnership with amazon, Zonguru gets access to exact search volume.
- Actual $ from keywords – access to this data – for top 25 sellers
Money from keywords
Understanding what keywords to target for your launch – there are many 1000 variations for Amazon FBA product research:
- Which produce the most revenue?
- Find out which is the most competitive?
- What keywords, therefore, to focus on?
It’s a combination of:
- Relationship with Amazon
- Revenue share and market share
- Reverse engineering and testing it against the algorithm
“Keywords on fire” – type in a keyword phrase
- Reverse lookup against ASINs
- Data from Amazon
- Exact search volume
- competition
- The spread of market share
- Based on
- Based on the Brand Analytics API
- which listings get the biggest click %
- In market A Top 3 are getting top 60% of clicks
- In market B top 3 are getting only 20% of clicks
- Dollars from keywords tool
Example
Eg “Back brace for men” top 3 sellers 12% – $330K/mo
“Posture corrector” – top 3 sellers 15% – $220k/mo
How to define a market?
Specific metric – niche score (“Rainbow niche score”)
- Demand
- Competition
- Relative investment to launch
- Amount of net profit
There are 20 metrics that go into that
The strategy is to go into a niche category – objective to rank on page 1.
How would you define “too competitive”?
You could put in a phrase like “gardening tools”
From a filtering perspective
Search volume filter out <2000 search volume/mo
- Anything under an average of 400 reviews (filter out very mature markets)
- $ from keywords
50-review mark
Story
What’s your background?
Before Amazon was as an account director at advertising firms, esp in the digital space.
With Blue chip clients in London – lead “Have it your way” for Burger King.
In 2014 came across the Amazon selling and brand building opportunity
Built own Amazon business which got self out of day job
Adam Hudson and Jon who founded the company both sold on Amazon
CTO also sells on Amazon.
Unique perspective – a dev team of sellers!
Within the Zonguru business, every employee is encouraged to have their own Amazon business.
It flows into the software.
Even provide zero-interest loans for stock purchase to employees!
So 50% of workforce sell on Amazon.
Jon has unique perspective – sold on Amazon since 2014 as PL seller.
Believes in that philosophy and opportunity available.
He’s pushed that through the team – they can even get loans – to start Amazon businesses.
Out of the 25 staff, 50-75% are selling or going live.
Software developers make great Amazon sellers!
Jon started with Indian development proof of concept team.
The fact they didn’t get the business case changed everything.
How he came to work for Zonguru
Competition analysis
- Revenue share for top 3 listings – especially balanced with search volume
- Do these have an off-Amazon feed off traffic?
“Listing score” tool
- How well listing is optimised
- Placement of main keywords
- Use of all images?
- VIdeo?
- Do they have EBC?
- How long has niche been around?
Estimated Conversion Percentages
You can look at the top 3 from Brand analytics and get the approximate conversion rate
Plus some algorithms and metrics.
USING ZONGURU
Best way to provide value – just charge $1 for the first month – try for 30 days
Once you choose a package, there is a lot of flexibility on the tools you use.
Some of the links on this page are affiliate links, which means that if you choose to make a purchase, I will earn a commission. This commission comes at no additional cost to you. Please understand that I have experience with all of these companies, and I recommend them because they are helpful and useful, not because of the small commissions I make if you decide to buy something. Please do not spend any money on these products unless you feel you need them or that they will help you achieve your goals.
Watch my full interview with Jon Tilley
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