January 2020 inside Seelk Studio: A few updates...And an in-depth look at Competition & Share of Voice!

And we're back... With 2019 now behind us, our plan for 2020 is to bring Seelk Studio users monthly SaaS updates and quick "how-tos" to take their Amazon business to the next level. Let's get started!

What is Seelk Studio?

Seelk Studio is an Amazon marketplace analytics SaaS developed to provide Amazon Vendors and Sellers with a all-in-one solution to analyse their Amazon business. We provide our clients with actionable business insights to keep them ahead of competitors and on track with their periodic targets. Whether it is a sales analysis, content optimisation, an advertising or share of voice report, we are constantly improving and developing new features to help you analyse and manage your Amazon business.

In this month's blog post, we're featuring the Competition app with a focus on Amazon keywords and how to analyse your Share of Voice.

But first, some Seelk Studio Updates!

We updated the Keyword filter in Competition
For those of you already using the Competition app inside Seelk Studio, we've updated the keyword filter to provide you with more speed and flexbility when selecting keywords to filter. Check out the gif below to see how - enjoy!

Check out Competition 🏆 in Seelk Studio! If you want to get in touch, don't hestitate to give us some feedback.

A quick introduction to Amazon Keywords

On Amazon's marketplaces, the main way consumers find products is via the search bar. When a consumer searches for a product, what they input is referred to as a 'search term' (i.e. an exact word match). However, as an Amazon Seller or Vendor, what we're actually concerned by is which keywords this specific search term is targeting.

In the above example, if a consumer types in the search term "smart watch fitness tracker", Amazon will also target the "smart watch" keyword and not simply the entire phrase. Keyword strategies can be complex, but for the sake of brevity, we will stick to the basics for now.

Long story short, a keyword is a single word or phrase that is either bid on (using Amazon Advertising) or has been strategically included in the Amazon product page to increase organic ranking. Truth be told, your keywords are at the heart of your Amazon business and analysing your how your products search rankings fair against competitors on specific keywords gives you a competitive edge to take decisions on content, advertising and operations.

In Seelk Studio, we built the Competition app to analyse specifically that: your Share of Voice.

What is Share of Voice?

You might have heard a colleague or a client ask "What is my Share of Voice?". Share of Voice (SOV), simply put, is a calculation of how many of your products appear in a search result as compared to your competitors products, taking into account the ranking of the products in the search result. If we follow the above logic, that means that one can analyse their SOV according to a single or multiple keywords as proxies to exact search terms.

So, how does this work?

When a consumer types a search in an Amazon marketplace search bar they are in fact activating keywords related to that specific search term. Amazon has a complex system for fetching search results; that either organic products or paid advertising products, and for any one search there is a unique list of products that appears.

What are organic and paid product listings?

An organic product listing generally looks like this (you've definitely seen it before!):

Organic products are product listings that have organically ranked for that search term based on various factors and most commonly explained as a result of Amazon's A9 algorithm.

Paid product listings, on the other hand, are composed of both sponsored products and sponsored brands advertising placements, and generally look as follows:

Sponsored products are product listings that have paid to be present for that keyword and Sponsored written above it.

Sponsored Brands are located in the top bar on an Amazon search result page that have paid to be present for that keyword - N.B. only one of these appears for each search.

How do I analyse this in Seelk Studio?

These three product listing types are a key element in your understanding of Seelk Studio's Competition app - as their breakdown are the basis for your SOV calculation.

How our clients use the Competition app

If you take the above pie charts, you can see that this Amazon Vendor has solid presence across all product listing types (again, to clarifiy: organic, sponsored products and sponsored brands).

However, if we analyse a specific keyword (in this case the feutres permanents keyword from amazon.fr) – we are able to pull some interesting insights:

This specific client's organic SOV performance is only at 10%, however in both the sponsored brands and sponsored products brackets they are not ranking at all.

For this client, feutres permanents is priority keyword (they had seen a high ROAS in past Amazon advertising campaigns). Based on this analysis the client was able to spot this operational gap and up their sponsored products advertising spends in order to take back their slice of the pie!

How do we deal with low organic SOV over time?

As a first rule, when strategising to improve your long term ranking, you need to begin by analysing your SOV over time.

If we take this client's keyword "rasoir de sécurité" on Amazon France we can see poor SOV performance for both paid and organic over the course of 8 weeks.

If "rasoir de sécurité" has been identified as having a high volume of search and strategic growth factor for the client, then SOV analysis shows that they need to improve both their organic ranking and paid ranking.

A quick and dirty action plan for the client would be:
• Audit their product page content to ensure that  keyword "rasoir de sécurité" is present in the content or backend keywords to ensure SEO presence
• Start a sponsored product campaign for the concerned ASINs targeting that keyword to boost their product rankings

If they have already done this, then there the next thing to check is:
• Are they in stock for the ASINs they are targeting with "rasoir de sécurité" as a keyword?
• If they already have a sponsored product campaigns activated, the question is are they bidding high enough?

Need help or want to learn more?

If you want to learn more about Competition do not hesitate to contact us, schedule a demo with Seelk Studio Team or reach out to Seelk's Amazon Agency.