Running an Amazon competitor analysis is crucial to your success in the marketplace. Using a framework to monitor your competitors’ efforts is a great way to ensure you can beat them at their own game. Amazon earns nearly $17 million every hour. A portion of those earnings goes to Amazon sellers, product manufacturers, and fulfillment partners. However, the competition among these players is fierce. 

To compete with the top players, you must be aware of your competitor’s strategies. An Amazon competitor analysis involves reverse engineering competitors, keyword analysis, comparing product pages, and much more. The information you learn from analysis helps you improve your Amazon marketing.

This guide explains how you can use the same strategies as your competition to improve your Amazon sales. It takes a lot of work, but it will help increase your click-through rate, drive conversions, and optimize your listings.

What is Amazon competitor analysis?

The competitive analysis involves thorough research of your competitors. This includes identifying who your competition will be, as well as their marketing strategies, products, and more. The point of conducting a competitive analysis is to scope out your competition and gather vital information.

• What are your competitors doing right?
• How can you improve your own business strategies?
• How can you compete against the competition?

The competitive analysis involves thorough research of your competitors. 

An analysis of your competitor’s business will also help you to identify where they are falling short. Checking through their customer reviews may help you notice flaws or gaps in their Amazon business, which could be something you and your business could fill.

Measuring your competitor’s success will also give you something to work towards. You know who you need to outperform, and hopefully, after a competitive analysis, you will know how to do it. What does this mean for a seller looking to conduct a competitive analysis?

Briefly checking through your competitor’s website and scrolling through their social media feed does not qualify as a proper competitive analysis! To collect real and helpful information, you will need to go deeper.

How to perform analysis of competing Amazon sellers

Before you can start analyzing what your competitors are doing to maximize their sales on Amazon, you need to figure out who those competitors are.

Follow the steps below to identify your Amazon competition:

Step #1. Perform keyword research

To figure out which sellers you’re competing against on Amazon, you first need to determine your competitors targeted keywords by conducting keyword research. Let’s say you’re selling hairbrushes on Amazon. Your target keywords will be the words people will likely search for when they visit the marketplace.

You can figure out keywords intuitively, but it’s a much better idea to use a research or keyword tool to get a complete list of keywords you should be targeting.

Step #2. Find your competitors

Once you have a list of all the keywords you want to rank for, you need to find the sellers that are ranking for the same keywords, as they are your direct competitors.

To do this, you need to search for each keyword and browse the competitor’s products that show up on the first few pages of search results. Please note that it’s unnecessary to browse all the competitor’s products, as there will likely be thousands of them. You should pay the most attention to sellers whose products are located at the top of search results. 

Finally, compile a list of all sellers whose listings are in these results and repeat the process for other keywords on your list. Keep in mind that you can also perform this search on Google to find competitors who are not on Amazon. 

Step #3. Narrow down the list

Once you complete all the steps described above, you will be left with a long list of competitors. However, it’s impossible to research all of them thoroughly, so you should go through the list and pick out the sellers that are getting good results.

For instance, you should definitely include all the sellers who have Amazon’s Choice and Amazon Bestsellers products, as these are the top listings in each respective niche. You should also pay extra attention to sellers with multiple listings on the first page of search results. 

Once you’ve narrowed down your list, you should organize all sellers into three categories. The first category will contain your primary competitors. These are companies that sell products that are very similar to yours or target the same audience as you. The secondary competitors’ group will sell similar products to a different audience, or they could sell slightly higher or lower-end products than you.

Finally, the tertiary competitors’ group will contain companies that sell products that are somewhat related to what you’re selling. For instance, if you’re selling pots, this category could contain companies that sell skillets. 

In the end, you should have a spreadsheet with all competitors, their category assignments, lists of products they sell, and basic details about them, including strengths and weaknesses.

Analyze competing sellers on Amazon

Once you have a complete list of all your competitors, you should start analyzing them. There are around 13 things you should specifically pay attention to:

#1. Product title

Start by examining the titles competing sellers are using for their products. Compare titles of different products and take note of things that could be added or removed from the titles to improve them. You should also pay attention to the keywords other sellers use in the product title to describe their products. 

#2. Product images

Images are one of the most essential parts of any Amazon listing, as people can’t see or touch your product in person. Therefore, you should strive to obtain the highest possible quality images taken at the best angle that show the product in the most detail. Examine the photos of your competitors’ products and make a note of things that do and don’t work. It’s also a good idea to think about how you can use images to make your product stand out from the rest.

#3. Bullet points

Bullet points often contain the most crucial selling points of the product, so you should pay extra attention to them. For instance, you can see what advantages of their products your competitors highlight and find ways to counter those advantages in your own bullet points

#4. Product description

By reading a large number of product descriptions, you will be able to figure out what information a good description should and should not include, what the best tone for a description is, etc.

#5. Questions and answers

This section of product listings can provide lots of valuable information to you as the seller. First of all, you will see what questions customers ask most frequently. You should highlight this information in your product title, bullet points, and/or description. You can also see whether other sellers take time to answer customer questions. 

#6. Prices

Price always plays a huge role in a buyer’s decision-making process. Ideally, you want to sell your product at a slightly lower price than your competitors. And if the product’s quality is a little better than your competitors’ products, its price should be the same or slightly higher. Keep in mind that you need to maintain a high enough price to ensure that you can make a profit and not lose money on your Amazon business. 

It’s also a good idea to look at the pricing strategy history, as most sellers use repricing software to adjust the price of their products.

#7. Monthly sales

Some Amazon analytics software allows you to see how many sales your competitors are making each month. This information can help you understand if there’s a significant amount of demand for a product you’re planning on selling and how much inventory or money your competitors are able to make in terms of profit each month.

#8. Customer reviews

Amazon product reviews can provide you with a trove of information about your competitors. Pay extra attention to how many reviews are negative, as they will show you precisely what you need to do to beat your competition. Just make a note of all the things reviewers didn’t like about a competing product and use this information to improve the product you’re offering. 

#9. Explore keywords

Just like you, your competitors are also trying to optimize their listings for target keywords, so you should carefully examine their listings to see if they are doing something you’re not. You can do this manually, but the entire process will go much quicker if you use a keyword research tool.

#10. Backlinks

Getting backlinks for your Amazon product listings won’t help them rank higher in Amazon search results. However, it will help them rank higher on Google. Figuring out what strategies your competition is using to build backlinks can help you determine what you need to do to grow your business in the long term, as link building doesn’t give immediate results, but it can definitely help grow your online presence.

#11. Competitor’s Ad campaigns

Before you start running ads on Amazon, you need to analyze your competitors’ Amazon ad campaigns. You can only remain competitive if your ads cost the same or slightly more per click than what other sellers in your niche are paying. 

You can use relevant tools to analyze other sellers’ Amazon ad campaigns and find out what keywords they are targeting with ads and the search volumes of those keywords. 

You should also find out where other sellers are running Google Shopping ads. Simply enter one of your primary keywords on Google and see whether you see any ads for Amazon products in the Google Shopping ads section.

If you don’t, you can take advantage of this situation and start running these ads for your own products. However, this could be a risky move, as your competitors might be staying away from Google Shopping ads for a reason. 

#12. Website

Many of your competitors will likely have their own websites in addition to selling products on online marketplaces. You should examine these websites paying attention to their design and user interface, the types of forms and pop-up windows used to provide information, offer discounts, request email information, the ecommerce website builder they use etc. 

If you already have a website for your brand or are planning on creating one in the future, you can consider the downsides of other sellers’ websites and improve on those things on your website. You should also prepare for incidents and decide which metrics to keep track of.

#13. Social media

Many competitor brands may have pages on various social media platforms, so you should do the same. This is especially important if you’re targeting a younger demographic that spends a lot of time on these platforms. Social media pages can be a great source of organic traffic to your Amazon listings. 

When browsing your competitors’ social media accounts, you should note the platforms where the accounts are located, the type of information these companies are posting, the frequency with which they post, and the amount of engagement each post gets on average

Use the information you’ve gathered

Once you complete your competitor analysis, you will have a massive amount of information. Now, you need to make sense of all that data and figure out how to use it to your advantage. There are several things you can do with it, but here are four ideas to try:

#1. Find or create the right products to see

Once you’ve analyzed all the information about the products other Amazon sellers are offering, you should be able to see gaps in the target market. You can use this data to create or source products that will fill those gaps. If you can find some niche where customer needs are not fulfilled and find a way to meet them, your business will likely thrive because your products will have lots of demand without facing any competition. 

#2. Price your products appropriately

Once you know how your competitors price their products, you can set competitive prices on your inventory. You should also consider using repricing software to ensure that you’re offering the best prices possible at any given moment. Since most sellers use this software for their listings, competing with them without utilizing these methods will be challenging. 

#3. Optimize your keyword strategy

After conducting Amazon competitor analysis, you will have a good understanding of the products people are searching for, so you can build up your inventory to include the products customers search for. Plus, you will clearly understand all the keywords and advertising methods you should be using.

#4. Expand your business outside Amazon

Finally, you should consider creating a website and social media pages for your brand to grow your business outside Amazon. Keep in mind everything you’ve learned from your research and avoid making the same mistakes your competitors made with their social media accounts and websites

Top 7 tools used to perform Amazon competitor research

Carrying out Amazon competitors’ analysis can be time-consuming and overwhelming; as such, the following tools have been developed to help sellers fast-track the process.

#1. ZonGuru – Top Pick

When you want a powerful all-in-one tool that goes the extra mile beyond plain product research, ZonGuru is a name you should be looking more closely at. This tool offers a ton of baseline features like product trends and research, keyword research and tracking, listing SEO, index checker, and PPC analyzer. 

You can use these features to analyze product data from several angles, from revenue and sales potential to competitor data tracking and intensity analysis. The Zonguru team provides a lot of support for their members, including webinars and training videos to help you get started with your Amazon business. Check out their youtube channel for demos and how to’s.

Pros

• Very large dataset of products and keywords with accurate Amazon data.
• By purchasing ZonGuru, you will not only get one of the best Amazon product research tools, but you will also get one of the most comprehensive all-in-one Amazon seller toolkits.
• Easily beats Helium10 or Junglescout which have very bad data accuracy.
• Very intuitive and easy-to-use user interface.
• ZonGuru has a reverse ASIN tool that allows reverse engineering competitor’s product listings.

Cons

• Confusing pricing and need to keep adding addons and upgrades.

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#2. Jungle Scout

Jungle Scout is one of the most well-known Amazon seller software. Jungle Scout helps provide sellers with the necessary tools to increase their sales and product information. It can be used to find profitable products, track your inventory levels, and analyze the competition. Jungle Scout has a web application and a Chrome Extension.

Pros

• Most widely used
• Flexible pricing options for all budgets
• Excellent tools to research and analyze products/niches/markets.
• Perfect for both beginners and professional sellers.

Cons

• Jungle Scout doesn’t offer a free trial
• Bad data related to profit, finances
• Since it’s the #1 used app, tons of people will be able to see your data but scrubbed down
• Some features on Jungle Scout are currently limited only to the U.S. marketplace.

#3. Seller App

Seller App is a tool that helps Amazon sellers research profitable products to sell on amazon. It allows you to find the best selling items in every category, analyze your competition and spy on amazon’s top sellers, see what keywords they’re ranking for, how much traffic they’re getting, etc. Seller App also offers additional features such as real-time price and inventory tracking, amazon repricing tool, etc.

Pros

• Seller App offers full-featured 7 days free trial
• Online demo is available by Seller App specialists before committing to a plan.
• User-friendly interface that is easy to understand even for beginners in Amazon business

Cons

• Only two different plans are available

#4. AMZ Scout

AMZ Scout is a software that helps Amazon sellers find profitable products to sell on Amazon and also analyse their competitors. It’s easy to use and has helped thousands of successful sellers grow their businesses. AMZ Scout offers up-to-date pricing, reviews, inventory levels, and more for all types of product categories so you can focus your efforts on growing your business.

Pros

• Affordable tool for Amazon product research
• Amazon Seller’s Bundle costs only a little more than Pro Extension.
• It provides accurate sales data.

Cons

• Not as comprehensive as others.

#5. Viral Launch

Viral Launch is a software and marketing platform that helps Amazon sellers grow their business. Viral Launch includes Amazon product research tools that help sellers easily find profitable products to sell on Amazon. It has a user-friendly interface which makes it easy for Amazon sellers of any level to use the software and get accurate results in no time. Viral Launch platform has tools for market intelligence, keyword research, competitor intelligence, listing analyzer, to name a few.

Pros

• This tool is user-friendly.
• Viral Launch has a 14-day free trial.
• Includes a Chrome extension

Cons

• Not the cheapest choice

#6. Zoof

Zoof is a new Amazon seller software platform with some killer features, and it is one of my top favorite tools for Amazon product research and competitor analysis. Gain access to accurate and comprehensive data with the help of a tool that filters through all the noise. Filter away hype, bias opinions from other sources, identify opportunities missed by other tools. With Zoof, you’ll be able to make better product-picking decisions than ever before. 

Pros

• Zoof data comes directly from Amazon so that you can make informed decisions.
• Get everything with one affordable monthly subscription.
• Free 14-day trial
• Includes a reverse ASIN tool and a Chrome extension

Cons

• Supports only U.S. marketplace

Final thoughts

While Amazon competitors analysis is an extremely time-consuming and labor-intensive task, once you complete it, you should have a clear understanding of your niche, its top performers, reasons why those companies were able to become so successful, and all the strategies you should be using to become a leader in your market. 

Fortunately, you don’t need to do all that work researching the competition yourself if you use one of the tools I have highlighted in the article. 

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Amazon competitor analysis?

Amazon competitor analysis is a process during which sellers identify and evaluate other brands that sell similar products and compete for a similar audience on the platform. Analyzing your competitors is essential if you want to gain an advantage over other sellers.

How do I analyze an Amazon competition?

To analyze your Amazon competition, you will need to examine your competitors’ product listings, evaluate their prices, reviews, look at their websites and social media pages, and otherwise analyze everything you can about how they do business on the marketplace.

What is Amazon’s competitive advantage?

Amazon’s competitive advantage includes low cost-leadership, customer differentiation and focus strategies. Low cost-leadership is pursued by Amazon by differentiating itself primarily on the basis of price.

Which technique is used during competitor analysis?

The technique is known as SWOT analysis. It is often used in strategic planning to help identify a potential advantage. For example, your strong relationships with suppliers might give you the opportunity to offer prices that are lower than your competitors’.