November 21, 2024

Amazon Seller Competitor Analysis: The Complete Guide

Amazon Seller Competitor Analysis: The Complete Guide
Amazon Seller Competitor Analysis: The Complete Guide

Key takeaways: 

  • Evaluating the strengths, weaknesses, strategies, and overall performance of competitors, selling on Amazon is what we can refer to as Amazon seller competitor analysis. 
  • Carrying out competitor analysis helps you identify market gaps, optimize product listings, improve pricing strategy, enhance consumer experience, and make strategic business decisions. 
  • When carrying out your analysis, you want to examine certain areas including product features, product listings, pricing strategies, sales performance, and customer reviews. 
  • Avoid copying your competitors blindly, don't focus only on price, and don't ignore your own data. You also want to keep an eye on smaller competitors. 

With thousands of sellers trooping into the Amazon marketplace daily, keeping an eye on your competitors is crucial to staying on top of the game. 

Understanding how your competitors source their products, price their products, list their products, promote their products and much more is what is called competitor analysis. It involves examining their strategies, strengths, and weaknesses, to gain a competitive edge. 

Read on as we explore this guide on Amazon seller competitor analysis, looking at how to identify and analyze your competitors. 

What is Amazon seller competitor analysis?

We can simply refer to Amazon competitor analysis as the process of studying and evaluating the strengths, weaknesses, strategies, and overall performance of competitors selling similar products on Amazon. It helps sellers gain a competitive edge by understanding how their competitors position themselves in the market. 

This analysis involves several components including: 

  • Product listing: This involves comparing product titles, descriptions, bullet points, images, and the overall listing presentation. It also involves analyzing the quality of your competitors’ product information. 
  • Pricing: This involves analyzing competitors' pricing strategies, including discounts and promotions, and comparing value propositions. 
  • Keywords and SEO: This involves identifying keywords competitors use to rank products in search results. It also involves looking at keyword optimization techniques
  • Sales volume: It involves estimating competitors' sales volume and trends over time as well as analyzing best-selling products and market share.  
  • Customer review: This involves examining customer feedback, ratings, and reviews and understanding what customers like or dislike about your competitors' products. 
  • Advertising strategy: This involves tracking competitors' use of Amazon Sponsored Ads and other advertising tactics. 
  • Market share: This involves assessing the share of the market held by your competitors. 

Why conduct an Amazon seller competitor analysis?

Conducting an Amazon seller competitive analysis comes with several benefits: 

Identify market gaps and opportunities 

An Amazon seller competitor analysis can help you identify unmet customer needs, product gaps, and opportunities that your competitors may have overlooked. This valuable information can help you improve your product and marketing strategies. 

Optimize product listings 

By closely examining your competitors’ listings, you can improve your product titles, descriptions, and images. This can lead to better visibility on Amazon search results and increase conversion rates.

Improve pricing strategy 

Competitor analysis allows you to compare pricing strategies, including discounts and promotions. With this knowledge, you can set competitive prices while maintaining profitability.

Improve keyword optimization 

Through Amazon seller competitor analysis, you can Identify effective keywords used by competitors. This can help you refine your own keyword strategy, improving your product's visibility in Amazon search results. 

Strategic decision-making

Regular competitor analysis keeps you informed about market trends, customer preferences, and emerging strategies. By understanding what sets successful competitors apart, you can develop unique selling propositions that differentiate your products or services from the competition. 

This helps you make informed decision-making across various aspects of your Amazon business. 

Adapt to market changes.

Carrying out regular competitor analysis helps you stay current with the marketplace dynamics. You can easily make timely adjustments to your business strategy. 

Enhances customer service. 

By analyzing competitors' customer service approaches, and finding out what customers want and do not want, you can identify areas for improvement in your own service quality and response times. 

How to identify your competitors on Amazon 

To find out who your competitors are, begin by searching for relevant keywords related to your product. Use broad terms and gradually narrow your search to more specific, long-tail keywords. You want to use both broad terms and specific terms as this will give you a detailed view of your competition landscape. 

Look out for the products that consistently rank at the top for your chosen keywords. These are likely your main competitors. 

Look out for sellers offering substitute products or targeting slightly different audiences. These products may indirectly affect your sales even if they don't sell the same product. 

Once you've identified your competitors, you can use tools like Jungle Scout, Helium 10, or Seller Assistant App to gain insights into Amazon's competitive landscape. 

You can compare your product with competitors on various metrics such as revenue, units sold, average price, star rating, number of reviews, and market share. 

How to analyze your competitors on Amazon 

Here’s a simple step-by-step approach to analyzing your competitors on Amazon: 

  1. Analyze your competitors’ product features
  2. Analyze competitors’ product listings
  3. Study your competitors’ pricing strategies
  4. Study competitor sales performance
  5. Analyze your competitors’ advertising strategies
  6. Study customer feedback and reviews 

Analyze your competitors’ product features

First, you want to create a checklist of your competitors’ product features so you can find ways to improve your offer and highlight the most important benefits in your product listing. Scan through your competitors’ product features and look out for every feature you can find. You can arrange your list in a spreadsheet. 

Once you have all your competitors’ product features listed, you can find out where your product is superior. You can look out for features they have that you don't. What features do you have that your competitors don't? In what areas can you improve your product features to gain a competitive advantage? 

Analyze competitors’ product listings

Once you've identified who your competitors are, it’s time to dig into the details of their product listings. A well-optimized listing can significantly influence your product’s rank and sales. By analyzing your competitor’s listing, you can gather insights into what works and what doesn’t.

Here are a few aspects of your competitors’ product listing to analyze: 

  • Product title: Pay attention to how they structure their product title. Are they using relevant keywords? Are the titles compelling and informative?

  • Images: Look at the quality, quantity, and types of images used. Do they use lifestyle images, product details, or infographics? How well do these images sell their product? 

  • Bullet points and description: Amazon sellers who use engaging, benefit-driven bullet points and descriptions are more likely to convert customers. Look at how your competitors communicate their value proposition and unique selling point.

  • A+ content: A+ content enhances product descriptions with images, comparison charts, and additional text. If your competitors use A+ content, examine how they highlight their product’s features and branding.

Study your competitors’ pricing strategies 

Pricing is one of the most critical factors in consumer decision-making on Amazon. Understanding your competitors' pricing strategies can help you position your product appropriately.

You want to ask yourself the following questions: 

  • Looking at their base price, how do competitors price their products compared to yours? Are they offering a premium or budget option?
  • Are they running consistent promotions or offering discounts? Track these over time to understand trends.
  • Is your competitor offering free shipping, or are shipping costs added? How does this influence their overall pricing?

Study competitor sales performance

Another crucial aspect you want to analyze is your competitors’ sales performance. Understanding your competitor's sales performance will give you a better sense of how they are doing in the marketplace. You can use several tools available that provide estimates of your competitors’ sales data. These tools include Jungle Scout, which offers insights into sales estimates, average monthly revenue, and best-seller ranks for individual competitors.

You can also use tools like Helium 10 and Keepa to get a detailed view of your competitors' sales trends over time. 

Analyze your competitors’ advertising strategies

Amazon PPC (Pay-Per-Click) advertising plays a huge role in how sellers gain visibility on the Amazon marketplace. Understanding the advertising strategies that make the most impact can help you optimize your own campaigns.

Here are a few ways to analyze your competitors’ advertising strategies: 

  • Search for your targeted keywords and see if your competitors are bidding on those terms. If their ads appear frequently, it's a sign they are investing in these keywords. If your competitors are larger brands, they might also use Sponsored Brands ads, which appear prominently at the top of search results.
  • Check where your competitors' ads appear. Do they appear on product pages, in search results, or Amazon's recommended products? This will show you how aggressive they are with their ad spend.
  • You can use tools like Sellics to help monitor their ad campaigns and keywords. 

Study customer feedback and reviews 

Customer reviews can offer a wealth of information, not just for improving your product but for analyzing your competitors as well. Reviews reflect real customer experiences and provide insights into what customers love or dislike about a product: 

Here’s how to analyze your competitors’ customer feedback: 

  • Pay attention to your competitors’ review quality and quantity. How many reviews do your competitors have? Are their ratings majorly positive, negative, or mixed?
  • Look out for customer complaints. Negative reviews often highlight product flaws or unmet expectations. You can identify recurring complaints and use that information to improve your product or listing.
  • Also, pay attention to positive customer reviews. Positive reviews can indicate features or qualities that customers particularly value. If these are things you don’t offer, consider incorporating them into your product or messaging.

What to not do when conducting Amazon seller competitor analysis 

While studying your competitors is incredibly beneficial, simply copying their strategies or switching to their product offerings is never a good idea. Here are some things you should not do when conducting an Amazon seller competitor analysis: 

  1. Don’t focus only on product price

It can be tempting to assume that lowering prices is the best way to beat your competitors. But while price is an important factor, focusing solely on undercutting competitors can be a race to the bottom. Lowering your price too much can devalue your product, and ruin your profit margins.

Instead of focusing on product price only, look at the full scope of the competitor's offering. Consider other factors like product quality, add-ons like bundles, and warranties, customer service, shipping speed, and customer reviews. 

  1. Never copy your competitors blindly. 

We know the saying that imitation is the best form of flattery. But this is not always so in business. Copying a competitor’s product listings, keywords, or marketing strategies without understanding the why behind their choices can lead to failure. 

Just because a competitor is using a certain approach doesn’t mean it’s working for them or that it will work for you.

Instead, use your Amazon seller competitor analysis to understand what is working in the market, but adjust it to your unique selling proposition. Address unmet needs or offer something competitors don’t. Look at their weaknesses and innovate, rather than simply copying.

  1. Don’t overlook the smaller competitors 

It's easy to focus on top sellers and big brands, but this can cause you to overlook smaller rising competitors who may not yet have significant market share but are growing quickly. So, include smaller competitors in your analysis. They may have innovative methods, higher customer satisfaction, or product offerings that your larger competitors don't offer. Understanding their strengths can give you insight into emerging trends. 

  1. Don’t ignore your own data 

While competitor analysis is crucial, relying only on competitor data without considering your own performance can be risky. Every business is unique, and blindly following competitors without analyzing your own sales, reviews, and customer behavior may lead you down the wrong path. Instead, you want to combine competitor insights with data from your own performance.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What is Amazon seller competitive analysis?

Amazon seller competitive analysis is the process of researching and assessing the strengths, weaknesses, strategies, and performance of competitors selling similar products on Amazon.

How do I compete with other sellers on Amazon?

To compete effectively with other sellers on Amazon, you want to tactfully implement effective selling strategies. Some of these strategies include optimizing your product listings using effective product titles, detailed product descriptions, and high-quality images, improving search visibility, enhancing your customer experience, and optimizing your inventory. 

How do you track your Amazon seller market share? 

To track your Amazon seller market share, you can use several methods and tools. You can use Amazon's built-in analytics tools like Amazon dashboard and Amazon brand analytics or leverage third-party analytics tools like Jungle Scout Competitive Intelligence or Helium 10 Market Tracker. 

Why is competitor analysis important on Amazon? 

By conducting a thorough competitor analysis, you gain valuable insights that you can use to optimize every aspect of your Amazon business, from pricing to product listings to keyword optimization and customer service. This helps you gain a competitive edge ultimately impacting sales and profit.

Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.

Turbo-Charge Your Revenue!

You’ve probably already considered selling on Amazon but its way easier than you think.

Call Us Now

Enjoying our articles?

Subscribe to our newsletter to receive ePlaybooks insights directly in your inbox. Don't worry we will respect your inbox.
Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.