[Methodology] How to develop corresponding winning operational strategies by monitoring competitor data?

According to Maomao, Amazon sellers before 2017 rarely used third-party tools to monitor and analyze competitors’ sales, rankings, and other changes. These sellers monitored competitors by manually recording the rankings of competing products in Excel spreadsheets and estimating the sales of competing products by the ranking changes of their own product sales . Some well-funded companies would deploy a technical department and hire programmers to use Python technology to monitor competitor reviews, keyword rankings, follow-up sales, and other data based on the needs of the operations department. (Full of useful information, with benefits at the end of the article, Maomao invites you to join for free and share everything you know!)

However, with the continuous advancement of technology, more and more tools are emerging on the market, such as the well-known Amazon third-party tools in the industry: JungleScout, Helium10, and SellerSprite; these tools have relatively complete functions for monitoring the sales/rankings/inventory/follow-selling of competing products; so that more and more Amazon sellers have a great demand for these tools.

As a result, many companies began to purchase a series of tools for company operations, hoping to empower Amazon's operations department to select more products and monitor the dynamics of competing products in real time. But do you really know how to formulate corresponding operational strategies by monitoring the daily sales, ranking and inventory changes of competing products?

Common third-party Amazon operation tools on the market can usually provide product/competitive product monitoring functions. Basically, these tools monitor products in the following dimensions:

A. Category ranking/keyword ranking monitoring

B. Daily inventory change monitoring

C. Daily price change monitoring

D. Daily sales volume change monitoring

E. Monitoring of changes in the number of reviews/star ratings

F. Buybox owner change monitoring

G. Monitor the changes in the number of sellers

H. Listing modification and change monitoring

I. Changes in Listing Availability

Looking at these data, it seems that the tools purchased by the company are very powerful and comprehensive, and there is a sense of pleasure in replacing manual monitoring; but in fact, many sellers may only use them to monitor product changes, and do not make in-depth analysis of these changes to improve their products and formulate subsequent operation strategies. Then the tools purchased for thousands of dollars are really just "tools".

Some basic data of Amazon are no longer mysterious. For small and medium-sized sellers or individual Amazon entrepreneurs, these tools can be purchased for a few thousand yuan. These tools can also easily help you obtain some data for your reference in product selection and operation.

Earlier, I explained what dimensions of data the tools on the market can monitor. So what is the underlying meaning of this data? I will share with you:

• Product ranking changes: Sales volume and ranking are positively correlated. By monitoring the ranking of competing products in large and small categories, changes in the ranking of large categories correspond to market trends, and the ranking of small categories corresponds to the degree of competition.

• Competitive product inventory changes: By monitoring the inventory of competitive products, Maomao thinks that he can judge whether the competitive products are in normal inventory or in a state of overstocking based on the current market trend, and thus infer and follow up on his subsequent adjustment strategy

• Daily price changes: By monitoring the prices of competing products, Maomao thinks that we can think about the following: Through prices, we can understand the pricing strategies of competing products - the frequency and size of price adjustments , and think about the reasons for price adjustments, whether they are to improve conversions, clear inventory, whether they are participating in in-site deals, etc.; whether competing products promote their products by entering the market at low prices, raising prices when rankings are stable, and we can combine rankings to understand at what price the rankings are stable. We also often use Keepa to check the price fluctuations of auctions and the frequency and time of promotions to determine the reasons behind them.

• Number of reviews/star rating changes: monitor the changes in review star ratings in real time to see if any reviews have been artificially increased.

• Changes in the number of sellers following sales: Monitor whether competitors or your own products are followed by others in the middle of the night to grab traffic

• Buybox Owner Changes: The Gold Shopping Cart is crucial, remember not to lose it

• Listing modification changes: If the title, size, category, or main image of a competitor changes, analyze the reasons for the optimization of the competitor.

• Changes in listing availability: Competitors or your own products are out of stock, or they are removed from shelves due to complaints. Biandog will track and monitor them at any time.

After analyzing several dimensions of tool monitoring, Maomao will now combine the changes in competitive products that many seller friends may inadvertently notice in their daily operations. What is the underlying logic behind these competitive product changes? And how to formulate corresponding operation strategies?

• Monitor the ranking of competing products in different categories to determine market trends and competition levels

Changes in the ranking of major categories correspond to market trends, while changes in the ranking of minor categories correspond to the degree of competition.
If we usually judge the off-season and peak-season trend of a product, Maomao will look at the ranking of major categories throughout the year and get a fluctuation curve between months. Of course, this is only one of the methods to judge the off-season and peak-season trend. It needs to be combined with Google Trends and brand analysis to be more accurate.

This way you can get the changes in popularity between different months. Based on the changes in popularity between months, you can plan keywords in advance and submit activities in advance to make your products perform better during the hottest period.

The ranking of small categories directly reflects the competitive products that you are targeting. It is more practical and represents your own operation situation . In the coordinates of small categories, we can find out the listing situation of competitors and the gap between each other's listings. Maomao summarizes several situations:

Case 1: If the ranking of a small category drops, it means that we are impacted by other auctions. If it rises, it means that we have eliminated the impact of other auctions.
Case 2: If the ranking of the small category remains unchanged and the ranking of the large category decreases, it means that the market demand for the product has decreased. If the ranking of the small category remains unchanged, the change in the ranking of the large category represents a change in market trends.
Case three: If the ranking of the major category and the ranking of the minor category improve or deteriorate at the same time, this is difficult to judge because both are related to sales. If the ranking of the minor category improves, the ranking of the major category will generally improve at the same time.

For these situations, sellers can use them as a mnemonic, record them, and analyze them at any time.

• Paying attention to the ranking of competing products can reveal the overall market traffic situation

When product sales decline, there is no need to rush to adjust links and advertisements . By observing the rankings of competing products, you can get an idea of ​​the overall market traffic situation.

Case analysis: The advertising performance was good in December because the market traffic was high, so the overall conversion rate was increased. Even if the CPC was not high and the keyword booth was relatively far back, there was still good sales. However, after entering January and February, buyers' desire to buy decreased. Even if the CPC was very high, the order conversion rate was still very low. Therefore, when adjusting the advertising, the market traffic situation should be taken into consideration and the psychological expectations should be lowered. Just because the acos of the advertisement is higher than in December, it cannot be considered that the advertising performance is not good and forced adjustments should be made, which will lead to worse sales.

Extension: Advertising performance in the off-season will be worse than in the peak season. In order to stabilize sales and rankings, you can appropriately sacrifice part of the profit in exchange for a higher conversion rate, such as increasing discounts, running more activities, etc. The core of this is that when traffic decreases, you can offset the negative effects of the decline in off-season traffic by increasing the conversion rate.

The above are some of Maomao’s ideas and original methodologies for analyzing and formulating operational strategies by combining tools;

Of course, it is not enough for sellers to analyze competitors by monitoring their sales, category rankings, inventory changes, etc. Maomao suggests that you still need to combine the prices, promotions, rating numbers, star ratings, keyword rankings, etc. of the competitors to judge the operations of competitors and find places that can be integrated into your own products.