Using Brand Analytics to Grow Your Amazon Business

To make smart decisions when it comes to developing a brand on Amazon, we need data. We need to understand the sales opportunity and what the customer wants. While there are software solutions out there that help us gauge the potential size of the market and Seller Central reports to help us understand the sales demand and traffic at the product level, the data lacks information about customer behavior. Brands need to know how the customer interacts with their products throughout their shopping journey from consideration all the way to purchase.

Amazon has a kingdom of data and is known for sharing very little. However, they are starting to realize that by sharing more data they are helping businesses grow, which in turn benefits the customer and Amazon. As a result, Amazon has now extended the reports available to brands to help them understand customer behavior when interacting with their products.

Amazon Brand Analytics

These consumer behavior reports sit within a dashboard called Brand Analytics. They are only available to brand owners, which means the brand must have a registered trademark and be enrolled in the Brand Registry to unlock this feature. Brand Analytics can only be found within Seller Central under Business Reports. If you are a vendor, you will find similar reports available in Amazon Retail Analytics Premium (ARAP).

Currently, four reports are available but my guess is that this will expand over time.

Amazon released two Brand Analytics search dashboards in early 2022. Learn more about the Search Catalog Performance and Search Query Performance dashboards here.

These reports provide valuable insights into customer search, basket analysis, item comparisons, alternative purchases, and demographics. Below, I have provided details on each of these reports:

Amazon Search Terms

While there are lots of third-party software solutions out there that provide insights into customer searches and search volume, the Amazon search term reports brings an additional piece of data. Based on certain keywords and ASINs, you get to see the top 3 most clicked items for that search term, their click share percentage, and conversion share percentage during a certain period of time.

This data can help you build out and strengthen your advertising campaigns. It is a great way to understand the competition and see which products are dominating the search results for certain keywords. You can also review the results of any optimization work carried out to see if your products appear in the top 3 for specific search terms and if so understand their click share and conversion. Although, only having visibility of the top 3 is quite limited given the amount of selection on Amazon.

One thing the report doesn’t provide is search volume data for those search terms. Instead, it provides the ranking for that keyword based on search frequency. However, with a number of third-party software solutions available, sellers already have access to an estimated search volume for keywords.

Market Basket Analysis

Understand what products are most frequently purchased with your products. These reports highlight the top 3 most purchased items alongside your products. It is a great way to understand what items complement certain products in the range.

It may be that the most frequently purchased items are also from your brand, highlighting you are already cross-selling across a range of products and may have some degree of brand loyalty. If the products purchased with your product are from a competitor and are products that you do have in your range, it may highlight that you need to improve on cross-selling and bundling. It might also indicate an issue with the other items, for example, the price is too high or the product pages have not been optimized. If you don’t sell the items being purchased with your products, you can then identify new products you could potentially develop and add to your portfolio.

Item Comparison and Alternative Purchase Behavior

Editor's note: The Item Comparison and Alternate Purchase Behavior dashboard was retired in June 2022.

When customers are viewing your products, it's helpful to understand what items they are comparing your products with or may end up purchasing instead of yours. These reports highlight the top 3 most compared items and the top 3 most purchased items as an alternative to your product.

These reports provide a great insight into your competition. You can then take this data and review the other products to understand why customers are comparing and buying alternate products. It may be that your listings are not as strong, you have a lower review rating, or have a higher retail price point. You can then use your findings to strengthen your product listing and offering.

Demographics

Understand more about your customer; their age, household income, education, gender, and marital status. While a lot of these demographics will fit into the Amazon customer, this can still provide you a good insight into the type of customer you are attracting on Amazon.

It will help you ensure your marketing strategy connects with the right customer. It may be that your imagery focuses more heavily on the younger male under 34 years for a sports supplement product but actually, a slightly older female under 44 years is purchasing the product more. By adjusting your marketing strategy you might be able to improve conversions. It may also raise the question of why your product is not appealing to the target market you are focusing on.

Fine Tune your Marketing Strategy

With this additional data available to brands, you can make more informed strategic decisions. You should also be monitoring your brand health. Developing the right marketing strategy in the current competitive landscape you are selling in will help you grow your business further on Amazon and beyond.