Faster Amazon FBA Market Research With MarketScout

Transcript

Suzanne: All right, so hello, and thank you again for joining us for a training on MarketScout, formerly eComSpy. I will go ahead and pass the controls over to our presenters today.

Jennifer: Thank you Suzanne. Welcome everyone. We are here today to show you how MarketScout can work for your business, save you time and provide you the right data before adding items in your Amazon inventory. I'm Jennifer Nunez, a senior customer success advisor at eComEngine. I do software demos of our eComEngine tools and help Amazon sellers identify which software would fit their business needs. When I'm not at work, I like to play with my dogs, watch movies and do gardening. And with me today to help us with MarketScout is one of eComEngine's adept and elite, my colleague Franz Valmonte. Hi, Franz.

Franz: Hi Jen. Thank you so much. Yes, I'm Franz and I'm a senior technical support analyst for MarketScout. In my spare time, I like to read graphic novels and manga. Together with Jen we'll share how to start your research effectively using MarketScout.

Jennifer: Awesome. So before we go ahead and dive in, just orient you to eComEngine. We are a SaaS company, a software as a service company. We are headquartered in Richmond, Virginia. We've been supporting Amazon merchants worldwide since 2007. And some of you may have probably known us for FeedbackFive, but we do have a suite of tools exclusively for Amazon merchants. We also have RestockPro for ad venture and forecasting, SmartPrice for repricing. And today we are going to talk about MarketScout. So we all know that one of the most difficult aspects of running an eCommerce business involves sourcing the right products and establishing whether it's going to be profitable for your business or not.

Jennifer: So our main goal today is to help you research thousands of SKUs in minutes. I'll set up your file upload seamlessly in MarketScout, Franz we'll show you best practices and tips and analyze the reports and get those actionable data in your fingertips. So when planning for success, we'd like you to go ahead and research your UPCs to get started with MarketScout. More often than not we get the questions whether the UPCs they're using is valid or not. So you can go ahead and check it or cross check it at the GS1 Company Database. So you can check the validity of your UPC, verify who manufacturers the product and more. In addition to that, it's also very important when you're doing your product research is that you are aware of the Amazon shopping events, or if you have it in your calendar, even better. Amazon shopping events like Amazon Prime Day, cyber Monday, black Friday.

Jennifer: Knowing before this happens allows you to plan your sales and invent your strategy ahead, and MarketScout can help you research thousands of products at your fingertips in just minutes. Then you can decide whether which one you'd add in your listing, right? So what will you need to start your product research? One would be your search decks, and you need to have your ASIN, UPC or EIN. So any of those three would do, and then you have your product cost. Product cost is optional, but this would be great information if you can add it in your CSV template in MarketScout, this will help you calculate the margins and it will show it in your reports. You also need to make sure, and last but not least, this is a very important one is to connect your MarketScout account in your seller central. And you can do that by connecting it using your MWS credentials under your MarketScout settings.

Jennifer: I'll show that to you later on as well. So without further ado, let's take a look and see how the MarketScout software looks like, okay? Let me go ahead and switch to my demo account really quick. All right. So this is our MarketScout demo account, and I hope everyone can see my screen and let us know in the Q and A box if you can't see the MarketScout dashboard. So right off the bat, the MarketScout dashboard is very straightforward. You can readily see your MarketScout credits. You can purchase credits if you deem necessary upload new batch, you'll be able to see if the batch has been completed here, view online report and download your online report. So if you have your MarketScout account ready already, just go ahead and check your settings first under my account.

Jennifer: Now this is where you'll be able to see if your MarketScout account is connected. I'm using your MWS credentials. If not just click the hyperlink here and you should be able to log into your seller central and you'd be connected right away. Okay? So once that is done, you can go ahead and upload a new batch. All right? We'll start product research by identifying the file specifications. So number one, you need to download the template here, and I've already downloaded earlier for our presentation today. So as you know, MarketScout is previously called eComSpy, hence the name here.

Jennifer: Your first column there should be your ASIN, UPC, EAN. Also, this is where you put your search decks and then the item costs on the second column. Now, the cost data again is optional, but if you indicate it, it gives you a lot of competitive data, like lowest commission, lowest margin percent, lowest price. Those are great data to have if you want to identify if the products are going to be sellable or profitable on your end. Once you have that data available, by the way, don't forget to save your template into a CSV. So I have saved my template earlier. It looks like this. We do have sample ASINs here that we're going to use, including the cost. All right? And once you have this data available, you can go ahead and re-upload it, just go ahead and choose the file. So we're going to go to my desktop to get that data available.

Jennifer: There you go. And let's upload it or let's put a name here. There you go. And upload. So you can see it takes us back to the dashboard where we can see if the data is completed. Let's just give it two to three minutes and refresh our MarketScout account in a while, and you should be able to see the report. Let's jump into purchase and credit history. So purchase credits and credit history basically allows you to add credits as necessary. It's a pay as you go service, you don't have to subscribe monthly. You only buy scout credits when you deem necessary. And of course your credit history will show your purchase history and the number of credits that you've used in the entire stay in MarketScout. We do have customer support access here. This allows you to access several articles that are pertinent for the use of MarketScout.

Jennifer: The definition of terms, if you do want to reach out to us by email or live chat, you can also start a conversation with us and we'd be more than happy to help you. All right? Let's [inaudible 00:07:38] MarketScout demo guide and see if our data is already available. So it looks like it's still loading our data here. See, and before we jump into that, also we're going to pop in the chat our GS1 data link for you to use later on to cross check your UPC. We're also going to pop in our MarketScout email address for you to reach us. And that's marketscout@ecomengine.com. You can also reach out to us and let us know if you want to have a scheduled call with us. All right?

Jennifer: So we can go back to this later on and show this to you. There you go. So we have that report available. Let me just show it to you really quick. So this is how the online report looks like you have a lot of actionable data, competitive data that you can see if Amazon is selling it or not. If all Amazon ... If all offers are considered lowest margin, lowest market percent. More of this information, I'd like to turn over to Franz, to show you how it works and how to analyze this data that we have and download this via CSV. Franz, can you take it away?

Franz: Thank you so much, Jen. So yeah, we'll go over the steps on how to upload a batch successfully.

Franz: awesome.

Jennifer: Yeah. There you go.

Franz: So as explained by Jen earlier, you can download the template directly from MarketScout. You simply have to go to the upload new batch page and you can find the link to the template under file specifications, and uploading a batch is really easy, as long as you keep the following tips in mind. First, the upload file must be saved as a CSB file as you can see from this slide. You can name it anything you like. The first column must have a heading ASIN, UPC, EIN, and the second column must have the item cost. The search text and items must start on the second row, as you can see.

Franz: If you include the item cost, we can compute the margins for you. If you don't include the item cost, the value will default to zero for margin calculations. MarketScout does batches, one sort of product at a time. You'll get an error if you try to upload a file that has a mix of ASIN, UPC, or EIN. So on our slide, you can see on the first screenshot, the search stacks are just ASIN. So our system would accept that. So that goes the same if you have UPCs, you have to make sure that all the search stacks are UPCs and EIN, if you're using EIN. So if you try to mix it, you'll get an error if you try to upload the batch.

Franz: So leading zeros must be included for accurate results. Excel automatically removes the leading zeros. So you have to put them back in manually. And the way to do that is actually easy. In your Excel spreadsheet highlight the column with the search terms, then click the number group and choose custom and the category list. In the type box type in the number of zeros that the ASIN EIN or UPC should have with the leading zero. So if you have a 12 digit number that should have 13 with a leading zero, just type in 13 zeroes. So MarketScout batch file format accepts 10 characters for ASIN, 12 characters for UPC, and 13 characters for EIN. Once done, you can save your file as a CSV, and then you can upload the file to MarketScout.

Franz: So with MarketScout, you get access to competitive data. So you see what the lowest price is so you know if it's worth it or not to stock the item. You see the rank and category because it's no use to buy a bunch of inventory if you're not approved for that category. MarketScout also offers FBA market intelligence quickly, painlessly, and you can look up huge batches of UPCs, EINs, or ASINs at a time.

Franz: So in seconds, as Jen showed you earlier, MarketScout generates a report that gives you tons of actionable data. This is what the report looks like. So on the first column, you get the search text. So depending on what you use, so if you use a UPC, that's what you're going to get on the first column. But in this example, we use ASIN. So we have ASIN under the search text column, and then automatically we'll look for the ASIN. So that's what's going to show up on the second column. You'll get the title of the item as it exists on Amazon. The item cost is there as is the rank, category, number of FBA sellers, whether or not all offers are considered, the fulfillment costs, whether or not Amazon sells the item, Amazon's price, the lowest price, the lowest commission, lowest margin, and lowest margin percent. And you can even export the data to CSV or Excel so you can play with the data more. So you can find that download CSV button on top beside the search bar.

Franz: So the CSV download gives you even more columns of data to play with. So you get additional price information. The CSV shows you the lowest FBA price, margin, margin impact, margin percent. And you'll also see whether or not the item is oversized. You get the shipping rate. And finally, on the last column, you see the product link. So this data is sortable in CSV or Excel format. If you have Google Sheets, you can also upload the file there. And this gives you the ability to make more advanced research questions. So that's all for viewing the CSV report. Now I'll turn you back to Jen.

Suzanne: Thank you, Franz. So you're probably wondering how much does this cost? Well, first of all, there is no monthly commitment. It's a pay as you go pricing, and it's less than a penny per item if you want to look up your ASIN, UPC or EINN. Just take note that one UPC, EIN, or ASIN look up is equivalent to one MarketScout credit. If there are no data that showed up then it will not be deducted on your credit. Credits expire one year from the date of purchase. Okay? So now we're going to go ahead and answer a few questions for you, we have questions that came in. But before we go ahead and jump into that, good news to all our participants today, or those who joined us live today, we are providing you or giving you 150 MarketScout credits, and it will be applied to your account within 24 hours. So please watch out for that. Let's go ahead if we have questions here. Let's see.

Suzanne: So one of the questions that we have here is how long can I keep the reports? So the good thing about MarketScout is that you can keep the reports into perpetuity of your account. Just keep your account active. You don't have to worry about it being purged or deleted in a specific timeframe. So yeah, just keep your account active and you should be able to keep your reports in MarketScout. Right? Next question that we have, I think Franz can take this one. Aside from live chat or email, what type of support do you offer?

Franz: Yeah, that's a good question. So our dedicated support is available by phone as well. And that's available for Monday through Friday 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM Eastern time. Our phone number is (800) 757-6840. And you can always reach us via email, it's marketscout@ecomengine.com. And you'll also find that in our chat box. In the event, you want to know more about the product, you want us to do an onboarding, you can simply send us an email request and we can schedule it for you.

Suzanne: Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Franz, and again, thank you everyone for joining us today. And we look forward to having you in our next eComEngine webinar. Have a great day, everyone. Thanks Franz.

Franz: Thanks everyone. Goodbye.

Suzanne: Bye.