Hot on the heels of the IGD Online and Digital Summit 2016, we summarize the presentation given by Profitero’s Director of Strategy and Insights EMEA Andrew Pearl and the five key areas where FMCG/CPG brands can win with Amazon.
Do some basic research on your category: one of the biggest dangers is focusing only on your products in a vacuum and not fully understanding what your competitors are doing or who the best sellers are in your category.
One thing we are seeing across many categories is the growth of ‘challenger’ brands which you may not recognise as they are not for sale in major supermarkets; instead, these brands have chosen to focus purely on Amazon. Our FastMover reports highlight the best sellers by category, as well as revealing important factors such as product rating, number of product reviews and average price, enabling you to monitor and benchmark your product’s performance every month.
| UK Grocery | UK Chocolate | UK Personal Care | UK Beauty | |
| Product Rating | 4.6 | 4.6 | 4.5 | 4.3 |
| Product Reviews | 432 | 91 | 1,026 | 562 |
| Number of Images | 5 | 3 | 5 | 5 |
| Average Price | £14.99 | £8.16 | £20.08 | £9.61 |
| Prime Eligibility | 83% | 78% | 83% | 68% |
| Subscribe & Save | 52% | 17% | 32% | 24% |
Source: Profitero Amazon FastMovers, July 2016
Profitability is a key driver when thinking about range at Amazon and understanding item-level economics – products affectionately known as CRaP or Can‘t Realize any Profit – is increasingly important (check out our recent podcast discussion for more on this topic). These are products that are structurally unprofitable for Amazon to sell in their retail channel, therefore designing products for the online channel, and taking into account factors such as weight so you fit in with Amazon’s shipping model, is critical.
Best-in-class product titles and descriptions use the language that your shoppers are using to describe your products. But it’s equally important to ensure that your competitors aren’t beating you through sponsorship of keywords relevant to your category. We advise our customers to be achieving a minimum of 90% for branded search words so that your products appear in 90% of page 1 results. And for general keywords, 25% is an acceptable target.
To give your brand the best chance of maximizing conversion on Amazon, it’s essential that your product images are high resolution, front facing and with a white background. Make use of bullet points to call out key product features, and use A+ (enhanced) content, such as video and rich media, to build trust and confidence with your shopper. Our Q&A with content26 provides more detail on the importance of enhanced content.
Ensuring your product is available is probably the most vital area. You’ve done the hard work of creating best quality images, optimizing your titles and investing in keyword sponsorship – but if your products simply aren’t available, you’re never going to win on Amazon. The best way to do this is through through daily monitoring of your stock levels via Vendor Central, or by using automated tools such as Profitero.
To find out how your product stacks up on Amazon UK, download our special edition report which ranks the best sellers in Grocery, Chocolate, Baby, Beauty, Beer, and Spirits.