Amazon Competitive Analysis with Jenna Lieber

Protect your brand, product or invention from the hazards of consumer product launching and go from idea to product to big brand. With guidance from retail product design and development experts Tracy and Tom Hazard. Get the insider secrets to put the right things in the right order with the right resources so you can out design, outsource and out profit your way to retail success.

Hey there, product launchers. Welcome back to another Office Hours. This one's with Jeff Lieber and Denna Lieber of Turnkey Product Solutions, and they're going to talk about all things Amazon.

Are you ready?

Do you have what it takes? What do you need to be prepared? So let's hear from Jeff and Jenna.

Hey guys, my name is Jenna Lieber. I work for Turnkey Product Management. Not sure if you guys have seen a couple of my last podcasts with you guys, but we have covered tons and tons of different Amazon topics for you. The reality is it's tough when you first get on Amazon. You don't really know where should I start? So doing a competitor analysis kind of hones in on what you need to start with, right? So with this competitor analysis, you're able to see where should I start, what keywords should I use, what images? So I'm kind of just going to go through a step by step on how we do it. It is incredibly simple and yeah, I'm just excited to talk with you guys about it. So like I said, I think it's incredibly valuable for everyone to do it. I really think everyone needs to. I also recommend, if you're already on Amazon, I think it's cool to do this maybe once a quarter, see if your competitors have changed, see if there's anything new going on that maybe you're not doing yet. So I'll kind of just roll through our six steps in terms of creating that competitor analysis. So step number one is going and obviously finding those competitors, right? You need to find those top five competitors, people that have the similar product to you, similar brand message. These people are your competitors. These are the people you need to be. So put that list together. Find those five or four that you feel you match up against really well, and they're the ones taking your customers, right? So find those. That's step number one. And then once you do that, you'll go ahead and complete the competitor analysis. So here's what we look at. So our first piece that we look at is looking at the sales copy. So what I mean by sales copy, that could mean the title, it could mean the product description, the bullet points, literally any piece of the sales copy. And what we look for is maybe why taglines that you can also use, look for keywords, look for anything that stands out to you as a customer and think, oh this sold me on this product. That's step number one is just completing that. It's super simple, just go ahead and all I do is copy and paste it. That is a great bullet point. Now obviously guys, do not put the exact same bullet point. Do not do that. But you can go use it as you know, your starting point, your starting block, right? This is how you're going to start it off. So after we look at the sales copy, we're also going to look at the bonus value, see if there's anything free they're giving away with their product. So an example is on prime day I was a sucker and I bought a waist trimmer like most people do. And one thing they gave away with that waist trimmer was that lotion that you can put on that will help your waist get trimmer quicker. And I was even bigger sucker and I loved the little lotion so I went and bought it on Amazon. So they cross sold to me and it was great. So that's one example of a bonus ad. Another thing that could just be bonus is a warranty, a guarantee that's valuable to people. So that's also what you're going to be looking for when you're going to this competitor analysis and looking at your different competitors is seeing what are they adding that is valuable to the customer. So after you've completed that, this is my all time favorite part of this competitor analysis process. You go through and you look at the complaints people are getting on their listings. It's great. It's kind of a confidence booster. You're like, oh, that sucks that people said that about you. I don't know, it's kind of funny. Obviously we all have to deal with it. Unfortunately, it's not very fun when people are leaving some not so awesome feedback. But in that moment it's not feedback about your product. So you get to learn from it. Right? So basically what we look to do, what I do personally, I go straight to the 1 stars. I want to see what people are saying, right? What made them so upset that they gave a one star. So that's what I do, straight to the one star and I look for about three to five complaints. When you're looking at these complaints, you're thinking how can I transfer this complaint to into something I put in maybe my sales copy, maybe in my images Maybe you're in the designing process of your product and you can say, oh, I need to add something that fixes that problem that they're talking about here. So that's another example right there. But 100%, you definitely, during this process, want to look at the reviews and see what people are saying the next part. I've definitely talked about this in a couple of my other talks with you guys. But looking at those product images and those infographics, what are people using to sell on Amazon? What do those images look like? And then you're also looking at those infographics. Not only you're seeing what are they putting together for the infographic, but also what material is in that infographic, what content is in there, what things are they pointing out in that infographic. After we complete all those, our next thing is kind of the brainstorm. Because right now you're kind of in that brainstorming area, right? Because you're looking at all these things, you're getting ideas, they're flowing, and you're putting yourself in that brainstorming area. And this is a great time to just jot down different things that maybe you could do to your product, maybe different free things you can add for your customers. This is just a great time to quickly brainstorm things you can test on your page, on your product anywhere. And then after we complete that, the last step that we do is we do a Jungle Scout report. So I don't know if any of you guys are using Jungle Scout, but if you are selling on Amazon, you've got to get it. Or if you're sourcing products to sell on Amazon, you've got to get it. Because the truth is, Jungle Scout, you're able to see what people are selling products for. You're able to see their monthly revenue. You're able to see a ton. So I will show you guys what that looks like. And then also what we use it for is actually for keywords. There is a feature on the Jungle Scout Chrome extension where you can see what keywords people are targeting for that category. So this presentation I'm doing a little bit different. I'm not doing a PowerPoint. I'm honestly going to do a live competitor analysis, kind of walk you guys through what we do. So I'm going to go ahead and share my screen with you guys now. Cool. So we are now representing the client called Jenna's Jammin Slow Feeder Bowl. That's our new client. So we are completing this competitor analysis for Jenna's Jammin Slow Feeder Bowl. So this is kind of what that looks like. So this is just a quick breakdown of what it looks like. What we do is we want to make sure we save that link of that competitor. That way we can go back and look at our notes. You want to see, oh, what was I talking about there? Because I don't know about you guys, but sometimes when you're taking notes, you do kind of have to circle back around and see what you meant by that. So basically, you press this right there, it will take you right to the listing. I also like to put a screenshot of their entire listing. So that way you can see how many images do they have? What do their bullet points kind of look like, Terms and length? What does their title look like? It looks like right now they had about 700 reviews. How many questions were asked? It's just good to grab the screenshot. That way you know what competitor you're talking about. So, yes, I completed this first step just for this one. And then what we'll do is we'll move on to more competitors after this. So here are a couple of pieces of the sales copy that I grabbed from this competitor. These are things that you want to put in your sales copy, right, guys? These are things that you're like, okay, that does matter to customers. And I need to make sure I mention that. So right here, for example, talks about what the product is made out of, the type of materials it's made out of. So that's important, right? Because people care about their dogs. They want to know what their dog is eating out of. So this is a critical part to put in to your sales copy. At some point, wherever you decide to put it is up to you. But you definitely want to make sure you're mentioning that, right? Another piece of their sales copy I found incredibly valuable, was easy to use and clean. Truthfully, our dogs are kind of messy. You know, we love them. They're kind of messy. So making sure that this product is easy to clean, that makes sense. You need to include that somewhere. Maybe not in your bullet points, but maybe it should be in your infographic, right? So you're just grabbing pieces that sell a customer. You're just grabbing things that you think this sells. Me want to buy this because of this? Just really thinking that way. So another thing that this listing had their value add that I found was a 100% guarantee when purchasing this product. So they said 100% money back guarantee will be included with all slow eating bowls. The truth is, guys, if your competitors are providing A guarantee. You need to also provide that guarantee just because that could be the difference maker. Right. That could be why someone won't buy your product, but they'll buy another product. So that's another thing to add. Right there is make sure you're adding those value items and trying to match what your competitors are doing. And beat it. You want to beat what your competitors are saying. All right, so moving on to my favorite part, like I told you guys, was finding the top three to five complaints from customers from the critical reviews area. So here are the three that I found. I just grabbed three. So one thing I do is I make sure that we have those links in there. That way I can go back and obviously read the review more in depth. This is kind of a shorter version of it. Cute, but skip it unless your dog has a freakishly long tongue. So see what I mean, guys? This stuff does kind of put a smile on your face. That was really funny. This is a good thing to think about because in your sales copy, maybe you can make a joke like that. Hey, you know, this bowl is not for freakishly long tongued dogs. This is for normal tongued dogs. Something like that. You can make a joke out of it or simply just say, our bowl is not as deep as others. Just really trying to see what are people complaining about. Just trying to pick out those different things. So that's one right there. That's too deep. Obviously, food gets stuck in the spirals. Maybe you can create a video showing it doesn't get stuck in the spirals. Maybe you can create an image that's showing that, hey, it's not going to get caught in these little corners right here. It's not that hard to get it out of. And then the last one, this isn't a huge complaint, but frustrating for puppy. I. I think that would be a good bullet point, right? Frustration free zone for your puppy. It's going to challenge them. It's going to prevent bloating. But it's frustration free. So people are saying, this frustrates my dog. My dog just gets upset and flips the bowl and gets mad, making it a frustration free product. Be great, right? So that's another thing you can point out in the sales copy. Definitely. I've shown you guys this before and it still stands true today. These are great product images. So basically what you do in this step is you grab a few images that you love. I don't think there's limit to this. Right? You don't have to do one and one do as Many as you want. Because it's important. This stuff is important. And the more examples you have, the easier it is to hand to your designer and say, hey, can you make this, please? For example, right here, this dog bowl has the packaging. You guys know I love to show packaging with the main image. I think that's awesome. And then right over here to the side, we have the infographics. It's talking about the different benefits of this bowl, right? Because maybe people don't understand, why would I get my dog that bull? Well, here's why. It prevents choking and vomiting. Food, safe materials. Prevents food spillage and sliding. It's listing all of the benefits to this product. It's going to sell you if you don't understand it, you know. So the last thing, like I said, you're in brainstorming mode. One thing that I put down, I'm like, it would be really cool if there was different colors, different variations for this product. What if my dog doesn't like blue? Pretty sure dogs are color blind, but hey, maybe my dog doesn't like blue. I don't know. So it's important to have different colors, different variations. So that was one little brainstorm I put down there after completing that. And then right here, talking about the Jungle Scout report, this is what it looks like. So you're able to see right here, the average price of this item. You're able to see the revenues they're making, the reviews. They have that average star rating that they have. You're able to see it all. You're able to see the prices. So 100%, guys telling you use Jungle Scout. It's awesome. And then the last thing I want to go over from Jungle Scout is these keywords right here. So every single chrome extension with Jungle Scout does have this. I will show you guys how to get there. So basically, this can kind of kickstart your keyword research, right where you can see. Okay, a lot of people are mentioning bloat, they're mentioning bold, dog feeder, fun, interactive. These are things people are mentioning in this category. So this is a great start to your keyword research. So right now what I'm going to do is I'm honestly going to roll through a few of my competitors here that I've listed. And I'm just going to show you guys live how I look at this and how our team grabs stuff and what we think when we're grabbing them. So we'll go ahead and start with this one right here. So right now, what we're going to do is we're going to look at sales copy. This is what we're looking at for this specific one right now. Title isn't that crazy. So I don't really see that as a big sales copy thing. But when I do go down to these bullet points here, obviously not that in depth, but they do have some really good points to them. Like I said, they're not saying that much in here, but they are pointing out very important things that you should be mentioning if you're selling this product. So one that really, really sticks out to me is Veterinarian Recommended. This is huge, right? People care about that stuff. They want to know, okay, do the professionals like the dog professionals? Do they think this is a great idea? Do they think that my dog's gonna be mad at me and not like me anymore? This is good. This is something you want to include. So mentioning Veterinarian Recommended, you would want that in your bullet point. All you would do right there is just create a Google Doc or create a word doc. You just copy and paste that in there and you save it for later and say, I'm going to mention that in my bullet points. Now another thing I like here is proper portions. So this one's good because when I look at this, it doesn't look like it carries that much food. So I might wonder how much food can I actually put in there because my dog eats a lot. So this actually tells you exactly each portion size for each. So it says the large one carries four cups of kibble, the small one holds two cups, et cetera. So just really making sure that you're putting those portion sizes in there, I think that's very valuable because especially like if you have an image like this, right? Because to me it doesn't look like there's that much food in here. So 100% what you would do, copy and paste it. You definitely need to mention that that's all you're doing when you're going through this guys, is what am I seeing that would sell me on this product? So the next thing we're going to talk about is value items. This one right here, they do have a warranty, so warranty for all our products past 180 days. So truthfully what you could do, you can say, okay, my competitor, they're offering 180 day warranty. Maybe I should add a year warranty. That's better, right? That's better than 180 days. So that's something you would want to save and say, okay, maybe I can use this, maybe I can provide something similar to this. Warranty or guarantee, right? My other suggestion, you know, when I saw this, my thought was, I wonder if the word warranty or guarantee works better. What's selling better? If I were you, actually, when I'm looking at this, I would think, hmm, so they're using warranty. Maybe I should use guarantee and see if that works better. And then if it's not working too well, maybe you can do a warranty, right, where you can change it to a warranty, bullet point and split test and see, maybe one converts better than the other. So that's another thing. Maybe you can just take a quick little brainstorm note and say, okay, split test, warranty or guarantee. That's a good idea right there. Another thing I think about when I'm on this listing in particular is keyword research. That's what I'm thinking. Just because of their title here, it looks like they're really trying to get all those keywords in there. So what I would do is I would open maybe a spreadsheet right here and just start copying pasting different keywords that I'm finding. So right here I would probably grab pet, fun, feeder, dog bowl, slow feeder, Maybe I'd grab slow feed, dog bowl, bloat, stop, dog bowl, anything like that. That's a great idea. Just start putting those keywords together. That's going to help you in the long run. But that's another thing to think about when you're rolling through these, right? Is grab some keywords and store them. Just create a simple list for yourself. Make it easy for yourself when that time comes. So my big takeaway for this one is that warranty. That's a good value item. So next we'll go ahead, we're going to move on to customer reviews. What you would do, it's simple. So you're on their listing right now. What you do is you go ahead and click their customer reviews. You see that they have 5%, one star, click that. And honestly, you just kind of roll through these reviews and see what people are saying. So looks like Aunt B here, this was not a win for her cat. So, you know, big red flag there. So maybe you think about it like this. Not a win for a cat in my sales copy, maybe I should mention that it's for cats. Or if it's not for cats, you don't want to lie, right? You want to make sure you're portraying the proper message. So if it's just for dogs, you might want to put in, hey, Disclaimer, not good for cats. But also maybe you're in the product development stage where maybe you want to make sure that you have both options, right? Maybe you wanted one for a dog and one for a cat. So that's one right there that you can save and say, okay, people are talking about cats. People did buy this for a cat. I want to make sure it's clear if this is for a cat or if it's not for a cat. So that's one thing right there. Let's see here. All right, here's another one. Will not work with small dogs. Does yours work for a small dog? If it does, you want to point that out. This bowl works for large dogs, medium dogs, small dogs. Works for my guinea pig. I don't know, guys, list what it works for, right? You want your product to be shown in the best way possible. So be honest with your customers. If it doesn't work for small dogs, maybe create one that is just for small dogs. But, you know, just making sure you have that different variety is really important, I think. So you're seeing that right here. Will not work for small dogs. You wanna make sure that you have that in your bullet points if it does work for small dogs, right? Because maybe you'll get this customer that wasn't too happy with this one. Maybe she wants to try another one, right? All right, let's see. Let's find one more good one. I purchased this product to protect my dog. Instead, one of the non slip grips fell off and I found her chewing on it. Okay, so that's a bummer, right? Dogs do chew on things. We can't control that, right? But maybe in your bullet points or maybe in an infographic, I guess you could talk about those slip grips and you can say super tight or maybe like airtight slip grips that won't fall off when your dog's pushing the vole. You can use that negative here that you're finding on a competitor and use it to help yourself down the road. So that's a good one right there. I think we're all set with those. But basically what I'm trying to tell you guys is really take your time looking at customer reviews because you can really find a lot of interesting things. So things that maybe you didn't think of points that you want to make in your sales copy, you can find a lot of that when you're looking at complaints from customers. And even some people, I know, some people have mentioned, oh, should I look at the positive reviews? And I definitely think so you know, what was their positive experience with this product? And you can even use some taglines from there, like Life Changing Dog Bowl. It's really what are people saying about a similar product? You can 100% use that as well. So the last bit I want to talk about is infographics. And I felt that this dog bowl company did an amazing job. So I really, really wanted to talk to you guys about it. So right here, this is their main image. And I definitely talked about this in one of my talks with you guys. But one thing for sure is you need to have that white background for your main image. They are technically meeting that requirement with this because yes, there is a very cute dog here, but also it is a white background. Technically this is a white background and the product is right here. If you can make something like this happen with your product, I would 100% recommend it. This definitely catches someone's eye, especially when you have all of those bowls listed. Maybe this one will really stick out to someone because they're seeing a really cute dog next to it. So let's just roll through their images and chat about it a little bit. What I recommend is if you really like an image, take a screenshot of it and create a full document of images that you like. That way, when it's time for your designer to take product images, you're set. You already know what images you want. He doesn't even need to brainstorm it. You can just say, here you go, please, please, please make this one, make it our own, create this infographic, et cetera. If you already have that all together, it makes it way easier down the line when you're ready for that product image start. So right here, this is a good one. We were actually just talking about this, right? Where people obviously really care about this non slip rubber feet situation with these bowls. So you definitely want to point that out. I really like how they did it. They mentioned how many are on the bowl, they mention where they are. They zoom into the picture. I mean, there's no question. These non slip rubber feet, they are on this product. They have made that very, very, very clear. They are basically telling you, your dog will not be pushing this bowl. So it sells you. You see these features when you're looking at something like this. So the next thing, I love this one. This is an infographic right here. This is amazing. So right now Amazon is getting very tight with bullet points with keywords. I know a lot of people are getting in trouble mentioning certain words and certain categories. You want to make sure that you're able to talk about the benefits, right? So maybe you don't have room in your bullet points or anything like that, but you can put it in an infographic, right? I loved this one. Mealtime is fun and challenging. Prevents choking, easy to use and clean, bite resistant. Slow down eating time. It's listing all the benefits of the product. This alone sells you guys. This is telling you, this is why you want our product. It's going to make your meal times way more fun and challenging. So creating something like this, obviously do not, like I said, the same thing with bullet points, guys, same thing goes here. Do not recreate this infographic to be exactly like your competitor. It's okay if you use similar benefits, similar idea, but you want it to be your own. You want it to look like it has your company stamp on it. So this is a really good example of an infographic. And then right here. So in the complaints, like we were saying, it seemed like there was for this product in particular, seemed like there was a big discrepancy in terms of what size dogs could eat at of these bowls. And this one is showing you right now three very different sized dogs. So it looks like right here, this is maybe, I don't know, medium sized dog. I'm not a dog expert. Anyway, this right here, we got about a medium sized dog eating out of the bowl. It's showing you that this size dog can eat out of this bowl, right? So now an owner of a dog similar size to this knows, okay, my dog can eat out of this bowl. I can buy this bowl for my dog. And then right here, this image says a couple things to me. Obviously a big dog can eat out of this bowl, but also a child is able to feed their dog. Simple things like that that maybe you don't think about, but they really could sell a customer. Maybe someone is concerned about their child using the bowl. Can my child still complete their daily chore of feeding the dog? You don't know what people are thinking about. So I thought this was a really great idea to show the side of the dog and involve a child. Your child can still feed the dog. Don't worry about it, they've got it. And then the last one right here, I'm pretty sure this is a puppy. Could be wrong, but it looks like a puppy. And to me that kind of shows a puppy's able to handle it. It will challenge them, but they are able to handle it. Like I said, very easy stuff right here, I would just screenshot every single one of these pictures, save it in a document, and then send it to your graphic designer and say, hey, can you help me create something similar for my brand? It's super easy and just a great way to start brainstorming after you complete all those steps through all those competitors. And obviously you want to complete all of those different things for every single competitor. Just with time and everything. I felt this was probably better to roll three different listings with you guys, but definitely complete all of that. So complete the sales copy part, the value part, the customer reviews. You want to complete the infographic part. You want to complete all of that for every single competitor. But this was just for an example. So as promised, I'm also going to show you that Jungle Scout tool that we use. So we're just going to go with this keyword phrase here. We'll search that on Amazon. And then it just pulls up what people will find when they search this. But what you do is after you've signed up for Jungle Scout and everything, you go ahead and click JS right up here in the right hand corner. That's your Chrome extension. You click that and it pulls up all that data that I showed you in my initial example. So what you'll be seeing is their revenue. You'll see their reviews, you're gonna see their rating. This is good to know. I mean, I think actually the most valuable part here is obviously you can see what the potential is for this type of a product, right? You can see the revenue potential. But I also really like knowing what reviews you're up against. How many reviews do I need to compete with these people? Is kind of my thought. This one, for example, I think this was the first bull that we went through. They have 8,000 reviews. So that's a tough one. But, you know, going into it, hey, they have 8,000. This one has 315. This one down here has 32. You really have a better idea as to what reviews you're up against. And then the last part about it is looking at those keywords, like I mentioned. So all you do is if you have this open, you guys see this little cloud right here in the bottom right of the Jungle Scout art? You go ahead and click this, and it says associated keywords, and boom. These are your keywords, guys. Copy these down. Copy these down. As soon as they come up, screenshot them so they're saved. These are the big keywords you need to make sure are in your sales copy, because everyone else is using them. They must be working, right? So you're Saying that Feeder was used six times, Interactive was used, Pet stop everything. So you're seeing what different keywords are being used. So that's kind of how we do our competitor analysis and just really help you guys brainstorm and it gives you your first start, I guess, when you're heading on to Amazon. So that's my presentation. If you guys have any questions or you need any advice in terms of brainstorming for stuff like this, definitely reach out to me. It's jennatern key productmanagement.com. i'll be happy to help you guys. Yeah, so, I mean, is there any questions or anything like that I can help you guys with?

Hey, Jenna, it's Tracy.

Hi, Tracy.

That was so cool. I did not know about that cloud thing. I used Jungle Scout all the time and I did not know about that cloud thing. How did I miss that all this time? I skip all their emails with their tutorials and their upgrades, and I've been.

A lot of emails that I didn't.

Pay attention because I'm not a daily user.

I use it for pre research.

I do early research, but that is really useful.

Yeah, it's awesome. Yeah, I think we accidentally found it. I don't even think it was in an email. I think we're like, what's this cloud thing? So, yeah, I mean, awesome.

Good for you. You just gave us a huge hack tip.

It's amazing. I would really recommend it. And if you're ever just stumped on keywords, you're seeing what other people are using. So it's really cool. Definitely.

That's really great. And guys, if you didn't realize it, but I just put a link. Jenna and Jeff Lieber, who is the founder of Turnkey Product Management, are featured in my Ink column today. So the article just went live while you were speaking and I dropped the link in into the post on Facebook. So, yeah, super cool. And of course, if you're watching this in the recording on Product Launch Hazards, it'll be in the blog post and there'll be a full link to the article. And the article is usually posted eventually in Product Launch Hazards a couple of weeks after it goes live on the column. So it'll be in both places eventually. So anyway, they are rock stars, as you have already gauged from this presentation. First off, I did not know that.

Slow food for Dogs was a thing.

Slow food for people. It's a huge thing. I mean, there are books and there are. But I did not realize we needed.

To do that to our dogs too. You know, I didn't either. I always use this. This is my guinea pig. It really is. But I think it's because I just love looking at dogs. Truthfully, people do get really creative with these product images, so that's why I really love using them as an example.

Yeah, they're really pretty. Like, that's a really pretty dish.

Definitely.

I totally get that. Anyway, thanks so much for being on today. I really appreciate it. And you are our first live streamer.

First live streamer.

The first live streamer of it. We're going to be doing that pretty much as often as we can, all the time, if possible. Hopefully every one of our experts is going to be tech savvy enough to be able to handle this.

And we'll be on live.

So, guys, check it out. Make sure you follow us on Has Design's Facebook page. And if you follow Has Design on Facebook, then you'll be notified every time we go live. Every time every expert goes live. Be sure to check out Jenna's profile and Jeff's profile in Product Launch Hazards because you can connect to them through there. And you can see all of their previous videos because they've done quite a few and they are so educational. I learned something new every time and that's why I wrote the article, because.

I was like, this stuff is old. No one knows this stuff. So if you want to learn how to launch on Amazon faster, that's the title.

So anyway, thanks so much, Jenna. We appreciate it.

Of course. Of course.

Thank you for joining us on this episode of Product Launch Hazards. To get the most out of your membership, visit productlaunchhazards.com to join the Expert Office Hours Live and ask us your burning questions. Check out the resource library for document templates and guides and get exclusive articles and shares each day. Don't forget, you can always book a private consult with any expert so you can out design, outsource and out profit your way to product launch success.