How to Use Amazon Customer Analytics to Drive Growth
Unsurprisingly in a year where physical sales were swiftly taken off the table, 2020 saw as many as 3,500 Sellers joining the Amazon ranks daily.1 These still-escalating figures mean that companies are going head-to-head with an average 1.9 million active competitors, as well as Amazon aggregators with more than an estimated $3.5 million to spend on targeted ad campaigns.,2,3 Finding competitive in-points on this platform has never mattered more — it’s also never been this difficult.
Obviously, standard companies can’t even begin to offer the money that aggregators are putting on the table, meaning that throwing funds at competitive offerings isn’t the solution on a small-Seller scale. Instead, building targeted, high-ranking campaigns with customer needs in mind is best achieved with alternatively free-to-use techniques like customer analytics that already offer everything you need to succeed, so long as you understand how to use it.
Unfortunately, despite the introduction of an insights program in 2018 and a brand analytics tool in 2019, Amazon’s customer analytics have long been famed for sparse offerings, forcing most Sellers to resort to more holistic third-party approaches that shine a light on true customer understanding. In this article, we’re going to consider how this more inclusive approach can provide the competitive in-points you’ve been missing, and also the best ways to feel those benefits without falling on the wrong side of often stringent Amazon data usage stipulations.
Suggested reading: Mastering Amazon Brand Analytics… Find out more about how to fully leverage customer analytics for unparalleled Seller growth.
What can you do with customer analytics?
Broadly speaking, customer analytics make it possible to more easily understand and target effective marketing decisions based on even shifting consumer behaviors and preferences. For Amazon Sellers listed directly alongside competitors, profitable analytics-led targeting especially comes back to two crucial focuses — customer lifetime value (CLV) and customer acquisition cost (CAC), as well as the ratio metrics necessary to make sure that Amazon spending across the two ultimately adds up. In other words, it is wise to learn how to use CLV to grow your Amazon business as the metrics holds unlimited potential when it comes to targeting the right customers at the right time through advertising.
Focusing on the monetary benefits of CLV, as well as the areas of marketing that can get those repeat consumers looking your way in the first place (i.e. discounted prices offered through Amazon), can especially help to provide a competitive advantage when so many other Amazon Sellers are concerned with the here-and-now. Deep diving into an introduction to CLV and CAC, plus the CLV:CAC ratio is particularly worthwhile for ensuring analytics that enable you to embark on a wide range of use cases, including —
- Branding ads backed by justifiable investments
- Boosted organic rankings thanks to consumer-led ads
- Forecastable cash flows for future marketing drives
- Building a brand on Amazon that has a strong presence
- Faster customer acquisitions with guaranteed profitability in accordance with risk profile and CLV:CAC-led advertising cost of sales (ACoS)
Using customer analytics to inform strategy
Even CLV:CAC ratios fail to offer one-size solutions unless Sellers also consider the different ways in which these analytics can ultimately inform selling and marketing strategies. This can most easily be broken down into two subsections that focus on very different aspects of strategy overall, which are —
1. Business strategy
At a macro level, analytics like CLV:CAC ratios make it possible to ensure decent business strategies devised off the back of informed spending and long-lasting value that more easily enables businesses otherwise penned in on all sides to —
Champion the right new products:
By helping to identify best-selling ‘hero’ ASINs at a glance, customer analytics that more easily categorize and highlight where sales are happening, or even which products are gaining the most interest (aka high-potential ASINs), are clear indicators of where businesses stand to reap the full rewards of an effective CLV:CAC ratio in the first place. These insights also provide a clear indication of which new products are most worth introducing to ensure that CLV keeps you on top regardless of ever-arising competition.
Understand target audiences
By enabling a clearer understanding of what existing customers value, and how you can better tap into that focus, analytics enable the tailored targeting of the ideal audience for lasting business. Accurately calculated CLV metrics especially enable the segmentation of clients to determine individuals with the highest overall value. Furthermore, comparing these numbers with the other products in your category better enables you to target offers and promotions, incentivize loyalty, and even optimize bundling offers to further increase the value, and competitive edge, of every sale made.
2. Tactical strategy
Effective customer analytics enable the development of tactical campaigns based around customer profiles rather than products themselves can significantly help to provide a much-needed Sellers’ edge, especially when adjusted to cover every corner of Amazon marketing as follows —
- PPC: Audience understanding enables the tailoring of PPC keywords and bids towards consumer needs. Segmenting customers according to lifetime value especially makes it possible to understand how best to appeal to the most viable prospects through both the right keywords and the championing of high-performing products.
- Organic: Due to Amazon’s A9 algorithm, appearance in organic search is determined by a range of factors including relevance, popularity, and competitiveness. All of this is made possible by utilizing customer analytics to create A+ content using consumer-relevant key terminology, a focus on hero ASINs, and FAQ modules among other techniques.
- DSP: Amazon’s demand-side platform (DSP) makes it possible to buy targeted ads for increased reach both on and off Amazon. The fact that audience insights are available with DSP especially highlights the need for consumer-led optimizations here, both concerning new-to-brand and existing consumers. DSP effectiveness largely comes back to understanding how CLV relates to ASINs, as well as keyword strategies that ensure appearance in all relevant searches to increase your opportunities of appealing to, and impressing, already interested consumers.
The components of effective customer analytics
While Amazon is trialing beta versions of customer engagement tools including live streams and SnS (simple notification service), often limited Amazon data sets can prevent the effective dissemination of analytics overall. With this in mind, the effective use of customer analytics here depends on well-targeted, planned campaigns that take into account crucial components of more efficient analytics handling, such as —
- Enhanced analytics capabilities: Amazon-native analytics often stand in the way of effective CLV metrics due to non-existent CLV growth tools and a focus on the CAC side of the equation. Third-party analytics solutions that maximize the value of Amazon data alongside more holistic data scopes and are therefore essential, especially with regards to increasing data integrity and directly addressing existing data limitations in mind of filling those gaps.
- CLV expertise: CLV is an imperative metric, but it can be incredibly difficult to calculate accurately, especially as long-lasting oversight is imperative to measure true value. Holistic CLV expertise that takes a long-view of analytics across consumer behaviors is therefore essential for understanding the true revelations inherent in this metric.
- Growth strategists: Growth strategists who work to understand how analytics can be used to overcome current and future challenges with the ultimate goal of expansion in mind ensure efficient, well-placed marketing outcomes for far less initial cost.
- Centralized campaign management tools: Holistic data implemented across various areas of expertise must also come together in one-source, centralized campaign management tools that make it easier to access, simplify, and understand a positive analytics lifecycle that keeps fuelling Amazon sales with each new campaign launched.
Nozzle is the key component
Data in the Amazon ecosystem can quickly get out of control, meaning that it often feels like you need expertise just to begin perceiving what customers here expect. By providing precisely that understanding of the Amazon ecosystem, our team here at Nozzle can significantly simplify an otherwise unruly analytics web to ensure applicable information that facilitates the competitive advantage you need to succeed — all from one easily accessible source that doesn’t require a degree in Amazon sales to navigate.
Our holistic approach to analytics that covers everything from customer LTV right through to geo hotspot analysis especially helps you to aggregate otherwise disparate Amazon data to make it far easier to recognize trends, make comparisons, and ultimately contextualize incoming data for better-formulated decisions moving forward. Get your free demo today to see precisely what Nozzle’s benefits have to offer for your unique Amazon sales campaigns.
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