Amazon FBA Product Research with Jon Tilley of ZonGuru - a podcast by Michael Veazey

Amazon FBA product research is becoming more and more important especially as data in the Amazon ecosystem is becoming even more developed.


Jon Tilley is the CEO and co-founder (with Adam Hudson) of ZonGuru an all-in-one software toolset to help Amazon sellers scale their business. Background
TACTICS FOR MARKET RESEARCH Problem 1: Using keywords  and data to choose product niches

And how to visualise it when you do Amazon FBA product research.As a private label seller, there are two factors in the product niche: 

The data - 50% of the solutionThe more creative skill around differentiation.
The data sideThe data is becoming more and more important especially as the Amazon ecosystem has developed

Paid searchRanking algorithms getting more and more important

The key areasExact search volume from customers. In partnership with amazon, Zonguru gets access to exact search volume. 
Actual $ from keywords - access to this data - for top 25 sellers Money from keywords
Understanding what keywords to target for your launch - there are many 1000 variations for Amazon FBA product research:Which produce the most revenue?
Find out which is the most competitive?What keywords, therefore, to focus on?

It’s a combination of:Relationship with Amazon
Revenue share and market share Reverse engineering and testing it against the algorithm

“Keywords on fire”  - type in a keyword phraseReverse lookup against ASINsData from AmazonExact search volume
competitionThe spread of market share

Based on Based on the Brand Analytics API

which listings get the biggest click %In market A Top 3 are getting top 60% of clicks  
In market B top 3 are getting only 20% of clicksDollars from keywords  tool 



ExampleEg “Back brace for men” top 3 sellers 12% - $330K/mo

“Posture corrector” - top 3 sellers 15% - $220k/moHow to define a market?
Specific metric - niche score (“Rainbow niche score”)Demand
Competition Relative investment to launch
Amount of net profitThere are 20 metrics that go into that 

The strategy is to go into a niche category - objective to rank on page 1. How would you define “too competitive”?
You could put in a phrase like “gardening tools”From a filtering perspective 

Search volume filter out<2000 search volume/mo

Anything under an average of 400 reviews (filter out very mature markets)$ from keywords

50-review markStory 
What’s your background?Before Amazon was as an account director at advertising firms, esp in the digital space. 

With Blue chip clients in London - lead “Have it your way” for Burger King. In 2014 came across the Amazon selling and brand building opportunity

Built own Amazon business which got self out of day jobAdam Hudson and Jon who founded the company both sold on Amazon 

CTO also sells on Amazon. Unique perspective - a dev team of sellers!
Within the Zonguru business, every employee is encouraged to have their own Amazon business. It flows into the software. 

Even provide zero-interest loans for stock purchase to employees!So 50% of workforce sell on Amazon. 

Jon has unique perspective - sold on Amazon since 2014 as PL seller. Believes in that philosophy and opportunity available. 

He’s pushed that through the team - they can even get loans - to start Amazon businesses. Out of the 25 staff, 50-75% are selling or going live. 

Software developers make great Amazon sellers!Jon started with Indian development proof of concept team. 

The fact they didn’t get the business case changed everything. How he came to work for Zonguru
Competition analysisRevenue share for top 3 listings - especially balanced with search volume 

Do these have an off-Amazon feed off traffic?“Listing score” tool

How well listing is optimisedPlacement of main keywords

Further episodes of Amazing FBA Amazon and ECommerce Podcast, for Amazon Private Label Sellers, Shopify, Magento or Woocommerce business owners, and other e-commerce sellers and digital entrepreneurs.

Further podcasts by Michael Veazey

Website of Michael Veazey