If your brand is pulling all the correct levers for its Amazon strategy, it can be difficult to define what efforts are driving the most growth. Relying on one or two key metrics without separating out advertising and organic, for example, can lead to a strategy that doesn’t evolve over time. By paying close attention to both organic and advertising results, brands are able to clearly see what is driving success and which strategies could use some fine-tuning. Here are five metrics Code3 Account Strategists use to tell clients a complete story about organic performance. Sales is a tried and true metric every seller on Amazon is closely monitoring. It’s obviously one of, if not the most important metric for a brand. However, sales numbers can be difficult to use for a clear picture of organic success on Amazon, since it’s influenced by advertising. To get a better idea of how your organic efforts are performing, “compare advertising sales to overarching Vendor and Seller Central sales,” said Sam Jennings, VP of Operations at Code3. “This comparison can give you a general idea of the sales coming from organic efforts.” Similar to sales, Glance Views show the number of times a PDP was viewed but can also be heavily influenced by advertising. To get a better understanding of organic performance, compare the clicks from advertising to glance views in Vendor Central and page views in Seller Central. If you’re trying to improve your glance views, optimizing your product title with strategic keywords, features and benefits can help. Best Seller Rank (BSR) is a number that compares how well your products sell against others in the category. Amazon updates these numbers hourly to account for both recent and historical sales. Some brands consider BSR as a litmus of overall sales, but the number is constantly changing and can be using data points that are a few days old. There are also a wide variety of factors that influence the BSR, and no clear way to understand what impact your organic metrics are playing on the BSR. Additionally, the BSR is no longer measured by an individual ASIN, it’s measured by the entire variation, so it’s potentially an unclear metric. For example, if a coffee product is variated with ten different sizes and ten different flavors, the BSR is an indication of how the entire family is performing, not an individual ASIN. This can skew the BSR results. While BSR is an important metric to pay attention to, Code3 Client Strategists use the number along with other metrics for an overall picture of Amazon success. Share of Voice is another important metric to pay attention to and it requires a third-party tool to measure. Share of Voice is a measurement of how often a brand appears in the SERP for any given keyword. Code3 leverages Code3Insights, a proprietary software powered by Downstream to measure Share of Voice for our clients. When utilizing this powerful tool, we have access to a number of metrics, including specific keywords and categories, for organic efforts, advertising, and blended. Code3 Client Strategists use the metrics to monitor competition and directionally understand where we rank in terms of market share. As brands optimize their content and make calculated changes, keyword tracking plays an important role in defining success. This is another metric best measured by a third-party tool. First, you’ll want to make sure that the keyword you’re monitoring is within your content either in the title or one of the first bullet points, so it can be scanned by Amazon. The keywords you’re tracking should also be attainable for your specific brand and ASIN, taking into account the Amazon A9 algorithm. A9 places a lot of importance on sales velocity, so if your ASIN is not a top seller, you should be tracking longer tail keywords with lower search volumes. These types of keywords are less competitive, and there is more opportunity to rank for them if you don’t have a significant sales velocity. Evaluating and analyzing metrics for success is an important part of any marketplace strategy and it’s critical to look at the entire picture. Measuring how successful your organic efforts are can help ensure your brand’s strategy evolves and increases market share in the future. If you could use a strategic partner to help you with your marketplace strategy and defining success, contact us today.
