Amazon Search Volume Data: The Key to Product Research

Product research is everything for Amazon FBA success. But many competitors, gurus, and “experts” neglect using Amazon search volume data despite its incredible impact. Why?

No matter where you’re at in your FBA journey, conducting intensive product and market research is critical to your success. 

With each stage of the Amazon selling process, the key performance indicators (KPIs) you rely upon will change, as each phase presents unique challenges. Knowing which data points to observe and consider during any decision-making process plays a significant role in your ultimate success or failure, especially for FBA beginners.

For most sellers, search volume data doesn’t enter the equation for product research until you’re building an SEO-friendly listing or exploring pay-per-click (PPC) advertising opportunities.

But waiting until after you’ve found a product to start paying attention to search volume data may be a major mistake!

How does search volume play such an important role in the decision-making process? Easy. It’s a significant indicator of one of the most fundamental aspects of any business.

Search volume represents demand.

Outside of Amazon, businesses invest an abundance of time and money into research for demand validation.

What are people looking for? Where are they going for these items? How much inventory should we have in stock? What are interested customers willing to pay? Can I expect steady sales all year long?

With the right research tools, sellers can not only answer all of those questions but can actually reverse engineer product ideas based on years of exhaustive market data. Every metric tells a unique story, and search volume estimates tell the story of demand.

We can safely say this due to the nature of Amazon being a search engine solely for commercial purposes. Others may recommend utilizing Google search volume data for research, but there’s a huge part of the equation you’d be missing out on by not using search volume from Amazon.

Searches on Amazon are made with the intent to buy

Check out your recent search history on Google. How many of those searches were made with the intent of buying something? Chances are, not many. On the other end, it wouldn’t make much sense to search for something on Amazon without some level of interest in buying something.

So why make a business decision based on searches made with no intent to buy?

Outside of Amazon, Google Keyword Planner and AdWords are incredible tools for seeing what’s generating buzz. From that, you can increase your visibility through PPC advertising outside of Amazon. But Amazon and Google serve two entirely different purposes as search engines. 

Google organizes information and makes it universally accessible. Amazon is much more focused on commerce and making transactions as frictionless as possible for sellers and buyers.

Utilizing search volume data for Amazon instead of Google eliminates the guesswork of buyer intent. As a result, you can focus on the level of interest in your market directly from your audience.

Where can I find Amazon search volume?

Viral Launch’s search volume estimates (available with any plan with access to Keyword Research) display search volume history ranging back years to keep an eye on product seasonality.

Every product is bound to have peaks and valleys in sales. But not paying attention to seasonality is an all-too-common rookie mistake.

For example, let’s take a look at this chart for the search volume history of “kettlebell.” If you were to have looked at search volume estimates in April or May of 2020, you might believe you’ve hit a grand slam product idea.

From this graph displaying years of search volume data, we can reasonably conclude traffic for kettlebells skyrocketed as gyms closed. As a result of COVID-19, gym rats worked out more at home.

As more people receive their home workout gear and gyms re-open, searches have seen a downtick in the previous two months and will likely continue regressing to the norm. While “kettlebell” receives a significant chunk of searches, it’s a far cry from the peak outlier demand in the months after gyms started closing due to COVID-19.

Current search volume provides a zoomed-in snapshot of the moment, and historical search volume data delivers a more complete picture. Using historical search volume data allows us to increase the sample size we’re drawing from for more accurate data.

Use search volume estimates to find and validate your niche.

As more and more household brands flock to Amazon and top-selling third-party sellers continue to mature, competing with dominant products is increasingly difficult due to saturation.

By no means does this mean that highly profitable products aren’t out there, it just means the strategy for finding them has been updated to fit the current landscape of Amazon as it continues to mature as an e-commerce giant. And for aspiring sellers, it only intensifies the need for astute strategies and well-informed research.

Because of that, we recommend avoiding the oversaturated, uber-competitive markets that are difficult to compete within. While not impossible to succeed in a saturated market, more barriers to entry represent additional risk.

You can find our comprehensive deep dive into our recommended strategies for finding niches and performing product research in today’s FBA climate here.

In a nutshell, finding niches is beneficial to sellers because they have an increased likelihood of success and an opportunity to own a segment of the market as both Amazon and your brand grow.

With this strategy, you’ll want to avoid overly crowded markets while also making sure you have an audience. With Keyword Research, you can quickly ensure this by utilizing the Estimated Search Volume filter and setting your search parameters.

Utilizing the Estimated Search Volume filter in Product Discovery’s Keyword Search is an excellent way to hunt for niches.

Once you’ve narrowed down your filters to match your goals, just click Show Keywords, and you’ll be provided with a sortable list that includes estimated search volume as well as data including the average price, sales, reviews, and revenue in that keyword market. Those on annual plans will also see a Product Idea Score. This score incorporates multiple metrics into one score on a 1–5 scale for quick and easy validation.

Using your search parameters, you’ll see a full list of keywords on Amazon that meet your criteria. This allows you to evaluate some of the most important elements of product research at once. 

As you sift through the results, be sure to use market research tools such as Market Intelligence to further validate product ideas with data, estimates, and insights.

Use this powerful data to your advantage

Don’t make the mistake of overlooking search volume data in your product hunt! Without tracking current and historical search volume for a product’s seed keyword, you’re vulnerable to critical oversights in your research.

At Viral Launch, we believe the most-informed decision is the best decision. Having reliable and accurate search volume estimates in your arsenal is an essential element of making the most informed decision possible.

Don’t miss out on the valuable insights from Amazon search volume estimates! Add Keyword Research to your research plan for reliable search volume estimates and an edge over the competition!

Why Not to Use Search Volume to Determine Giveaway Units (Follow the Data Ep. 27)

Why Not Use Search Volume to Determine Giveaway Units (Follow the Data Ep. 27)

When you’re running a launch, you need to match the daily sales of your top competitors. But how do you determine how many units to give away? Some sellers look at search volume. But this episode, we’re going to let you in on a secret: using search volume to estimate the number of giveaway units needed to drive keyword ranking is an extremely flawed method.

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Follow the Data Show Notes

Podcast Transcript

CAMERON YODER:
Keywords are extremely important when it comes to building a successful Amazon business.

CASEY GAUSS:
This week we’re going to dispel a new but ever-growing myth that you can use search volume to determine the correct number of units to use when running promotions to drive keyword ranking or estimating the number of units customers are selling through a particular keyword. I’m Casey Gauss.

CAMERON YODER:
And I’m Cameron Yoder, your hosts for Follow the Data: Your Journey to Amazon FBA Success. In this show we leverage the data that we’ve accumulated at Viral Launch from over 30,000 product launches and our experience working with 8,000 brands to help you understand the big picture when it comes to Amazon and, more importantly, the best practices for success as an Amazon seller. This episode is an in-depth look at one really important aspect of product promotions, number of units for a giveaway. We’ll make the case for why using search volume specifically is mathematically flawed and talk you through current best practices based on what has worked for our clients specifically.

CASEY GAUSS:
A significant number of sellers are running promotions and giving far too many units in their promotions. When asked, many cite their keyword tool as a source of the suggestion and, as a result, they’re wasting hundreds to thousands of dollars in extra inventory.

CAMERON YODER:
Let’s jump in. So we’re back from Vegas. It’s been – it was a good trip.

CASEY GAUSS:
It was a good trip, and we are not in between some bunk beds recording on a mobile mic, and hopefully, I can guarantee this, but much better analogies will be coming your way than the half a piece of bread.

CAMERON YODER:
Listen, if you haven’t yet, go back to the previous episode right now, go to about six minutes and 15 seconds. I remember it specifically. It was hilarious. Just go listen to Casey’s analogy of bread, and you’ll be blown away.

CASEY GAUSS:
Yeah, analogies can be very powerful, but sometimes a little tricky. And if you don’t get them right, then it’s just, it’s embarrassing.

CAMERON YODER:
Casey, what did you think of Vegas, just really briefly? I just want to get your opinion. What do you think of Vegas, the trip and the conferences?

CASEY GAUSS:
Yeah, overall I mean conferences like – one reason we love going to conferences and bringing additional people, you know, we usually try to bring five people including Cam and I, is it’s really great for other people on the team just to hear the feedback that we get. You know, so many people come up to us excited about what Viral Launch has done, you know, for them and for their business. And so I love seeing that feedback in person. It’s so much different getting it in person than, you know, over email. And then you also just get a lot of really good candid feedback. You know, unfortunately I was thinking back. I feel like we didn’t get enough candid feedback on Keyword Research. So if you guys have that, we would love to hear it. But anyways, yeah, went really well, very exhausting. If you’ve ever been to a conference in general there’s very little sleep involved, especially if you have obligations back home or, you know, in the office or whatever. But yeah, what about you, Cam?

CAMERON YODER:
Yeah, no, I think you hit it on the head. Really it’s just so good to go, and we said this last week, but to go and to meet everyone, just put a face to a name, really I would encourage you if you ever see us in public or at a conference, just say hey. It’s always good to talk to everyone here, and again, to put a face to a name and to hear what you guys are going through and what advice you want or need and just say hey. So yeah, if you see us at a conference or just in general, feel absolutely free to say hey.

All right. So anyway, getting back to the podcast episode, we’re touching on search volume and why not to use search volume to determine the amount of units that you need to give away for something like a launch or a promotion. Casey, what do you think?

CASEY GAUSS:
Yeah, and honestly, so taking it a step further back, I mean a lot of people, the real question – so to be honest the real question is not what is search volume for this keyword; it’s what is sales volume for this keyword? You know, again, like the main driver of rank, which is where a ton of organic sales traffic is coming from, is coming from keywords. And so the question – and how well you rank for those keywords. And so the question is not how many people ran a search for this, or how many times was this keyword searched, but how many sales actually came to this keyword? If there were a trillion searches for omega-3 but there were 10 sales that came through that keyword, then that would not be a good keyword. It would look good because there’s high search volume, but what you really need to understand is what is the sales volume? This will inform your strategy around what keywords are most important to rank for because you want to be where the sales are, not necessarily where the searches are, and then further so if I want to drive ranking for this keyword, then how many units do I need to give away? Again, it does not matter how many people are searching for your product. It is not number of sessions that is driving your ranking. It’s the number of sales that are driving your ranking.

And so, again, you should really – the real question is sales volume. We don’t have sales volume, so as a proxy for that we’re using search volume. But because now you kind of understand it is not – it’s sales volume that you do want, you can’t use search volume in a number of ways. And so the main thing that we’re talking about here, primarily because we help with product promotions and driving keyword ranking is that we see so many people using search volume as a way to estimate number of units to give in a product promotion or, you know, drive external traffic, whatever, to drive keyword ranking. And we see a lot of people wasting, you know, thousands of dollars by doing this. We just really want to kind of dispel the myth, right? Like we are a company that has a ton of data, and we love using that data to help you make better decisions. And so that’s – I mean Follow the Data. That’s the name of the podcast, and that’s why we’re here.

CAMERON YODER:
That’s what we even see – so just to iterate that again, it’s really important for listeners to understand that it’s not search volume. Again, you need to base these numbers that’s something like a giveaway number, off of sales, sales that are attributing to keyword ranking. And even in some cases people are using different tools that are even just using search estimations, right, estimation volume, not even sales estimation but search estimation. In that case, again, what we’re seeing is a lot of people giving away more units than they should or way more units than they need to to actually gain rank. And so we want to help. We want to help the people that are listening and people that are planning for promotions in the future. We just basically want to help people with their business to make sure that they’re not losing on money that they don’t need to lose on.

CASEY GAUSS:
Yeah, so this is not directed towards a particular tool. We see people using this. There are tools that are suggesting number of units to give specifically based off of sales volume. We see that, but then we also see people using maybe even Keyword Research to look at search volume to then estimate number of units to give. And so we just want to dispel this whole concept as a whole. So we’ll jump into it if that’s okay, Cam.

CAMERON YODER:
Yep. So there are two major flaws. Major flaw number one is conversion rate. Casey, talk about conversion rate.

CASEY GAUSS:
Yeah, so I think a real insight here is we’ve had some, you know, special Amazon data that we’ve gotten. So we’re – like this is just, you know, one report, let’s say, and we’re not building anything off of this one report, but it’s definitely helped us make better decisions. And so basically what we’ve seen is, you know, we get this report that shows us what the search volume is for a particular keyword, what the click – number of clicks into a listing, number of add to carts through that keyword, and number of purchases, again, through that keyword.

So let’s take omega-3, again, as an example. We would see the number of searches, then from there the number of clicks into a listing, then from there the number of add to carts and then the number of purchases. So we are able to see what is the conversion rate from search to add to cart? What is the conversion rate from search to purchase? So looking through, you know, this list of words we were trying to figure out, okay, what is the average – what is the average conversion rate from search to purchase? Because again, we care about purchases, not searches. And the problem is that there wasn’t a good average. The range is [immense 0:08:28.8]. And so the range was literally anywhere from 50% – so that means if there was 10,000 searches there were 5,000 sales, let’s say, and all the way to .01%. So if there’s 10,000 searches –

CAMERON YODER:
And that’s conversion.

CASEY GAUSS:
Yeah, yeah, sorry.

CAMERON YODER:
50%, to .01% conversion.

CASEY GAUSS:
Yeah, conversion. So that would mean if there’s 10,000 searches there’s literally 10 sales. I mean that’s insane, right? So there’s 10,000 searches for a keyword. There’s anywhere from 5,000 actual sales to 10 sales. And so you know, no tool, nothing like that on the market is able to estimate what the conversion rate is for these particular keywords. And so, again, if you tried to take an average, let’s say you’re like okay, well I’ll just shoot for the middle, and let’s call the middle 25%. Well, so if you give away 2500 units that’s, you know, 2490 more units than you would need to give in order to match the .01% conversion, right? But if you give away 2500 units that’s only half the units you would need to give to hit the $5,000 mark or the 5,000 sales mark, the 50% conversion mark. And so it’s so hard. It’s really just a shot in the dark if you’re guessing at any particular conversion rate. So again, I could care less if there’s a trillion searches for omega-3 or, you know, any keyword if the sales volume is only, you know, 10 sales, or 100 sales, or 1000 sales. So flaw number one, conversion rate.

CAMERON YODER:
I think a simple way that – something simple that people can use to remember or to just like get this flaw into perspective is just because someone is searching for something does not mean that they’re buying it, and that goes back to keyword, keyword ranking being attributed through sales. Just because someone is searching for something does not mean they’re buying it, and that’s shown specifically with the data that we have between that 50% and .01% conversion.

CASEY GAUSS:
Yeah, and I mean just think of all the people that are doing keyword research to sell on Amazon, or like you’re just looking at prices, or you’re trying to do research and you think Amazon is a place to do it, probably not, but anyways, so what we’re seeing is, again, just a ton of searches that are not converting to purchases. So flaw number two, sales distribution. So this one is a little bit harder to conceptualize or to explain without visuals.

CAMERON YODER:
If you have a piece of paper and a pen that would help, but it’s not necessary.

CASEY GAUSS:
Yeah, nor am I going to be good enough at walking you through this for you to, you know, really draw it out. So we do have a blog post on this where we did try to provide some visuals to really help you understand. I’m going to try to do my best. Cam is always better at summarizing and really helping you to understand.

CAMERON YODER:
I’ll see what I can do.

CASEY GAUSS:
Yeah, let’s see what Cam can do. So anyways, flaw number two is sales distribution. So what sales distribution is referring to is what percentage of shoppers that are searching or purchasing. Let’s say you search omega-3. What percentage of the shoppers are buying the first product, what percentage are buying the second product, you know, the fifth product? What percentage are going to page 2 and then buying the top ranking product there? Like sales distribution is referring to, again, who is buying what product where and, you know, what percentage. And so if you, let’s say that 100% – this is very unlikely I would imagine – but let’s say 100%. Let’s take Instant Pot, right? So I would imagine sales distribution for Instant Pot searches are pretty high towards the top. If you see the Instant Pot then you are going to be buying, right? Same with let’s say AA batteries. If you search AA batteries you don’t need to scroll through, you know, pages of results. You probably don’t need to scroll past, you know, number three, or you know, number five, before you find out what you want because there’s not that much variation there. So you’re probably buying the first, second or third product, let’s say, that shows up in the results. But a more stylized product or a broader search, let’s say, you know, gifts for men or Valentine’s Day gifts, or Father’s Day gifts, I mean the results are much more broad. You probably don’t even have in mind exactly what you want, and so you’re probably scrolling through the results. You may hit page 2. You may scroll through to try to figure out what you want, and you may end up buying, you know, that whiskey decanter or something like that that’s, you know, number 15. Or you may end up buying this tie that’s ranking number 25. And so sales distribution for a word that has a bit more style or kind of different bundles or whatever, I would imagine sales distribution is much higher.

And so again, we are trying to figure out how many units is the sell – let’s say we want to rank in the top five for omega-3. So what we’re trying to figure out is what is the sales volume to the products ranking number one, number two, number three, number four and number five, and then we need to match that in per day sales to rank alongside them. So we’ll try to go with an example. Let’s say we want to rank in the top five. There’s 2,000 sales through this keyword, and sales distribution is 100% to the top five listings, right? So the top five listings are seeing all 2,000 of the sales coming through this keyword. And let’s say it’s evenly distributed, meaning so it’s 2,000 divided by 5, which is 400. And so each listing is seeing 400 sales. So number one, number two, number three, number four, number five, all 400 sales. And you want to be able to match them in per day sales. So basically, again, you have to hit that $400 – or sorry, 400 sales mark. But let’s say that sales are evenly distributed among the top 20 results. So position number one sees as many sales as position, you know, number 20. And so then sales are 100 per day. And so giving away – basically the giveaways will be – could be significantly different depending on what the sales distribution is, and these are very simple examples. I imagine it’s something, you know, for one keyword sales distribution for Instant Pot is 80% to position number one and then, you know, evenly distributed through – or like the next 10% is through positions two through four. So I think it becomes very, very confusing or is very complex, and every single keyword is so different. So if you’re wanting to rank position number five it’s going to require a totally different percentage of the sales from the conversion percentage from the search. So you can see the math really starts to add up, right? And so, and it’s so different depending on each keyword. Basically if you wanted to use search volume to estimate number of units to give you would have to know the conversion rate or approximate the conversion rate from search to purchase. And then depending on where you wanted to rank you would need to understand what the sales distribution from this word to position – let’s say you want to rank position between positions five and 10. You would need to know the sales distribution from that sales would be between those positions so that you can match in per day sales those competitors.

And so there’s so many approximations that really what existing tools are doing, or what most people are doing is just saying like, you know, let’s just take a percentage of search volume and say that’s how many units you need to give away per day in order to rank for this particular keyword. And what we see on the flip-side is so many people are coming to use Viral Launch to run these promotions or whatever, and they’re trying to give away sometimes, you know, five times as many units as we would expect. And if, you know, we were suggesting 100 and you’re saying you think you need to give away 500, I mean that is a significant amount of inventory that you’re giving away. And so I do think that continuing to build the best sales history is great. I think that like overkill is not the worst thing, but I do want to make sure that people are well aware of this because if you have a limited budget and you’re spending that limited budget on excess inventory and these promotions where in reality you could be targeting additional keywords, or you could be using it to ramp up your sponsored ad costs, or your AMS campaigns, or whatever, I just want to make sure that you’re spending – you are knowledgeably spending your money as efficiently and as effectively as possible.

CAMERON YODER:
Let’s see if I can – let me see if I can summarize sales distribution a little bit. All right, so it’s really important to go back to what we said at the beginning where keyword ranking is attributed through a sale, right, not a search, but a specific sale. A launch or a promotion for something like a keyword is – it’s not rocket science, right? The entire goal of a promotion like this, or of a launch, is to get you to somewhere on page 1 where you want for that search term. In this case let’s say it’s omega-3. I want to get to page 1 for omega-3. So I need to look at the sales, the sales numbers that are going on on page 1 in order to match those per day with something like a launch or a promotion. So to do that I need to see those sales numbers, those sales estimates, instead of seeing the search volume. Number one, those sales estimates aren’t really even available on certain tools like other tools, right? The search volume is. That’s not what we want. What we want are sales estimations and accurate sales estimations, right?
So let’s say I type in omega-3 into Amazon, and I see the spread, right, and on the top five are a ridiculous amount of sales. Now in order to reach that top five – again, also maybe taking into account something like your sales history, but at this time let’s just use the sales velocity or something like a launch or a promotion as a factor for getting to page 1. So you typed in omega-3, and your goal is to be in top five. So you look at the sales and you see that the average is around like – you’re going to need around 2,000 units, or maybe not 2,000 units, something like 500 units to give away. And you’re like, yikes, that’s a lot of units. I’m not a big business man in omega-3 yet, so I can’t get there. So you go down. Let’s say you look at the top 10. And so you look at the sales distribution, again, just the sales numbers spread out across the top 10. It’s going to take less, typically – it depends on the market. Again, it’s going to take – it might take less for you to get to the top 10 than it will for you to get to the top five. But again, the entire goal of a launch or a promotion is to simply match the number of sales that are going on in whichever range you’re going for. That is the idea of sales distribution being applied to something like keyword ranking. And that’s why it doesn’t work for search volume because search volume, again, it’s not – it does not involve the sales volume. And search volume cannot show you the spread of where sales are going. That’s my summary. That’s my simple summary.

CASEY GAUSS:
Well done, cam. There’s an example in the blog post where we go over, so let’s say a keyword gets – this is kind of in a little bit of an exaggerated example, but I think sometimes these, you know, exaggerated examples really help to help you understand what we’re – the point that we’re trying to get across. So let’s say a keyword gets 100,000 searches per month. The conversion rate from search to purchase is 2.5%, meaning 2,500 sales across this keyword per month. And then let’s say sales distribution, 80% go to the top five listings. That means the top five listings see 2,000 of those 2,500 sales per month, and after top five 500 sales. Let’s say you want to rank between positions six through 15, and that’s where the rest of the sales are happening, so 20% of that 2,500 is 500 sales. And so 500 sales evenly distributed among those 10 products, let’s say, means each product is really only seeing 50 units per month in sales through this keyword. So if you need to rank in position six through 10 then you only need to give away two units per day. So 100,000 searches down to two units per day, and these estimates that we’ve used are completely arbitrary but are not out of the realm of possibility. And so that just goes to quickly show you, you know, that’s 100,000 searches. We could easily show you the math where 10,000 searches you need to be giving away, you know, much, much more.

CAMERON YODER:
Your goal, pick a target, pick a target for a keyword, look at the sales numbers for that target and match it with a launch or a promotion.

CASEY GAUSS:
Yeah, so real quick we’re just going to go over how we’re estimating number of units to give. You know, in an ideal scenario we’re able to do some data science or whatever to really give some good estimates in terms of sales volume, leveraging both search volume and Market Intelligence data. But right now we’re not able to do that. We’re not aware of anybody that can realistically do that, even if maybe someone can say they do. I don’t know of anybody, but I’ve heard – recently I’ve heard some people that are like, you know, we do data science. And it’s like they have insanely terrible answers. And so I think it’s one thing to be aware of. You know, I think you should always be questioning the authenticity of something. You should always be using, you know, your best judgment, logic. You should always be testing everything because too often do we see people – and this is one reason we wanted to start this podcast – but too often we see people in a place of power, people that may have, you know, an audience for one reason or another mislead people, not necessarily out of intention, but maybe just out of, you know, ignorance, or I don’t know. And we see people, you know, we do data science so you should trust what we’re doing. And it’s like, you know, you could have the most technically amazing whatever, but if you’re getting, you know, bad results, then data science is worthless.

CAMERON YODER:
Yikes.

CASEY GAUSS:
Anyways, how are we estimating number of units to give at Viral Launch? So like we said at the top, you know, we’ve – again, this is not a plug to use Viral Launch or anything. We just, again, want you to make good decisions around running your promotions for ranking, estimating number of units that are being sold through a keyword. Again, we just want to dispel this myth.

CAMERON YODER:
This is simply what we’ve seen work directly.

CASEY GAUSS:
So 30,000 product launches later this is what we’re doing. So first obviously you have to know your main keywords. The best proxy for this is using something like Keyword Research or using some tool that has good search volume estimates so that you can see, okay, what are the most popular keywords? It’s very important to know. So many times we have someone come to us and they think, you know, I don’t have a funny example – high heels for dogs is a good keyword for high heels because their keyword tool told them that. And in reality obviously it’s not. That is a real result in a keyword tool. Anyways, so people will think, you know, this keyword blue 32-ounce insulated water bottle is a good keyword for their insulated water bottle, and in reality it’s not, and we see people so focused on ranking for it, and they’re wasting their money. So know your main keywords.

Next up, know your budget. So again, if you’re going for a high-volume keyword, again, you can use search volume as a proxy here, but if you’re going for these high-volume keywords then make sure that you have the budget to give the units away necessary to drive the sales necessary, and then just to have the inventory needed so that when you are ranking for this keyword and you’re increasing your sales you won’t run out of stock immediately after. And so if you have a smaller budget, again, everything is relative here, smaller, bigger. If you have a smaller budget compared to your market you have to go after these keywords that are appearing to get lower volume sales, and we’ll show you how to estimate that.

And yeah, so then step three is determine estimated sales volume for this select for your selected keywords or the keywords that you’re considering. So the way that we do that is we run Market Intelligence on these keywords. And so Market Intelligence is showing you the estimated sales volume for the products for every keyword that they’re ranking for, sponsored ads and so forth. So looking at sales volume for the products that are showing up for a particular keyword does not mean that the majority of the sales volume is coming through that keyword. And so one thing that we do is we like to go look at what is, you know, how many high-volume keywords are showing up for this particular product. So let’s take fish oil. Let’s say the only – let’s say there’s three high-volume keywords. Fish oil, omega-3, fish oil supplement. So what we would do is we would go, and assuming these keywords are relatively similar in volume, we would go and to be on the safe side we would look at the sales per month that we’re seeing in Market Intelligence and we would divide it by three. So if you’re seeing 1000 sales a month, then we’re guessing that you’re seeing around 33, 34 sales per day through this particular keyword. So now I know that if I want to run a promotion for seven days, then I would need to give away that 33 or 34 times 7.

And so if it’s a lower volume keyword then it’s a little bit more difficult. It’s, again, going to be your best guess, and I would rather err on the side of caution. I would rather give too many but not, you know, five times too many. So again, I would go and try to get a good feel of the landscape in terms of keywords. You should’ve done this already when you optimized your listing and when you were preparing to even sell this product because I think it’s important to understand how you’re going to drive sales before you even source a product. But again, I’m going to go get a feel for okay, there’s about 10 words that are the same volume as this. Again, the product is seeing a thousand sales a month. And so divide it by 10, and then you would just give away at that volume. So let’s say I’m going for this keyword. There’s 100 sales. We’re estimating 100 sales through this particular keyword. Divide that by 30, and so that’s basically, you know, three, four sales per day. And so I’m going to give away at the three to four sales per day to go after this particular keyword, or maybe not give away, run through external traffic, you know, however you’re running your launches, however you’re ranking products. I would go and target that number.

CAMERON YODER:
That’s good, Casey. I honestly, I just want to add, or I just want to iterate the importance of budget. Not everyone has the ability to automatically target the keyword with the highest search volume and sales volume, right? And in this case what I’ve seen work for individuals is actually to go for secondary or tertiary keywords where the targeting keywords that on average don’t have as many sales volume – as much sales volume – excuse me – or they automatically, right off the bat, they – I’ve seen people try to target – they want position one, right? I want – I’m targeting fish oil, and I want to get to position one on page 1. So let’s do it. And then they don’t have enough units to do it, and by the time they’re done with their promotions they just end up failing because they didn’t have the resources to get there in the first place. So it’s really important to recognize what you’re capable of doing. In this case I’ve seen people do really well once they recognize how many resources they have, or how much money, or how many units they have to give away for a promotion. They accept that fact, and then they go for something like, let’s use the fish oil example. Let’s say they wanted to get to page 1, or position one page 1 initially. They recognized they did not have the number of units available. So instead of going for position one they look at something like – let’s say they looked at position one, but even position one through eight, or one through – let’s just say one through six are out of their means. So then instead they look at positions seven through something like 15, and they say actually after position six the sales drop off decently, and while I want to gain as many sales as possible, I’m not capable of launching into positions one through six right now. So I’m actually just going to target – I’m going to bite the bullet for them. Maybe it’s their pride or something. I’m going to bite the bullet. I’m going to go for positions seven through 12 or something like that. So then they look at positions seven through 12. They look at the sales for – the sales estimates – again for those products in those positions, and they match those over a promotion time, something like seven days, right? And in that they get to page 1. They don’t – they did not give away more than they were able to give, and they got to page 1. And after that, if they stay there organically, if they’re able to continuously maintain rank, then I’ve seen people specifically do this, they get to position something like seven to 12 and they maintain that position and just organically, as they stay there, they move up the ranks because they’ve optimize their product well enough.

Bottom line, know your main keywords. Pick the right ones to target. Number two, determine your budget. Determine what you’re capable of doing, and determine what you want to do and if your budget and what you want to do align. And if not, then you might have to take it a step down. And number three, determine the monthly sales volume for that selected keyword and match it over something like a seven- to 12-day period of time.

The takeaway for today is base your projection for giveaway units on sales volume, not search volume. You can apply some of these techniques to your own promotions. No matter what traffic source you’re using, something like discounted promotions, or Amazon sponsored ads or Facebook promotions, in order to reach page 1 for your targeted keyword you’re going to need to match or exceed the average number of sales for that specific keyword that you want to target. Basing your estimates on something like search volume could honestly cost you a lot of money. I’ve personally seen it happen. Our team sees it happen, and we don’t want that to happen to you guys. Sales volume, not search volume.

Well hey, everybody, that is all for this week. Thank you again so much for joining us here on Follow the Data. For more insights and reliable information on how to succeed on Amazon, subscribe to the podcast and check us out on YouTube. I have a new walk-through up for Keyword Research on our channel. So if you want to check it out just search Viral Launch on YouTube. Go to our page, look for my face and the video titled, “How to use Keyword Research.” We’ll also link to the video in our show notes. Again, we’re just coming off of a couple conferences. We’re actually gearing up to go to a couple more over the next couple weeks, and we had such a good time meeting some of you, some of you listeners. So thank you. Thank you all so much. Feedback is really important to us, so if you’re listening on Apple Podcasts feel absolutely free to leave us a review and/or a rating. If you know of a fellow seller who is using suggestions from their keyword tool to determine how many units to give in their launches, please send them our way. Send them to this podcast. We want to be a resource for sellers and the information source in this space, trusted information source. So please tell your friends, spread the word and share the show.
So thank you again so much for listening, and as always, if you want to be featured on the show, have an Amazon-related question or an idea for an episode, feel free to leave us a voicemail. Our number is 317-721-6590. Don’t feel intimidated at all to call in. Really, we want to hear your voice. It will be a voicemail that pops up so you won’t have to talk to anybody directly. You’ll be able to just leave your opinion or leave a question. I feel like after talking to people at these conferences I recognize that maybe they were – or people listening are intimidated by calling in. So please call in. Feel free. Don’t be intimidated. We’d love to hear from you. Again, it’s 317-721-6590. So until next time, remember, the data is out there.

Amazon Giveaway: How to Determine Giveaway Units

Using search volume to determine the number of Amazon giveaway units needed to drive keyword ranking is an extremely flawed method.

A significant number of sellers are running promotions and giving away far too many units in promotions. When asked how they are determining the number of units they are giving away, many sellers site their keyword tool. As a result of these bloated suggestions, countless sellers are wasting thousands of dollars in extra inventory and advertising spend.

In this post, I’ll show you what’s wrong with using search volume. And then I’ll walk you through the current best strategies for determining the right number of units for a giveaway. After running over 30,000 product launches, we’ve learned a thing or two about what it takes to drive ranking, including how to best estimate number of giveaway units.

Two Major Flaws In Using Keyword Volume To Estimate Giveaway Units

Flaw #1: Conversion Rate

Remember that sales volume, not search volume, is the important metric for keyword ranking. If there are a hundred-zillion searches per month for a product but only 10 sales, you only need to drive enough sales to compete with those 10 purchases.  

Conversion rate from search to purchase can be drastic. We have access to some insider, Amazon data, and what it shows is that for some keywords, the percentage of searches that result in a sale can be as high as 50% and as low as 0.01%.

Talk about a drastic difference! That means if a keyword gets 10,000 searches per month, there could be anywhere from 5,000 sales to 10 sales.

There’s no way around this huge variation in conversion rate. What if you took an average? Let’s call the middle a 25% conversion rate. That would mean 25% of 10,000 searches are sales. So monthly sales would be 2,500. But 2,500 giveaway units isn’t going to do much if the keyword is actually converting at 50%. That would mean sales were actually 5,000.

On the other hand, it would be extremely excessive to give 2,500 units if the conversion rate was only 0.01%. In that case, you would have only needed 10 sales. But instead you threw away inventory.

As you can see, without an understanding of conversion rate, estimating Amazon giveaway units using search volume is very misleading.

Flaw #2: Sales Distribution

The second major flaw in determining number of giveaway units from search volume is the distribution of sales across search results. Sales distribution can be summed up with this simple question: what percentage of shoppers who run a search, purchase the #1 ranking product? What about the #5 ranking product? The #15?

If 100% of shoppers who search a keyword end up purchasing the #1 ranking product, sales distribution would be low. Actually, in the case of 100%, the distribution would be 0.

If 10% of customers purchased the #1 ranking product, another 10% purchased the #2 ranking product, and so on, the distribution would be higher and would look like this.

So what is the likelihood that sales distribution is consistent for most keyword searches on Amazon?

If you search, “AA batteries,” you don’t have to scroll very far before you find what you’re looking for. The products are all generally the same with minimal difference other than price and quantity.

Conversely, when shopping for, “father’s day gift” or “baby bandana bib,” style and preference are important considerations for shoppers. Prospective customers are much more likely to browse the results, ultimately purchasing the style, bundle, or color they like most.

Now that you understand what sales distribution is and how it can vary wildly, you can begin to see the second flaw in using search volume to estimate number of Amazon giveaway units. Keyword tools do not consider sales distribution. In fact, they don’t have any information about sales distribution at all.

And that’s a problem for you as you determine the optimal number of giveaway units for your launch. Sales distribution plays a critical role in the number of sales your product needs to outrank the competition.

For example, let’s say 80% of the sales for a keyword search are split between the top 5 products. If your goal is just to land in the top 15, then you don’t actually need to compete with those top 5 products. You only need to match the other 20% of the sales for that keyword.

If you did want to land in the top 5 for that keyword, you would need to match the sales of those top 5 competitors. That would mean giving away enough product per day to match 80% of the sales for that search term.

Now let’s look at conversion rate and sales distribution together. Say conversion rate is 2.5% for that keyword with 100,000 searches. That’s 2,500 monthly sales. And if 80% of sales are distributed among the top 5 listings, that means 2,000 monthly sales are going to those top 5 sellers.

So if you want to land in position 6 – 15, you only need to compete with the remaining 500 monthly sales. If we assume that sales distribution between products 6 – 15 is even, we can estimate that each product has about 50 sales per month. Divide that by 30 days in a month, and you’ve got about 2 sales per day, or 2 units a day that you need to give away in your launch. 

As you can see, estimating the number of giveaway units needed to be sold per day to match competitors is highly dependent on the conversion rate AND the sales distribution across the results. Both of these numbers are currently unknown to existing tools and can vary significantly across searches. These factors are what make keyword tool calculations a shot in the dark at best when it comes to giveaway unit recommendations.

How to Estimate the Number of Giveaway Units

First, let’s talk about how a launch works. The idea of a launch is to match or exceed the number of sales for listings on page one for your targeted keyword in a short amount of time. We recommend 7 days, as Amazon recognizes sales history in 7-day buckets.

In order to sell a large number of units in only a few days, you’ll likely need to use a giveaway platform. But how do you determine the number of Amazon giveaway units you need to match or exceed the monthly sales of your competition?

Unfortunately, there is no simple or straightforward answer for you just yet. We will, however, share the processes we have used here at Viral Launch to estimate the number of units to give for tens of thousands of launches over the last few years. We guarantee that this approach is far better than using search volume to estimate the number of Amazon giveaway units you need for a successful launch.

Step 1: Know Your Keywords

First and foremost, knowing your main keyword is critical to a successful Amazon business. Using an Amazon keyword tool such as Keyword Research, allows you to identify your product’s most relevant words. A good tool will help you prioritize by showing you search volume and relevancy for each keyword. We call that our Priority Score.

Step 2: Determine Your Budget

Your budget for your promotional campaign is an important factor in determining which keyword you should target. The higher the sales volume, the more units you will need to rank alongside the page one performers. If your budget is big, go for a keyword that gets a lot of sales. If your budget is smaller, go for a keyword with fewer sales.

Step 3: Determine Monthly Sales Volume for Your Keyword

Once you have selected the keyword you’re going to target based on your budget, search volume, and relevance to your listing, you need to determine the number of Amazon giveaway units to get ranking on page one.

Use a sales volume estimation tool like Market Intelligence to determine the number of sales your page one competitors are doing each month. This will allow you to see the sales volume you need to match or exceed over at least a seven day period.

A simple way to do the math is to take an average of sales for listings on page one you are looking to rank alongside. Let’s say you are looking to rank in the top 5 positions for your keyword and the average sellers are selling 3,000 units per month (100 units per day).

From your keyword research in Step #1, you should have a good feel for your market’s most popular keywords. Let’s say there are 2 high volume keywords, each highly relevant to your product market.

We would suggest giving away at 50% of the average sales volume. So 1,500 units per month or (1,500 / 30 days = 50 units per day) 50 units per day.

Multiply that by a minimum of 7 days of promotions to equal a suggested Amazon giveaway of 350 units. 

We understand that the math is not perfect. There are potentially hundreds of words these top performing products are generating sales through, including PPC, outside traffic, etc. We are working hard to develop a solution for better determining the number of sales per keyword as well. However, until we have this more granular data, we are relying on this tried and true method of determining the number of units to sell from a solid metric, sales volume.

The Takeaway

Now that you understand the technique behind creating an Amazon giveaway strategy based on sales volume, NOT search volume, you can apply some of these techniques to your promotions. No matter what traffic source you’re using (i.e. discounted promotions, Amazon Sponsored Ads, or Facebook promotions) to reach page one, you need to match or exceed the average number of sales for your targeted keyword.

Basing these Amazon giveaway estimates on search volume alone could cost you tens of thousands of extra dollars and cut into the bottom line of your business. Take advantage of the advice and knowledge of the true Amazon experts at Viral Launch and make sure your next promotion sets you up for success.

LAUNCH YOUR PRODUCT

Feasting on Crumbs: How to Leverage Small Gains and Rank Higher on Amazon (Follow the Data Ep. 26)

Feasting on Crumbs: How to Leverage Small Gains and Rank Higher on Amazon (Follow the Data Ep. 26)

Understanding the nuances of Amazon customer search is what can really help you rank higher Amazon in the most efficient way possible. Just a handful of small opportunities that other sellers might consider crumbs, really add up. Join hosts Casey Gauss and Cameron Yoder for a conversation about how to feast on the crumbs of your product markets. 

Listen on iTunes   Listen on Stitcher

Follow the Data Show Notes

Episode Transcript

CAMERON YODER:
Hey, everybody, what’s up? My name is Cameron Yoder, and I’m here with Casey.

CASEY GAUSS:
Hey, guys.

CAMERON YODER:
And we’re actually in – we’re actually in Las Vegas right now. We hit up a couple conferences, a couple Amazon seller conferences. And it’s been a good time. We’ve had the opportunity to meet a lot of really awesome sellers, and Casey actually spoke at one of the conferences here. And it’s just been honestly a really good time to meet some of you, and to talk to some of you, and meet some people that we haven’t met before.

And as always, it’s just good to be in the community, you know, just meeting and talking with people. Anyway, so we’re actually going to dive into more about Keyword Research, not exactly specifically the tool that we introduced last week, or the tool that we just came out with, but we’re going to talk kind of deeper level strategy behind – or basically deeper level strategy that you as a seller can use when you’re researching keywords, the mentality that you should be developing. And we’re going to talk about, again, just deeper level strategies and strategies that you can implement today when it comes to research.

CASEY GAUSS:
Hey, guys. I do want to stipulate that, you know, we are not planning on – we’re not trying to shove Keyword Research down your throat. We really just think that, you know, there are some really cool opportunities that have to do with Keyword Research just in general that we really want you to be aware of because whether you’re in a high, highly-competitive market there is still so much opportunity.

Whether you’re in a low competition market, I imagine there’s tons of keywords that you’re not targeting. So yeah, we’ll jump into just high opportunity keywords. So one, you know, so there’s always people jumping into markets that they really have no business being in, or maybe you’ve just been in this market for a while, it’s just gotten so competitive, and you’ve kind of just lost market share.

Well, there’s still, from what we’re seeing, generally so much opportunity that’s out there. So let’s take the Garcinia cambogia market, for example. If you’ve been around for, you know, more than a year you probably know this product to be somewhat of a joke, right? So there’s a ton of products out there that everybody is sourcing, and everybody knows that everybody else has sourced it at some point. These are products like grill gloves, Garcinia cambogia, turmeric, fish oil, grill brushes, garlic press; you know there’s a number of these products.

And so Garcinia cambogia, like I mentioned, is one of them, a very, very competitive market. At one point it was insanely high-volume. I think it’s still pretty high-volume, but there’s definitely some more mature players in this market. So when we go and we run keyword research we find, you know, just quickly scanning through I found 10 words, each with at least 1000 searches a month in volume, all with over 900 opportunity score.

So the one keyword for this is luxury Garcinia cambogia. There’s over 2000 searches a month for it and 990 opportunity score. What this means is – to recap the opportunity score, basically what we’re doing is for each word we’re going to look at the top sellers for this word, and we’re trying to understand do they have this word in their listing. And if so, where do they have it, and how are they using that? The reason being is we are trying to help you understand how easy it would be to rank for a particular keyword. And so to understand how ranking works on Amazon it’s important to know that Amazon is paying attention to the very specifics of keywords and how they’re used in your listing.

So the rules of indexation and the rules of ranking are different. So if you put brush in your listing you will be indexed – meaning Amazon associates this keyword for the product – you will be indexed for, you know, the singular and plural form of that just by putting one version in. So if I put brush in my listing I’ll be indexed for brush and brushes. But one thing that is – and it, you know, generally doesn’t matter where you put that. You know there are limits in terms of back-end search terms. But regardless, you know, if you put it in the bullet points, you put in the title, it all is indexing the same.

But when it comes to keyword ranking, though, this is quite a bit different. And so, you know, basically Amazon is looking at the content of a listing at the time of a sale. So as a sale goes through they’re looking, okay, what words are in the title, what words are in the bullet points, what words are in the back-end, and so forth, to then boost them up in the search results. And so what we see is that words contained within the title get more rank power per sale than words found anywhere else in the listing.

And so this is a very important thing to note. We also see that the specifics are important. So if you only had brush in your title, but you had brushes, you know, in a bullet point, then each sale that happens the word brush is going to be getting higher ranking or moving up the ranks faster than the word brushes. And so these specifics, these nuances, are very important for you to understand how to build the best listing possible and get that advantage over the competitors.

So taking all of this into account plus a bit more, all the data that we have found through our 30,000+ launches, we’ve put into this opportunity score. So we’re looking at, okay, for luxury Garcinia cambogia, how are the top-ranking products using it in their listing? Is it found in the front end? If so, where and how? And so a thousand is the top opportunity, meaning that nobody has it in the front end of their listing in any form.

So for luxury Garcinia cambogia the opportunity score is 990 with 2000 searches a month. All that to say you’re selling Garcinia cambogia, this really competitive market, but there is plenty of opportunity for you to kind of, you know, get the crumbs. Like I said, I think there’s six words or something like that that combined have over 8000 searches per month. Each one has over 1000 searches individually and an opportunity score of 900. So collectively, you know, these crumbs add up to, you know, half of a piece of bread – or half of a loaf of bread.

CAMERON YODER:
A cookie.

CASEY GAUSS:
Adds up to – I don’t know what it adds up to, but I don’t know what the analogy is, but regardless, you know, you can add up these words. So for example, luxury Garcinia cambogia, misspellings as well, assuming that they do not auto complete within their search results. But here’s a word that has over 1000 searches a month, but is Cambodia Garcinia, but reviews on Garcinia cambogia, there’s over 1000 searches a month for that. So you could just prioritize the word review somewhere in your listing, and now start getting significantly more boost in the search results and another misspelling, Carcinia cambogia.

So if Amazon isn’t auto-completing these words you can throw them in your listing, throw them either in the front end or the back end. Misspellings probably belong in the back end, but it really kind of just depends on what your brand looks like and what the misspelling is to see if you can throw it in the front end. Again, the title provides a really distinct difference in terms of rank power that it is driving. So all this is saying is even in really competitive markets there’s tons of opportunity out there. Go position your product well. Make sure that you’re doing your keyword research to really understand where are the holes – where are the gaps in the market so that I can push my product in there?

CAMERON YODER:
I just want to add a little bit to that. I think high-level sellers might take this piece of information and think that there aren’t keywords that they haven’t seen yet, that they could apply to their listing. But this advice honestly applies to all people. I mean it’s not like every single person knows every word in the dictionary, right? And just because of that, you yourself cannot determine if there’s a group of people searching a word that you don’t know about.

And because of that I would really encourage you all, if you’re low, or if you’re a beginning – if you’re a beginning seller, or if you’re an advanced seller, to go and find – do keyword research with the purpose of finding those words that you haven’t seen yet because you will find them, and all of those added up, even if they’re small, to stick with the crumb analogy, can make a whole piece of bread or an entire cookie, whatever the end result of that analogy is.

CASEY GAUSS:
Yeah, another one that we were doing some demos here at one of the conferences and people, you know, could not believe that one, people, other top sellers for these words did not have these words in the front end of their listing, and then they were blown away that, you know, some of the most popular tools out there were just missing these really, really important words.

So another high opportunity keyword, if you search trash can you will find trash cans, the plural form, with over 10,000 searches a month, 1000 opportunity, meaning no one has the plural form of can in the front end of their listing, which is just insane to me. The fact that you don’t think to throw cans, the plural form, in your listing is crazy. But there’s over 10,000 searches a month. Easily just throw cans in your title and now you get all this additional traffic without doing much work at all.

So next up I think we are going to talk about horizontal markets. So horizontal markets, again, from kind of a technical perspective can be difficult to find. So there are some popular keyword tools out there that are missing a lot of these horizontal markets, and this is something that, you know, is really important. So one example is going back to trash can, you know this word, we keep using the word but it just has amazing examples.

For example, a horizontal market would be a word where there are no root words contained within this new word. So basically what that means is let’s say we are selling a trash can, a horizontal market would be kitchen garbage, or garbage bin, or waste bin, because you do not find trash or can anywhere within the word. And so there’s tons of these horizontal markets. They can be difficult to find. Another example would be, you know, let’s say you’re selling a first-aid kit and trauma bag would be that example for you. There’s so many of these horizontal markets. Again, make sure that you’re hitting them. A lot of tools that have existed on the market have not been doing us a good job of finding them. But there’s a ton of opportunity out there.

Next up, so this is talking more specifically about Keyword Research, our tool, but we do want to highlight some benefits of the integrations. This is one thing that, you know, I’m just really excited about. But I guess I get excited about a lot. So one benefit of Keyword Research being now integrated within Market Intelligence is too often we see someone going after a very, very niche market, and the sales on Market Intelligence look amazing.

So if you were – but you don’t really know in reality what keywords are driving those sales. So on Market Intelligence or any tool that, you know, this Chrome extension or whatever that’s showing you estimated sales, these sales are for the product as a whole independent of what words it is not ranking for and where. So people can get confused pretty easily.

So if we look at the water bottle market, let’s say someone searches 32 ounce insulated water bottle, and they think you know, the sales look amazing. The top seller is selling $230,000 a month, the third ranking product 100,000, and you know, 26,000 and 40,000 in between those. So it looks like sales are amazing, but if you look at the search results that are now showing within Market Intelligence you see there’s only 378 searches over the last 30 days for this.

So that is a clear indicator that wow, if there’s only 378 searches this revenue cannot be coming from this keyword. So then if you go and you look at insulated water bottle, what you’ll find is okay, there’s a lot more searches, almost 29,000 searches over the last month. And you can, again, see the revenue. If we were to go to water bottle I would imagine we would see a lot of these same products showing up and obviously much, much higher search volume. So basically what we’re hoping to do here with Market Intelligence is just to help you understand that you should, when doing your product research, you should be looking at the main keywords that are driving the sales. And what is the best indicator of that? That is search volume. Cam?

CAMERON YODER:
Yeah, I just want to maybe say this in a different way because I think without a visual picture it’s a little hard for listeners maybe to picture something like this. But I just want to give a picture. Again, let’s stick with the insulated water bottle. So you search 32 ounce insulated water bottle, and you see – you’re pulling up all the results and you’re looking at sales information, so monthly revenue, right? So if you pull up 32 ounce insulated water bottle, and I’m a seller looking to maybe get into the insulated water bottle market, I’m going to see all these huge, huge monthly revenue numbers, right?

And I’m going to think, well shoot, everyone is killing it in the 32 ounce insulated water bottle space, so I’m going to source insulated water bottle – or 32 ounce insulated water bottles. What I don’t know, however, is if those sales are being attributed through other keywords. In other words if someone else, or if other people are buying these insulated water bottles through a more primary keyword, such as insulated water bottle, or water bottle in general. So what I need to do is make sure that people are searching for that specific term or that specific market. And in some cases like this people can easily get tricked into buying a very specific product.

Maybe it’s something that’s a little bit of a longer tail keyword and they think it’s a great market when in actuality it’s actually those sales are being attributed through another keyword. And finding the primary keyword is going to give you a more accurate picture of that market, and it’s going to give you a more accurate picture of maybe what you’re stepping into, to either validate that idea or save you from stepping into a market that will underperform, basically.

CASEY GAUSS:
And last topic, integrations with product discovery. So this is something that I have been dreaming of for a while, and especially when I realized that we would be able to integrate keyword research data with product discovery. And this is – it’s because you cannot do this literally anywhere else in the world, and that is find underserved markets on Amazon. So what, you know, we did a webinar last night and we were walking through some examples, and you know, it just made perfect sense.

So basically what we mean with an integration with product discovery, which is a product finding tool, you know, we’re tracking coming up on 100 million products on Amazon. We’re tracking millions of keywords, brands and categories to help you identify, you know, great product ideas, great product opportunities, brands that are killing it so you can emulate their success or find, you know, what tactics or driving such.

Anyways, so if you go to the keyword search type in product discovery you can now put in search volume exact, and the search volume, again, is coming from Keyword Research, and here’s where this gets really cool. So basically by having search volume and sales volume we are able to find markets that are underserved. So what I mean by underserved is people are, you know, searching, you know, bachelorette or bridal shower gifts, let’s say.

So they’re searching bridal shower gifts, and they go there and they’re not finding anything that they want, and so they just end up not purchasing something. The opportunity here is for you to find these markets where people are running tons of searches but no one is buying because they aren’t finding what they want. And this gives you validation to understand people want this, no one’s finding – you know, there isn’t a good option available, so I can bring something totally new to the market that satisfies this need.

So one like amazing example that Cam has ahead, or up on the screen right now, is gender reveal. So people are searching gender reveal, and there’s over 25,000 searches a month for this, and there’s only $6000 in average revenues. Gender reveal party supplies, 33,000 searches, and the average product is doing $4,900 a month. So there is a ton of search volume. There’s very low revenue coming in on these products, and that is just one keyword.

If you were to go add up all of the keywords that were related to gender reveal, gender reveal party supplies and you were to look – because the revenue stays the same. The search volume just continues to add up. So anyways, these products are doing, you know, $5,000, $6,000 a month on average, but collectively you know there’s got to be well over, you know, 75,000 searches a month. So just a ton of volume, and basically people just are not buying what they, what they’re seeing.

And so this, you know, go see what’s out there. Obviously people are not super happy. Maybe read some reviews to see what people are really looking for. Go do your research. Go see what you can source, and then bring that to market because you know people are looking for these products. They’re just not finding what they’re looking for.

CAMERON YODER:
Yeah people, so people – it’s been very interesting for us to be in Vegas and to be talking to people here just about keyword research in general, not specifically about our tool, but talking to other people and how they use keyword research tools. It’s very interesting for them to use them to find untapped – or to find product ideas, right? So they’re using Keyword Research, other research tools, to find product markets. They’re using the tool for the purpose that they weren’t intended for, right?

And so they’ve asked us – people have asked us about, well should I use Keyword Research? Or can I use Keyword Research to find other markets that I am not in right now? And the answer is yes, you can because other markets are going to pop up. Like if you search trash can, something specific like another horizontal market will pop up or something like it, like mesh bin or something like that. That includes another marketplace for you to jump into. But the integration here with product discovery allows for full search of new product markets that you’re not in yet using Amazon keyword search volume.

So Casey, where we touched on searching for markets that have a high search volume and low sales because that’s indicative of a lot of people searching for a product but not buying, which is indicative of a market that people are not happy with necessarily, or an opportunity for you to make a better product in. On the other hand, let’s say you flip the – so we set a minimum search volume, and we set a max sales number, right, to limit the amount of sales that are popping up for these keyword markets.

Let’s flip that a little bit, and let’s search for markets that have a minimum search volume. So we’re searching for markets that have a high search volume, and we’re searching for markets that have a high revenue, whereas before we were capping the revenue. Now we’re finding markets that have a ton of sales, right, and a ton of search volume. At the same time we’re going to throw in one more metric here. We’re going to cap out the review count.

So we’re searching for markets that have high number of sales, high number of searches, but a capped out number of reviews, something like 100. This, this is a small – and I’m just keeping it simple for podcast’s sake, but this then is indicative of markets that are getting a lot of searches and a lot of sales but are still young, right, so the markets that are still opportune for entry, basically if a market has a lower number of reviews but a high number of sales that’s a better chance of you entering in and competing.

Well this pulls up markets that a lot of people are searching for, that a lot of people are buying in, but that not many other people are competing in, something like that. Our goal with this is to really challenge the mentality of people when it comes to keywords, when it comes to research, when it comes to product research and just keyword research in general. So I would honestly, honestly encourage each of you to begin to question the way that you think about keywords and begin to question yourselves with what you’re looking for, how you’re looking for it and maybe even how you can optimize your processes and your listing optimization.

Well, everybody, we wanted to – we want to thank you so much for sticking with us. We hope that you found some value with this, especially when it comes to just thinking about processes in a different way. That’s what we want to do. We want to challenge sellers to better themselves. We want to challenge sellers to improve and scale their businesses and honestly have fun while doing it. So we thank you so much for tuning in.

Thank you so much for listening. Again, if you have any questions feel free to send us an email, hit us up on Facebook. We would love to hear your feedback on the podcast or just any general questions that you have. Whether it be something about researching keywords or researching markets, we want to hear from you. So hit us up. Thank you so much. We do this for you. If you said hey this weekend, thank you so much for stopping by and saying hey. Hopefully we will see you all sometime in the near future. Anyway, thank you guys so much. Until next time, remember, the data is out there.

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