Cracking Marketplaces Part 2: Monitoring the Right Metrics

In a world full of head-spinning metrics, how do you evaluate your marketplace progress? Arindam Paul, founding member and Head of Marketing & Strategy, Atomberg, has helped to grow the home appliances brand to a $20 million run rate on Amazon. He lists the important things to track.

Your Amazon market share

By using publicly available data on Amazon (the seller rank on the pages of each of your competitors) and combining it with your own brand’s rank and daily sales, it is possible to create a model that correlates rank and units sold. 

It is possible to extrapolate your Amazon market share, virtually free. Paul details this technique on Twitter here. 

Metrics that Matter

Paul recommends that you keep a close eye on these 9 metrics, each of which tells a different story:

1. Category Size & Market Share: Shows how well your brand / SKU is doing on the platform with respect to the competition, and what the potential upside could be. This can then inform your ad spends.
2. Share of Brand Searches: Gives a split of all searches within the category (available on Amazon Pi, which only sellers have access to). This should increase month-on-month.
3. Glance View Share: The share of your brand’s glance views (page visits) with respect to the category, which should grow month-on-month.
4. Ratio of Market Share to Glance View Share: A derived metric that tells you if you have a conversion or visibility problem.
5. Percentage of Glance Views Driven by Ads: Another insight from Amazon Pi, this number shows your dependency on paid ads, and should come down over time.
6. Percentage of Sales Driven by Ads: Shows how dependent your ultimate conversion is on ads. The lower, the better!
7. Advertising Cost of Sales: A measure of advertising efficiency, though it is dependent on what competition is up to.
8. Total Advertising Cost of Sales: A derived metric, useful for those with some scale, that shows whether the flywheel is picking up.
9. Average Monthly Ratings: Speaks for itself.

More information in this great Twitter thread which should be mandatory reading for any seller on Amazon.

Utilise the Power of Freely Available Data

Not all insights lie behind a paywall, or indeed, exist in a structured manner. Paul says that it is important to develop the ability to learn from unstructured and often unconventional sources of data. 

You don’t even need to be a spreadsheet guru to take advantage of publicly available data. You can get a wealth of information by simply going through product reviews and unboxing videos, including what customers look for, where the competition falls short and ideas for your product’s next iteration.

Track Facebook Ads Library to see what advertising your competition (or indeed, anyone else) is running. You can experiment first-hand by visiting competition websites, and analysing the inevitable re-marketing across display and social media.

Whew, that’s a lot of solid advice for Amazon sellers and it’s all based on first-hand experience, not empty gyan. We hope you also checked out Cracking Marketplaces Part 1: How to Scale Revenue.

Take the time to absorb and apply it and let us know how you fare.