Jeff’s secret to Amazon Product research

It’s no secret that product research on Amazon has changed significantly over the years. 

Whilst it might have been possible a few years ago to find a product with high sales and low reviews, slap a logo and a barcode on it, send it in to Amazon and make loads of money, those days have gone.

These days, if you want to be successful on Amazon, or in e-commerce in general, you have to think through the filter of building a brand. 

I always say the foundation of a successful brand is a good product. So today we’re going to look at how Jeff Bezos himself trained his Amazon staff and built the Amazon culture all around product launches. 

This is going to help you with both your product research and product development. 

Amazon FBA Product Research in 2021

One of the hardest aspects of building your own brand on Amazon is product research. How do we put products into the market that are going to succeed in today’s market?

Lots of changes have happened on Amazon over recent years. More people are selling on Amazon, and review counts are aggregated across all international marketplaces so it’s easier for international sellers just to bring those same agents over to other marketplaces and instantly have a higher review count. 

The introduction of ratings (where users can select a rating in an email they receive rather than having to leave a written review) has driven review rates up to 6, 8, or even 10% review rates, compared to 1 or 2% in the past.

All of those things combined mean that trying to find products that have got high sales and average across the market under 50 or even 200 reviews is extremely difficult. It’s not impossible, but it’s getting rarer and rarer.

And so you’ve got one of two options here. You can get stressed out and think well, this isn’t for me anymore because it’s not an easy opportunity.#

Or you can realize that actually still presents one of the best opportunities for building a successful business in current times. 

I don’t just say that as someone that makes content about this. I’m actually putting my money where my mouth is. I recently launched two new brands and they are both on the trajectory that they should be hitting six figures within 12 months.

It’s something that I’m excited to continue building, because this is an amazing space. But you do have to think a little bit differently now. 

How to Find Products to Sell on Amazon FBA

This is the key to product hunting for Amazon – the Besos way.

If you want to know how to find the best products to sell on Amazon, start with this: look for opportunities where you can create value for a market. 

This is something that Jeff Bezos has really drilled into his Amazon culture. He’s created a culture where they have a ‘working backwards philosophy’.

What that means is that they start with the end in mind – the experience the customer has when they receive the product they’ve purchased.

One of the strategies Jeff employed was to get his executives to write a mock press release about a potential product that they were going to launch. The idea was that if a product wasn’t press release worthy, then it wasn’t a product they wanted to release. 

You see, you don’t write a press release for small improvements, or a product that’s just copied from a competitor, because everyone in the world would see that you’ve just copied this product from a competitor. 

You only write a press release if you have something noteworthy to announce, right? That’s the kind of thinking that I think that is going to make the brands of tomorrow really stand out. 

Finding the Right Products to Sell on Amazon

What we teach at Brand Builder University are six kinds of criteria for doing product research and finding winning products on Amazon. These are essential criteria that you must bear in mind – regardless of which Amazon product hunting techniques you use.

One of the main ones is differentiation – finding ways to create something new and of value. 

Of course, like anything, there’s a balance in all of this right. You still want to be able to launch products that the data suggests is going to be successful because that’s going to reduce the risk element of your new business. And it’s also going to give you that firm ground to launch often. 

However, you still need to improve on current products – otherwise, why are people going to buy your product? You need to find other ways to differentiate other than just being another new product with a low amount of reviews. 

I want to encourage you to look at the improvements that you’ve made to your product. 

Pour over the reviews of your competitors to see what the weaknesses are. See how the product could be improved and do some market research. 

Think about the customer – what do they actually want from this product? What’s their intent when they come to this listing? What are they actually they’re looking for? 

Remember, it’s not just about what the product does. It’s about what the product does for the customer. 

Do some hard work to research the answers to these questions, and then come back to the drawing board and say, “What can we improve about this product?”, “What can we add to this product?”, “What can we bundle with this product?”, “What can we change about this product that is going to make it stand out?”. 

You want to create a product that in a search term results page stands out so that the customer clicks on your listing and buys your product. 

That’s the only way that you’re going to be able to succeed and stand out on Amazon in the current time. 

This is just one of our six product research criteria that you must get nailed in order to find a product that is going to work – in other words, that fits within the framework we call the Product Potency Formula. 

I break all of that down in great detail inside our free Amazon Masterclass. It’s around an hour long and I go through it in lots of detail.

I share examples, break down the numbers, show you sellers who have followed this formula and succeeded – and more.

You can find out more about our free Amazon masterclass here.