Last updated on August 12th, 2021 at 03:49 pm
A good Amazon Seller’s Manager should be knowledgeable in many fields of Amazon’s activity:
- How to write a cool and converting Product Detail Page
- What is the estimated demand for a new product?
- Is it time to restock on inventory yet?
- How profitable are your sales right now?
- Should you twinkle PPC bids, because the weather has gotten warmer?
- Are you missing out on any good-performing keywords?
- What ranking does your ASIN have with existing top-performing keywords?
- Is in time to take a break – and go for a short walk?
Well, luckily for us, most of these issues are already being covered by a plethora of existing software solutions. Some arguably better than others, but still, there’s something for everyone out there.
Let us have a look at what useful software tools an Amazon Seller’s Manager/ Owner can use to make his/her life more comfortable and to work more efficiently.
Now, there are quite a few solutions on the market already, and more are in the making. Some serious titles like Jungle Scout or Helium 10 are on everybody’s mind when it comes to Amazon tools, and for a good reason: they cover multiple areas of work and make Managers’ life much easier.
Other tools offer a more narrow approach and focus on one or a few problems, like helping with Amazon accounting, managing your work time, or even (spoiler alert!) do some work for you. So for every type of software and for every brand name you see in this article – rest assured there are more similar services out there to look for.
What I want to accomplish with this small article is to focus your attention on WHY you may want a particular software and what kind of benefits it may give to your field of work. So let’s get started.
AMAZON AUTOMATION SOFTWARE (active)
Running the Amazon business by yourself or with a small team means that you just might not have a dedicated manager for every task. This puts you under constant time pressure as there’s always more things to do. So you end up needing to prioritize a lot and switch your attention often between most pressing tasks. And this is no small thing!
Luckily for you, there are a few solutions out there that can do some hard work for you.
Now, don’t get me wrong: none of them is a silver bullet.
Even the smartest automation software still depends heavily on whether your Seller Account is running smoothly: from the solid quality of your ASIN listing – to sufficient stock and PPC budget.
Here are some areas of work that can be actively helped by automation software:
Amazon’s own Automated PPC Campaigns
The fact that Amazon themselves (in the Seller Central) are offering to automate your paid advertising efforts should come as no surprise. Many small or beginner sellers do have neither expertise nor time to manage their Amazon PPC Campaigns properly.
So instead of rifling through all nitty-gritty of Amazon PPC management – one can just pick the desired ASIN, create the Auto Campaign, be done with it.
Will it work? Yes, you will get extra sales and rise in ranking. Will it work well enough? Honestly, I am yet to see an automated PPC campaign outperforming a properly-build and manually managed one.
Amazon PPC Bid Adjustment & Dayparting Software
Good Amazon PPC bids on the right keywords – bring the good sales. Wrong bids either bring you nothing or make an outright loss.
So naturally, a Manager running PPC campaigns would want to know exactly when and by what margin to adjust the bids and/or pause keywords to make the most out of their PPC Campaign’s budget.
Unfortunately, there’s only that many times a week, a live Manager can check upon PPC parameters and make a decision to initiate such a change.
But this is no problem for software. There are several paid automation tools that claim to take this bid adjustment burden off Manager’s shoulders. Software like “Zon Tools” or “Sellics” are examples of rules-based automation software. In them, a Manager can apply his/her experience in running PPCs for a particular product and create a set of rules (i.e. program threshold values, triggers, and the respective response changes in PPC settings) that will be constantly applied by the said software to the running PPC campaigns.
Want a bid to decrease as soon as real ACoS surpasses your break-even ACoS? Not a problem. Want a keyword to get paused after 20 clicks and 0 sales? Just dial in the numbers and let the vigilant software do that for you.
But what if you do not have the PPC expertise? Or you DO have the expertise, but this is your first time working with this particular product’s market? Obviously, that will leave the effectiveness of the rules-based automation wanting.
And here comes the other good news: a new generation of Amazon PPC optimization tools (like “Profit Whales PPC Optimization”) takes the process a whole step further. Not only do they apply pre-build rules to your PPC Campaign (depending on your target profitability and desired level of aggressiveness) – they also take active care of analysing new keywords and adding good ones to the PPC campaigns.
While still no match for a seasoned PPC manager – this new-gen software already does their job better than half of Amazon Sellers attempting to run their PPCs personally. And it certainly does a better job than Amazon’s automated campaigns.
Amazon FBA Repricing software
Source: https://www.repricerexpress.com
Many Amazon community speakers claim that there is no successful Seller who does not use some kind of repricing software (i.e. automated software that changes the price of your Amazon inventory).
Whilst not entirely true (we know a few 6-digit sellers who don’t use one), we do agree that there is value in such automation. Especially so for FBA Sellers who’s forced to fight for their buy box constantly.
“RepricerExpress”, “Reprice IT” or “App Eagle” are valid examples of this kind of software currently in use by many Sellers.
Basically, there are two kinds of repricer tools, both benign rules-based:
- Schedule-based that checks your rules after a set time period and applies them to your inventory
- Reaction-based (like the said “App Eagle”) that activates rules every time it detects a competitor seller does something with their prices (like lowering it below your current price)
All you have to do (again, like with rules-based PPC automation) is to use your experience and knowledge of your market to set up the rules and have the software to apply it.
Automated Amazon Email Sequence Software
Amazon product reviews are (and always were) an important thing. Strong reviews both enhance your Product’s profile in the eyes of live customers, and they influence how Amazon’s algorithm evaluates how good is your ASIN for a particular customer query – be it in organic or paid results.
And with the recent changes to Amazon’s software that tracks down ungenuine reviews, obtaining the real thing is ever more critical.
E-mail-centered online communication culture (like the US0 is the most obvious source of those extra reviews. To tap into it more effectively, you will need to create some cover-letter that follows up your every sale that asks if the customer liked your product, and perhaps they’d like to leave a review.
Automated software allows you to pre-make these emails and program a chain of emails that a customer will automatically receive after successfully purchasing your product.
While there are many auto-emailing sequence solutions out there (like the famous “MailChimp”), only some can be integrated into Amazon Sellers’s actions at the API level.
Check out their websites ( “FeedbackWhiz” for instance) and see if a solution is suited for your needs. Once you find the one you like – you’ll be all set to create an irresistible review magnet email sequence and apply it to all your customers automatically!
AMAZON INTELLIGENCE SOFTWARE (passive)
Most seasoned Amazon Seller Managers/Owners actually do know what they’re doing. Given enough time, they don’t actually need most features the automated software offers. A precise manual control & years of experience are still head and shoulders above even the most cleverly designed software.
Even so, some managerial tasks take way more time and effort to complete than others. Assorted types of software tools also cover some of these areas of work. Let’s see what help one can get to do their job faster and more precisely.
Amazon Product Search and Database Analysis Software
Finding new niches to fill with your products is bread and butter for some Amazon Sellers. Researching the vast Amazon categories for a new product with the right combination of sales volume, profitability, and severity of competition takes up a lot of time.
This is where a Manager can find help from software like “AMZ Analyzer” or Helium 10 “Black Box” to navigate through Amazon and locate product niches that are just about right to make some new money in. Of course, a well established White Label Seller will unlikely benefit a lot from such info -, but still it may help him/her to see some missed business opportunities.
The only hidden problem worth mentioning with this kind of tool is that it is available to EVERYONE. Meaning that it’d probably be not just you, who has noticed a new tasty blue ocean niche but a few to-be-competitors as well… so just be ready for it and try to outrun them at the start!
Best Amazon Keyword Research Software
Probably the most monkey job part of running an Amazon PPC campaign – is looking for right keywords to advertise with.
If you are running just a dozen PPC campaigns for many years, this isn’t really a big deal. However, if you are managing hundreds of ASINs across dozens of Campaigns (being created and archived over and over) – this can get out of hand rather quickly.
So you probably would be relieved to know that paid online tools like “Merchant Words” or one of “Jungle Scout” software allow you to do this work much faster. Just dial in a relevant seed keyword (or even strip the whole competing ASIN and off all the keywords they use) – and see what related keywords are out there.
Judge how good they are by the frequency of search queries per month. Find out what competitors are fighting for the top positions on these keywords. Indeed these keyword-research solutions are a real-time savior that even a seasoned Manager will gladly use and free up time for other important jobs.
Amazon Keyword Ranking & Indexing Software
Knowing how a product is ranked for specific keywords (both organically and in paid Sponsored ads) can guide Manager’s PPC efforts to where it’ll bring the most effect.
These parameters do not have much meaning for Sellers making less that 5-figure sales on any specific product…
And aux contraire when the Seller is already a top player in their market and is actively fighting for the top of page one – watching over the ups and downs on your top-performing keywords can mean gaining or losing thousands of dollars per day.
Paid tools like “Sonar” or Helium 10 “Cerebro” provide the Manager with quick access to the data on keyword ranking. And the data-driven decisions are always right when it comes to Amazon!
Amazon PPC Analyzer software
These are the tools that mainly exploit the inherent weakness of the Amazon Seller Central advertising interface. Apps like “PPC Analyzer” will gladly gather to give you what Seller Central can not.
For example, it can get you all the keywords you’re using in a particular PPC campaign, show all on one screen and allow you to tweak them in bulk and with more ease than you could’ve in the actual Seller Central interface.
Other analyzer software is focused on looking for principal flaws in a PPC Campaign structure (like a free “Profit Whales PPC Analyzer”) and roll out a list of actionable recommendations on how to make the PPC Campaign better. It’s then up to the Manager to make the necessary adjustments (or outsource the task to 3rd party).
Amazon Account Alerts
A trendy software feature, rather than a separate tool, it is shared by both small and huge players (like the Helium 10 as mentioned above).
Essentially it acts as a watchdog for all manner of changes that need Manager attention, be it low inventory, competitors taking over the buy box, receiving negative reviews, or a BSR dropping to undesired levels.
If a professional Manager was to pick only one type of passive assistance software – it’d probably be the one with the best alert system.
Accounting Software for Amazon Sellers
Although selling on Amazon and keeping track of all expenses & goals is easier than in most other businesses – it’s still a pretty daunting task.
Especially if there are no dedicated accountants on your team, and you need to keep the books between answering your customers and ordering the next bulk from your supplier.
Software like “A2X” or Helium 10 “Profitability Calculator” and other similar accounting tools are there for you to lean on. Not only can they take a data feed from your Amazon Account but also your inventory supplier, thus cutting extra monkey job and keeping your numbers always at hand.
Again, I feel obliged to repeat: we’ve barely scratched the surface of all the areas of automation, and assistance Amazon Sellers can benefit from a software tool. And we certainly do not say that an Amazon Seller Manager/Owner can’t just do an excellent job without the assistance of some solutions.
In fact it’s the opposite: a good Manager will only use the tool that helps him/her to save time for more strategic and creative tasks at hand.
So be smart about it and spend some time to gather a toolset that suits your personal working needs best. And if you feel like you’ve found that sweet combo – let us know in the comments below what did work best for you.
In any case – good hunting to ye all Amazonians out here!
