How to Use Helium 10’s Cerebro to Analyze Competitors.

Guess and estimate which keywords could generate sales with a unique, new product. Here, Bradley Sutton, Helium 10’s Director of Customer Success and Training, is answering the question, “How to Use Helium 10’s Cerebro to Analyze Competitors?”

Short answer: The same way you would if you had similar competitors, just with some extra creativity and a leap of faith (or two).

First, for those who aren’t too familiar with the Cerebro tool, let’s go over the fundamentals of using Cerebro to analyze competitors with products similar to yours.

The basic strategy is that if you’re selling a product, say a chew toy for dogs, you would go to Amazon, type in “chew toy for dogs,” and then look at the search results and find popular products similar to what you have in mind. You would then collect a few of those products, enter the ASINs into the Cerebro tool, and then the Cerebro tool would provide you with a plethora of useful information about those competing products. Information includes valuable insights like monthly search volume and likely longtail keywords.

Essentially, this strategy utilizes your competition as a case study for understanding your target market. Because enough other products have built a history of sales, you can base your own strategy on reliable historical data versus taking a shot in the dark.

While this is a common strategy, it may not be particularly helpful if you have a unique product that doesn’t have existing competition on Amazon. If this is your situation, you can still use a similar strategy — you just have to be creative.

In this AMA, Bradley uses Apple Watch bands as an example. As you can see from the initial search results, most of the products shown on page one are very similar, but one is especially unique: a charm bracelet-style band.

Let’s say that, hypothetically, the charm bracelet band is your product. According to search results for Apple Watch bands, no similar product to that exists. Sure, broader keywords could include “band for Apple Watch,” but with dozens of other bands that aren’t similar at all in style to the charm bracelet band, you’ll need better longtail keywords to target your intended audience.

In this case, try to find products under the same umbrella and of similar style that you think your audience would like. For this example, that wouldn’t necessarily be a charm bracelet band, but in these search results, the glittery pink band has a similar aesthetic to the bracelet. We could speculate that customers who like the pink band would also potentially like your charm bracelet band.

With that decided, you can take the ASIN of the “similar audience” product (the pink band) and enter that into Cerebro to pull data. From there, use that data to determine keywords, search volume, and more, and tweak as needed once your sales pick up.