Why aren’t you successful on Amazon, even though your listing is optimized and you manage your campaigns in detail? The answer often lies in the product itself. With the Valuezon SMU Approach, you develop custom-tailored products exclusively for Amazon that solve Buybox issues, avoid price wars, and leverage the algorithm to work specifically in your favor.
What are SMU Products?
SMUs – Special-Make-Up products – are products developed exclusively for Amazon, deliberately set apart from your general range and specifically tailored to the rules of the marketplace.
Most companies focus on performance marketing and content management with the Product Detail Page when professionalizing their Amazon business. But even when these activities are executed well, success often remains elusive—and companies are left wondering why.
The reason often lies in an insufficient product fit for the Amazon marketplace. Many companies offer the same products across all sales channels, overlooking that Amazon has its own requirements and criteria that determine success or failure.
To solve this problem, Valuezon developed the “Valuezon SMU Approach”—a strategy specifically targeting the development of Amazon-optimized products. Together with clients, so-called Special-Make-Up products (SMUs) are developed exclusively for Amazon. These are deliberately different from the general product portfolio in other sales channels. Originally known from the fashion and sports industries, SMUs describe products designed specifically for special customers, countries, or events.
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What problems do SMU products solve?
When and why should you develop special products for Amazon that aren’t sold on any other sales channel? Here are the main use cases, the problems they solve, and the strategic advantages they offer:
- Buybox: Avoid losing the Buybox through Amazon’s price-crawling activities on other online shops and platforms
- Price and sales control: Prevent painful battles for the Buybox and negative price spirals when other retailers or Amazon offer the same product
- Sales optimization: Targeted adjustment and development of a product for the Amazon search algorithm (A9), which determines visibility and ranking
- Maximum use of Amazon marketing tools: Adapting products to Amazon’s advertising and promotion tools
- Optimized logistics and fulfillment: Perfect alignment of product size and weight with Amazon’s logistics pricing (FBA, FBM, etc.)
The Valuezon Success Spiral: SMUs as a Success Factor on Amazon
The SMU product strategy forms the first and crucial step of the Valuezon Success Spiral, which is based on four pillars:
- Product: The product should be more than competitive and have clear USPs compared to competitors. In addition, the selling price should ideally be in the sweet spot of Amazon’s bestsellers or peer group. This is exactly where the Valuezon SMU Approach comes in.
- Content Optimization: Before launching the product, the listing is professionally created to maximize CTR and conversion rate—keywords, images, USPs, sales pitch, A+ Premium Content, Brand Shop, etc.
- Performance Marketing: Effective use of all available advertising and sales tools on a daily basis—especially for the company’s top sellers.
- Business Management: Management decisions based on sales data with the aid of a tool such as the Valuezon Performance Cockpit.
Only when all four success factors are fulfilled does a product have the chance to climb the bestseller ranking in such a way that it benefits disproportionately from organic and paid searches through the algorithm. It will then be literally pulled up the “success spiral”—like being swept up by a whirlwind.
The Valuezon SMU Approach: Process and SMU Product Development
The Valuezon SMU Approach is based on the principle of so-called Target-Reengineered Product Development. The laws of the Amazon marketplace and the needs of its customers are at the heart of product development. The following five-step procedure has proven itself in numerous client projects:
Step 1: Market Analysis
To conduct a targeted market analysis on Amazon, all relevant subcategories are first identified, since these can be analyzed best both quantitatively and qualitatively. The “peer group” of bestsellers in the subcategory ranking is examined closely—in terms of sales volume, type and professionalism of the sellers, fulfillment, as well as the number and quality of customer reviews.
Step 2: Competitor Analysis
If the subcategory has been rated as “attractive,” direct competitors are analyzed—specifically the bestsellers and best-practice competitors, because success comes only if you are better and/or cheaper than these. Their sales, product features, strengths and weaknesses are analyzed based on customer reviews, USPs, pricing strategies, and margin calculations.
Step 3: Keyword Analysis and Seasonality
For product development, the most common customer needs are collected and evaluated based on search terms (keywords). Most brands struggle at this point because product development no longer stems solely from research and creative work. The ranking of keywords over recent years—both short and long tail—is crucial. This step is the most important within the Target-Reengineered Product Development framework. In addition, seasonality and lead times in procurement are analyzed.
Step 4: USPs and Added Value
Once all information about the market, competitors, and keywords is available, it often becomes clear and almost “logical” for customers themselves to deduce how a product must be defined in order to avoid being hopeless and instead become an almost guaranteed success. In a certain sense, success on Amazon can be planned—and failure is foreseeable. Now, for each product, the added values (value-add) and USPs are developed.
Examples of added value include:
- Better functionality, quality, and design
- Awards and prizes
- Trends and innovations
- Sustainability
- Bundling of products in homogeneous and heterogeneous bundles
- Add-on products, etc.
Step 5: Product Specification and Margin Calculation
Whether a product goes into production and sale depends primarily on whether the margin calculation is sufficiently positive. If that is not the case, parameters such as product costs, fulfillment costs, return costs, and expected marketing costs need to be adjusted until the product reaches the set margin targets—or it will not be implemented.
After the product has been defined qualitatively and quantitatively, detailed product specifications for sourcing and manufacturing are developed—the so-called “Product Specifications.”
Summary
The Valuezon SMU Approach addresses the problem of standard products and Buy Box issues through the development of Special-Make-Up products (SMUs). These products, designed specifically for Amazon, avoid challenges such as loss of the Buy Box or inefficient logistics while simultaneously increasing visibility through optimized alignment with the Amazon algorithm.
SMUs are the first step of the Valuezon Success Spiral, which consists of four factors: product quality and USPs, professional content optimization, effective performance marketing, and data-driven management. Only by fulfilling all of these criteria can a product sustainably become a bestseller.
The development of an SMU follows the principle of Target-Reengineered Product Development. In five steps, a product is specifically optimized for Amazon:
- Market analysis
- Competitor analysis
- Keyword research
- Product development with USPs and added value
- Product specification and margin calculation
With SMUs, Valuezon offers a proven method to make success on Amazon predictable, avoid price wars, and secure long-term competitive advantages.
