Serious Sellers Podcast: Learn How To Sell On Amazon FBA & Walmart

#569 - How To Scale Your Amazon Business

Join us for an insightful episode where we sit down with Christi Michelle, an expert in scaling Amazon businesses and the founder of The COO Integrator. Christi shares her fascinating journey from running an Amazon brand management agency to becoming a fractional Chief Operating Officer. Discover how she blends visionary ideas with tactical strategies, and hear about her comprehensive competitive analysis of 25 brand management agencies, revealing the importance of understanding unique value propositions. Christi's wealth of experience provides valuable lessons for e-commerce entrepreneurs looking to scale their businesses effectively.

In another segment, we explore key strategies for measuring business health and scaling effectively. Learn how to assess your business's performance through crucial data metrics like PPC statistics and P&L statements. Understand the significance of evaluating employee performance and fitting within your organization. We also discuss Tony Robbins' 10 life cycle stages and their relevance in identifying your business's current strengths and weaknesses. Practical tools such as the EOS organizational checkup and core values exercises are highlighted to help you align your company's direction and goals for balanced growth.

Finally, we tackle the challenges of managing remote teams and maintaining productivity in the e-commerce world. Discover strategies for fostering a strong company culture and maintaining relationships. Learn the importance of holding productive meetings that drive progress without creating unnecessary busy work. Additionally, Christi shares her transformative experience at a two-week water fasting retreat in Costa Rica, offering insights into personal growth through struggle and simplicity. Whether you're looking to scale your business or find balance in your entrepreneurial journey, this episode is packed with actionable advice and inspiration.

In episode 569 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Christi discuss:

• 00:00 - Scaling Amazon Businesses With Expert Guidance
• 04:34 - Brand Management for Major Brands
• 08:03 - Business Evolution and Maturity Stages
• 09:32 - Measuring Business Health and Scaling
• 14:27 - Navigating Amazon's Rising Costs and Fees
• 20:11 - Key Role of HR in Business
• 21:03 - Effective Remote Business Operation
• 23:52 - Creating Constructive Meetings for Company Culture
• 25:33 - Costa Rica Spiritual Retreat Experience
• 29:20 - Business Growth and Simplification

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Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

So many Amazon sellers don't treat their Amazon businesses like a real business. So, we brought on somebody today who's an expert in this and she's helped countless number of businesses really scale up, and there's going to be great points that you're going to be able to glean from this as well. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. What was your gross sales yesterday, last week, last year? More importantly, what are your profits after all your cost of selling on Amazon? Did you pay any storage charges to Amazon? How much did you spend on PPC? Find out these key metrics and more by using the Helium 10 tool Profits. For more information, go to h10.me/profits. Hello everybody, welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I'm your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show. That's a completely BS-free, unscripted and unrehearsed organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. And I'm still here recording in Spain, Madrid, Spain. I'm here at the Avosk office and we are here with somebody who has not been on the podcast in like two, maybe even three years, over three years Christy in the house. How's it going?

Christi Michelle:

Hi, doing well. How are you?

Bradley Sutton:

I'm doing just ducky. I recorded Leo earlier today, but he did his presentation already, so I was able to ask him some stuff on it. But I don't know what you're going to talk about yet, so I'll ask you that in a little bit. But since it's been so long since you've been on the podcast, what in the world have you been up to?

Christi Michelle:

I think the last time I was on I was running an Amazon brand management agency, and so that was the first one that I was running at the time. And after that we merged, slash, sold to a larger agency where I was the head of operations as well. We had about 100 clients, about 90-ish employees, so really kind of scaled up, which turns out that's kind of my forte, and I was there for a little while and then I left and apparently, I just can't get enough of the agency world. So, for the last about two and a half years I've been running what's my new agency? The COO Integrator, and so I am a fractional chief operating officer. So, it's that second in command. It's the one that says, OK, here's the big vision of what the visionary wants, the CEO wants, and OK, now how do we turn that into tactical strategies that we can, implement and get everybody rowing in the same direction? For so I do that.

Bradley Sutton:

Hold on. So, you're the CEO of this company or you're, like, a CEO of many companies.

Christi Michelle:

I'm the CEO of my company, my agency, but I play the role of the COO, which actually quite works for me because I'm a good blend of both the visionary and also the integrator. I like taking the really big concepts. That's a lot of fun for me, but I need to distill it down and make it very practical, set some goals around it, and I use a lot of my business strategies to make sure everything gets executed. So, it's both.

Bradley Sutton:

Went out to dinner last night and I remember you Vincenzo was there and you found out he worked at a PPC agency and you're like, oh man, a couple of years ago I did I looked into like 25 PPC agencies was it?

Christi Michelle:

It was a brand management agency. So, I was trying to do a competitive analysis. I wanted to understand. So, one of the things that I think a lot of companies, especially when they're getting started or they're so kind of single focused you don't realize that they don't understand their unique value proposition. And so, what makes you different? Why, if I were looking at two different agencies, why would I choose yours over someone else?

And most folks, unfortunately, they're oh, it's you know, we've got great customer support or we're so good with our clients, and it's very generic and they all kind of say the same thing. And so, I really wanted to understand okay, well, who are my competitors in the space? And I find it to be a very non-competitive space in the sense that we're all very friendly, it's very open. What I love about the e-commerce space is that it has kind of that good feel to it as an industry personality. But theoretically, these are my competitors and I wanted to see, well, okay, what are they offering? What do they charge, what are their contract terms? So, I really, I called dozens of them and I just said, hey, this is what I'm doing. I'm just I called dozens of them and I just said, hey, this is what I'm doing, I'm just what's unique about you? I just want to know these different things. So, it was a competitive analysis. It was just sort of a landscape.

Bradley Sutton:

And you know, obviously you don't have to mention any names, but what was just some things that stuck out to you about, I don't know, maybe price point or something that you saw was a hole in the industry or something that everybody had, or what were some of your big takeaways, I guess, like I'm asking.

Christi Michelle:

You know that most companies actually did have something that was quite unique. I would say more than half the companies. They would tell me something and I'm like I haven't heard that before. That's really unique, like that is. Do you know that as unique to you? So, in a way I was kind of helping them with their marketing like go ahead and highlight that. So, some folks you know they would specialize in major brands like big Fortune 100 company kind of brands. That's not typically what an Amazon brand management agency, but if you think about it those are. Most of those companies are kind of dinosaurs so they don't know how to kind of pivot and get online. So that was a unique one. A lot of companies had different contract terms but most of them were a flat fee plus once you had a certain point. Then we take a percentage. Unique ones were maybe it was a contract they just go month to month, and other ones they said we just went two years because we're going to invest with you. So really, I think knowing what those are, what your differentiators are and what's important to you, can help you, I guess, decide what type of clients, your ideal client, who you want to go after. Some clients are just like I just want to test this out, is this going to be good? So, they would probably want to go with an agency that has a lower fee and month to month contracts. But other ones who want to deep dive, they know they're going to invest in this, they know where they want to go build that partnership. So, it helps, you kind of weed out the clients that you do want and get rid of the ones that you don't. So, I don't know what really stood out. There was a lot.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, now let's just flip the script a little bit. I'm an Amazon seller, I'm new or I'm big, I'm a seven-figure seller, eight-figure seller? Who is the persona or what type of person should be looking for a brand management agency as opposed to you know what? You probably should just try and handle things on your own at your stage.

Christi Michelle:

That's a loaded question. I would say that it actually depends on your personality type. So, there are people who want to understand there's a level of control that says I want to bring all of this in house, I want to bring in an expert who is a good PPC expert, someone who does graphic design. I want it to be so customized because it's my business. If that is your personality type, you probably want to build in house. But if it's not and you really just want kind of the simple life, you can find a partner partnering with an agency that has all of that already in-house. I would go that route. But it really depends on how you want to run your business in general. So, it's more of a personal decision on your lifestyle. With that there is an influx point, especially because, like I said, a lot of agencies will have sort of a flat fee to start with for the first 90 days or whatever, and they get to a point and they say, okay, wait, we expect to build traction at this point.

Christi Michelle:

So, from that we want to, once we hit this threshold, we want to flip and we want to take a percentage of sales. Well, that's fantastic, especially if they're doing a really good job. But if you go from doing, 50,000 in sales and then a hundred thousand in sales and then 500,000 in sales, and suddenly you’re doing millions in sales that you know taking 5% or whatever that is, at some point you're going to be paying the agency hundreds of thousands of dollars that it makes more sense than to just bring it in house. So, there is a scaling point that I would say unless you're super comfortable and you just love working with them and you don't care to give away that percentage as long as you don't have to think about it, because clearly, they've done a good job, then at some point you would probably want to bring it in house.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, all right. Now I think, looking now I remember looking at the title of your talk today like wasn't one thing about helping people scale, all right, so we have listeners of this podcast, from newer sellers all the way to maybe seven, eight figure sellers. What are some? I know a lot of the stuff you talk about is targeted, you know, depending on their exact persona, but maybe there's some general things that you could, some tips that you can give out about, because I think everybody wants to scale, unless they're just like trying to do this in their hobby. That hey, I'm very happy at my level of the rest of my life. My, my day job is this. That's probably like 3% of people. I think 97% wants to scale. So, what are some tips you can give?

Christi Michelle:

It's very customized because it depends on where your maturity of your company is. And so, I use the word maturity and the evolution of your business because most people say, well, I'm a million-dollar company or I'm a $5 million company or I'm a $40 million company, that really doesn't matter, because I've had clients that are 40 million, I've had clients that are 2 million and they're at the same stage. They experienced the same influx of issues. So, I like to identify them. So, Tony Robbins has a really good. He has a really good model that's called the evolutionary 10 stages of your business and it starts literally from like a child. It's like birth. You have infancy, you have toddler, teenager, young adult, and then you're in your prime and then eventually, at some point things always kind of deteriorate and you kind of go down that path. So, I like for people to be able to identify where they are. That helps them understand what their bottlenecks are. Able to identify where they are. That helps them understand what their bottlenecks are. So, one tip would be figure out where do you stand like, where is your evolution of your company and what is it going to take for you to go from a teenager to a young adult, or a young adult to get to you when you're in your prime. So, understanding that about yourself. Another thing that I would say is most companies, you're just very focused. Most people don't understand this. If you didn't get an MBA, you don't understand all the facets of business, right? They think, well, I've got a product and I've got a or a service. This is what I'm doing. Understand that if you want to scale, you kind of need to do it. The best way to do it is very, is as balanced as possible, and so another exercise that I do is based off of EOS, which is the Entrepreneur Operating System. They have a model. So, this is that's a business blueprint.

Christi Michelle:

Every company should be working from a business blueprint, and so, if you can do that, there's a several questions that kind of prompt you well, how well are you in each of these categories of your business? So, you can say, okay, well, how is my data measurables Like? Do I know what I'm measuring? Do I know what my PPC statistics are? Do I know what my P&L looks like? Do I know what my turn rate is? Do I know? There's lots of things to know. So, understanding that category, understanding your people. Do I have the right people? Have I hired you know? Are they doing the best that they can? So, there's lots of different ways that you can measure the health of your business. You can take it as a 20-point questionnaire. You can go to EOS I think it's called; I don't know. You can download it for free. In five minutes, you can kind of figure out sort of like a general health of your business. That will also tell you OKAY, here are the areas that I'm unbalanced. These are my strengths and these are my weaknesses. But as you want to scale, you want to scale as balanced as possible. Also, understanding different personality types. You start off as the visionary of your company and different visionaries and I kind of have had several different buckets that I would put them in. But there's different visionaries, create different problems, create different solutions and problems in their companies. So, you get the ones that are.

Christi Michelle:

They're just very what is it Gregarious? Like, very like outgoing and big and let's try all the things, and they don't have a big sense of risk. They don't have a correct sense of risk. They go above and beyond and that's really fun. They're usually very grateful. They're a lot of fun to work with, but there's very little. The opposite side of that is they don't come with a lot of accountabilities they just trust you. Yeah, go do the thing. I like you. You seem smart, let's go. And they won’t’ve that type of leader. Understand what your strengths are and also understand what your weaknesses are. Right, because that can create a lot of uncertainty in your employees, and a lot of employees love you, but they just feel like they're constantly concerned about what's happening with their job. So, I could go down a whole rabbit hole on different personality types, but those are the things is understood who you are, what you bring to the company and kind of the health of the business overall. I mean there's tons of tools out there that in five minutes. I love doing workshops because I want people to learn about themselves, where they stand relative to who they are, what they bring to the table and you know what they're going to need to balance them, because everybody has strengths and weaknesses.

Bradley Sutton:

Now I'm looking here. I'm guessing this is part of, like, your workshops that you're going to be doing,

Christi Michelle:

Yes.

Bradley Sutton:

Or is this a handout that people are going to have?

Christi Michelle:

Yes. Okay, very tactical hands-on.

Bradley Sutton:

Maybe you can describe some of this so that people can maybe do this at home even without you. At least get started on this framework here.

Christi Michelle:

Sure, well, I mean, I kind of did mention a little bit, so I would look up Tony Robbins. So, business mastery he has the 10 life cycle stages of your evolution of your business. So, if you can look that up, he kind of gives a definition, as I said earlier. So, you have birth, you have infancy, you have the toddler, you have the teenager, you have the young adult. What are those? What are the pros and cons of each one of those? So go look that up and if you could do that, read there, help yourself identify. Once you identify, let's say, you figure out that you're in a teenage stage. That's a very exciting stage. It's also one of the most dangerous stages and a lot of people get stuck there, a lot of visionaries get stuck there, and so I won't have time to go into detail about it. But if you are able to identify yeah, that kind of sounds like where I am going ahead and look at what the next stage is after that. What is it going to take for me? So, the teenager stage I think it's usually fun and reckless, right? Teenagers? I think of them as driving 100 miles an hour down the highway that they've got their sports car because cash flow at that point is less of an issue. But they say yes to everything and they don't know how to say no. Everything looks like an opportunity, so they pull resources from everywhere. It's very unfocused. So, I think about that teenager driving 100 miles an hour down the highway. If they take one wrong turn, they could seriously wound the business. They don't really recognize that. There's a sense of overconfidence with that. So, if you look that some of those are usually the signature problems that you have as a teenager, then look and see okay, well, what is it going to take to get to be a young adult? And I kind of like quote that as a young adult would be a rebirth. You grow up right. You're like okay, we have to have some responsibility. We're going to bring in some professional staff at this point. We're going to so anyway. So really good way.

Christi Michelle:

Another thing that I have here, as I said, sort of this grading. I turn it into sort of a wheel exercise so you can kind of self-grade. And it's the EOS, I think it's organizational checkup. Go there, it's 20 questions, it's Likert scale one through 10. Grade yourself. You can share that with all the other people in your company, so that you get a collective grading for everyone. And it comes back and it says okay, well, your score is a 57 out of a hundred. Okay, well, what areas do we need to work on? So, it will quickly highlight for you some of those pieces. But I core values exercise, creating your one page, your business blueprint. Who are we? Where are we going? Why are we doing what we do? What makes us unique? What's our ideal client? Really, building on a business blueprint? Because when you look at going back to the stages, if you look at the when you're in your prime, this is like, this is like Apple. I mean, there's just, there's a. You just know that they come out with excellence at all times. Right, and you can be in your prime for decades. You can be in a prime for a long time. When you understand what that looks like, you want to strive to get to those levels of like. What's the pros of each one of those? So, self-education.

Bradley Sutton:

Taking it back to, I think, something that is at the top of mind of a lot of Amazon sellers nowadays. You know you started selling on Amazon and kind of like the glory days where you could just like fall into making tons of money by accident, not even knowing anything. You're doing right Nowadays I'm sure you talked about this with Amazon sellers. I think I see so much more fear and anxiety over all the new fees that Amazon has. You know rising PPC costs, rising logistics, this and that and now many people are stressing about how I mean not only just how to scale, but just how to stay afloat. And so, some of your successful people you talk to what are their characteristics or what are they doing to? Because it's still very viable to make money on Amazon. So, what are the successful people? How are they navigating all of these fees and increased costs?

Christi Michelle:

Well, first of all, they're treating it the successful ones are treating it like a holistic business. It's not just I'm going to throw up a product, make some money and then maybe I figure out a little bit of PPC with that right. There is an evolution to actually truly building something like a business, and so I say that in tandem. When I think of truly building a business, it's you have to look at all aspects, so it's not just the single focus of what are my resources within the Amazon or e-commerce space. So, for example, so when we talk about fees, one of my clients you know is has nothing to do with this, but it overlaps he gets the best rates on UPS and FedEx that you can imagine. Okay, well, maybe we can't. If you're doing FBA, then you can't necessarily use those right, because you're not going to get better fees. But if you are diversifying and if you are going, if you want to do FBM or if you want to do Shopify and you want to go to other places, those fees you can offset them by getting unbelievable discounts for those and you can kind of offset the cost of what Amazon is rising by decreasing the costs of other platforms in your Shopify store, let's say. So, that requires that you step out that you would not know that this person, this type of service exists, because it's not really talked about here, because most people go FBA if they're going to be selling on Amazon. But being resourceful and looking at just look at the problem plainly Okay, amazon fees are going up.

Christi Michelle:

What is my? If you look at your balance sheet, if you look at your P&L and you say these are all the costs that are associated with my business, what are ways that I can offset each one of these? Like I look at it, I like put my little MacGyver hat on and I'm like, okay, what else can I do? What else can I bring to the table? What else is working in completely different industries? What are they doing that I can kind of take and then bring that over into my space? So, I say two things. They treat it like a business, like it's holistic, it's not. I'm not just selling a product. They know that they're building a brand, they know that they're trying to. And if they try, if they know in two years they've got their vision, two or three years we want to sell for X amount, okay, well, you start working with folks, that will help you kind of get you set up for a sale. We'll do that a year and a half in advance. There's some brilliant tactics for how you can set for decisions you need to make today that 18 months from now will greatly pay off so that you can find the right buyer. So, these are all different ways that are just it's not just looking at selling a company or your business, it's what are all the resources that you're going to need in the future. So, thinking in advance, treating it like a business and looking for resources outside of space.

Bradley Sutton:

I think what you said is important, because there's a lot of Amazon sellers, I would say that this is probably the first business they've run. Maybe they came from the corporate world or they came from working a nine to five and so they don't have that experience. And there's a tendency, it's because it's such a different beast, on one hand, where it's like, oh no, it's not a real business, but then all of a sudden, they're like wait, this is a business doing seven figures a year. In your experience, when you first talk to people like that, what are they doing wrong? As far as not treating it like a business, like what's the most common things that you're like, okay, we got to get this fixed right away, okay.

Christi Michelle:

Okay, I'm going to answer this in sort of an evolutionary piece. So, most people, when they start a business, it's just you in your basement or wherever, and you're selling either your product or service, but probably your product, right, if you're not going to do an agency style and you figure that out. So, you go through that and it's just you, it's you're trying to do everything, and then you kind of get that going and then maybe you hire a customer service person or maybe you hire someone to help you out with the day-to-day operations. Okay, let's bump up the sales, let's do the marketing, let's get in some PPC how else can I get a lot more sales? So, then you switch your focus next to the department I'm going to put that in air quotes the department of marketing and sales, and you try to figure out let's pour some gas on this. We've got your product and service. Then you have your marketing and sales, okay. So finally, then we've got that flowing, we've got that going, we know what we're doing there. Oh crap, I'm making a lot of money. Now, what's my P&L look like? What's my balance sheet look like? What does my profit look like? What is margins? What is this about? So, then you start taking okay, do I have the right people? Okay, am I like doing the best that I can, and do I have a high turnover? So, then it gets to HR. So, my answer is actually HR.

Christi Michelle:

People ignore HR because in the evolution, it's the last, it's, we call it like crisis by management by crisis. Most, every one of those stages you're saying what's the biggest crisis that I need to focus on? So, HR doesn't feel like it's crisis, but it actually is like the underpinning of everything. So, most people ignore HR. So, one of the very first things that I do when I come in is I say what do our people? What does it look like? Do we have the right staff? Do you trust your people? Because a lot of times they'll hire someone but they don't trust them and so then they micromanage them and they never let them flourish. And then you have it keeps growing and growing and growing. And then you have this owner who now has like 15 employees. They've technically become successful, but they've got golden handcuffs because they can't leave, because they haven't figured out how to actually delegate and trust. That is one example.

So, when I come in, the first thing I do is. I say what does HR look like? Because usually and, by the way, the whole time, whether you're doing the you're, you're doing your product surface, your operations, your marketing sales, your finance, you're still hiring people along the way. But that always tends to fall on the visionary, which most people didn't go to HR school. They don't know how to interview, they don't know how to hire the right people, they don't know how to manage and make sure that they're setting those expectations.

Christi Michelle:

So, I tend to think of that as I will come in first. I'll look at HR, because I know that that's one of the number one thing that's going to make or break a company. But it feels like it's the underpinning. It doesn't feel like it because it's not so much a big crisis loud thing usually, but that's the underpinning and it always falls on the visionary and that's not necessarily going to be their forte. So, if I can teach them how to do that and we can kind of clean house and get the right people in the right place and get the systems and all of that, that's typically what I see.

Bradley Sutton:

All right Now. You and I were just talking to elevator about. How Helium 10 are remote company. I would say nowadays most Amazon businesses as they scale and become a real business, it's almost all remote. Either they're hiring people within the United States remotely or in most cases hiring people from other countries, be it Philippines, Pakistan, et cetera. What are some things that Amazon, business owners can do to. In a remote lifestyle where they can just make sure, hey, everybody's on task. Like Helium 10, we started as an in-office company so it was easy for us to know like oh wait, this person is slipping when we run remote or like we know what. But, Amazon sellers from day one. They're kind of a remote company. So, how do they structure it to make sure that it's still operating as a well-oiled machine, even though maybe they've never even met some of their employees in person?

Christi Michelle:

Sure. I mean, I think it's a really good question. I think there’s a lot of challenges the people have because it’s not a natural state if you think about humans and how it all interactive with each other coming from villages that living, but this is very new thing. Covid did not help but it really exacerbated the fact that we so I would say the same way that you would handle a social situation if you moved away from your friends and family you, it takes effort. You actually have to put in conscious effort to reach out and create a relationship with. You can't like, if you moved away and you have all of your best friends and your family that lives back in your hometown, you no longer it's not. You have to actually put in the energy and effort to ask them how they're doing, see what they're up to, have constructive conversations. When you're in person, you just don't really think about it. You kind of take it for granted. You're like, oh, I'll just go bump into you at the water cooler. Hey, just pop in my office. That kind of thing. It's so much, it happens kind of effortlessly. It takes effort to actually maintain relationships and you have to build. You kind of have to rebuild your social skills. So, I would say that, from a culture perspective, is that you need to figure out what that looks like. So, I have a lot of clients where we'll implement. Just, you know, we do like happy hour Fridays where everybody, at three o'clock or four o'clock, we're like hey, let's all get on here, we’ll share, we’ll do trivia, they’ll do things. So, there's lots of things you can do from a culture perspective.

Christi Michelle:

But in terms of just operations, of business, cadence of meetings and I say that carefully because I think a lot of people roll their eyes, I have a lot of meetings, lot of meetings. A lot of people roll their eyes at me because they hate meetings. Most people hate meetings because they're not productive meetings. I, like I said, I am a hands-on, tactical person. I don't want homework after a meeting. Don't make me do anything. As soon as we're over the phone, I'm done, I did my job. So, the moment that I get on meetings, I know what we're working at, I know what we're trying to solve and if it's, we don't know the answer. I'm building a matrix. I'm building, we're typing it out, we're having a constructive conversation and leading it. I'm constantly monitoring people to say okay, what are we trying to solve? You have this question how can you get our audience to solve? What do you need to move forward? So being you just have to be more cognizant about having constructive meetings. So, it's a lot more communication in that sense. But that more communication does not need to be waste of time.

Christi Michelle:

I think a lot of people have that sort of this equals that? Not true at all. Just have productive. So, learn how to have. So, I had to summarize one. Decide how you want the culture of the company to be and put an effort to make sure that that happens, that you are making building relationships again, whether that's a happy hour, you guys do like a weekly, like shout outs or something like that. And then the second one is learn how to have productive meetings. Learn how to have constructive meetings where you actually get work done during the meeting while everyone's together. They can put in their input if that is needed. Learn how to have constructive meetings that you don't have to have a lot of busy work on the other side and then you guys are learning and building and growing together, which just creates more camaraderie.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome, awesome, all right, any last words of wisdom like a message you want to get out to Amazon sellers around the world here, what can you help them with? Like I sometimes call this like a 60 second strategy, but I'm not going to tie you down to a certain time, but just anything you want to close this out with.

Christi Michelle:

Oh goodness, I mean I think I've harped on the fact that treat it like it's a business. Truly, if you're not working on a business blueprint, you know EOS is a good one, it's. It's a limited. It's very, very good, but it's limited. There's, you have system and soul. There's lots of different ones. Get like, find, a business blueprint to work from, because most people don't understand strategic frameworks and it's not anybody's fault If you didn't go get an MBA, if you didn't know this, but you have the entrepreneurial spirit. You do have to educate yourself on how to run a business. So, treat it like it's a business, that there are all different components and aspects to it and I think that you will find that scaling and growing and educating you will be more balanced and less stress and you'll have less of those true deep pitfalls that I see a lot of people having.

Bradley Sutton:

All right, one more thing. At dinner last night I kind of got a little bit of this. But Boyan was telling me you went to Costa Rica and you didn't eat food for like two weeks or something. So, tell me a little bit about what prompt cause? You never. there are some people out there who are I'm not trying to throw anybody under the bus, but like the whole very spiritual and touchy, feely and yoga every morning, and let me go find my, my inner priestess, or whatever.  You never struck me as that kind of person, but so I'm wondering what prompted you to do this retreat, what did it involve and what did you get out of it?

Christi Michelle:

So, funny that you said that, and I don't think that I used to be, but I'm happy to openly admit I'm actually quite a spiritual person. I'm not a religious person, but I am a very spiritual person. And so, what prompted it? Two things I could say. We grow by the most through our struggles, and I've read this in a lot of different places and people talk about I wanted to go do something that was challenging. I wanted to do something that pushes you, because in this particular retreat I was in Costa Rica, definitely out with the bugs. Every night I had to look for spiders and scorpions and snakes. In my bed, on top of not eating at all, you had a one job and that was to drink as much water as humanly possible.

Bradley Sutton:

So, I was doing you ever have those things in your bed?

Christi Michelle:

Not in my bed but, I definitely have a situation a very large spider that was a.

Bradley Sutton:

Crossing Costa Rica off my bucket list.

Christi Michelle:

But it's so beautiful there, but you're there and it's. You know, I meditate a lot, I mean. So, I thought I was. Oh, I'm just going to go there, I'm going to meditate for a couple of hours every day. I'll take some naps. No, you had one job to do and that was to drink as much water as possible. So, I was drinking up to 1.75 gallons a day. But the thing is, when you're not eating, when you're not eating, you're not replenishing the electrolytes, so you have to drink 16. You can't drink any more than 16 so that you don't flush it, so it's little sips. So, from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to bed, so from 7 am to about 10, 10.30 at night, all you have to do is drink, and you're not supposed to. There's no internet, there's no WIFI, there's, I mean, you can have your phone, but there's nothing that you can't, like you know, download anything. No one tells you physically purging. Most people that went there I was very different. Most people who went there had very much had cancer, had different things. Cleansing of your body is. It's fantastic. I recommend anybody research what fasting like water fasting can do. It's one of the best things I think you can do for your body, but so there was a combination of wanting to kind of do a good cleanse, but it challenges you mentally, emotionally and physically to be uncomfortable, to be in a space you don't have any.

Christi Michelle:

Most people use food for comfort or to repress I mean, we all do it right or to repress some feeling, or to kind of just enhance. I mean we use food almost like it. I mean it truly is kind of like a drug where you don't have that to rely on. So, then you're sitting there by yourself, no one really to talk to, nothing to entertain you in traditional ways. You're stuck with your thoughts and you go through a lot through that. So, I like to do pretty strong challenges and so that was one of my big challenges for this year. Can I do it? And I would probably not ever do it again, I mean, unless I got very, very sick, and I thought this would. If I did, I thought that would be the best thing that it could do. But, it's just to, to challenge myself, to grow to do something different.

Bradley Sutton:

All right, cool. All right, man, we'll see. I've tried a lot of different things. Maybe, maybe I can try that, just minus the scorpions and snakes and spiders. Yeah, all right. Well, how can people find your company, or are you out there on the interwebs these days?

Christi Michelle:

I am in fact on the interwebs. I think that we have so I am right now. So, my main is I'm the coo integrator that is my agency, so that's just coo for chief operating officer, the coo integrator, that is my website. And right now, I mean, the truth is I I'm extremely fortunate that I do have a backlog of clients. And, funny enough, I don't really scale my company of all the things. Who don't she helps people scale, but she doesn't when you've had so many companies and you're responsible for hundreds, you know dozens, if not a hundred, plus people there comes a point in your life where you're like I think I'm just good with keeping things simple, but you kind of have to go through that to appreciate this. It's kind of like water fasting you have to go without food before you can appreciate the food there. but yeah, so I'd love to. I usually do free analysis with people, thank you, thank you, just to kind of help them and I can point them in the right direction. So, I'm always just kind of happy to help guide people, and anymore now I spend some time on boards of companies and I do other investments and things. So, I love the game of business. I'm always happy to talk about it. So please reach out to me, Christy, at the CEO integrator, and I'm happy to chat.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome. Well, hope to see you sooner than later and I don't have to travel around the world just to be able to see you. Like Karen Spade,

Christi Michelle:

Yeah, going to Europe, right All right, we'll see you guys in the next episode.

#568 - Amazon Semantic Search & Google Indexing with Leo Sgovio

Join us in this episode as we sit down with Leo Segovio, a top expert in the space, to discuss a wide range of topics that are essential for E-commerce sellers. Leo shares his unique insights on how optimizing Amazon images can significantly impact indexing and ranking. He also opens up about his recent ventures, including a software project for influencer and affiliate marketing, and an intriguing Airbnb project in Italy. Additionally, Leo provides valuable tips for Amazon sellers looking to diversify their income by investing in real estate, highlighting the importance of strategic investments to complement a thriving Amazon business.

Listen in as we explore the evolving landscape of influencer and affiliate marketing strategies. We discuss how leveraging platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube can empower brands by building robust affiliate networks. We highlight successful brands and share advanced techniques for optimizing listings to ensure better visibility on Google and Amazon. Practical tips for using press releases on high-authority domains to improve Google indexing are also discussed, offering listeners actionable advice to enhance their marketing efforts.

Finally, we talk about the significance of Google indexing for Amazon sellers and the benefits of driving traffic from Google to boost Amazon rankings. We discuss the theory that paid traffic may hold more weight and the value of optimizing images with keywords to enhance discoverability. Additionally, we examine Amazon's evolving search algorithms and how intent-based optimization is changing the way products are discovered on the platform. This episode is packed with valuable insights and strategies to help Amazon sellers navigate the complexities of e-commerce and achieve greater success.

In episode 568 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Leo discuss:

• 04:14 - Investing In Real Estate Investments
• 09:41 - Leveraging Creator Marketplace for Affiliate Networks
• 15:56 - Google Indexing for Amazon Sellers
• 18:16 - Google Traffic Boosts Amazon Ranking
• 24:01 - Google Indexing Boosts Product Visibility
• 26:46 - Search Algorithm Evolution and Intent-Based Optimization
• 29:13 - Optimizing Amazon Listings for Intent-Based Search

Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

Today we've got one of the top minds in the entire Amazon game back on the show, Leo Segovia. He's going to be talking about a wide variety of topics, such as the impact on indexing and ranking by optimizing your Amazon images, and much, much more. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Hello everybody, welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I'm your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show. That's a completely BS-free, unscripted and unrehearsed organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. And speaking of the e-commerce world, I'm on the other side of the world right now. For those of you listening, maybe I sound a little different. We are in the AVASK office here in Madrid, Spain, right in the middle of our Elite Workshop, and just about 15 minutes ago we had our very first speaker. All the other speakers are very mad at him because he started off and he set the bar really high with his talk, but we've got no stranger to the show, Leo Segovia. Leo, how's it going?

 

Leo:

Bradley, good morning. How are you doing?

 

Bradley Sutton:

Doing great, doing great.

 

Leo:

Awesome. Yeah, this morning was great. I'm actually happy this is my first time in Madrid. Yes, I actually just stopped once. I think I was on my way to Puerto Rico, but yes, I got to enjoy the city. Today I'm here at the AVASK office in Madrid, so happy to be here and happy to be your guest again.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome, awesome. So now you know it's been a while since Leo's been on the show, so let's first just catch up with what you've been up to. Have you been launching products on Amazon? You've just been focused on building software. What have you been up to the last couple of years since you've been on the show?

 

Leo:

Yeah, it's been a crazy year for me actually. I've been involved in a couple of different projects. We are obviously always looking for new products to launch. What kept me very busy in the past year has been software that I've been working on for influencer and affiliate marketing, and actually this Airbnb project in the south of Italy, which has been kind of a roller coaster. Yeah.

 

Bradley Sutton:

So, you actually moved, I remember you went from Canada to Florida and then a few months ago you moved back to your home, uh, country of Italy, but then this was always meant to be kind of just like a like a winter, uh or summer home for you.

 

Leo:

Yeah, that is correct. Uh, I have a family in Italy. So, and recently their area of Italy is called Puglia, it's in the southeast was becoming more and more popular and more expensive, and so I decided to buy a property there so that we could spend a week or a month in the summertime, perhaps, when in Florida is too hot, you know, go inside of Italy. Invite some of my Amazon friends, you know, mastermind, and so that's the plan. Now, I was supposed to be there only for a couple of months, just to see what was going on, but when I got the keys, I realized that the place needed a lot of work, and so I've been stuck in Italy since November, actually, of last year, and I'll probably stay there until for two more months before going back to Miami.

 

Bradley Sutton:

What passport do you have? What country passports? I have Italian and Canadian passport. Okay, so then, when you bought this house, you use your like Italian citizenship?

 

Leo:

No, actually I well, I could participate to an auction because I bought this place at an auction. Not the $1 ones, it was more than that. But yes, because of my Italian citizenship it allowed me to participate to an auction. But everything that I'm doing is as a Canadian citizen. It works out better from tax perspective and all that.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. So that's why I was asking about this, because I think this is, you know, like somebody might be jumping on the show. What are we talking about? Airbnb here? But as e-commerce entrepreneurs, Amazon sellers, maybe we make a little money, maybe we're not interested in exiting our business, but now we have extra money, like do we start other businesses? You know, maybe something that has nothing to do with Amazon, but I hear of more Amazon sellers doing something similar. Where they go you know, not necessarily Italy, but another country, buy a house and then so, as a Canadian citizen or as an American citizen I would assume it's about the same. What's the process of participating, like in this Italian auction to be able to buy this house?

 

Leo:

I think you need to have someone in Italy or a friend, someone with an Italian citizenship, in order to buy a place at auction. Otherwise, you just have to go to a real estate agent and buy a regular place. The reason for me it was convenient is because it was a good deal. If I was able to win the auction, and so in real estate, you make money when you buy, not when you sell. Right, if you buy for less, that's most likely guaranteed revenue or earnings whenever you sell, and so that's the reason why I did this. Now, I don't know exactly the process if I didn't have any Italian citizenship, but yeah, a lot of entrepreneurs you know, especially Amazon sellers whether, when they exit or you know if they're already doing quite well and they have good cashflow, they normally tend to invest in real estate Airbnb’s. You secure yourself passive income from that, and it's always a good investment.

 

Bradley Sutton:

So then would I have to have all cash though to once the auction closed, I can finance over there.

 

Leo:

Okay. So that's an interesting thing. I was going to finance the project. I ended up buying a cash because it just made more sense for me, but in Italy they actually give you a mortgage as long as you can prove that you have income outside of Italy.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. And then so you calculated out, like how much you can maybe get an Airbnb. And then so have you calculated hey, for the other months of the year where I'm not staying here, I need to rent this place out x amount of time of the year. And it's going to be worth it, have you like, and did that analysis?

 

Leo:

Yeah, so in this specific region of Italy and the location of what I bought in August for a place with a pool and four or five bedrooms, you can charge 5,000 to 6,000 euros a week. So you make your money in the summertime. Ideally, as an investor, you don't want to go and spend time in the summertime there, but you want to go, perhaps either early, like May or September, when the season starts to kind of slow down and so you don't take out money from your profits, right? So my plan is to rent it out June, July and August. If I have some good offers in September, maybe I'll rent it out, otherwise I'll go myself there in September or May, but, yeah, normally throughout the year.

 

Leo:

You know Italy is a destination where you have a lot of tourism during summertime, unless you're in Rome or Venice or Florence, which is always busy throughout the year. You know south it's a summer destination, right. So you get a lot of tourism summertime. Wintertime dies down, so you probably can get us or what you can get in the summer. But you know it works out well because if you have a small apartment, for example, in a big city, and you are charging, you know, 200, 300 a night? Um, at the end of the year you make the same money. So with this kind of properties is a little bit of a different um investment. I went more on the luxury kind of market, hoping to work only with Americans. You know foreign tourism, but in my opinion it's a great one.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, so there you have it, guys. You know, like, maybe you've had some success on Amazon and you're thinking of what kind of things to invest in. You know, getting a property at a low price and maybe fixing it up even though it's a headache a little bit, you know could be the route that you want to go. Now you know we're going to talk a lot about some really cool Amazon strategy coming up, but you've been developing some software lately for a while now. That's not necessarily for on Amazon, but it helps Amazon sellers. Can you talk about that a little bit?

 

Leo:

Yeah, I've been working. The software is called Spliced. I've been working on this for about two years now and I was supposed to be already in market, and the reason why I'm late is because of what I just explained. It took me, you know, it took resources and energy a little bit off the other project, but now we're ready to go, and the reason why I built this software is, you know, Bradley, you know I have Convomat, which was my first software that I built, and then Amazon changed it to iOS, and so I had to find a way to pivot. But I already knew that influencer and affiliate marketing was the way to go, also for us Amazon sellers, in order to have a little bit more control over the traffic, over the business and the revenue that we drive to our brands. And so, with Spliced, my goal is to leverage the creator's marketplace, which is huge between TikTok and Instagram and YouTube, and leverage that to build affiliate networks for your own brand.

 

Leo:

There are already a lot of sellers out there that are doing a good job when it comes to affiliate marketing. Look at a brand like Goalie. Goalie, one of the key strategies for Goalie was actually the affiliate marketing, and so with Spliced, my goal is to allow brands to look up into our marketplace, which has already been built with we have over 20 million creators and then approach them with an affiliate partnership instead of just UGC content. This is the reason why we didn't build in Spliced, just UGC campaigns. There's already plenty out there of softwares that you can use for UGC, but in my opinion, if you have a solid affiliate network, you can keep launching new products, relaunching the same products. We use it for reviews. If you need something like that and you have more control over your business, and if you decide to launch your D2C website, you can leverage the same network and start pushing traffic off of Amazon. So there are a lot of reasons why I believe people should use a platform like that. It's like building an email list, but instead you're actually leveraging the creator marketplace.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, yeah, interesting, I think TikTok how it works, people's eyes are really open to more of influencer marketing. I mean, it's basically influencer marketing. There's not really SEO on TikTok, or it's not even. Even if you understand the hashtags, it doesn't necessarily guarantee the rally. It's a numbers game like getting you know. You get out to 25 influencers and maybe 24 do nothing, and then one person, even though they're small, they get on the For you page or something like that and literally can bring thousands and thousands of dollars. There's somebody I've been helping with, you know, shipping their products and they're you know they're doing me sometimes some days a thousand fifteen hundred units of sales for like this planner and it was a hundred. They didn't spend any for PPC on TikTok 100%. You know they just push the product to influencers and then one here and one there just goes viral and it just means a lot of business.

 

Leo:

Yeah, I think you know it's probably right now a big hype. I mean the TikTok shops everyone is talking about them working with affiliates and it's probably one of the oldest marketing strategies, if we want to call it that way. You know the affiliate marketing works because of the power that the individual creator in this case has to influence people right, and so people want to buy from people, and if you, as a brand, do a good job in recruiting a few super affiliates in this case we're talking about good creators that will turn into affiliates, then you have to worry less about that promotion part of you know launching new products.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Interesting, interesting. Okay, now let's move a little bit back towards the Amazon world and actually I'm going to go a little bit off of Amazon, but it's something that you talked about today in your speech and we're not going to go too deep into it. If you guys want to really hear his presentation, you have to be an Elite member. So you Elite members definitely make sure to look out for the recording on that. But one thing you were talking about when it comes to images, but the way you discovered this was you said you were checking indexing on Google. So we know, on Amazon, if you want to check indexing, you just use Helium 10 index checker, right? Or if you don't have Helium 10, you can use the old school method of put the ASIN plus the keyword and then search and see if it comes up. For just rudimentary index checking for keywords. If you want to see if your Amazon product is indexed on Google, how do you even see if you are?

 

Leo:

Yeah, so normally on Google you will copy your URL, search it on Google. You can also do a site column with your URL and then Google will show only search results that are related to the domain you're searching. But if you type the whole domain, the whole URL, the canonical URL of your Amazon listing, if you are indexed, it will show there.

 

Bradley Sutton:

But what about if you're? Can you look if you're indexed for a specific keyword?

 

Leo:

So if you're indexed for a specific keyword, then you want to put that URL plus the keyword and then or amazon.com/dp/your ASIN, or you can also do ASIN in quotes plus the keyword and then you will see if you get, if you're indexed on Google from that keyword. It works in a similar way. Um, but yeah, the presentation we touched a lot on you know the details of what was going on Google which was dependent on, uh, the way that the listing was optimized on Amazon.

 

Bradley Sutton:

You talked about some advanced strategy. We'll talk a little bit about that, about like images and stuff. But without the images, is there a way to force yourself to be indexed on Google, like, for example, if you create a custom canonical URL, just insert the keywords and then if you actually happen to you know, like maybe run some Google ads, get some conversions on that, will that index you for that keyword on Google?

 

Leo:

Yeah, so, based on some experiments that I've done, the easiest way to get indexed on Google is to publish some press releases on domains with good authority score domain rank and have your you know pointing a link to your listing with the anchor text that you potentially also want to rank for using that specific canonical tag that you get from your Amazon listing. So the reason why this works better is because normally Google indexes across these websites. Like you know, if you publish through PR, news or something like that, they will be crawled, and so Google will find these links and then follow your Amazon listing, which obviously, as a consequence, would be indexed.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, interesting. Now, taking it a step further, why should an Amazon seller even be concerned about indexing on Google like, um? Obviously, if you're running Google ads, you know your goal is to get direct sales from it. But just being ranked organically, um, what kind of bumps do you see on sales? Or how does it help a to be ranked high? I'm not just index. I mean index doesn't do much if you're ranked on page 30 or something, but how does ranking organically for a keyword? What's the potential there for helping sales?

 

Leo:

So there, are a few reasons why you want to be indexed on Google, and for the most, let's start from the most advanced ones, right? Advanced sellers they normally try to send traffic to Amazon, especially during the launch period, using external traffic, right? So Google, we know, is a good referral that tends to help your rankings, and so Amazon tends to reward you if they see traffic coming from Google. So if you're not indexed, you lose a chance to show Amazon that you are getting traffic from Google. Now, I have a theory that paid traffic has a little bit more weight than organic, but the reason why you want to be indexed and the reason why you might want to be indexed for certain keywords is so that when you drive traffic through the URL to Amazon, you can actually give attribution to that keyword. That's number one, right? So you can actually use these URLs as your two-step.

 

Leo:

Number two if you do a good job with your indexation and your listing is optimized, you actually also appear in the images, right? And so if people are looking for specific products, sometimes I search on Google using images because I'm looking for specific products that might be hard to find on Amazon, but if I look through the Google images and I find the product, then I go to Amazon, and so if you're not indexed, you're also not going to be able to be found there, and Google images actually gets a ton of traffic. So here are some of the reasons why, two of the reasons why. I can think of many more, but the most important are these ones. Google is still one of the largest search engine, and so missing out on that opportunity, I'm afraid it causes a lot of missed visibility for an Amazon seller at a listing level.

 

Bradley Sutton:

And then you've done some tests before where you noticed that if that Amazon can read what the search was from Google, so that when you get sales from a keyword in Google, it also potentially could help your Amazon ranking for that keyword, right?

 

Leo:

Yeah, that is correct. There was a test that we have done two years ago where everyone was talking about Google traffic and so we drove traffic straight from Google paid to Amazon without using any keyword in the URL, and then we noticed that for the keywords that we were actually bidding on, we saw a lift in ranking. I remember going from position I think it was 35 or so to position seven or five. So surprisingly we saw that Amazon was able to attribute that search query on Google and then the ranking as a result for the keyword was actually improving on Amazon as well.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, interesting, interesting. Now let's switch and talk a little bit about images, because this also has to do with ranking on Amazon. It has to do with ranking on Google, getting indexed in Google. What has more of an impact with getting discovered or being able to be read by Google? Is it if you have an infographic and the actual words appear in the infographic, you know on the actual image, or is it the metadata, or it only works the best if you're doing both?

 

Leo:

In my opinion, you have to do both, and the reason is that right now, every search engine uses AI to detect subjects, text and everything on an image. You know, if you look, if you're a Facebook advertiser, you probably know that they've had this for a long time. If you add more text on an image than the image, the visual itself, your ad wouldn't have been approved, and so AI detection for images has been going on for a while. But now, since you know, ChatGPT came out and you know Lama from Facebook, we have, you know. We know we have a lot more information about this topic, and what we found is that the search engines, including Amazon and Google, they scan the content of your image and they're able to rank these images based on the content of that image, including subjects, context and in the subjects and text. Did I say that?

 

Leo:

So, basically, what Google cares the most on top of that is also the metadata, because the metadata helps the search engine classify that image. So, while the content itself helps them understanding okay, this is what this image is about the actual metadata is more technical for the crawlers, the engine themselves so that they can place you in certain categories. And so when it comes to Amazon, the content on the image right now, I noticed that through some different experiments, that is being used for ranking reasons. And so if you look at some products that don't have, for example, keywords on the images, they are less. You know there are multiple factors. Obviously, they play when it comes to rankings, but if you put two products side by side same ranking, same ratings, same being on market for the same time period, timeframe and same price one has text on images and keywords and one doesn't. Most likely the one with keywords on images is going to rank better.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. So then what Amazon sellers should be doing is for their main images, or you know, the in their image carousel and their A+ content is I mean, obviously you can't have text in your main image. You know that's against terms of surface, although if you can have the packaging there, that's a good, that's a good opportunity. But then to get, hey, you use the right keywords, but then also, if you're using like photoshop or something you have and we're not going to go into detail, it's like there's a bunch of crazy stuff about copyright and there's fields there that he talks about in his presentation. You'll have to watch the Elite workshop for that. But you've been doing testing where it one has, it one doesn't, and then it gets you indexed on Google. You've actually seen where the ones who did it, their Amazon sales were like way higher than the ones who did it.

 

Leo:

Yeah, that is correct. We analyzed an e-brace on Amazon and this is, you know work that I was doing with a friend of mine, and we were trying to understand why these competitors were actually indexed on Google and they were indexed for certain keywords. Not the main keyword, but a variation of them. And so what I did I created this Google sheet where I was helping me understand which ones were indexed and for what keywords they were indexed and that led me to see that the ASINs that actually were indexed on Google were indexed for keywords that were present on the A+ banners. And so when we did that, what happened, this happened within 48 hours, we noticed that Google indexed that specific product image and they were actually featuring it as a search result on Google for the main search query, so that image wasn't used as a snippet or thumbnail for the listing itself. So the URL wasn't amazon.com/dp/ASIN, it was amazon.com/ the search you know embrace.

 

Leo:

So it took me to the search results page, but the image that they took as a featured image was actually the one of my client, and so that was very interesting because Google detected a refinement and it detected an update in that listing. It saw that that image was very relevant for the search query because of the way that we optimized it using metadata and then they used it as the main image on the Google search results. Now this, to me, is fascinating and is very important, because if you are a shopper and you're searching on Google for an e-brace and then you see this image, most likely that's psychological,   most likely when you land on the Amazon search results page, you're going to go and find a product, you're going to go and click that product. So that added traffic, that added conversion rate, helped us recover the racing and the sales that we were losing. But that was a very interesting experiment that we did.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Interesting, okay. So again, if you guys want to get more information about that, that almost might be worth it just to subscribe to Helium 10 Elite for one week, just to get that presentation. So if you guys want to look into that, go to h10.me forward slash Elite and see it's only $99 extra, so make sure to sign up for that. Now, another thing that I think a lot of people have been talking about not just you, but you were one of the first ones to talk about semantic search and Cosmo and things like this, and we'll talk about what that means. But I think, just to set some groundwork, I think everybody understands that any search algorithm will evolve over time. That's the whole purpose. Like the companies who don't want to do well, they'll just keep their algorithm the same right. But anybody you know whether we're talking about Google, Facebook, TikTok has an amazing algorithm, Amazon. It changes over time and we've seen that.

 

Bradley Sutton:

You know, if we were searching five years ago on Amazon, it's different. And now if you've bought some how many of you who have bought something you search for a keyword that has to do with that and that thing that you bought is now at the top on your Amazon maybe not somebody else. That didn't happen like five, six years ago. Last year we showed an example of how you search a keyword that doesn't really exist. It's called noodle camera and no listing has the word noodle camera in it. But there was like maybe 30 listings that came up and it was like a stethoscope camera it looks like a noodle. So five years ago you put noodle camera it would say zero results because nobody has that in their listing and these listings don't have that keyword in there. But it's showing up because Amazon shows history that, oh, people don't know what this is called stethoscope camera but then they think it looks like a noodle. So now it's showing listing. So we've seen this even for a year. Now, first of all, Amazon science documents we've talked about it, but maybe 80%, 90%, never actually is 100% in production. Sometimes it goes into production, sometimes it doesn't. But what was it that made Cosmo so interesting these documents that talked about it, that you're like man. This is something that you think that Amazon is going to move towards.

 

Leo:

Yeah, the reason why, I think is something that would be applied at scale across the marketplace is because, as searchers, as buyers, as shoppers, our goal when we use a search engine is to find a product or information that we need in order to solve a problem. And so, as a technology company in this case we're talking about Amazon their goal is to improve, like Bradley said, the algorithm in order to simplify that search result and give you exactly what you're looking for, by burning some steps in the middle, right. And so that's what Cosmo is designed for. Cosmo is designed to be a man in the middle, between yourself and the search results, right, when you work together with it to give feedback back and forth. And so what they do right now they learn. You type a search query, they give you some result, you refine that result by clicking on some products that you think are relevant. And what they do with this information? They start building this knowledge graph, right. So a classic example if you go on Wikipedia and for something, Wikipedia normally links to other relevant sources. That's what they call the knowledge graph, right? They know that this is relevant to that right. And so what cosmo is trying to do, instead of you having to refine the search. They're refining it for you.

 

Leo:

So the example that I give in my presentation this morning is that, if someone is searching for winter coat, we saw a product that ranks number one on Amazon that doesn't have the word winter coat in the title. But yeah, they're ranked number one, and so this is shocking, right, like everyone's like oh come. Title is supposed to be the most important element on the page when it comes to optimization and some SEOs, but this time Amazon understood that you are looking for something that keeps you, to keep you warm, right. So now we're shifting from a keyword-based search to intent-based search, and so, as sellers, right now, what we need to do is understand what is the actual intent behind the person. What am I selling this to? I'm selling this to someone that wants to stay warm, right, that's what the purpose of a winter coat is, and so, with that intent in mind, we need to optimize listings so that we can convey the message through images, through the title, bullet points and description, so that Amazon, the new Cosmo, understands that this product is something that helps people stay warm.

 

Leo:

And what I think is going to happen also because of the shift in the way that these search results are built, which is more intent-based, is that Amazon then will start recommending also related products. So if you're looking for, if you type in winter coat, they say, okay, well, this person is trying to stay warm and so let me show them also some winter gloves and winter socks and maybe some winter boots, and that will change everything right. They will change the way we advertise, they will change the way we try to be associated with other products. They will change the way we also promote our listings. So that's very interesting and fascinating, but I think it's a good thing for the buyer, right, while for our sellers might be challenging to figure out again, how do we optimize our listings keeping this semantic concept in mind for the buyer? And they've already proven. If you look at the Amazon science document in the research papers, they're already saying that they're seeing a lift in conversion rate when Cosmo is applied to a search result page. So we must pay attention to these and monitor certain. It's challenging right now to understand where this is applied, but we need to monitor better the Amazon marketplace and then evolve and adapt as Cosmo gets released into more categories.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Not to be controversial here, but to me it's almost it's different, but it's not different. Like, at the end of the day, Amazon wants to make money, right, so that winter coat that became number one. It's not number one necessarily because of new algorithm, because it would not be number one unless that is one of the best converting ones, because that's what gives Amazon the best chance to make money. But I think where the difference here is, or what's something that's quote unquote new, is it gives people more at bats. Like maybe I never. Even if I didn't have winter coat in my title, it might've been almost impossible for me to get on page one. But now Amazon is all right, let's just throw it here. Oh, shoot, look at that, how well it's converting. Let's go ahead and push it all the way to the top, whereas maybe you know, four years ago, you know, unless you were super optimized for a certain keyword, you would never even have the ad back. Like you would never even be able to get on page one, you know, outside of PPC or something. So to me that's like the difference, but something also. Again, I keep saying I don't want to be controversial, but it's going to be because there's a lot of people I respect in the industry who have been talking a lot about things that and I agree mostly with them. But I completely disagree when they say things like, oh, tools like maybe Helium 10, if they don’t change it’s going to be out of date. To me, I cannot see a world where the traditional forms of keyword research, are going to be not as important In the future, if Amazon is super intuitive, of course that's going to evolve.

 

Bradley Sutton:

But the main reason we do keyword research is to get indexed and to also make our listing. Initially because the Amazon algorithm is based on buyer interaction, right. So once it's been out there for three, four weeks, they have so many data points and how people searched and what they clicked on and stuff that. Okay, now we can start doing advanced algorithms. But to even get it in the right pages you had to have done the regular keyword research to show Amazon. Because when you're brand new, day zero of your listing, Amazon has no idea what it is. It goes by the image, it goes by what you have in the title and how you have it. So my personal opinion is that no like. Of course, little things are going to change with keyword research here or there, but the main core of hey, let me find the most important keywords. That's not going to change because you have to tell Amazon on day one what is your product.

 

Leo:

So, Bradley, I agree with you and I think there is one important detail that is the link between what you're saying and what this all semantic stuff is about. Right, the reason why that winter coat might be ranking number one, even though the winter coat is not in the title is attributes of the winter coat. You know Amazon right now, which before they probably weren't doing before Cosmo, right, they're looking at the attributes. So most likely they are ranking this one very well because it contains, uh, goose feathers, or they have 300 grams of goose feathers per square meter or whatever foot, and so they now are using these attributes to understand is this product warmer than this one? So, while the keyword research tools are always going to be needed, what I think is an opportunity for companies like Helium 10 is now provide additional information to the seller together with the main keywords. That helps also the listing be more relevant for Cosmo, using attributes related to those keywords. So, if the keyword is winter coat, what are the main attributes of coats? Right? What does a coat have to have? Waterproof, has to be warm. What kind of feeling? Is it polyester? Is it goose feathers? Also, is it long or short? Things like that are going to be the difference between the traditional keyword research tools and the semantic powered keyword research tools. If you guys give the sellers the same list of keywords and, by the way, here are some attributes related to these keywords, that will help Amazon Cosmo understand more about your product. I think that's the winner, in my opinion.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, and in his presentation he talked a lot about different things you can do to be more semantically relevant and you know, using ChatGPT, so some really good features there. But that's important because you know, the it's not just, we're not just talking about Amazon SEO, it's also going to help you on Google and Bing and these, these other things and there's things that just the human mind we can't process, but a computer can process and tell you hey, this is, this is the keywords with the buyer intent and this is the most important, this is how you can relate yourself. So, regardless of how much of this Amazon develops, it's already important now for outside of Amazon indexing. Now, before we get into your last strategy, and I have just a couple of questions for you if people want to get more information, reach out to you, find out about your new project you're working on, or just reach out to you. How can they find you out there?

 

Leo:

I have my own website right now. It's leosgovio.com, so you can reach out to me on through my website.

 

Bradley Sutton:

And spell that, because it's not spelled exactly as you might think.

 

Leo:

It's l-e-o and then s as in Sam, g as in George, o, v as in Victor, i o. Yeah, over there I have some information also about the semantic SEO stuff. So if you're more interested about this, I'd be happy to share my knowledge in depth, and LinkedIn is one of the platforms that I use the most.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Excellent. All right Favorite Helium 10 tool?

 

Leo:

Magnet

 

Bradley Sutton:

If you were a head of product at Helium 10, what is one tool or function that you would bring that we do not have currently?

 

Leo:

I believe I will combine what we just discussed about into one tool, and so it's an hybrid between a listing analyzer powered with recommendation based on the semantic stuff.

 

Bradley Sutton:

And your 30 to 60 second tip can be about anything for sellers out there.

 

Leo:

Leverage. Try to think about your current strategy when it comes to product inserts. To leverage it for UGC.

 

Bradley Sutton:

All right guys. If you want more information, go to leosgovia.com. Check them out in the Helium 10 Elite, the Q2 workshop replay. But thank you, guys, so much for joining us and we'll definitely be reaching out to Leo next year to see what he's been up to.

 

Leo:

Thanks, Bradley, I appreciate you having me again and, yeah, looking forward to the next one.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Adios desde España.

Helium 10 Buzz 6/6/24: TikTok Shop Cancelled? | Walmart Review Mapping | Amazon Award Opportunity

We’re back with another episode of the Weekly Buzz with Helium 10’s Chief Brand Evangelist, Bradley Sutton. Every week, we cover the latest breaking news in the Amazon, Walmart, and E-commerce space, talk about Helium 10’s newest features, and provide a training tip for the week for serious sellers of any level.

TikTok Shop Puts European Plans on Hold, Concentrates on US
https://www.pymnts.com/news/social-commerce/2024/tiktok-shop-puts-european-plans-on-hold-concentrates-on-us/

Amazon Small Business Report
https://sellingpartners.aboutamazon.com/impact

The Amazon 2024 Force for Good application is now open! Amazon is searching for mission-driven selling partners who drive positive change in their community.
https://sell.amazon.com/blog/force-for-good

 

Learn how Amazon uses AI to spot damaged products before they’re shipped to customers
https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/innovation-at-amazon/amazon-ai-sustainability-carbon-footprint-product-defects

But that’s not all! We’re also thrilled to announce Helium 10’s new Japanese version, designed to support Japanese users with native language navigation and subtitled tutorials. Plus, we've got a brand-new dashboard widget for tracking Amazon account metrics over time. Don't miss out on the hidden gems of our Chrome extension that could transform how you manage your Amazon business. And for those looking to optimize Amazon FBA fees, we share critical tips on monitoring package dimensions to save on unnecessary costs. Tune in as we unpack these game-changing updates and arm you with the tools to elevate your e-commerce game!

 

In this episode of the Weekly Buzz by Helium 10, Bradley covers:

• 00:52 - TikTok Shop Cancelled?
• 02:33 - Amazon Small Business Report
• 04:33 - Walmart Review Mapping
• 06:11 - Amazon Force For Good Awards
• 07:30 - Amazon Project PI
• 09:22 - Follow The AM/PM Podcast On LinkedIn
• 09:50 - Helium 10 New Feature Alerts
• 12:39 - Pro-Training Tip: Under The Radar Chrome Extensions Features

Transcript

 

Bradley Sutton:

TikTok shop plans canceled in some countries. A chance to win cash direct from Amazon. Walmart now allows you to tie reviews to orders. This and more on today's Weekly Buzz. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I'm your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that is our Helium 10 Weekly Buzz, where we give you a rundown of all the goings on in the Amazon, Walmart and e-commerce world. We give you what's new inside of Helium 10 as far as new feature goes, and we also give you training tips of the week that'll give you serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. Let's see what's buzzing. We got a few news articles today and then we got some cool training tips that I want to get to as well. So let's go ahead and hop right into the news Now

 

Bradley Sutton:

The first news article of the day is from Payments.com and it's entitled TikTok Shop Puts European Plans on Hold. Concentrates on US. So it's full steam ahead here in the US. But if you remember, a few weeks ago on the Weekly Buzz, we had reported that, hey, a release in places like Europe and Mexico and Canada was imminent, but now it is backtracking. So it says here in this article that, hey, TikTok had planned to roll out shopping platforms Spain, Italy, Germany, France and Ireland as early as July, but they have put a pause on these expansion plans, along with intentions to bring the TikTok shop to Mexico and Brazil. Now this article says, hey, that this decision reflected ByteDance, which is TikTok's parent company, their strategy of focusing on the US market in order to avert a possible ban. Now, one of the other reasons that they did this it says that they were afraid that European expansion plans might run into potentially regulatory scrutiny, kind of like it has happened in the U? S. And so they are like, hey, we're not about to uh, deal with that at this time. So for those of you who are excited in Europe about being able to start TikTok shop, unfortunately it's a no-go Now if you are in another country. It's pretty difficult to sell on TikTok shop in the USA because you need a social security number. But if you're based in the USA, you want to learn more about how to sell on TikTok shop. Make sure to check out our workshop next week. We'll have signup information this weekend in your email where we give you a detailed training on getting set up with TikTok shop.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Now, the next article here is actually from Amazon, and there's some interesting stats that you might not have known. Right, you know, like before, in the past, 50% of sales came from third-party sellers. You know how much it is now 60%. Do you know how many employees Amazon USA sellers are employing? 1.8 million. That's crazy. 1.8 million people are employed by Amazon sellers out there. How many sellers hit the seven figure mark for the first time last year? 10,000. So 10,000 sellers hit that seven figure mark for the first time last year. Are you one of them? Well, where is all of this data coming? This is from a report that Amazon put out called the 2023 Small Business Empowerment Report, so linked somewhere here in this. You know, above or below. Wherever you're watching this on, make sure to download this report, because it is super detailed and it's got a lot of cool information Like did you know that? The five most shopped categories from US for third-party sellers, what do you think? Number one health and personal care. Two, beauty. Three, home. Four, grocery and five, apparel. It also has this interesting map here we can click on any state and see some stats Like, for example, I live in California. There are 77,000 sellers in California who sold 715 million items. Now if I go to New York, there's 37,000 sellers but almost sold the same amount as the California sellers 721 million. I was like just picking random states here to see, hey, which one really doesn't have that many sellers. And I hit South Dakota. South Dakota only 600 Amazon sellers and they only sold 5 million products. So it's a pretty cool article and also this download is super detailed, with a whole bunch of information on what Amazon has done last year and some stats that maybe you never knew, that you wanted to know.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Next article is actually not really an article, but it's an email I got from Walmart. Maybe some of you Walmart sellers got it and might make some Amazon sellers jealous. What have Amazon sellers always wanted to be able to see, as far as like, for example, negative reviews, I mean for years and years. This is what Amazon sellers asked for. Is what? Yes, it's like hey, can I see who is the one who left me this review, or can I see which order it was? And, as we know, that's not available on Amazon. In Amazon, you can, if you're a brand registered seller, contact people who have left you a negative review using the Amazon templates, but you still it's. You know, for the majority of orders you can't really tie the order or the review to an order. But check out this message from Walmart here. This says it's entitled Ratings and Reviews. This brand new dashboard serves as a centralized hub for monitoring and managing customer reviews. So it's a new review dashboard, it says. Now you can connect reviews to specific orders and pinpoint the products behind negative or positive feedback. This streamlined approach makes it easier to resolve issues with fulfillment, listing, quality or customer service. So if you guys didn't get this email, go check your dashboard in your seller center in Walmart and see if you can start mapping those reviews, both positive and negative, to exact orders. And then, are you, you know, does Walmart allow you to contact those buyers? Again, I think this is something that Amazon sellers definitely wish we had. But now, Walmart sellers, you can now tie reviews directly to orders.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Next article is actually a press release from Amazon. It's entitled Amazon 2024 Force for Good Applications is open, all right. So this is basically an award that you can possibly win be featured on Amazon Accelerate. You can win cash prizes. This is for, you know, those who are third party sellers who have you know good stories about. Hey, are you giving back to your community? Are you involved in charity? Are you doing something with the proceeds from your Amazon business? You know that is for your local, community or neighborhood. Last year, there were three individuals that won these prizes. We don't know exactly what they won, but they're also featured at Amazon Accelerate, so it's free to apply for this award. You only have until June 12th to apply for it, so check somewhere below. If you're watching this on YouTube or listening to this podcast on a podcast player, we should have the link there or you can find it in sellercentral.com. Just look up Amazon Force for Good Application and, who knows, maybe we'll get to see you on stage at Amazon Accelerate and you'll be able to treat me for dinner because you just won a whole bunch of cash for winning this award from Amazon. Actually, yeah, if you do win and you found out because of this podcast, I expect a nice dinner at Amazon Accelerate. On you, all right, all right. Last article of the day, also about Amazon, and it's entitled Learn. On you All right, all right. Last article of the day, also about Amazon, and it's entitled learn how Amazon uses AI to spot damaged products before they're shipped to customers.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Now, this, I think is kind of cool. First of all, this is something that Amazon is saying hey, we're actually doing this. You know there's a lot of speculation and a lot of change coming with AI and some things we see. You know, we see in seller central, where Amazon is allowing you to use AI sometimes to make your listings, which I don't think anybody's actually doing, um, because it's still not that great yet. Um, you know, there, there there's rumors about where Amazon search might be going with AI and the kind of roles that it's going to play. We don't know, but this is something that's a hundred percent confirmed. I mean Amazon is doing this. Um, but this is something that's 100% confirmed. I mean Amazon is doing this in certain warehouses. It's kind of interesting. There's like this tunnel now that Amazon is putting products through, and then you know this AI can, like, detect, like is the package broken or is it damaged or other things that this article talks about, and this it's called a project PI for private investigator. So I think this is, this is, overall, going to be good for us, for sellers. How many times have we lamented that we see a bad review and what we find out is that a customer got a product that was like return from another customer and it's in bad, it's in bad shape and we're like why in the world did Amazon even send this product, you know, in this shape, to the customer? Um, well, hopefully those kinds of situations are going to be decreased the more that Amazon uses this uh project PI here to kind of detect those things. So move in the right direction, I think, by Amazon are.

 

Bradley Sutton:

One last thing, last thing A lot of you guys have LinkedIn and you follow Helium 10. Great, you also see you follow me on LinkedIn. Excellent, make sure you're following Helium 10 and myself. Just look up Bradley Sutton on LinkedIn, but now also add the AM PM podcast. All right, so just type in AM slash PM podcast on LinkedIn and you'll be able to get some snippets from the AM PM podcast that you otherwise might have missed out on in some little nuggets from Kevin King here and there. So again, LinkedIn. Follow three accounts myself, helium 10, and then now also follow AM slash PM podcast. All right, let's get into the new feature alerts for Helium 10. All right, now this first announcement I'm actually going to give in another language. You'll see why in a second.

 

Bradley Sutton:

皆さん、お知らせがあります。 Helium 10の日本語版の正式にロンシー。. Basically, I just said all right, guys got an announcement. Helium 10 now has been launched in Japanese. Now this is kind of big, because this is not Helium 10 works for Amazon Japan. No, helium 10 has worked in Amazon Japan for years, but a lot of our Japanese customers were like, hey, that's great that we can use it, but we want to actually see Helium 10 in Japanese. So now for all Japanese users, you can go to the very top of Helium 10 and change a language. Japanese users, you can go to the very top of Helium 10 and change a language. You've been able to do English, German, Spanish, Italian and Chinese, and now you can do Japanese, so that all of the menus inside of Helium 10 and you know the columns and everything else is in the Japanese language. Also, you're going to be able to see all of the learn button videos in Japanese with Japanese subtitles. So I hope everybody is able to get use of that.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Now, the next new feature alert from Helium 10 is a new widget for your dashboard that allows you to view different metrics from your Amazon account over time. So let me show you how you're able to add that. So when you're on your dashboard, go to the very top right and where it says add a chart, hit that button and then select chart library. Now the very first preset that's going to come up is a brand new one. It's called performance over time. When you add that, it's going to show up here now at the bottom of your main Helium 10 dashboard, and now you can chart different things up to four different metrics over time.

 

Bradley Sutton:

For example, right here I have tracked day by day gross revenue on the same chart as net profit expenses and my cost of goods sold. I can actually change one of these and start tracking advertising costs or units sold maybe page views, sessions, unit session percentage and now you can see how different key metrics for your business might interact with each other. And I can do this at a daily level, a weekly level, monthly level, quarter or even a yearly level to see these charts. So at the bottom here you can also see alerts. So if something happened, like for example here on this day it says I got a new one-star product review, maybe I want to see did that have an effect on my sales or did it have an effect on my sessions. I can actually chart that here and see, hey, when it started and if it had an effect on any of these metrics. So, again, start playing with this. Add this chart, customize it however you want, and then you will be able to get some insights into your product performance.

 

Bradley Sutton:

All right, let's get now into our training tip of the week, and what I wanted to talk about is just a couple under the radar things that you can do with your Chrome extension that I bet 95% of you are not using. Here's the first one. All right, if you're on a product page, like maybe your product page or your competitor product page, I'd say do this to your product first. At the very top, there's this product summary widget that comes up right. Click the see more data right where it says all marketplaces. And now what this is going to do it's going to tell you this product, if it's yours or if it's your competitor's product. What other Amazon marketplaces is this product being sold in? Like? Look at this product. This product is being sold everywhere, from Amazon United Arab Emirates, amazon Saudi Arabia, amazon India. The only one where it's not being sold, it seems like, is Amazon Netherlands Right now If this was your product and you know you're only selling in US and Canada and all of a sudden you see active listings like this is showing, plus the stock of the inventory of the products, now you know what your product is. Your listing is being hijacked in other marketplaces and somebody else is selling your product, or maybe a facsimile of your product, and you might need to take action. So that's one thing that I think everybody should do with your own listing. Let's say you're on your own listing.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Another under the radar thing is kind of a hidden technique. Scroll down here to right underneath, where the Helium 10 BSR widget is All right, and underneath here you're going to see it says calculators and you're going to see revenue calculator and sales estimator. For this one you have to click on Revenue Calculator and then click back on Sales Estimator. And when you do that, this new secret widget comes up and I like it because it has the item dimensions and the package dimensions right here. Now how is this beneficial? Like, for example, this collagen peptides? Obviously it's not something that you fold or expand. You know the product itself is going to be really similar to the size of the package, right, and sure enough. You see that here Helium 10 is telling you the item dimensions is 7.3 by 4.4 by 4.4 and the package dimensions 7.2 by 4 by 4.4. So obviously it's a little bit wrong. You know how can you have the package dimensions a little bit smaller than the item, but you'd be happy if you saw that here. Where is this very crucial? Well, what if you know that your package should be about the same size as your item, but your item dimension length is 7.3, but all of a sudden the package length is something like nine inches or 10 inches.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Well, now you know that Amazon must have probably remeasured your product and you didn't know about it. And you could be wasting hundreds of dollars a week, if not more, on extra FBA fulfillment fees because Amazon has the wrong dimension. So this is kind of like a cool way to just use Helium 10 to see, hey, does my package dimensions make sense compared to my item dimensions? Or do I need to dive a little bit farther and then now go to Helium 10 Alerts to see, hey, when did Amazon change my package dimensions? I need to get some money back from Amazon. So there's a couple under the radar things you know everybody always talks about Cerebro, Magnet, Black Box, Xray, but these are a couple of things here in the Chrome extension that I bet a lot of you weren't using, and I hope you can get some use from it. All right, guys, thank you very much for tuning in this week. Don't forget to tune in next Thursday to see what's buzzing.

#567 - How To Split Test Your Amazon Listings To Make More Money

Can a minor tweak to your Amazon listing images earn you an extra $40,000 a year? We uncover the incredible power of optimizing click-through rates and how even a 4% increase can transform your sales figures. Using split testing and tools like Helium 10 Audience, we guide you through the process of obtaining crucial market feedback to enhance your listings. From experimenting with main images and titles to leveraging Amazon's "Manage Your Experiments" feature, we leave no stone unturned in our quest to maximize your product's potential.

What if you could figure out exactly which product image will capture consumers' attention before you even launch on Amazon? We dive into a fascinating case study involving a coffin shelf to reveal how audience testing can refine your images and help customers see the full value of what you offer. By investing in audience feedback, you can start with the best possible image, avoiding costly mistakes and boosting your chances of success right from the get-go.

Ever wondered how psychological and demographic factors influence shopping decisions? We explore advanced listing optimization strategies and the importance of organic ranking during product launches. Through a real-time example with our Project X egg rack product, we illustrate how offline split tests can provide quick insights without risking revenue loss. Plus, discover the mechanics of A/B testing for product images, using Helium 10 Audience powered by PickFu to enhance your listings and drive your Amazon sales through the roof. Don't miss these game-changing tips and practical advice on making the most of your Amazon presence!

In episode 567 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley discusses:

• 00:00 - Optimizing Amazon Listing's Click-Through Rate for Sales
• 01:08 - Split Testing Images for Amazon Success
• 09:22 - Amazon Listing A/B Testing Image Results
• 11:17 - Optimizing Product Images With Audience Testing
• 16:00 - Improve Your Product Launches With Helium 10
• 19:13 - Targeting Audience for Advertising Campaign
• 24:13 - Listing Optimization Strategies and Launch Tactics
• 26:18 - Importance of Helium 10 Audience Testing
• 30:34 - A/B Testing for Product Images
• 31:33 - Testing for Best-Selling Variation in Audience
• 34:30 - Utilizing Tools for Amazon Sellers

Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

Did you know that improving your click-through rate from search results on a product even only 4% for a product that maybe only sells even on just 10 units a day could mean up to $40,000 of extra sales in a year? Today, I'm going to show you exactly how you can split test your listing images in order to achieve results like this. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Not sure on what main image you should choose from, or maybe you don't know whether buyers would be interested in your product at a certain price point. Perhaps you want feedback on your new brand or company logo. Get instant and detailed market feedback from actual Amazon Prime members by using Helium 10 Audience. Just enter in your poll or questions and, within a short period of time, 50 to 100 or even more Amazon buyers will give you detailed feedback on what resonates with them the most. For more information, go to h10.me/audience.

 

Bradley Sutton:

All right, hello everybody, welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I'm your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that is our monthly Ask Me Anything, where we do a training on a certain topic and then we open it up to all the members out there to go ahead and ask whatever questions you have about Helium 10 or Amazon that we can help you with. And today we're going to be talking about split testing images, both on Amazon, off Amazon, and we're going to do some live examples of this, and we're going to talk about why this is important and how it can help you. I think it's one of the most slept on things that a lot of Amazon sellers aren't doing.

 

Bradley Sutton:

All right, let's get started here. Now let me just give some framework on why I think this is something that literally every Amazon private label seller should be doing. When we create a new listing right, we have in our own mind what might convert the best as far as images, as far as titles, things like this, and it's based on, you know, hopefully some solid research. You know, maybe we've checked out the competition, maybe we know this certain niche right, but the problem is sometimes we might be a little bit biased, or we might kind of like overvalue our own knowledge of a certain niche, and when we do that, we could be leaving money on the table. You know, let's just do some calculations, guys. Let's just say that you know you want a certain click-through rate from the search results.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Let's just talk about main image, right now. Let's just say that your conversion rate, once people actually get to your page, is 10%. Let's just say it's 10%. All right, 10% of the people who click on your product they're going to convert. Now, if your click-through rate is also, let's just say 10%, right, that means that on a certain keyword page or just overall, let's just talk about it overall let's just say you know you're getting like a thousand impressions, right? You know a thousand people see your product and if you have a 10% click-through rate on it I'm not just talking about PPC, just in general I'm doing some general numbers here that means a hundred people click on your product. If it's 10% your click-through rate and then if your conversion rate is 10%, how many people buy your product? 10. All right, so 10 out of 1,000. So let's say your product is a coffin shelf, that's $30. With these numbers. Right, that means you're doing every day about $300 worth of orders. Okay, $300 worth of orders over the course of a year, that's about a hundred thousand dollars. So you've got a six figure product, a hundred thousand dollars.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Now let's just pretend that nothing else changes except your click-through rate. That means that the more the people see it in the search results, then the more they're going to click on it. What if we could bring your click-through rate from 10%, not even 5%. Let's bring it from 10 to 14. So that's a 4% increase. All right, 4% increase. So that means if, instead of 100 people a day clicking on your product, how many is that going to be? So we take 100, or we take 1000 and multiply that by 0.14. That means that 140 people are going to see your product. And if you still have the conversion rate of 10%, how many people are buying that per day? That's now 14 people who are buying that a day. So we take that 14, Times it by what's the retail price? $30. That's $420 a day you are doing on your product. We times that by 365. Now you have gone from a product that does just over $100,000 a year $109,000.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Now you've got a product that is getting $153,000 per year. You just increased by over $40,000 and you did not even change your conversion rate. You only changed the amount, your click-through rate, the amount of people who see your product in the search results and click through it, and not even by 5%, a 4% increase. Okay, Now, that's what I'm talking about here. So this is why I think this is a very important topic, and I'm just only talking about one thing you know what are the things that influence click-through rates. You know it could be your price point, it could be the way you have your title set up. It could be your main image, which is what I was talking about. So, this is why it's so important to make sure that, at the very least, you start split testing different things of your listing. All right, now Amazon has a live split tester and we're going to talk about that. First, how many people use, you know, manage your experiments. Those of you who have, who have brand registry. All right, let me show you how to do that, and then I'm going to talk about in what situations I use it, but then also the potential drawbacks of using this.

 

Bradley Sutton:

This is in Seller Central, in the how Cool Is that? Project X account. The part that you can do split testing for free if you have brand registry is called manage your experiments. So you click on brands and then you click on manage experiments and what this does is it allows you to do live split testing of new things. All right. So, the kind of things that I can split test is my A+ content, I can do my Bullet Points, Product Images, Product Description, Product Title, A+ Brand Story, or I can do Multi-Attribute. All right, we're just going to keep it real simple and mainly talk about main image, because in my opinion that's one of the biggest things that could really make an impact on your either click through rate or conversion rate. All right. So I did a few of these recently, all right, one of them is going right now, all right.

 

Bradley Sutton:

So this is a product I had called a bat bath mat, all right, and I had two different main images I was split testing. Let me show you the actual content. One was an old, like computer generated image I had and one was a newer one that AMZ one step did, all right, so you can see very similar images. Those of you watching this online, I can see. You can see it's very similar images, but just different angles, all right. And so it's like hey, I wanted to split, test this in the search results and take a look at this is ongoing. This is literally going right now. That's why it hasn't gone through yet and you can see that one of them, I sold 24 units and the other one 18 units. All right, one of them, 11 units sold from search. The other one, 4 units from search. Okay, one of them has a 0.07 conversion rate. One of them has a 0.05.

 

Bradley Sutton:

All right, so it looks like version A, which is what I have, is going to win. Okay, so that's one that's literally going right now. Here's the other one we're going to be going over today is the coffin shelf, all right. So here is this one and it completed. Okay. Now look at this one here, this one actually, I started around the same time, but look at this one. This one had a 0.1 version at a 0.04 conversion rate and the other one had a 0.005 conversion rate. That option A sold nine units over this very short period of time, and the other one only one unit. So this one already stopped because Amazon's like, oh my goodness, this is like night and day. This is going to be the good one compared to what I was showing. All right, so this one shows good information. But here's the thing. Let's just say that, on this live split test that I was doing with Manager Experiments, this one was it was almost like a 10X better one image over the other. But how Amazon is doing this is it is showing this product with the different images and search results like half of the day showing one, like half of the day showing the other.

 

Bradley Sutton:

So the problem with doing this live split test if it's a brand new listing especially is that, by definition, sometimes half the time you are showing an unoptimized image. What if, during this time, I was showing just the good image? I would have maybe, in this situation, almost doubled my sales, if not more, because I was wasting half of the day showing an image that was not well converting. Ok, now I think there's a time and place to do manager experience, especially some with some of the nuances of your bullet points, A+ content or more mature listings. But when you are trying to, you know rank or you've got a brand new product, you can understand maybe a little bit why it's probably not good to just go ahead and launch a product and then do a manager experiments from the get go, because you don't want to be, by definition, screwing your listing 50% of the day, if that makes sense, all right.

 

Bradley Sutton:

So let me show you what I think that everybody should be doing and I've been doing this for years is using a service called PickFu and inside of Helium 10, it's called Helium 10 Audience, and before I even launched my listing, I am doing this research, all right. So let me just show you. I did the exact same test yesterday and we're going to do a couple of tests together. Let me show you what I did yesterday or last night in Helium 10 audience. I set up a poll and I told the customers hey, you are searching for a coffin shelf. This coffin shelf includes a gift box and spooky accessories. If you saw the following 3 images in the search results for a product, which would make you want to click it the most, and do you see the one that won by overwhelming amount, a score of 56 to 22 to 22, this one that won in the manager experiments.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Now, let's just pretend that this was a brand-new product release. I mean, this is not a brand-new product release. This is the Helium 10 coffin shelf that's been out there. But I came to the exact same conclusion using my test audience, and so I could have started from day one with the right image without having to have 50% of the time a bad image showing up because it's a live listing. So this is the beauty about using Helium 10 Audience that I think everybody like literally every single product launch. You should be running this. Now granted, you know some of you may have, you know, be launching, like you know, 20 products at a time. I was just talking to my friend, a Helium 10 Elite member, Yizhak, and he was launching some leggings and you know, when he launches leggings, he's got like three different kinds of variations. Launching some leggings and you know, when he launches leggings, he's got like three different kinds of variations. So every single group has, you know, like 100 variations because it's three different kinds. He's got size and inseam and color and then each of those has like eight combinations, right. So I'm not saying, oh yeah, Yizhak should have done 100 Pickfu or Helium 10 Audience tests, that that's not very economical or feasible, but at least you want to check it once.

 

Bradley Sutton:

For the main, you know image results, right? So the beauty about this is it's not just, oh, random people are voting on what image they think is the best to be able to get money. The people who are doing the Helium 10 Audience, you know they actually get paid. That's why each time we do this, it costs money between 50 and $60 or so because each of the people who are responding are getting paid to give their responses. And to give their response, they have to give you information, and you don't have that in the manager experiments in Amazon. So, for example, some of the people who picked option A, which is the one that won you can read here what they're saying. This one person says hey, this image shows me all of the accessories and multiple angles of the box. Another person says option A shows the coffin both open and closed, as well as clearly showing what the accessories look like. Now, this is important. This is important, I never would have thought about this. Did you guys catch this? They think that this tells me something right here the fact that two people said multiple angles of the coffin. Let's go back to the image. This is not multiple angles of the coffin.

 

Bradley Sutton:

All right, these are two products that are included in the product. One is a coffin shelf and one is a coffin shaped box. So, right away, this is not something that I'm just going to go and say oh, this image one, right? Because now, all of a sudden, my thought process has changed. I thought that this image is going to clearly show that a gift box is included and it's two separate products. But no, here are two people who just said that they think it's the same product, but just showing open and close in different angles. So now I know I might need to go back and figure out something to make it more obvious that, no, you're getting two products for the price of one. This coffin box is a gift box that's separate from the regular coffin. Let's keep reading. I literally haven't looked at these until this second. Here's another person. I find A more appropriate. It has an all-around preview of the product. Okay's another person I find a more appropriate. It has an all around preview of the product. Okay, another person says I like to see the two trinkets at the bottom right of the image. That was important to me because I wanted to make it clear that people who order our coffin shelf they get, like this LED candle plus something else.

 

Bradley Sutton:

So, I'm going to keep reading this and see how many people are saying that they think that this is just showing a different angle. So, you see how it's different levels. All right, it's not just a matter of oh, which image is best. But now I might have to go back to the drawing board and say how do I make sure that people understand that they actually get two products in one? And then I would. I would go ahead and try to make a new image and then run it again versus this one, versus the other images. So sometimes I run Helium 10 audience maybe three times on a certain, a certain product. Okay, I hope you guys understand the value of this Number one. The first value is before I even launch a product, I can make sure that from day one I am launching with the most optimized image. The other option I could have done is even taking it a step further is Photoshop this into like Amazon search results and actually show the title and maybe show a couple of competitors. This is why I run Helium 10 Audience, sometimes 2,3 times. Yeah, it cost me like 200 bucks to do it. I mean I was using this since it was PickFu, since it wasn't in Helium 10, but it was worth it to me, the kind of insight I get.

 

Bradley Sutton:

So number one is hey, am I running the most optimized search result image or experience? I guess, if you can consider the title also in the price? And then, secondly, am I completely overlooking something like I just did here, where I thought it was very clear that people are getting 2 different products here in the same package, but some people thought it was just a different angle of one product? Okay, we are going to run this live, a brand new one, and it just has two options, and it's a brand-new product launch that I'm doing. So let's go ahead and run this live together. I'm going to go to Helium 10 Audience and I have 2 images that are very, very similar. Okay, very, very similar, and it's a product I'm going to launch today or tomorrow on Amazon. So here's what we do. We go to tools in Helium 10. Under listing optimization, we hit audience and then I'm going to hit create new poll. All right, and I could do use poll builder or build from scratch. I'm going to go ahead and use the poll builder and we are going to do. You can see all the different things that we can test here A+ content, a general idea, logo, infographics or secondary image, product listing, product title, a video, a voiceover, even something about a website. All of these things we can do. I'm going to do product images, which is main image, right here.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, do I'm going to do product images, which is main image, right here? Okay, now I'm going to write my question. So let's go ahead and write. A question is, you are searching on amazon for a stackable egg rack? Which of these main image options would make you want to click on the product more? I can probably have made this better, but we're going to do this live, all right, let's go to the next step. All right, what are my two options? Let's go ahead and add these. See, very similar, but again, I want every little bit counts. Remember, I just showed you guys that having a difference of even just 4% for my click-through rate could mean $50,000 a year, almost all right. So you can see there's two different images here. One has a full rack of eggs and one only has half of them, and it's a slightly different angle. Let's go ahead and see the next step.

 

Bradley Sutton:

I can pick the audience, all right. So I could just go general audience first, available respondents. I might just go ahead and do that now. Or I can choose a custom audience where I'm like hey, I want men, I want women, I want dog owners, I want people who exercise four times a week. There's a billion different options here. The one that I usually pick is Amazon Prime subscribers. All right, that's what I'm looking for. I could pick an age range, right, in this case. I want this to run super fast, because the more I segment it like this, it takes longer. I'm just going to hit general audience because this product is general. You know, like men like it, it all ages. But like if I was doing a pet grooming product and it's specifically for dogs, you better believe I'm going in there and I am going in and choosing, you know, like dog owners or something like that, or if I have a product that's specifically for men or for women of a certain age group. I'm going to go in there and make sure that the people who are going to vote on this are exactly my target market. I'm only going to choose 50 people for the audience. I can find out, you know, behavioral habits or personal traits of the people who are responding here if I wanted. I'm just using the free option here. Next, step 50. Let's just go with this.

 

Bradley Sutton:

All right. Now again, is this the best way to do it? No, the best way is probably to also show my competitors you know image, okay, and maybe even show it in the search results. I'm doing something simple, just so you can see how this works. All right, let's go ahead and proceed to checkout. Boom, okay, it is working now. All right. So, this one is going to be in progress. We're going to poll it up right here and we're going to keep going back to this. This is live. It's literally going out to a whole bunch of people right now. We're going to go back and check that. What situations would you want to use this, compared to when you would want to use the Amazon manage your experiments. Well, if I haven't launched my product, 10 out of 10, I am doing this, I mean literally 100% of the time that I launch a product I'm running a Helium 10 Audience on some of my main aspects right, because, remember, I don't want to start off with potentially an unoptimized or not the best option for my image or title. Right from day 1, especially during the honeymoon period, I'm trying to get the best click-through rate possible and the best conversion rate.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Now, sometimes, if I'm just testing something else and I don't, I think I'm doing pretty well and there's nothing I'm going to do. That's going to be a big change. Well, yeah, I'll go ahead and run manager experiments, because it's free, right on an exact listing. And actually, when you run manager experiments, you can get additional details on what's going on, as you saw from what Amazon was showing, right? Let me just show you again what are the kind of things that you can see. You know you can see what your conversion rate is. You can see how many units are sold from search, how many sales from search. You can see the exact sample size, et cetera, et cetera. So in that situation, if I'm like, hey, I've got a pretty optimized listing. I've already run my Helium 10 Audience before and I just want to tweak something that I don't think is going to make a big difference.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Well, yeah, I'll go ahead and use the manager experiments, but if you have not tested your main image on a brand-new listing, you haven't launched yet. 100% guys, I do not launch any product without having run this, and so if you are out there and you're launching products and you are not split testing your image first, or split testing perhaps your price point or how the product might show up in the search results, I strongly believe you could be leaving money on the table. I mean, some people can change your click-through rate by up to 10%. Even if you change it 1%, 1% guys, on that one that I was showing you, that would sell what did I say? Like 10 units a day only. If I was only selling 10 coffin shelves a day and if I just change my click-through rate by 1%, we're still talking thousands of dollars difference per year I'm getting by increasing my click-through rate just 1%. So is that worth a $50 Helium 10 audience? Well, you better believe. That's why I do it for every single one of my listings.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Any questions so far with this concept of like split, testing your images before you launch. Kan says can you show me please how to navigate to the experiment page in Helium 10? Yeah, absolutely, let me show you really quick. So where this is you click your main menu in Helium 10 at the top left where it says tools and under listing optimization. And, by the way, everybody has this option. This is not something that's only Diamond, because it's a pay-per-use, so everybody has access to it. You click under listing optimization. It's Audience. All right, there's. Oh, my goodness, look at this, guys. I just started this like what? 5 minutes ago, not even 5 minutes ago. What am I saying? Like 3 minutes ago, and I've already got 18 results. And do you remember? I said you guys were kind of split down the middle between option A and option B. Well, take a look here. We've got now 10 to 9, so it's very similar with what you guys had thought, except it's slight chance to option A.

 

Bradley Sutton:

All right, so what are, what are some of the things that people are saying all right, one person here says I'm more likely to click on A, the left one, because this is full of eggs, which makes me think that'll hold a lot more likely to click on A, the left one, because this is full of eggs, which makes me think that'll hold a lot more, even though I know they hold the same amount. It feels like it can store and organize more. It's also more visually appealing to see the eggs neat and orderly like this instead of the other image, so it makes me, you see, like that's something I didn't even think about. You see this other one where it's like you know, somebody with like ADD or something like might be looking at this and like, hey, why do people just have random holes in this egg rack used? And it's not all full. It's like it's just a psychological thing. All right, so I see, always when I run this guys, I always have new things that I didn't think about. Look at this in the last one minute that I was talking, seven more people already responded.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Let's go ahead and load those seven. We are still at almost half each here. Wow, that's crazy. Right on the line of what people want more. I could see hey, what's the age range of the people who are responding right now, it looks like 58% of younger people are choosing B, but of the older age range, 45 and up, 66% want option A. So there's something right there. All of a sudden, I have some insight. Well, if my target market is older people, I might go ahead and favor option A regardless of the score here, because that's who likes my product more. So that's the kind of level that you can go in, all right.

 

Bradley Sutton:

So, your takeaway, guys, is if you're in the midst of launching a product, don't ever launch a product without running Helium 10 Audience. Okay, this is how important I think it is. You might think you have the best main image or the best title, but really make sure you have some solid proof before doing it. Now, if you already have a listing active, you still if you never split test anything and it's something big like the main image it might be still better to run Helium 10 audience just so that you can get instant results within like a day, of which one might be better, and then immediately change it if you need to. Because remember, if you run manager experiments in Amazon, it might take 30 days to get a. You know enough results and in those 30 days 15 of the days, half of the day, half of the month you are running an image or a title or whatever. That is not exactly that. That is not optimized, and so you know you can just kind of understand that you might be leaving hundreds of dollars on the table half the month if you're running something, a live split test like that. So that's why I always like running my split test immediately in one day and offline.

 

Bradley Sutton:

All right. Did you say that when you do an A-B test on Amazon, they automatically convert the listing to use the best image they tested? If you choose that. So that is an option on Amazon where you can say automatic it's called, automatically publish the winning result or something like that it's called, and you just check that if you want it to automatically do it, or you just say you uncheck that and then you just look at the results and then you decide which one you want to go with. You have both of those options on Amazon. All right, we already have. The vote is finished for the egg rack pictures, and the one with all of the egg racks won with a score of 52 to 48. So this is not like a very clear cut winner here, but you know, like the other one, the coffin shelf one which had a score of like 50 to 20 to 20. But now at least I have a little bit more confidence to go with this image that has all of them, and then I'm going to start reading these comments here to see if I get more information. Look, it's 50 people respond in like what? 10, 15 minutes here and now I have all this data to go through to really make my decision when I launch this later today.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Matter of fact, as soon as I get off this call, I'm probably going to do it. What am I? Which image am I going to use? And is there something I didn't consider. Like remember what happened on the coffin shelf? I realized that people think that it's the same. It's the same image, just a different angle. So I'm going to definitely read this once I'm done with the call. Ali says using launch strategies like the Maldives honeymoon, when do you really start focusing on actual profit and long-term viability of the product? What's the perfect balance? So all I think about during the launch strategy is getting to page one organically. I'm not concerned about profit. Now, I usually can't, you know if I'm not launching a super competitive niche. I can usually get to page one within a week and then at that point I start maybe rate if I got, if I started getting my Vine reviews or other reviews, I might start raising the price up and take my foot off the gas. But I'm usually going really hard and heavy. Even if I get to the top of page one for 10 full days, even if I got to the top of page one after only 2 or 3 days, which happens sometimes in my launches.

 

Bradley Sutton:

All right. So I try to go really hard and heavy at least 10, 10 days to help me stick my landing more, and then at that point it's a matter of all right now do I start to try and rank organically for my secondary set of keywords and then I just do it all over again. I still go really hard and heavy and losing money. Now if after 30 days of launch and losing money and putting a lot of money in PPC, I'm not getting the conversions I need organically or maybe I'm getting bad reviews, I have to. I have to like, kind of like, take a step back and look at what am I really doing Right? What am I doing wrong? Why am I not sticking my landing? Why are people not converting? Or why is my listing, not converting even though I'm at page one, all right. So these are things that you have to start considering, you know, after 30 days or more of your launch. Great question by Alex says how would you do your A-B test for your image against competitor images on Amazon search result pages?

 

Bradley Sutton:

All right, so what I would do? Let's just say I was doing this large coffin shelf. Well, I'm not going to take a picture of the Helium 10 widget up here, right, I might take a screenshot. I would have to take away this previously viewed of this whole image right here, from the top of the image all the way down to the price, potentially right. And then I would make that an actual image, right? And then I would go ahead and choose a couple of the main competitors and take that same spot. And then you say, hey, you searched for large coffin shelf and these were the 4bmain search results you saw at the top of the page. Which one would you select and why? And always, I'm going to get comments on not just the image. Sure, I'll get comments on the image. But then some people are going to comment on the price, some people are going to comment on the reviews and the star rating. And then now you can understand how people kind of like navigate the search results a little bit more by using the Helium 10 Audience there.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Joan says a little bit more by using the Helium 10 Audience, what do you test show if you have six variations? Well, you want to pick which one is the best-selling, right, because that's probably what's going to be in the search results. So, for example, for coffin shelves, I've got three variations, right. I've got a black one, I've got a purple one and a pink one. I do not test the purple and pink ones why? I know even before day one of when I launched my coffin shelf, the black one is the one that sells the best for everybody else and it's the one that shows up in the search results right. Now if I was doing some super, super niche tests where I was like, hey, I just want to test my pink coffin shelf versus other pink coffin shelf, sure I could do it, but in this situation I'm only going to test the black coffin shelf because I know that is the one that sells like five to one over the other ones, and that's the one that is the one that shows up in search results for everybody's listings.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Kim says would you also recommend doing A-B tests on infographic images or is it more useful, important for the main image? All right, this is a great question. And then Kim says essentially have you found your conversion improved by testing infographics? Yes, okay. So remember I said I was only talking about one thing today, which is improving your click-through rate of the actual images. And remember I said at the beginning hey, we're going to assume that your conversion rate is going to stay the same and I showed how much your sales could increase just by improving your click-through rate from the search results. But you can take the opposite. Let's say you already have a fully, fully optimized main image and price point and title and your click-through rate is not going to improve. Well, what's the other thing you can improve? You can improve your conversion rate. It's the same exact thing almost. I mean not as much of a scale as the click-through rate, but if you can improve your conversion rate by 3%, right, that means if you get 100 clicks a day, you get three more orders if you improve your conversion rate by three.

 

Bradley Sutton:

So it's the same thing. So maybe, if you think the infographics can make a difference if it's not optimized. Absolutely, that should be something that you can test. All right, I always want to start with the thing that moves the needle the most and that's the click-through rate. Because, remember, if I improve 3% click-through rate on a thousand impressions, that's a big difference compared to changing the conversion rate by three, right. You know, on something that only gets 100. So you want to go ahead and split test your A+ content. Split test the things that are inside of your listing, your bullet points, like I've done that before. I show screenshot of bullet points and then Photoshop in other bullet points and then see what people think. Absolutely. All right, guys. Hope you guys enjoyed this episode. We're going to go ahead and shut it down soon. We did a live test of Helium 10 Audience. I showed you how to use manager experiments in Amazon.

 

Bradley Sutton:

I really hope I got through to you, because I'm looking at numbers of how many people use Helium 10 audience or how many people are using PickFu, and it should be 100% of private label sellers Literally should be, but it's not anywhere close to that or what people are using. So if you don't have Helium 10, use PickFu. If you've got Helium 10, you've already got it right there in your Helium 10 Audience tool. Make sure to do that If you've never run it. Go to your number one selling product and get some variations of the image you know based on what else is selling, or compare your image to your competitors and get some insight, guys into how your target audience is interacting with your images and price and title in the search results. And if you're launching a new product anytime soon, always have your graphic designer give you three or four options of main images and then split test that first before launching your product. So hope you guys found this beneficial. Thank you guys for joining and we'll be back next month for another. Ask Me Anything, but if you're a Serious Sellers Club member or Helium 10 Elite member, we'll see you either next week or the week after, since we do this every single week. Thank you guys very much and enjoy the rest of your day or weekend. Bye-bye now.

#566 - Amazon Listing Optimization Masterclass

Join us on our latest journey through the innovative world of AI-assisted Amazon selling! We kick off with the transformative capabilities of Helium 10’s Listing Builder tool. Listen in as Bradley guides you through the intricacies of crafting the ultimate Amazon listing, utilizing cutting-edge tools with the power of AI to enhance searchability and PPC effectiveness. We also unravel the secrets behind the Listing Quality Score, ensuring you leave with the knowledge to make your product stand out in the Amazon marketplace.

Discover the future of e-commerce imagery with our dive into AI image generators, perfect for your lifestyle main images, Amazon Post, and all A+ content formats. Bradley also shares his personal experience in creating stunning visuals, emphasizing the prompt-writing process to achieve images that could even eclipse the originals. In this conversation, the power of keyword optimization comes to life as we import vital search terms into Listing Builder, setting the stage for an Amazon algorithm-friendly listing. Whether you're a seasoned seller or new to the game, you'll gain invaluable insights on making your product shine.

In our final chapters, we tackle the craft of creating and optimizing Amazon listings with the assistance of AI. Bradley walks you through the process, from studying competitor listings to tailoring the tone of your product description. The strategic use of keywords is front and center, as we focus on targeting specific audiences and enhancing product visibility. We wrap up with a look at how to optimize listings against competitors and discuss the advantages of syncing listings directly to Amazon. With these strategies at your disposal, you're well on your way to mastering the art of Amazon listing optimization.

In episode 566 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley talks about:

• 00:00 - Mastering Helium 10's Amazon Listing Builder With AI
• 03:39 - Optimizing Keywords With Listing Builder
• 07:52 - AI Image Generator and Listing Creation
• 09:53 - Generating and Editing Amazon Listing Images
• 13:35 - Optimizing Keywords and Competitor Analysis
• 14:43 - Creating Amazon Listings With AI
• 21:22 - Optimizing Keywords in Listing Creation
• 25:11 - Understanding Amazon Keyword SEO Score
• 33:10 - Optimizing Amazon Listings With Listing Builder
• 33:41 - YouTube Keywords Analysis for Listing Optimization
• 40:38 - Creating Amazon Posts Efficiently with AI

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Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

10 strategies that's going to help you craft your best Amazon listing with the help of AI, as well as even image generation and more. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Hello everybody, welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I'm your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that's a completely BS-free, unscripted and unrehearsed organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. And this is another one in our series of Seller Strategy Masterclasses where I go deep into one of the Helium 10’s tools that helps with a specific use case, and today we're going to be talking about Listing Builder. That's why I got my LB hat on right here. So we're going to be talking about everything from how to check the SEO score, about how optimized your listing is to the Amazon algorithm potentially, to how to generate images for Amazon posts, how to generate captions for Amazon posts, how to write a listing from scratch without even AI, how to use AI to write a listing in any language that you're trying to make for a new marketplace. How to import listings, how to export listings and sync them. We have a lot of strategies today. Hopefully, I don't have to split this up into two episodes. I don't even know how long this is going to take me, but this is going to be a lot of great information today that you're going to be needing in order to make your first or next listing on any Amazon marketplace that Helium 10 works on. So let's go ahead and hop into it.

Bradley Sutton:

Let's first talk about an introduction and overview to just Listing Builder tools so you can kind of get to know it and understand how to navigate in it. So, Listing Builder if this is your first time going into it, the way you can navigate there is through your list in under listing optimization in your menu and then hit the Listing Builder button. Now, if you've never had Listing Builder before, you're not going to have any listings here. I've got a few here because I've already obviously made some listings and done some test listings here in Project X. But this is the main dashboard when you sign in, where you're going to be able to view all of the listings that you are editing here in Listing Builder. And then there's different filters up here, like if you want to see, hey, which ones are the ones that are linked to Amazon listings, which are the ones that are synced to Amazon listings. We're going to talk about what that means later. Now one thing right off the bat is if I want to add a listing, I hit this button at the very top, add a listing. And here is where I can actually go directly to the image generation with AI tool. So there's going to be a specific training on how to use this. But if I just want to hop in and say, hey, I don't want to make a listing right now, but I want to be able to take one of my images and create something with AI, you're going to be able to do that. I can also create a listing from scratch or optimize an existing listing that I might have already.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, the core functionality of Listing Builder is just as the name sounds it's to build listings. So, in Listing Builder, this is a place where you can start writing your title, your bullet points, your description and even your backend generic keywords, and, if your listing has it, you can have subject matter here as well. Now, why even make a listing in Listing Builder as opposed to writing in Seller Central? Well, it's about the keywords. Obviously, Helium 10 is known for our keyword research tool like Cerebro, Magnet, etc. You've probably utilized it to get the best keywords for your product or niche. Well, what you're going to want to do is import all of those keywords to Listing Builder. I'm going to show you how to do that in a later strategy here. Now, by having all of your keywords here in Listing Builder, now you can make sure that you're using it in your listing. There's a line that comes through every time you use it. It even tells you how many times that you have used those keywords and also it shows you all the individual keywords that make up those phrases up here at the top. So again, this is so important because you could have the best keyword research in the world. But if you didn't put that keyword in your listing, are you going to be searchable for it? Are you going to be able to run PPC on that keyword? Probably not, because you're probably not even going to be indexed.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, some newer features of Listing Builder that we're going to talk about is listing quality score. There'll be a strategy about this, your keyword performance rank. You know I developed a formula over the course of like six to eight months where I launched tons and tons of listings and I was able to try and get as close as I could to the kind of way to optimize your listing that is most beneficial for the Amazon algorithm in ranking, and so we developed a formula so that this score will go ahead and reflect how optimized your listing is. So I'm going to show you, throughout these strategies, how to use that score to make sure that you've got the most optimized listing compared to your competitors. Now, if you have a diamond plan, you've got access to those listing scores, as well as also the ability to build your listing with AI.

Bradley Sutton:

All right, now, who might this AI feature before? It could be. Maybe you, like me. If I'm selling in Amazon Germany, I don't speak German. I can use Helium 10 to get all those German keywords. I don't even know what those keywords maybe mean. I can actually write a perfect sounding German listing with AI, even though I speak English, by writing English into Listing Builder and putting all the German keywords I want to rank for, and this Listing Builder will go ahead and use AI in order to write all my title, bullet points, et cetera, using those important keywords I want. Another use case might be well, maybe you're a native speaker of the language that you're trying to write a listing in, but you've got writer's block. That happens to me sometimes. Right, where I'm like man, where do I start? I want a different vibe, right? Well, in this Listing Builder AI tool, you put the description and everything, and then you can say, hey, I want this to be a humorous vibe or educational, or empathetic or inspirational, et cetera, and then this will go ahead and create your listing in your own language, but maybe you're not going to use it exactly, but at least it gets you on the right track and like, ooh, I like the way, I like where the direction this is going. Let me go ahead and hop in there and kind of like tweak it a little bit so you can do that for your listing, or even make a Amazon post captions as well. So a lot to kind of like, you know, tackle here in Listing Builder. We're going to have a total of nine, 10 strategies now that I'm going to show you how to do a lot of the things I just alluded to here in this video. So let's go ahead and hop into it.

Bradley Sutton:

How to create images for Amazon using AI. Why is this important? How can it make you money? Well, in the past, you know, our only option was to maybe take you, you know, rudimentary, kind of like ghetto looking images with our phone or something like that, or pay a lot of money if we had it, you know, for professional pictures. That's still what I do, actually, but not everybody has enough money to be able to invest in professional photography right off the bat, or maybe we did, but then now we're like, oh man, I have this other idea for an image, or I want to do this or that, right. Well, that's where AI can come in, because AI can help you create different images. Now there's a lot of different kinds of images that AI can help you with. Now our AI image generator. Let me show you what it can do. It can create main images for your listing. It can also create images in the format of Amazon Post, which is a different format than a main image. You can make A plus logo images, A plus image header images all the different A plus module types of images you're going to be able to create using this AI image generator. You also would be able to make images that are designed for best viewing on a mobile browser.

Bradley Sutton:

So what is the process for this? I actually pulled up a listing here of a competitor product. All right, this is a coffin shelf. That is not my coffin shelf, but I saw a couple of his images and I'm like you know what this very well could have been done, maybe with AI, or maybe he paid a lot of money for this picture. And so, like I'm like, is it possible for me to duplicate this image that this guy has of his coffin shelf on this wall? You know, for those listening to it on their phones, I'm trying to describe it here. It's just a picture of a coffin shelf on a gray wall. There's like a plant on the ground, um, some books on the table, et cetera. Right, so I just downloaded his main image of his coffin shelf and then I went ahead and started writing this prompt so, so this is the prompt I wrote. Now, what I could have done is I could have just, you know, chosen a theme here and a theme setting, but I went to go in and make a description, so I put here hey, the pictured shelf is hanging on a light gray wallpapered wall, includes subtle decorative elements such as a small plant, a few simple artwork on the surrounding wall, separately from the main image. All right, I have things such as the product scale. This is the size I want the product to look like in the image. I can have things like a void, what I don't want to see in the image. I can choose different engine models stability, ai or AWS, bedrock, titan. What is the AI style? I chose photographic. I could have chosen comic book, digital art, anime, analog film, 3d model, et cetera, and then basically let's go ahead and see what happens. You know I didn't put too many details here.

Bradley Sutton:

Let's hit, generate images. All right, here we go. This is what has shown up. I got four images it put. A couple of these are pretty decent. I mean, arguably, these images are maybe better than what this Amazon seller was using. You know, like this is not a good resolution that I'm looking at right here because I'm not zoomed in, but you know, I would almost say it's better than this image that this best-selling coffin shelf is using right now on their listing. So now, if I want to use it, I just go ahead and download this and I can go ahead and upload this to my listing. All my previous images are going to show up down here. This is just scratching the surface and maybe you guys are better at making prompts than me. You can even use ChatGPT to help you make a prompt to generate some higher quality images. But if you're looking to make, you know, take one image and make it in the format for A plus content or Amazon post, or change out backgrounds. You know, maybe you're doing a holiday theme, you know, for one of your listings and you want to put, like, some Christmas ornaments or some Halloween things or whatever. This is a way that you can just do it without having to like have a reshoot. So hope you enjoy using that feature.

Bradley Sutton:

How to import keywords into Listing Builder. Why is this important? How can it make you money? Well, this is pretty much the crux of using Listing Builder. Otherwise, you don't even need to use Listing Builder if you're just going to make your listing in Amazon Seller Central. But the whole point of Listing Builder is showing you, first of all, that you've used all of your main keywords and your secondary, supplementary keywords, your indexed for, and you've organized it in a way that is best for the Amazon algorithm. And that's what Listing Builder is going to help tell you. Where do these keywords come from, first of all? Okay, so that's a very good question, and you would hopefully have gotten your keywords from other tools, in Helium 10, Cerebro, for example, like let's just go ahead and say that I had done a search for bat-shaped bath mat and I had the 77 keywords as part of what I was going to target for my listing. Now you might have 100 keywords, you might have 150, you might have keywords that come from Google, you might have keywords that come from our other tools like Magnet or Blackbox. But let's just pretend that these list of 77 keywords is all we had. All right, I'm just going to go ahead and copy these to the clipboard.

Bradley Sutton:

And in Listing Builder. Now there's two places in Listing Builder where you can add it. You could just go ahead and add keywords here if you happen to get on this page, but I suggest doing it right here on the main first tab, which is add keywords for listing. I'm going to click on manually add keywords and all I have to do is paste all of the keywords right here. Then I hit the button add to bank and now all of those keywords are going to show up here on the right hand side. I'm going to see the search volume too. You might notice this CPS, that's competitor performance score. I haven't entered any competitors yet. That's why these are all blank. But this is now the list of all of my keywords, then it's all right here now on my main keyword bank, and what Helium 10 is doing here is it's splitting all of these keyword phrases there were 77 of them into one word, two words or three words, okay. So, for example, right now, by default, one word is chosen. So I see Gothic is a keyword that is in a lot of these phrases right here. We've got decor, we've got Batman, we've got witchy. Now I hit the two word roots. I can see home decor is something that is in some of these phrases. Three word, uh, three word roots. There's only one rugs for bedroom. That is appearing multiple times here in these phrases. But again, this is going to be the key because this is going to be your guide now, as far as hey, these were all the keywords that I found in my keyword research. I have to make sure that I get them into my listing. Uh, you know, the way the Amazon algorithm works is usually you're not going to be indexed for keywords that you do not have in your listing. All right, so again, import the keywords from wherever you did your research into Listing Builder, and then you're going to be ready to start making your listing.

Bradley Sutton:

How to import an existing listing into Listing Builder to edit. Why is this important? How can it make you money? Well, I've told you before that this is not just about creating new listings. You can also import your existing listing so you can start managing it in Listing Builder and making the updates inside and seeing how your SEO works. Another kind of strategy that I think is slept on is you can import your competitors listing into your Listing Builder. If you kind of want to see. Hey, how is their keyword density like where do they include certain keywords in their listing? Let me see how they have their SEO set up. Let me show you how you can do either of those. Right here in Listing Builder, I'm going to hit the button add a listing. All right now once I do that, I have three options create from scratch, optimize your listings or generate images with AI. Let me just show you what happens if I hit optimize your listing. It's going to be linked to my Amazon account. If you have already included your Amazon connected your Amazon account to Helium 10. And now I can just choose any one of my listings and it's going to go ahead and import it right here into Listing Builder. But, as I said before I can import anybody's listing. So, for example, here is a competitor bath mat out here. Maybe I want to see how they have their listing set up. All I have to do is copy the ASIN and then I hit create from scratch and then I choose the marketplace. So remember, I can go ahead and import a listing in Amazon USA, Germany, France, UK, Brazil, Belgium even didn't realize we had that India, Japan and more. This one is going to be from the USA. I'm going to go ahead and put the ASIN right here and then I'm going to hit start building.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, what Helium 10 is doing right now is it's importing the title, the bullet points and, if it's available, the description right into my own Listing Builder. So if I had a whole list of keywords now I'm going to be able to see hey, how do they have their listing all set up? Now, if you've got the diamond plan, you kind of don't need to do this, this kind of competitor checking, because we've got the competitor performance score that I'm going to talk about in a later strategy. But if you're just in the planning plan, you want to be able to have visibility with how your competitors have their SEO set up. This is the way to import their listing right into your Listing Builder and so, as you can see right here, I've got their product title, I've got their bullet points and no description, since they had A plus content. So, again, if you're getting started with your own listing ad connected from your own account so you can have a base here and just remember, Listing Builder is not just about making new listings. This is kind of like your hub where you can manage your existing listings so that later, when I show you how to sync them, it's going to be a lot easier as opposed to having to go back and forth to Seller Central copying and pasting. But even if you're not doing that, this is also another way that you can look at your competitors' SEO, with how they have the keywords placed and how many of the important keywords that you identified they have in their listing.

Bradley Sutton:

How to create an Amazon listing from scratch, with or without the help of AI. Now, why is this important? How can it make you money? I've said before that you know maybe you don't speak a certain language fluently that you're trying to write a listing. Well, you can get help from AI. Maybe you do speak the language fluently, but you have creative writer's block right that we all have sometimes. You might need AI to help get you started. Or maybe, hey, you speak a language just fine. You just need a place to be able to write your listing with the help of understanding that you are using all of the keywords. Well, this is what I'm going to show you how to do in less than five minutes here. Now, let's just say you're going to go ahead and write a listing with the help of AI. Now you would have hopefully already put which marketplace you're going to write the listing in and, based on that, it's going to know it has to make the listing in English, Japanese, Spanish, etc. You can write the description for the AI in any language you want your own native tongue. Now for this situation, all I'm doing is just writing a listing for the Amazon USA marketplace for that bat-shaped bath mat, and remember those 77 keywords I had found in a previous strategy. Well, I've got them all here in my keyword bank, and now what I did was I have 500 characters where I can put as many characteristics as possible.

Bradley Sutton:

Now you can see I only use 161 characters. This is not going to be my real listing. I'm going to use I'm just doing this for demonstration purposes but some of the characteristics I put as different phrases is like bat shaped bath rug extra thick, 32 inches by 20 inches thick, chenille, fiber machine washable, water absorbent, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. The other thing I can put is the brand name, and then, where I want to put the brand name, I also have here the product name. That's what is going to show up at the beginning of the title, and then I have here what's called the tone. So we have some preset settings where maybe you have a listing where you want it to be formal, or maybe you want it to be casual or empathetic or inspirational. I chose humorous because you know, I think you need a little humor if you want a bat shaped bath mat, right? Um, I also have target audience, so I put just a couple things here, like men and women who like gothic decor or people who want to buy gifts for spooky decor lovers. There's also a section here for words and special characters to avoid.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, the first thing you're going to want to do is you're going to want to go ahead and make the product title. Now maybe I want to definitely include my most important keywords in my title. All right, so what I'm going to do is I'm going to edit these keywords that I'm definitely going to include in the title and choose them from my keyword bank. Now one thing you could do is just kind of like use find keywords that are nested within each other. I've talked about that in other episodes, but in this case I just chose two words. I'm like saying, hey AI, I want to have these in the title Bat Rug and Spooky Bathroom Decor. Then all I have to do is I hit this AI write it for me button and it's going to take all of this information up here that I had put in and then take a look at the keywords that I entered in. You know I had put those from Cerebro and it's going to go ahead and create a title. Now take a look right here. It made the title right here just in seconds. It says spooky bathroom decor bat rug, non-slip, water absorbent, 32 by 20 inch bat shaped bath mat with thick chenille fiber, machine washable, no creases. The perfect gift for Gothic decor enthusiasts, Manny's mysterious oddities. So, basically, it wrote a pretty decent title for me If I want to use it. Um, I can go ahead and hit use suggestion. And now look what happens. Now that I wrote this here, there is now going to be a line on the left-hand side through all of the individual keywords that I now have in my listing and it's also going to show me all the keyword phrases that I have if I have used them. So, for example, remember I said use bat rug. There's bat rug right there. Spooky bathroom decor. It's got a line through it because I used it right here in my listing.

Bradley Sutton:

Same thing with the bullet points. If I'm satisfied with the title, I'll just move on to the bullet points. Hit the button that says AI, right for me. And now I have five bullet points that it made. Some of these say bat shaped bat rug, perfect for goth bathroom, this unique bat man rug. And if I can hit use suggestion and look how many, it's trying to use up all of my keywords in my keyword bank, both individual and the phrases, as much as possible, and that's how I would write my listing. That's AI and how it can help. Now, if you've got the diamond plan, that's how I suggest starting your listing and then maybe just tweaking it to make sure you've used all your keywords. What if you only have the platinum plan? You still can use Listing Builder and just write it manually. You would use it the same way. So basically, you would start writing your listing manually, trying to make sure that you are using all of the keywords in your listing. Like, let's just pretend I was going to come up with this bullet point right here and I start writing this gothic rug is great for Halloween decor, something like that. Did you guys see what was happening here on the left hand side as I was writing this bullet point? Well, it started crossing out the words that I am using. By the way, if you are watching this on YouTube, you can see. If I put my mouse over some of these keywords, I can see what are the search results, the top 10 search results for that keyword. It kind of gives you an idea about, maybe, how relevant it is. If I want if that's annoying to you, I wanted to turn it off I just hit the settings button up here and I can turn this top 10 ranked products keywords off.

Bradley Sutton:

But anyways, I would just keep making my listing, trying to make sure I have all of the individual keywords and or phrases. Now, remember, you've got to know which are your most important keyword phrases. All right, usually you want to get at least 10, 15 in phrase form of your most important keywords and then all the rest of the words to be indexed for the phrases. You just have to have the individual words, and that's why that root keyword section is very valuable. You know, hey, I just got to get these individual words once in my listing to have a chance to be indexed for all of those other keywords. So here is another great technique of how you can completely make your listing, with or without the help of AI, using Listing Builder.

Bradley Sutton:

How to measure your listing's Amazon SEO score. Why is this important? How can it make you money? Well, if you are trying to make a listing, you don't want to just keyword stuff. Right, all fields in a listing also are not created equal. If you put a keyword in the title, it's worth more than if you put it in the description. If you have a main keyword phrase in phrase form, it's better than if you just have the individual keywords from that phrase just in random spots in your listing. There's so many things that kind of like drives relevancy for the Amazon algorithm. Now, nobody knows the exact formula of Amazon, and if anybody tries to say they do, they're full of baloney right. But you know me, what I did for over eight months was I tried to study the algorithm as much as possible you know, launching hundreds of like fake products just to be able to see the effects on the algorithm when you change keywords around and so I was able to come up with our data science team this formula that helps sellers understand the effects of placement in the listings. But again, this is not like some exact formula. I do not have special insight into the Amazon algorithm. I can only make this formula based on my observations, but it's definitely going to help you for sure.

Bradley Sutton:

Now let's go ahead and hop in with how you can actually use this. The first step, if you want to have a listing score, is you need to go down here to listing analysis and then hit keyword performance rank and once you get there, you are going to have this button that says add competitors. Now, once you get to the add competitors page, you are going to need to enter in all of your competitors, like right now I'm in a coffin shelf listing and it already gives me like suggestions of which ASINs I can pick. But I suggest putting your own ASINs right in here. I entered, I think, like seven or eight ASINs and then, once I do that, instantly you are going to get a full score for your listing. Now, the reason why you didn't have a score before was because it's using the competitor performance score and the search volume to be able to know what your score is. So, for example, right here, my keyword performance score is 181,011. And I can actually see what goes into it.

Bradley Sutton:

There's different ways that it calculates your keyword SEO score. Like, if I have it an exact match, one of the keywords for my list, it's going to give me a certain number of points If I have it a plural or singular match. What does that mean? That means, like, if the keyword is spider web shelf but then I put spider web shelves, it's still going to give me points, but not as much as if I put the exact keyword spider web shelf. If I have it in phrase match, that's a. The keyword is Gothic, coffin, spider web shelf. Well, you can see here in the title I've got Gothic and coffin together, but then spider web shelf is way at the end of the title, I still have all the keywords. So that's what's called a phrase match, where maybe a part of the phrase is together and then the other part of the phrase is in a separate part of the same section. Then I've got field broad match. That means I can have a full phrase but it's spread apart with no two keywords together in a field in your listing. And a field means the title, bullet points or description, right, and then I have listing broad match. That means maybe I have a three-word phrase and then you know, one keyword is in the title, one keyword is in the bullet points, one keyword is in the description. That's called field broad match.

Bradley Sutton:

So as you write your listing, this score is going to change. So, for example, here's a keyword coffin decor that it says I haven't used an exact phrase form. Let me go ahead and throw it in my bullet points. By the way, you can see, my score is 181,000. Let's go ahead and put just randomly coffin decor right here in that first spot and then, yeah, look, I got a line through coffin decor and my score now went up to 183,000. So first of all, that just shows you can manipulate this score. So, like you know, technically you could just throw keywords anywhere and get the highest score. I would like to hope that you understand that that's not the point of this tool is to just try and get a high score at all costs. You can't just keyword stuff. Nobody likes that. But that's just to show you how that scoring system works.

Bradley Sutton:

How to compare your listings Amazon SEO score to competitors? Why is this important? How can this make you money? Well, you can optimize your listing to get the highest score that you want to get. But at the end of the day, your goal should be to have a more optimized listing than your competitors. And if you can do that, theoretically speaking, interactions with your listing is going to help you more than your competitors. Like, if I have the keyword coffin shelf an exact phrase and I've got a coffin shelf and I have got it two, three times in my listing, Amazon knows I'm very relevant. Somebody buys my product after the search of that keyword. I'm theoretically going to get kind of like more bang for my buck with that purchase, as opposed to somebody who might be just indexed for that keyword and they've got coffin in their title and shelf somewhere in their bullet points, all right. So that's the value of this score is you're trying to make sure that you are well optimized for SEO, especially in comparison to your competitors. So how can you do that? Once you've entered in all of your competitors and you've optimized your score, you're going to want to check this keyword performance rank of your competitors and right here, as you can see, you can see that this coffin shelf I have is number one. I've got a score of 181,011, and the other listings on this page or that I imported, they all have less of a score than myself.

Bradley Sutton:

All right, I personally don't look too much at the title ranking and bullet points ranking. That doesn't affect things too much, but it's right here, just in case you want to see it. So again, check this frequently, because this is going to change based on your competitor listings and you want to make sure that you stay number one. If you want to, just if you're wondering, hey, did this get refreshed or not? You can just go in here, delete them from your competitors and then add them right back to make sure that it has the latest version of the listing, but use this especially against your main competitors, to make sure that you always have the best SEO score that you can in comparison to your competitors.

Bradley Sutton:

How to check your keyword performance for your Amazon listing. Why is this important and how can it make you money? Well, you might not be able to fully see the effect of how your listing optimization has affected that score. All right, I showed you before. You could just go ahead and put a keyword in. You can see your score move up and down. But maybe you want to dive a little bit deeper to really get into the nitty gritty of what is going on in that score scoring system. This is how you do it. If you've got the diamond plan, you've got access to this button up here called keyword performance. So just hit the open keyword performance and it's going to open this thing at the very bottom. And now this is how you can use this section. It's very, very powerful. Uh, first of all, on the right hand side, I've got this section called root keyword usage and performance and it has all of those 72 root keywords, those single keywords that make up all of those phrases, right here, and it's interesting because I can actually see, um, how many times these are used in my listing, like, for example, the root keyword sick coffin. I've got 16 times in my listing and I could see oh, it's four times in the title, it's six times in the bullet point. Now here's a really, really cool thing what, in which keywords do I have coffin in it? I can hit this filter button and now on the right hand side I can see all of the keyword phrases that has the word coffin in it and which ones I've used and which ones I haven't used, and it says I've got 49 phrases that have used the word coffin, right, and then so here's one of them coffin shelf. If I look down here I can see, first of all, how important is this keyword. Well, it has a competitor performance score of 10. What does that mean? That means that most of the top competitors are all ranking for that keyword. By the way, that's an important metric to be looking at to understand how important the keywords are. I can see title match exact phrase and also I have it as a field broad in the title. All right, so I have that keyword right there in the title. It says I've got it in exact phrase form in my bullet points and I've got it in exact phrase form in my description. So I've pretty much maxed out the points that I can get on this keyword coffin shelf.

Bradley Sutton:

Here to the right I can actually see some stats about that keyword. Like, should I be focused on it? Oh, wow, it's got 2,500 search volume, 20 estimated sales for a keyword. It's got a title density of 25. It's got a brand analytics data right here. So this is pretty cool in that it's going to give me a lot of data about this keyword. If I'm ranking for that keyword, that rank is going to show up right here on the right-hand side. Now, this is a listing that is not even active right now. That's why it's not showing any organic rank. Take this other keyword here. Let's just pretend for a minute that this keyword coffin knife holder is super important for this listing. Obviously not, but instantly. Just by looking at this in a second, I could have identified that. Wow, this important keyword I do not have in any phrase form or long tail form or any form at all anywhere in my listing. And if this was an important keyword, like if it has a very high competitive performance score, that's a hole in my listing.

Bradley Sutton:

Another way that I like to do this that actually helps me with PPC is, as I am making my broad campaigns in PPC, I want to see what are the root keywords that show up most in my listing. Remember I told you coffin has 49 keywords, or 49 keywords it's in. I probably am going to make a broad or phrase campaign, PPC for the word Coffin because it has so many long tail keywords. All right, maybe Gothic. All right, Gothic has 11 of them, so Gothic is another keyword that potentially I can go ahead and use in a broad match campaign. So, guys, this is really what's going to help you understand what is driving that score, because it's going to tell you what keywords you've used, how you've used it and where you use it in your listing. Did you use it in exact phrase form? Did you use it in the plural form? Is it just in field, broad form? And if you have important keywords that don't have a good placement in your listing, it's going to be super easy to visually see which keywords those are and what part of the listing that it doesn't even have anything in it, so that you can make sure that you can go ahead and edit your listing and get those important keywords activated.

Bradley Sutton:

How to analyze your listing's competitor comparison table. Why is this important? How can it make you money? Well, you know, we've been talking a lot about just the overall score of your listings. We talked about looking at the keyword performance of your own listing. Now this is the tool that's really going to bring it all together. It's called the Competitor Comparison and now, instantly, you're going to see which ones of your competitors are really well optimized for certain keywords and which ones that you are extremely lacking on. Take a look at how easy it is to use this. If you've got the diamond plan, you're going to be able to hit this button up here called open Competitor Comparison, and once you do that, it's going to open up this amazing and super detailed chart. For those of you watching this on YouTube, you're going to be able to see all of those keywords that you had identified that you wanted to be in your listing, right? I've got 111 keywords here and now I can instantly see, all right, the most important keyword, the one that has a 10 score here in my competitor performance score coffin shelf I can see how everybody has it in exact phrase form. These are all my competitors and I can see hey, everybody's got it, except one person in exact phrase form in their title, right, I can see that this coffin shelf large. On the other hand look at this not one person has it in exact phrase form in any part of their listing. So again, if this was an important keyword for me, what I'm going to be able to take from this is wow, I've got an opportunity. Then if I put coffin shelf large, it means that I'm going to be the only person in this niche to have prioritized this keyword and have my listing optimized for it.

Bradley Sutton:

Same thing down here. I can just easily see the keywords that nobody has in any phrase form in their listing, myself included. Like here's another one a spider web shelf. Obviously this is not irrelevant, that relevant of a keyword, right, but I can instantly have seen if it was that it's a big opportunity for me, because not one person. Not only do they have it in phrase form, they don't have it in broad form, in plural form or any other form in any part of the listing. So I can just go through and compare how I have my listing set up compared to these competitors.

Bradley Sutton:

So again, these aren't the old days of selling on Amazon, where all you need to do is hey, let me just throw in all my important keywords. But it's also about where you're placing your keywords and how your competition is placing their keywords. How are they indexed for certain keywords? Do they have keywords in exact phrase form? Do they have it in plural form? What do you have? These are all things in this new world of selling on Amazon that you have to be considering that maybe you didn't consider back in the old days. And having a tool like Listing Builder here, and especially with the diamond plan so you can get access to these advanced features, it's really going to help give you a leg up on the competition where, all of a sudden, your competitors will be like how in the world is this guy beating us on these keywords that we used to be getting sales from and beating them on? They don't realize that you've got this secret weapon of Listing Builder.

Bradley Sutton:

How to sync your listing to Amazon? Why is this important? How can it make you money? Do you need to use an outside tool to sync a listing to Amazon? No, you can just edit listings right from Seller Central. But tell me this how many of you before have tried to edit your listing in Seller Central and sometimes it just doesn't update and it might not update until you use a flat file sometimes. Or maybe you have to open up a whole bunch of cases to seller support. Well, interestingly enough, you know, the Helium 10 Listing Builder is not like guaranteed to update your listing, no matter what kind of garbage you put into it, and it's going to overwrite something on Amazon. It doesn't always work that way, but it actually has a higher contribution status than if you were to just hit edit listing in seller central. I've had situations where I tried to edit my title or bullet points in seller central and even after 48 hours nothing happened. But then I do it in Listing Builder and I hit sync and within 30 minutes that update has processed. So that's definitely one of the reasons why it's good to use Listing Builder.

Bradley Sutton:

The other reason is just because if you're making your listings in Listing Builder, you want this to be the source of truth, right, and not to have to remember wait, did I go to Seller Central and then copy and paste one by one the different fields? If you don't have the diamond plan at Helium 10, that's what you have to do and there's nothing wrong with that. I mean, our first tool before Listing Builder was called Scribbles and you could not sync the listings. You had to go into Seller Central and copy the title, copy the bullet points. There's nothing wrong with that. But obviously, if you have a one button push to Amazon, that is what you're going to want to use. So here's how you can use that. The first thing you have to make sure is that you’ve linked to one of yours in your Seller Central account. And the way you can make sure that if you did that is this button up here. It'll say link to Amazon. If you don't have it linked, mine is linked, I already linked it to a certain SKU. So all I have to do is hit this button, sync to Amazon and it's going to update whatever I have. Now, keep in mind, it's going to overwrite whatever is in your seller central, all right. So just make sure that you have everything filled out in the right way.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, sometimes there are certain things that Amazon does not allow you to update. Like, some listings have more than five bullet points, right, if you, if I, had six, seven, eight bullet points, it's only going to sink the first five. Another thing that sometimes doesn't sink over is the subject matter, because not all listings have the subject matter available to be written, but it does allow you to overwrite the generic keywords here as well. Now, how long does it take to update after you have hit the sync button? Could be as quick as 5-10 minutes. Sometimes it might take a day or so. It all depends on how Amazon works. So, everyone, if you have linked your product to Amazon, make sure that you are syncing your listings after you edit it in your account. Now, how you know if it has been synced or not is go back to your regular page that has all of your listings, your dashboard, and it's going to show in the status right here if it has synced or not or if there is an error. You'll also have that message. So again, everybody, make sure to sync your listings. You've got the diamond plan and that's pretty much all you need to know about creating listings and looking at SEO scores and syncing them all the way to your Amazon listing.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, in the next strategy, I'm going to talk about something that actually you can do inside of Listing Builder but doesn't even have to do with your listing. How to generate captions for Amazon Post with AI? Why is this important? How can it make you money? Amazon Post, for now, is a completely free service. Think of it as kind of like an Instagram newsfeed, but for Amazon. Let me show you what Amazon posts are here. I just found a bath mat company and if I went to their storefront and I hit the button post, here are their posts. It especially turns up really well on a mobile browser. This one, obviously, is a desktop browser, but you can see that they have a lifestyle image of their product and then they have got a uh caption here for each one. All right, so you've. The best practices is to create an image every day here and then make this post. Now, as you can see here, products are linked here to these posts and so obviously, the main goal is to be able to get brand followers and then, hopefully, they see one of these posts, are inspired by it, they click the product and they purchase it and you're not having to pay for any of this. Now, as I said, the best practices is to make an image every single day and a caption every single day. That could be time consuming and maybe very difficult to do. Number one if you don't have that many images, how are you going to get a different image for 365 days out of the year. Well, that's, first of all, what you could have done with that other strategy I told you about in an earlier video, which is how to use Listing Builder to create the AI Amazon Post images, right? Well, what about the caption though? Right? Watch this. This is pretty cool. 

Bradley Sutton:

Now, do you remember earlier I had written, with AI, this listing that was a bat-shaped bath mat. Well, if I scroll all the way down, I can actually see Amazon post sections. All right, now there are five sections right here. I just have to hit this one button. Write it for me, all right, and within seconds, it's going to write five Amazon posts based on my listing, and boom goes the dynamite. Just like that, I've got five different posts that I could use, with five different images that I might have produced from my AI image generation. Take a look at one of these. Add a touch of the macabre to your bathroom with our bat-shaped bath rug, and even put like a bat emoji. Perfect for gothic decor enthusiasts and a spooky addition to your Halloween decor. It even had a hashtag here gothic decor and Halloween rug. Here's another Amazon post it generated within seconds while I was talking there. Step out of the shower onto our spooky non-slip bat rug. Make your bathroom uniquely yours water absorbent and machine washable Hashtag bat rug. All right, so within seconds I got five different captions. All right, so there's my one week almost all finished, and then, as I showed you before, if I just hit one, I can just do one generation of Amazon AI images for Amazon posts. I would have had four or five images like that. I combine it with these and I can have one of my VAs or employees just every day. Hey, go ahead and put a new post up and I don't have to take 365 pictures or 10 photo shoots of 36 pictures each. I don't have to pay a professional copywriter to write captions. So this is a really quick and easy way that you can create this content for nearly free. That is free on Amazon. So make sure to use these AI-generated Amazon post captions along with our AI Amazon post image generation in order to get those extra views for your Amazon store and your Amazon products and get those quote-unquote free sales that aren't costing you any PPC or any professional copywriting.

Bradley Sutton:

All right, well, I hope you enjoyed this Seller Strategy Masterclass, where we went deep into Listing Builder. This is the crème de la crème as far as a listing creation software that is out there in the space. So make sure you use every bit of what we went over today. And is there something that we're missing? Is there something you'd like to see? Make sure to let us know. We'd be happy to take all requests and the ones that get asked the most. We'll go ahead and integrate those into the tool. A lot of the features that you saw today come from our customers asking us for them, so I hope you enjoyed this episode and we'll see you in the next one. Bye-bye now.

Helium 10 Buzz 5/31/24: Walmart+ Week | Amazon Inventory Analytics

We’re back with another episode of the Weekly Buzz with Helium 10’s Senior Brand Evangelist, Shivali Patel. Every week, we cover the latest breaking news in the Amazon, Walmart, and E-commerce space, talk about Helium 10’s newest features, and provide a training tip for the week for serious sellers of any level.

Walmart launching sale ahead of Amazon Prime Day
https://www.axios.com/2024/05/30/walmart-plus-week-sale-amazon-prime-day

Amazon Prime now includes a Grubhub food-delivery subscription
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/05/30/amazon-prime-grubhub-subscription.html

Amazon gets FAA approval to expand drone deliveries
https://www.axios.com/2024/05/30/amazon-faa-drone-delivery

Amazon expands A-to-z Guarantee in Europe to include property damage and personal injury claims
https://www.aboutamazon.eu/news/customer-trust/amazon-expands-a-to-z-guarantee-in-europe-to-include-property-damage-and-personal-injury-claims

Why Temu’s E-Commerce Model Is a Threat to U.S. Patent Holders
https://observer.com/2024/05/why-temu-poses-a-threat-to-american-businesses-and-patent-holders/

Join us as we break down the latest feature alerts from Helium 10, along with a must-know training tip of the week on how to know who is running ads on your product page and your competitor’s product pages. Don't miss out on the insights that can make you a serious player in the e-commerce world!

In this episode of the Weekly Buzz by Helium 10, Shivali covers:

• 00:45 - Walmart+ Week Announced
• 01:40 - Amazon x GrubHub
• 02:51 - FBA Inventory Analytics
• 04:02 - Amazon Drone Deliveries
• 05:00 - Amazon A-Z Claims
• 05:43 - Temu Counterfeits
• 06:33 - Helium 10 New Feature Alerts
• 07:40 - Pro Training Tip: How To Know Who Is Running Ads On Your Product Page

► Instagram: instagram.com/serioussellerspodcast

► Free Amazon Seller Chrome Extension: https://h10.me/extension

► Sign Up For Helium 10: https://h10.me/signup  (Use SSP10 To Save 10% For Life)

► Learn How To Sell on Amazon: https://h10.me/ft

► Watch The Podcasts On Youtube: youtube.com/@Helium10/videos

Transcript

Shivali Patel:

Walmart+ week dates released. Amazon Prime now including a Grubhub food delivery subscription, and Amazon's new analytics page. This and more on this week's episode of the Weekly Buzz.

Bradley Sutton:

How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I'm your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show. That is our Helium 10 Weekly Buzz, where we give you a rundown of all the new stories that are going on in the Amazon, Walmart and e-commerce world. We highlight the latest New Feature Alerts from Helium 10, and we review a training tip of the week that'll give you serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. Today, our host is going to be Shivali Patel, and so Shivali, take it away and let us know what's buzzing.

Shivali Patel:

First up, we have a news article from Axio stating that, in a strategic move to outpace Amazon, Walmart is launching its Walmart+ week ahead of the annual Prime Day sale in July, signaling an early start to the summer shopping season. Last year they ran it around the same time as Prime Day, but this year they are running it a whole month early, from June 17 to the 23rd. Since, while Amazon has yet to announce the exact date for Prime Day 2024, it is expected to be in July, I hope that those of you who are Walmart sellers have enough inventory in Walmart WFS to cover the increased sales that you'll be experiencing. And for those of you who are Walmart buyers, this year's event extends well beyond product deals to include significant discounts on gas, travel and more, so that's something that you will want to stay on the lookout for. For example, they're doubling their gas discount to 20 cents per gallon at certain gas stations.

Shivali Patel:

Next up, we have this news piece from CNBC, which informs readers that Amazon Prime will now include a Grubhub food delivery subscription. This is definitely an enhancement to their Prime membership program, contributing even more to the ease that it offers its users. The decision aims to attract and retain members amidst the growing competition from Walmart and Target's loyalty programs. Previously, they actually used to offer a year-long Grubhub subscription, but they've now switched that over to free 99. Who doesn't love free 99? And that allows for free delivery on any orders over $12. Additionally, non-prime members can place Grubhub orders directly through Amazon's website and app. This announcement follows Amazon's 2022 agreement to secure up to a 15% stake in Grubhub. That was contingent on performance metrics and, though this might not directly affect sellers, there's always room in the conversation for added perks that Walmart and Amazon give to their Plus and Prime memberships, because, theoretically, the more value that they're able to add, the more that people will stick around on those platforms, leading them to shop for our products.

Shivali Patel:

Moving on, we then have some news directly from Amazon that you can find inside of the news section of your Seller Central account. Some news directly from Amazon that you can find inside of the news section of your Seller Central account. Amazon just launched a new FBA inventory, age and excess analytics page to help sellers analyze their aging and excess inventory. As it says here, the new tool is meant to provide a summarized view of aging trends over time. It aligns FBA sales and aged inventory surcharges with aging inventory, as well as offers other key performance indicator cards like SKUs with estimated excess units, excess inventory recommendations and surcharge summaries. If you click onto the page that it's linked, it provides additional information, such as the page allows for filtering by date range, SKU granularity, such as daily, weekly, monthly, to tailor your analysis, and then an inventory age trends graph, which will help you visualize the aging inventory data, with options to include non-aging units and view fulfilled sales and surcharges and more. Note that this page includes one year of historical data and for more information and access instructions, you can always just head over to your Seller Central News.

Shivali Patel:

Now the fourth news segment is a topic that we've touched on time to time on the Weekly Buzz and there's not too much expansion, but maybe this will change with this. New ruling received Federal Aviation Administration or the FAA's approval to fly longer distances without visual spotters, allowing the expansion of its prime air service, as it says right here. Now why this matters. Amazon aims to deliver 500 million packages a year by drone by 2029, and this authorization marks a significant step in meeting the safety standards in the crowded skies. The company has spent years developing proprietary detect and avoid technology with drones equipped with cameras to scan for obstacles on the ground as well as in the skies, and it's finally set to scale, beginning with more densely populated areas in College Station, Texas, and expanding to Phoenix later this year using next-generation drones. Who knows, maybe soon we'll have drones flying overhead with coffin shelves on the way to project X customers. Amazon also is expanding their A to Z guarantee. Amazon's A to Z guarantee ensures that customers can shop with confidence, offering protection for every single product that is purchased in its stores. This guarantee has actually been in place for over 20 years and it's provided hassle-free process for refunds if customers are dissatisfied with a product's delivery or condition. But as of May 2024, the guarantee now spans several European countries to further include and cover property damage or personal injury caused by defective products. I think that this commitment underscores Amazon's dedication to providing a really secure and trustworthy shopping experience.

Shivali Patel:

Lastly, let's switch over and talk about Temu. So Temu sellers might be copying your Amazon products. As you can see here, it says as an inventor, Temu sellers are a great way to get your Amazon products. Entrepreneur and small business owner with multiple patents, I've experienced firsthand the impact of the economic battle we're fighting against Temu and similar foreign companies undercutting domestic businesses. As a creator, I front row to the behind the scenes e-commerce corruption that typically involves unethical practices and fraud. So things that can occur are counterfeit or unauthorized replicas of well-known brands, including your brands, hopefully not being generated across these platforms, and so you will want to be vigilant about whether or not your products are getting listed, or your images or title bullet points. Whatever the case may be, are they getting duplicated so that way, you can come up with strategies to navigate that. With that, that is it for this week's news.

Shivali Patel:

Moving on to our New Feature Alerts, we have just one for you this week, and that's going to be our Tracked Keyword Widget. The Tracked Keyword Widget is something you can add to your dashboard. It's separate from our Insights Dashboard, as you can see here, when you are on your dashboard page, what you are going to do is click the plus chart icon or button, and when you select that, you'll be given the chart library option, and by selecting that, you'll be able to see it loaded right here. In doing so, you can click add and go down to the bottom and you'll see it load right somewhere on that dashboard so you can access this even if you are a platinum user, and essentially it brings that Keyword Tracker to the main page. You'll be able to toggle organic and sponsored. You'll be seeing all those keywords that you've selected inside of your Keyword Tracker in descending order of search volume. And let's say you have multiple products, you can always select this dropdown and switch into a different product if you would like. So that way, every time you're going into your dashboard you're always seeing your keywords in that spot. Very quick access and you can monitor your keyword ranking. So that way you know if you need to switch up your strategy.

Shivali Patel:

Switching over to the training tip, before we close out, do you guys want to start keeping track of who is advertising on your product page and your competitors' product pages? Run Xray on any product page. I have the coffin shelf open here and it's likely only going to show me products from the variation when I open up Xray, as you can see here. But what you will want to do is click this filters option and then uncheck, mark, hide sponsored products from results. So when you do this and you click apply filters, what you're going to see is it's going to reveal to you many of the sponsored product ads and widgets that appear on the page, allowing you to see who is advertising. You can then use this information in other product targeting campaigns or to determine where to increase bids on your defensive product targeting ads, so that way your products will appear more frequently. All right, guys, that is a wrap. Hope you guys enjoyed this week's episode. We will see you next week to see what's buzzing.

#565 - A Seller With 20 Years Of Experience On Amazon!

Join us for an insightful conversation with a true pioneer in the online marketplaces as we journey through a remarkable 20-year e-commerce journey featuring Rolando Rosas, who has two decades of selling experience, including 10 years on Amazon. Listen in as we unpack strategies to amplify product reviews on Amazon, ensuring compliance with their stringent terms of service. The discussion takes a turn down memory lane, recounting our guest's rich personal history from Panama to the United States and an unexpected career pivot that led him away from the medical field.

The e-commerce landscape is constantly shifting, and our latest chat explores how sellers must evolve to keep pace. We reflect on the transition from physical storefronts to digital dominance, discussing the necessity for adaptability in response to the surge in online shopper activity. The dialogue further reveals the struggles and triumphs experienced by our guest, as we navigate through topics such as profitability challenges, hybrid business models, and the utility of analytical tools like Helium 10 for pinpointing underperforming products.

In our final segment, we focus on maximizing profitability through cost control and the strategic use of available tools. We talk about the potential impact of Amazon's forthcoming FBA fees and how meticulous inventory management is key to thriving in e-commerce. Rounding out our discussion, our guest Rolando Rosas offers his insights into maintaining an online presence and the significance of podcast collaborations, sharing his accessibility on various platforms and his journey with Helium 10. So, tune in to gain valuable knowledge from a seasoned expert who has navigated the e-commerce waters with agility and success.

In episode 565 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Rolando discuss:

• 00:00 - 20-Year E-Commerce Journey
• 11:04 - Evolving Strategies for Amazon Sellers
• 12:44 - Adapting to Changing Amazon Strategies
• 17:24 - Optimizing Amazon Seller Profitability
• 20:34 - Sellers Discuss Zero Fees and Profit
• 22:51 - Strategies for Maximizing Profitability With Amazon
• 24:37 - Amazon Advertising Strategies for Success
• 28:53 - Strategies for Reselling and Private Label
• 29:23 - Cost Control and Profit Increase Tools
• 34:01 - Online Presence and Podcast Collaboration

► Instagram: instagram.com/serioussellerspodcast

► Free Amazon Seller Chrome Extension: https://h10.me/extension

► Sign Up For Helium 10: https://h10.me/signup  (Use SSP10 To Save 10% For Life)

► Learn How To Sell on Amazon: https://h10.me/ft

► Watch The Podcasts On YouTube: youtube.com/@Helium10/videos

Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

Today, we've got somebody who's been selling online for 20 years and on Amazon for 10 years, and it was even on a Helium 10 podcast before I ever was. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. How can you get more buyers to leave you Amazon product reviews? By following up with them in a way that's compliant with Amazon terms of service. You can use Helium 10 Follow-Up in order to automatically send out Amazon's request or review emails to any customers you want. Not just that, but you can specify when they get the message and even filter out people that you don't want to get that message, such as people who have asked for refunds or maybe ones that you gave discounts to. For more information, visit h10.me/followup. You can sign up for a free account or you can sign it up for a Platinum plan and get 10 % off for life by using the discount code SSP10. Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the series sellers podcast by Helium 10. I'm your host Bradley Sutton and this is the show that's completely BS free unscripted and unrehearsed. Organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e -commerce world and we've got a serious seller who is doing what I think I gotta think about this might be a first so we've had many people who started maybe on the AMPM podcast and came here actually I'm one of them so my very first podcast I was ever on was when I was a new employee at Helium 10 and I was a guest of Manny Coats on one of the last podcasts he did for the AMPM podcast and then a few weeks later we actually started this one. Now, we've also had unique situations where we've actually had somebody on the German podcast, and they were on the Spanish podcast. We've had somebody on Serious Seller's Podcast English, and on the Spanish, Elizabeth Rivas for one Helium 10 elite member. But this might be the first time we've had somebody who's been on the AMPM podcast, the Serious Seller's Podcast in Espanol, and now the Serious Sellers Podcast English for a record-breaking moment here. Rolando, how's it going?

Rolando:

I am doing fine, that is right. I did appear with Manny Coats sometime in the middle before he, before, you know, changed over to Kevin and they had been on Adriana's now twice on the

Bradley Sutton:

Also you were a guest of Manny and Kevin then?

Rolando:

Yes. that is correct.

Bradley Sutton:

All right but and you've been listening to it since the Manny Coats days way back in.

Rolando:

Yeah well yeah that didn't nothing looked like this it was I was a whole I was at the very beginning of starting to appear and going on people's podcasts it was very I was a new new newbie at the time so Manny kind of broke me in in terms of you know getting out there it was probably the second or third time I'd been on a podcast at that point.

Bradley Sutton:

Oh, first of all, where are you at right now? 

Rolando:

I live just outside the nation's capital in Washington, DC.

Bradley Sutton:

So is that where you were born and raised or?

Rolando:

No, I was born and raised in Panama. And my parents came over when I was six and we moved to Louisiana. And in Louisiana, you know, back in the early 80s, boy, it's not like what it is now. There was a, there weren't any, bodegas like you'd see in New York City and in Baton Rouge, Louisiana Eventually

Bradley Sutton:

You must not stay there very long because I don't hear the accent at all.

Rolando:

Come on y 'all. Come on y 'all I get there. I get there if you want me to I can talk a little bit.

Bradley Sutton:

There we go. Okay. Where's the water boy? I don't have I don't have any water boy vibes here

Rolando:

No, you don't hear very much because

Bradley Sutton:

Let me get some high-quality H2O.

Rolando:

Yeah he's a great wait, great, great movie. And I lived in New York for some time new york, you know, loving the pizzas and all that. You know. He, he, he, uh. And then for some time, when I went to college, I went to college in the in the Midwest Minnesota. So you can't get as clean as a talking voice.

Bradley Sutton:

Is that the Golden Gophers?

Rolando:

Goldie, go, goldie, that's right, look at that.

Bradley Sutton:

All right, my mascot skills still. I still have it, even with a fever.

Rolando:

And then after college I said, you know what? Minnesota is just too damn cold and so I live right now outside the nation's capital, and I've been doing that for the last 20 years wow, okay, all right.

Bradley Sutton:

So what was your major there? Uh, in the frozen tundra of Minnesota

Rolando:

I majored in Psychology and

Bradley Sutton:

What were you looking to? I mean, like, what was it like when you, you know, when you start college, you're like, all right, pick the major. You have something in mind that you wanted to do. Like what was your?

Rolando:

Oh well, I wanted I started as a pre-med and I started as a pre-med, my brother also. He we went to school when we both he was only one year behind me, and so we both were in the same school. We both were looking at pre-med. I got about into junior year and I was like you know, I don't know if I want to do school for another eight more years, 10 more years. If you throw some specialties in there and my brother did so, he's a very successful surgeon right now and I wanted to just get out of school and just start working, because you know, hey look, I don't know about you, but I didn't have money. I was po, po, po po, and so I wanted to start making money and I started. I came out of college, worked for a fortune 500 company, did that for a while and then, at the tech bubble bursting in the early 2000s, that's when I backed into being an entrepreneur and started my e-commerce journey

Bradley Sutton:

How did you discover?

Rolando:

By, totally by accident. So the bubble burst. I got nowhere with job applications really for months. Nothing, nothing. You a lot of interviews, nothing happened. And I happened to have a box of samples of the stuff that I was selling in the previous job and I really was so bummed out I'm like God, maybe I just throw this, all this stuff away. I don't even want to look at it. And so I said you know, all right, you know I'm going to do something better than that. So, instead of throwing in a landfill, I'm going to call a couple of people that I had already known. And one of those said, yeah, come on down, this is a call center. And they said come on down, we'll talk. And I said look, here's what I got. I know you're looking for some new stuff. And they said, yeah, but we want more. And I was like, oh really, I was just purely thinking I'm going to unload this stuff so I don't have to throw it away. And then we want more. And that was where the beginning I thought, hmm, maybe there's a business here selling this. But the downside was I knew that I have to either be on the road the entire time trying to build a business and I didn't want to do that because that's what I was doing in my previous job or this new thing called e-commerce. Like, people could go to a website and buy what you have. At the time, Amazon was at its infancy and only selling books and a lot of other websites. I was on a Yahoo stores. You either dialed the number that was on the page and you call and say, hey, I want such and such, or you send in a fax and it had your credit card number, which we also did. And then that's one thing led to another, and then, several years later, I started the Amazon journey.

Bradley Sutton:

While you were talking, I actually looked up on the AMPM podcast website your name. I found your Kevin King episode, but then I did find that you were on with Manny. And now I just have a question because I'm looking here on the pod. By the way, it's episode 141. So for sure this is a first. Somebody has been on with Matt, I mean Manny, me and Adriana. Now you just have to learn German to be on our German podcast.

Rolando:

I can do it, that's all.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, yes, exactly, but I'm looking at the timestamps and so I just have to go back to your story, because what does this mean? Rolando the archaeologist, have you any idea what that could have been referring to?

Rolando:

Oh heck, yeah. So when I was in college, one of my professors said hey, look, there's a discovery that we've made in the current hotspot today that Ukraine and Russia are fighting over in the Crimea Peninsula. I'd been there and so I said look, yeah, you know, one of the things I did that I thought was kind of cool is that I went on an archaeological dig. We found bones, we found a first century synagogue underneath another temple and yada, yada, yada. And you know, it was interesting, fascinating, to meet Ukrainians and Russians and there's a difference, there's a very there's a difference. There's similarities, but there's a difference there. It was cool to play Indiana Jones, but it's not glamorous. There was no cell phones, there was no Google, nobody knew where we were. We were in a military controlled zone at that time. At the time it was right when Ukraine had separated from Russia, so everything that could go wrong went wrong. You know, in terms from going to what was called a resort. It was not a resort; it was a resort that had freezing cold water. So if you want to take a cold shower, you were lit. It was like today you're doing some Wim Hof cold shower. That's exactly what it was. The toilets weren't working. A lot of people got sick. So everything you could think of about roughing it back in the day prior to you know being on Instagram and be like, oh look, I'm suffering, Look at me, and none of that. You just had to suffer, and that was it. If you wanted to get out and some people did they were like, okay, we can airlift you to the next base over in Germany. We'd have to fly to Kiev, get you out, and that's how you could get medical attention. So that was my introduction to archeology. I'm sure it's a lot better now. They did a bunch of other digs after that. So that's my archeology story. 

Bradley Sutton:

Indiana Rosas. I like it All, right cool. All right back to Amazon now. At what point in your e-commerce career did Amazon become your main source of income?

Rolando:

It took some time. The first nine months, probably the first 12 months on Amazon, it was not our main source. Our own website was, and we're making really good living on our own website.

Bradley Sutton:

What year are we talking about?

Rolando:

So we're 2024. So, I want to say that it was about late. 2014 was when we started the Amazon trip, the Amazon journey, and so we got to around 2015. Still nothing, you know, like $10,000 the year. But that's because the mindset was that you know, Amazon doesn't work for folks that are selling the products that we were selling. There's no real business folks buying on Amazon. All of these assumptions about Amazon at that point were really unfounded, so I really wanted to see okay, can we do something there? So after about 12 months, I said, you know, let me dive deeper and found out look, you need a different mindset. You need to give a different approach. This is not your own website. You have competition. It's not like selling Google or putting products on Google shops, nothing like that. The rules don't apply here. And once that started to kick in, okay, what do we do? We got to do some ads and we got to do some this and we got to do some research and they get some keywords. The mindset of the shopper is high intent, so we got to attract them. And so once that started happening remember that first December, which normally holiday periods are really slow for us, even to this day, and it wasn't. It was like a nice steady increase. And then January got better, February got better, then we made as much in one month that we had the prior year, and then that built on top of each other. Then the next quarter we sold more than we sold before, and then eventually our Amazon sales got parity with our own store, and that's when we thought, hmm, we got to go all in, what can we do here? And so eventually our Amazon sales surpassed our own store, which was kind of an amazing thing. So then, as things progressed, as you know, you can't use the same playbook from 10 years ago, and I think that's what today a lot of sellers are going through, and I'm sure you've seen, whether it's on Facebook or on LinkedIn, several sellers that are seven figures, some eight figure sellers are just throwing in the towel, and that's because the times today require a different playbook, and I think sellers need to really grasp that reality. Amazon's moved on. They want more money, period, end of story. They don't care, they want you want to use PPC, that's the tax you pay. You want to ship into FBA. You got to do it their way, and if you don't, you're going to be left behind or you're going to be finding yourself far behind your competitors that get with the times, far behind your competitors that get with the times.

Bradley Sutton:

Maybe people who started around the time you did and just saw ridiculous success, if those kind of people could have, without much effort, relative effort, been doing seven, eight figures. But then if you, if you're trying to use 2015 strategies even in 2018, let alone 2024, you'll quickly learn that you can't be lazy on Amazon or you can't be stagnant on Amazon with your strategies. I mean, things are changing on a daily basis sometimes.

Rolando:

Exactly, the pace has accelerated. What Amazon wants to do with its sellers it changes. You guys put out so many updates and you're trying to keep up and you guys have a big team of people to try to do with its sellers. It changes. You guys put out so many updates and you're just, you're trying to keep up and you guys have a big team of people to try to do that and it's challenging. So being current and being relevant are getting harder and harder and for those sellers that already found it a challenge, finding it even more challenging. And I don't think it's a surprise and I've been talking to other friends about this that are in the Amazon space I'm not surprised if more sellers are just not going to be in the next 60 to 90 days. They're not going to be part of it. And something that happened over the weekend our largest competitor they're 10x larger than us they declared bankruptcy. I'm not going to say who they are, but they declared bankruptcy and I was blown away. I was completely in shock when I heard that and decided to look it up. Sure enough, that's true. I checked out the court records. I was like, wow, I thought they were a beast. They were, but what is coming to the forefront, and I think every seller should think about, is profitability. No matter what you're selling, if you don't have money left at the end of the day to pay bills and buy more inventory, you are going to suffer. End of story, full stop.

Bradley Sutton:

So is your business model like? Is it all private label? Are you doing wholesale? Are you managing other people's brands? What's your model now, in 2024?

Rolando:

We started what you all call in the Amazon wholesale, what we call resell. So we resell brands in the electronic space. These are named brands and been doing that for 20 years. But what we brought along the way was a hybrid model where we are going to have our own private label of accessories on Amazon where we can control the inventory, we can control how we want to show ourselves and that kind of thing, and so that gives us a little bit of a balanced approach in terms of what we want to do. And I think if you're a private seller, you're going to face some challenges that resellers or wholesalers don't face, and vice versa. I don't think one is necessarily better than the other. I think the approach is different and you have to look at what your strengths are. For us, because we'd been in the reselling game or wholesale game for such a long time, we had the relationships, we knew all the distributors, we knew all the executive managers at all these different brand companies. So that's our strength. But we brought in the high, we brought in the private label to fill in some gaps for us and without even going too far into a bunch of different people, folks like your audience would know. Like Steven Pope, he runs my Amazon agency and I had him on my podcast and he said the same thing. He sold his brand and you would think that somebody that has 400 people would be able to manage to keep moving forward on Amazon. But that's how tough it is and he told me why. And you have blind spots and those blind spots can lead to mistakes and hopefully not all of those mistakes are grave mistakes that over time, pile up, and that's essentially what he said. So, like you said, you got to be current, you got to use maybe a different playbook, you got to experiment, you got to watch the cash flow. And if I want to say something about Helium 10, I will tell you that one of the things I really love right now about Helium 10 is that you can go in right now, this very moment, find where your dogs are and I guarantee you every seller has dogs on their catalog and you can clean that up and easily boost your profitability 10% to 15% right now by looking at exactly what every single SKU is producing or not, and if you're-.

Bradley Sutton:

What's your cutoff point that you guys use to determine of who gets cut?

Rolando:

So we look at first of all, let me step back something that we've just done this year. We have somebody that I would term something like our chief loss prevention person, and in retail you have somebody like that to making sure stuff isn't flying out the door under somebody's coat right at their local Walmart and whatever. This person is making sure that we're not losing money out the back door. And so one of the things that we try to do is anything that is making less from profitability. Every single SKU, anything that's 10% or less, immediately gets flagged, and that week we have a discussion around it why is it 10%? Why is it 9%? Why is it 5? Why is it minus 4? If there isn't some major justification like oh yeah, man, there's a crazy amount of returns that came in that week. Good, all right. What if we back the returns out of the equation? It's profitable, okay. So then we hand that information now to my catalog team and they go through and look through the reasons why the return was. If it's one order that gobbled up the returns, we understand. Okay, we're going to have some outliers. If it's something more like this product sucks, the product sucks. You guys are bums. This product sucks, and that means we need to go even further find out what happened. Oh yeah, you know what the 3PL that we have? They put the wrong accessory in the bundled kit. We got a problem right, so now we can address it early, rather than six or eight months later when you're doing an account review with your CPA or whomever and you're like, oh crap, yeah, we're 10 points lower this month, but that's kind of our process. Now you have to have the mindset of somebody's got to be in the numbers on a regular basis, looking at for us 10% or less, and be able to justify their existence If we can. And we see a pattern where, man, every month we're only making 5 points, we're only 5% profitable. It's not going to pay off in the long run, especially if you're constrained with cashflow. Cashflow is king, and this is something that I talked to a former CEO of Blockbuster. He told me our problem was cashflow. It wasn't Netflix. Netflix just kind of pushed us over the edge. The problem was that we were constrained with cashflow, and cashflow, I think, is what every single, almost every single Amazon seller will struggle with at some point. And addressing the dogs helps improve cashflow, helps improve profitability helps improve long-term longevity on the platform.

Bradley Sutton:

Are you guys utilizing FBA mainly, all right. So FBA is pretty much where the these new fees in 2024 have affected. You know people, people doing, you know shipping inventory in, or how much inventory they have in storage, return rates et cetera, et cetera. Let's talk about the first one how have you guys dealt with the inbound fee? Has that affected you? Have you changed what you do? Have you had to raise prices at all? How are you dealing with that first fee?

Rolando:

So we took all the data around. So we did some experiments. First, before the cutoff date, we started doing the inbound. We were paying for the placement fees, right, because we wanted to send stuff here and there, so we were paying for that. Then we switched that off to let Amazon go ahead and start shipping with so that inbound fee, those inventory placement fees weren't attached to it. We came out ahead even when factoring in the extra shipping. And I think every category needs to look at that, because if you're shipping furniture, your situation is going to be different than ours. But a lot of our items are around a pound. So in talking to other sellers they were. They pointed out to me hey, Rolando, did you know that in some cases you're going to come out where the fee is zero and overall you're going to come out ahead. And I was like what are you talking about? And so we did some math. Sure enough, we come out ahead. So I think inventory fees are a real thing they make an impact. But even more crazy than the, the, the inbound fees, are the low inventory fees and those initially we thought we were going to really be hit with that. And then they came out with this 20 units or less exception. So with the 7 days prior, a seven-day average. If you have sold only seven, I'm sorry, the seven days prior to you going out of stock or whatever, they look at how many units you sold. If you sold under 20, you're good, you don't have to worry about it. And so we have a bunch of low selling, low velocity items that were in that bucket and some that went out of stock that were in that bucket, and so it took our fees down, I think by 75%, and then the net result for us is only like 150 bucks net that we would have to pay on top of the sales. I'm like, okay, that's not too much to worry about, but we have all these things to look at. So I think in the end, this could make Amazon sellers better, because you're paying more attention to the inventory, which I don't know about you, but inventories are number one cost bar none. Like you could, you could get rid of all your staff. You still going to have inventory cogs outweigh almost everything else that you have on the books.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, okay. So what about electronics? I'm assuming you know returns are, are an issue. Is that going to affect you, that the new return fee, or are you pretty much below the threshold on everything there?

Rolando:

We're good Almost. We did a review Again. This requires you to take a spreadsheet. Put it in, our chief guy of numbers or loss. He looked at it, and we're in good shape. And one of the things about returns is that it takes a multi-prong approach to bring the returns down. It's certainly not anything to sleep on, because they chew up a lot of profit. So one of the things that we did was we looked at a program that Amazon has. It's called the PLS program, the product lifecycle support. In electronics. You have a lot of returns from people that say, oh, I don't know how to use that or I couldn't turn it on, and you know how easy it is to return something. Amazon just lets you send something back. You know whether you used it or not, or you dumped it in the toilet and dunked it. They don't care, they'll still take the return. So, we looked at creating videos. That helped. We looked at this product lifecycle support. So, the product lifecycle support lets the customer click on the get support that's on the app and it comes right to us on a landing page approved by Amazon where they can chat with us online, they can call us, they can email us and we give them information. We have videos from, and so on, so that's been really good to tamp down returns even in this very easy laissez-faire environment that Amazon allows when it comes to returns.

Bradley Sutton:

You've been talking about it throughout this episode and you specifically definitely referenced the importance of profitability in 2024. I mean, honestly, if anybody is doing any kind of business, you know what are you doing if you're not focused on your profitability. But I think it's more top of mind this year just because of everything that's going on With the new fees that are happening. And then it's not like PPC costs are going down per se or there's less opportunity to advertise. There's always more things you can do. How do you make the decision with your products? Hey, which forms of advertising am I going to partake in? And then, how do I just keep it all balanced to make sure that you know again, I'm still profitable.

Rolando:

So, this is where a tool helps and there's always a push and pull debate between an agency and you know in-house, and we run a lot of campaigns and so it's not. You know, we have five campaigns and it's easy to you know, just sort through. We have quite a bit of campaigns but internally, when you can have someone that you know what your goals are and they align with what you're trying to accomplish, it's a lot easier in some ways than hiring an agency bringing them in and they're going to have their strategy, but the goals they're trying to work with don't always line up. So what we do is look at ROAS. For us, ROAS is always very important. And then the second piece, which is again another reason plug for Helium 10. I love that. You can go by each SKU and in any given time you know, in the last 30 days or 14 days or whatever you could see if ads have outstripped the profitability. So, what if we'd removed ads from the equation? Oh yeah, we would have been profitable. And those are for the ones that are under 10%. But the ones that are over that, that are 15, 20, 30 or more, what if we kick in an extra 5% on the budget? Or what if we went up more on the placement so that we show up more on the top of search? These are all the experiments that you play around with as a seller. Okay, let me give this one a little bit more. See what happens. Can we rank with more keywords? So you have a little different strategy when it comes to ranking, and you've had so many lovely, wonderful guests on the show talk about ranking and keywords. I would not do it any justice by trying to jump into that mix. I could just tell you, for us ROAS, the profitability by SKU and looking at how that fits into the product, if we have margin for it, I tell my PPC person go ahead, give it a little more juice, let's see what happens. We do some external ads as well, outside of the platform, and that's doing some wonders for us also. So, we're running some experiments externally, pointing into the Amazon platform.

Bradley Sutton:

What is the most profitable form of advertising for you these days? I know when videos came out, that was very hot, you know like it was like oh man, my cost per click is so low compared to others, I convert really well. Or is it just the? You know the, the standard? Uh, you know sponsored product that you guys are doing, or maybe it's a some kind of sponsored brand? Or are you guys doing DSP or other forms?

Rolando:

No DSP at this moment we do play around in sponsor brands. It's a smaller part of our portfolio. When it comes to PPC and advertising, the heavy left, the heavy gorilla, the big gorilla is in sponsored products. I think, Dr. Travis, you know who I'm talking about. He had something that I am going to borrow from him. Amazon is a high intent platform that I'm going to borrow from him. Amazon is a high intent platform, so what you want to do is meet the demand. So if somebody, if there's a lot of traffic for bananas just throwing this out because bananas is in my head If you want to sell bananas or banana products, maybe you want to look at where the demand is for that instead of you know, let's say, like mung fruit, mung fruit is not going to be very popular in the US. So how can I plug myself in to the high intent shoppers that are on the platform that are looking for bananas and bananas product? Because whether I get 1% of those sales, 2% of those sales or 3% of those sales, especially if we're talking about a big number, right, that's better than 50% of monk fruit, which is a teeny, little pie, right? So that's kind of our philosophy. Try to meet the demand instead of creating demand. There was a gentleman who's head of marketing for Vermont Teddy Bear. I talked to him a few years ago. He more or less said the same thing to me. He said you know they do radio ads, they do TV ads they were doing. He said on Amazon, you meet the ads, they do TV ads. He said on Amazon, you meet the demand because you'll find that you can't even get your arms around all the demand. So try to meet the demand that's there and you'll find you'll be more profitable instead of creating the demand where now you're really investing. You're really investing to educate. Amazon is not ideal and set up for that. Amazon is great for meeting that demand.

Bradley Sutton:

All right, any last strategies for the rest of this episode. Let's talk about some quick-hitting strategies or something you can hit us with. Not many people in the game have been in the game for as long as you and you've kind of seen two sides of the spectrum People who are doing reselling and people who are doing private label. There's a lot of them out there. You've done both. What are some strategies for either side of that aisle that you can help people to be profitable or to have success in 2024?

Rolando:

Today it's all about controlling costs. There are very few levers you can pull on them. You can't control the referral fee. You can't control what your competitors are doing. You can't control all the returns coming in. You can't control Amazon's fees. But there are things that you can do right now that you can control and affect your bottom line and I've mentioned a few of those. But when it comes to inventory, I just saw today the supply chain, the freight costs coming from China just jumped up to almost $7,000 for a full container where they were $1,500. Those may require you look at. What about if we ship air freight? You may find you can get really good deals on air freight and maybe use a different carrier. Find you can get really good deals on air freight and maybe use a different carrier. Go in and take a talk to if you use a 3PL or a warehouse. Maybe it's time to look at a different warehouse. And we did that last year. We switched the 3PL that we were using. We're saving money. We got even a better warehouse. They were more involved. They caught mistakes All of the mistakes you can catch before it goes into Amazon saves you money and makes you more profitable. And then have somebody designated to look at your blind spots, because I guarantee you, you will find some. We found a really huge error. We were double billed for stuff we were using, caused us to overpay taxes. All these things again. These could all be catastrophic. But if you don't have somebody that's the chief numbers person looking at all these things and tying them together so that you can take action on it, I guarantee you, if you look back at everybody that's leaving, it's a series of things that have eventually just pushed them over the edge. So put some chief loss prevention person in place. Look at Helium 10, look at every single SKU. Find the dogs, get them out, get them off the board, liquidate them. You'll put more money in your pocket right now, and that's what every seller needs more money in their pocket.

Bradley Sutton:

You've talked about profits being one of your favorite Helium 10 tools. What else is one of your favorite Helium 10 tools and why?

Rolando:

I love the dashboard. That's where I spend more time in. The other parts of my team do different things. They're looking at inventory, they're looking at cogs and maybe they're using Cerebro for keyword search. But I love the dashboard because you can customize what I want to look at. You know, if somebody says, hey, you know what's going on with so and so I just look at and I get a good overview and I can customize it just the way I want and I can have, like, I want that first column to be the gross volume. I want to know overall what's happening. Second column I want to know profits what did it generate last month or this month or whatever time period we're talking about? And then profit margin, because then it factors in everything. I don't have to guess, I don't have to like go 10 reports deep. Oh, it's minus one for the last month. We got to do something right now. Get Anthony on it right now, please. Anthony, can you look at what happened here with this? And so the dashboard is great for that high level view, customizing it, and then, if you want to take some action on it. There's a lot of things you can do from there.

Bradley Sutton:

If we were to give you the keys to our product team for a week to develop a new feature or tool that we don't have yeah, it could be an existing tool or it could be a brand new tool, something we don't have what would be your priority for what we would do?

Rolando:

Let me see if I could do it my way, if I could do it my way. So, what I'd love is a way to combine PPC data, brand analytics data and keyword data. Combine those three. Let your AI in the background digest, chew it, find some nuggets and say hey, you are killing it on this keyword. Your conversion is astronomical, the profit is astronomical. You can afford to spend more here. Now I have some serious data to then my team hey, this keyword or this phrase double the budget. Why we've got extra money on it. It's generating a lot of revenue for us, and the data says we're killing it on conversions. If I had that ability, that magic wand, that's what I would say to your team Get to it. Can you make it happen? Because you guys have the data. It's just putting it together, running some analysis and then saying here's the probability of this, here's the probability of this, here's the probability of that. Okay, good, now you've saved my team hours, hours of time going through all the different reports and all the different parts of this stuff.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome, awesome. All right, how can people find you on the interwebs out there if they want to reach out to you?

Rolando:

Well, I hang out on LinkedIn quite a bit. You can go to Rolando Rosas on LinkedIn. I also have got a podcast called What the Tech spelled T-E-C-K. I'm also there. Send me a comment or a DM or something like that and we'll get in touch. I'll be glad to help if you're either looking to get into the space or you got some questions about why is this so hard and I can't do what I want.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome, awesome. We're also going to be seeing a lot more of you maybe in YouTube doing some Helium 10 demos and things like that. They asked me who do I think should get him. I was like, all right, my first choice right here is Rolando.

Rolando:

Let's see, I'm honored. It says a lot, and you're in this game. You've talked to a lot of people, so you had no shortage of people on your short list and I'm honored. I was at the top of that list.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome, All right. Well, thank you so much, Rolando, for being on the podcast multiple podcasts here at Helium 10 and helping me out with the Spanish demos and everything and sharing your knowledge with the audience. And we'll maybe reach out to you next year to see how things are going for you and if you haven't given up on those Spanish demos yet.

Rolando:

No, I'm going to learn German from here on out.

Bradley Sutton:

I want to there we go German. Yeah, we got to get you on the German podcast. All right, we'll have a good one.

Rolando:

Appreciate it.  

#564 - Amazon Product Inserts 101

Unlock the secrets to boosting your Amazon sales without crossing the line with product inserts as we team up with our Freedom Ticket instructors, Kevin King and Rafael Veloz of Share It Studio. This episode is your ticket to understanding how to legally and effectively use product inserts to build your brand and keep customers returning for more. Ditch the confusion and stay ahead of the competition with actionable insights and real-life examples, including Kevin and Rafael’s success stories with calendar sales and customer-retaining newsletters.

Prepare to transform your customer experience and drive repeat purchases with inventive strategies that resonate with your audience. We'll reveal the power of no-code apps as lead magnets, the smart use of QR codes, and how to craft calls to action that balance immediate sales with long-term loyalty. Rafael's Telly award-winning expertise shines as we navigate the nuances of customer engagement, ensuring your marketing efforts are not only effective but also compliant with Amazon's stringent policies.

Wrap up with a toolkit of marketing finesse, from leveraging QR codes for product-related apps to utilizing calls to action that truly speak to your buyer persona. Whether it's offering warranties, discounts, or even prize draws, we've got you covered with legal and effective strategies that hook customers in. This episode is brimming with tactics and takeaways tailored to help you master the art of Amazon product inserts and skyrocket your e-commerce success.

In episode 564 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley, Kevin, and Rafael discuss:

• 00:00 - How To Build An Unbreakable Brand With Product Inserts
• 00:59 - Advanced Amazon Product Inserts Discussion
• 08:57 - Leveraging Mail Leads for Calendar Sales
• 09:09 - Maximizing Sales Through Package Inserts
• 13:59 - Strategies for Amazon Product Insert Cards
• 18:10 - Enhancing Customer Feedback With QR Codes
• 26:35 - Amazon Review and QR Code Guidelines
• 27:15 - Prohibited Methods for Soliciting Reviews
• 31:02 - Generating Effective QR Codes for Customers
• 34:45 - Dog Treat Sample Pack Promotion
• 36:34 - QR Codes and Call to Actions

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► Free Amazon Seller Chrome Extension: https://h10.me/extension

► Sign Up For Helium 10: https://h10.me/signup  (Use SSP10 To Save 10% For Life)

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Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

Is it okay to do product inserts on Amazon? If so, what can and can't you put on those? We bring on Kevin King and expert guest Rafael to answer these questions and more. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think.

Bradley Sutton:

Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I'm your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that's completely BS-free, unscripted and unrehearsed, organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world, and we have our monthly special. This is called Seller's Edge, and this is actually a unique one, a new thing that we're doing, where we recorded live a module that's actually going to go mainly in the Freedom Ticket program about advanced Amazon strategy, and this one's going to be all about Amazon product inserts. There's a lot of misconceptions out there and so we brought on some people to talk a little bit about it. Now, the main core of this workshop that we did is actually in Freedom Ticket, all right. So. if you guys don't have a Freedom Ticket, any Helium 10 paying member has access to it. So, if you're a Platinum member, make sure to go into your Freedom Ticket account or your Helium 10 account and then hit Learning Hub. You can get the full details.

Bradley Sutton:

What we're going to have here is some clips from that training and then we're going to have a lot of the Q&A. What we did we did this live, where a lot of people were watching this training and they were giving a lot of questions like hey, what's okay to put in inserts, and can I send people to another website, and can I do this and can I do that? Kevin King got a little riled up there a little bit on some of the questions we were asking. So again, we're going to just give you some of their presentation just a little bit, and then mainly focus on the questions that you guys were answering. I'm positive. A lot of these questions are the same exact questions that you might have on inserts as well, so let's go ahead and hop into it.

Kevin King:

So I met today's guest Rafael around 2019, maybe 2020. But it was in 2020 where I really first got to know him. The guys over at PickFu actually came to me and said, hey, we're going to run this contest with like four different agencies and we want to feature your product. And at that time I was doing a hand sanitizer as a company called Germ Shark and I said I'm sure they said these guys are going to compete, they're going to create videos, they're going to create images, they're going to create A plus content. And then you get to go through it all, Kevin. You get to decide which one you like the best, and then it's up to you whether you want to go with them and pay them or not, if you, if you like it enough. And so, uh, Rafael's company, uh, Share It Studio was one of the winners. There was two, two companies that actually kind of came close uh, real close to each other, and one of them I liked one of their things and then them I liked the other thing, but a Share It Studio did the best job overall and they ended up creating a really a kick-ass video for us and a whole bunch of really cool content. So that's where I got to know him and you know this guy. His background wasn't necessarily an Amazon seller. He was a three-time telly, award-winning marketer and filmmaker, and then he decided to go out on his own and he saw this need in the Amazon space, where there's just not a lot of good agencies creating good, good imagery and video content. So in 2018, he founded Share It Studio and as a marketing Amazon specific marketing agency.

Kevin King:

Now they do a few things. It's not Amazon, but they focus on Amazon and it's they really want to set themselves apart, but not just saying, okay, we'll create some pretty pictures and we'll make some nice videos, but it's data driven. So they're actually looking at the data, looking at what it is that they actually need to do. What are the trigger points that are going to make people buy? Not just create a beautiful video that looks great, but what can they say, what can they do? What about those first three seconds? And just create a really custom, bespoke package of creative services just for Amazon sellers on the Amazon platform. They look at everything from. They do everything from PPC videos, premium A plus content, images, branding and a whole lot more, and they're really good at what they're doing so.

Kevin King:

Rafael is going to be coming on in just a minute and sharing us today specifically on package inserts, and before I bring him on, I want to talk about package inserts for just a second, because there's a lot of, what I believe, misinformation out there when it comes to package inserts. There's a lot of people that say you should not use package inserts on Amazon. You will hear that on Facebook groups. You will hear that from some of the people that help fight against Amazon. They say don't use package inserts, don't do it, you're putting yourself at risk. I 1000% disagree with that. 1000% disagree with that. I think there are certain things that you should not do on a package insert. Those anything you know people say well, you can't direct traffic off of Amazon. Bs, yes, you can. What you cannot do is put your package insert or your URL. If you read the terms of service carefully, Amazon says you cannot direct traffic off of Amazon, but that's on Amazon. That means that don't put your URL in your product photos. Don't put something in, don't email you know, using the customer follow-up something to take them off of Amazon. Anything on the Amazon platform in imagery or text. You cannot send them off of Amazon to do something that is against the rules. But when it comes to your package insert, all the big brands look at Sony, look at any of the big brands they have package inserts for warranty registrations, for accessories, for different things. It's totally fine in my opinion. But there is a line you have to draw and this is where a lot of people get in trouble and some people don't understand where that line is.

Kevin King:

You cannot do anything to influence reviews on Amazon, and that means in the old days people would say please leave us a five-star review, click here and they would take you to the review page. You can't do that. You can't put a smile and five stars. Five stars is a kind of a trademark icon of Amazon. That kind of indicates give us five stars. You can't do that. You can't say something like if you have trouble with this product, please email us. Don't contact the buyer, don't contact Amazon or contact where you bought it. If you have trouble, contact us. Otherwise, please leave us a review on Amazon. That's directing negative traffic to you, even though that's a good thing to do. You want to take care of the situation that's indirectly directing negative remarks that might have been a bad review to you. There's other ways to say that. You can say something like if you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us, something like that that has no indication of. If there's a problem or there's something wrong, we want to fix it. And I understand you're trying to steer bad things away and you're trying to be good, but that can be seen as as as a negative. Or what happens a lot of times is people will have some sort of innocent package insert and then they will, they will send that and send it to a warranty page or some sort of registration page and then in the follow up sequence so everything is clean, but in the follow up sequence there's something that's a little gray or shady and that's where people get into trouble too. So but if you're doing the package inserts right, and I think you're totally fine and there is a way to do them you know I get a lot of Amazon packages and a lot of times I throw the package inserts out.

Kevin King:

I mean, it's one of the first things. I used to look at them to see what other people were doing. But now, obviously, I probably get 20 Amazon packages a week. I probably look at one package insert and that's what Rafael is going to show you today is some ways to make sure that that yours is the one that I'm looking at, and there's a reason that I only look at. One is because most of them suck. They're little business cards or they don't have good graphics, or they don't catch my attention or they're buried in the package in the wrong place. There's a whole number of reasons that I don't look at where there's no value to looking at it. It's just a bunch of text, or they all look the same. There's ways to stand out, and I use a package insert, and my calendar business is one example that I like to give, and what I do is I put a four by six card in there and I say congratulations, you've won a free calendar. That's what the package insert says, and what that package insert then says, because I'm selling calendars. Calendars are like selling milk they go bad.

Kevin King:

So right now we're in May of 2024. Most people don't want to pay full price for a 2024 calendar. The year started five months ago, so it's hard to sell them. So if I have extra calendars left over, I got to get rid of them. I can throw them away, I can donate them somewhere, I can try to liquidate them, but what I do is I use my extra calendars as a premium and so I say congratulations, you've won a free calendar. Just pay $10 shipping and handling and you can go to my website and get the URL out there and enter this code to get the calendar for $10. Or you can send a check or money order in the mail. A lot of people send checks or money orders in a physical envelope in the mail to my post office box and it works really well and I get a lot of leads that way. What do I do with those leads? The next year I've got 17,000 people on this list. The next year, when my calendars come out, calendars are pretty much bought between mid-November and mid-January. That's the big two months that most of the sales happen. You're selling 400, 500, 600 a day of some titles, but in September people aren't really thinking about 2024 like last year, so they're buying like two or three calendars a day. But that's where I use my list and I send them out.

Kevin King:

If I have their email, I send an email and I also send a physical postcard through the mail to them and says hey, the new calendars for 2024, or, in this case coming up 2025 are out. You can buy them directly from me and pay $9.95 shipping and handling, or you can go to Amazon, if you're a Prime member, and buy them on Amazon and get free shipping. And what does that do? It allows me to launch my product completely with no PPC, no launches, no having to do Vine reviews, no, nothing. Because people go and I have four different titles and a lot of them. They buy all four, so that gets them in the frequently bought together. And then they also buy other calendars so they might buy a motorcycle calendar or something like that. So then I start showing up on these motorcycle calendars as customers who looked at this or viewed this or those sections. And I started this flywheel going and I'm selling two or three a day in September and I just ride that wave all the way up and I do zero PPC for these calendars. I do zero launch and that's the power of a package insert. And then I can sell these guys other calendars that are not available on Amazon.

Kevin King:

I do it for my dog products with a dog sample packs. I do it with a lot of things, but in nowhere in there and no my emails, nowhere do I ever ask for a review? Do I ever indicate five stars? Do I ever indicate anything that's manipulating the system? It's all above board and I've been doing this for 20 years and there's nothing wrong with it. Usually, if you dig deep and someone says I got in trouble for package inserts, I didn't do anything, look deep into their package insert or into their funnel and you're probably going to see that there is something that's a little on the edge there. So if you keep your nose clean and do this right, it can be powerful. And so Rafael is going to come on right now and he's going to spend some time showing you some really cool ways to actually do package inserts. Hey Rafael, how are you doing, man?

Rafael:

How's it going, man? Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. It's an honor.

Kevin King:

Appreciate you coming on and doing this man, this is going to be great. I’m looking forward to seeing what you got. Learn a few things myself, hopefully.

Rafael:

All right guys. Thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate your time. I am the Founder and CEO of Share It Studio. Actually, my background was in law. I went to law school. I did four years of law school in Venezuela and then I went to filmmaking because I hated law so that's like a really little fun fact. And then I started working and I graduated from filmmaking. I started doing filmmaking, I moved to New York, etcetera. I worked in a lot of companies CNN, Nickelodeon and then in 2018, I was working for Nickelodeon and I decided to quit because I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I wanted to get out of that rat race, which I think a lot of us maybe were there and wanted to escape. So, yeah, so let's get started.

Rafael:

So this is a little bit of what we do at Share It Studio. I just wanted to give you a glimpse. I'm not trying to sell you anything. I'm just trying to give you a glimpse of what we do. So we only focus on creating content. Why I feel like a jack of all trades is a master or none. We like to specialize in one thing, one thing only, and anything that has to do with visual and visually enticing or visually manipulated. You could say a little bit that buy or that conversion, so anything that has to do with videos, listings, et cetera. So what are product inserts? You can read this, I know you can, but in my own words it's a way to give the customer more experience, right, to give them more value. The more value you give, the more value you're going to get in return. So it's a powerful tool, obviously, to enhance the customer's experience. You can request feedback, you can promote your repeat purchases. It's all going to depend on the product itself. It's the same thing to have a product insert for supplements for a hand sanitizer than for a garlic press, for example. Those are consumables. You can repeat them. The garlic press, you can probably buy one when it breaks. But if it breaks too fast, it means the bad quality garlic press, right? So, depending on your product, I would say try to steer and try to analyze and strategize that product insert.

Rafael:

Okay, let's keep going. So do's. Some basic do's. Deliver value. This is like just a general thing in life. Let's go into newsletters. I don't read newsletters. I find newsletters actually very boring or they're all the same. But I came across and I'm trying to plug this in in any way. But I came across one a few months ago which is Kevin King's newsletter right, the Billion Dollar newsletter and there's so much value that I actually enjoy reading them. That's because it's given me value, like a bunch of value. If it wouldn't give me value, I just would discard it, archive it or read it or delete it, et cetera. So make sure you deliver value. It's the most important asset. If you do not deliver value, you're not going to get anything in return. Some ways you can deliver value additional usage guidelines, care recommendations, general insights, coupons, customer experience. There's a lot, a lot of ways. Right, make sure you maintain informativeness, meaning that you are talking about your product's advantages or attributes on the product. That's dependent on the product. Again, these are all dependent on the product that you have. It's gonna. It's not a, it's not a one. It's not a cookie cutter, it's not a cookie cutter template, it's more of a. What do I have? What fits into this mold type of situation from my point of view, at least in my experience?

Rafael:

Encourage reviews. You want to avoid 100% encouraging any positive reviews or avoiding getting, or encouraging avoidance of getting negative reviews. Like Kevin said at the beginning, that goes against Amazon's TOS and, just like the taxman, the Amazon man is also going to find out at some point. Okay, so I would say, steer away from that. So politely, solicit feedback from the customers. As simple as your feedback matters could help. Extend support. Again, it depends on the product, but extend support If it's maybe it's a product that it costs I don't know a hundred bucks, most likely if that product is a little bit faulty or people don't understand that because it's hard to assemble, or something you can extend support, maybe a video, maybe a hotline, maybe an email I don't know something that gives them support. Um, cross selling if your product, you can match it with other products. For example, I'm going to show you an example in a bit of a baby product. But let's say you sell in the baby category and there's a lock and you're selling a lock um securing mechanism for the door for babies, right, and you and you can also cross promote the outlet protector for babies. So you know you kill two birds with one stone.

Rafael:

Don'ts. Avoid soliciting positive reviews, guys. Do not do that. That's like bad, bad, bad. Referring from cherry picking reviewers, such as what Kevin said, like hey, if you're having a bad experience, you know, come back and we can help you before you leave a bad review. That's a no-no. Steer clear from external links. Like Kevin said, Amazon wants everything in their ecosystems. What I've seen recently, though, is that they send them to a landing page, but the payment processing takes them directly back to the Amazon page. So what does that mean? That means that, from the product insert, it takes you to the landing page. You gather data from there, like the pixels, the Facebook pixels well, that's not Facebook anymore, it's the Metapixel, et cetera. Now you have marketing data from there, and then it redirects them back to Amazon. I've seen that recently. Eliminate misleading information, false hesitations, exaggerated claims, deceptive details. You want to be as transparent as possible and as truthful as possible. Remember, giving value is about being real, maintaining real, and abstain from manipulation. Definitely abstain from manipulation, because that's also you're trying to cherry pick that review. Okay, and avoid interfering with packaging. This is more on your end. You don't want to have a package that's extremely hard to open because of the product insert, because it's not going to give value to the customer experience, and customer experience is everything. All right. So it's a simple thank you enough. It could be, but you know it's there's not more, so it's basically wasting your money.

Rafael:

So if you want to win and if you want to actually get results, you should definitely take action. So things you should include you in your insert cards. Things I would include that we've included with our clients is warranties, how to guides, how to take care of the product, benefits of our products, guidelines, but it's going to depend again on the product. I want to make sure that everybody understands that it depends on your product. But, in summary, if you want to get value, you should get value. That's a rule of thumb in life. Actually, we should all get value in life, so we can get something valuable as well. So type of products, inserts or strategies. So review hunting that's like the most basic one, right? You want to get reviews. The most reviews you get, the better. I'm gonna show you some examples afterwards. You can put up a QR code and ask for feedback. You can use jokes, for example. So you put the joke and then you put the answer. Kevin usually actually does this. He puts stump bases in the beginning of the email newsletter and then at the end, he gives you the answer. This allows him, this allows that you read through the whole thing and then you have a reward at the end, which is kind of cool. So, for example, for this one, this is plainly emotional. Hey, scan this QR code and speak your mind. That's it. I just want your feedback, and your feedback means the world to us. It's very important. You're being sincere, trying to be as sincere as possible.

Rafael:

This is some of the content with this. For this seller, we also did that his packaging and he inserted it. And also, you added more value. He's not in a lead generator. So if you want to watch this video, it's time to install this. Watch this video, right? So you scan this QR code. Basically, it takes you to a landing page. It asks you for your email to unlock or to send the link of the video to that email. So, right there, you're getting more information. A simple joke is cool. So what type of candy is never on time? Chocolate, you get it, I didn't know. So ChatGPT helped us with that, by the way. So, yeah, so after they peel it, okay, and then, hey, since we're here, share your experience with our candies, and then they scan your codes. You know you're asking for it. All right, this is for stickers.

Rafael:

And another type of strategy is free purchase marketing. So there's a couple of things you can do. You can add custom coupons and you can add also cross-selling. So a coupon is you'll we all know what well, maybe there's new or sellers. Here's coupon is just basically a way that you give them something, a discount or, yeah, a discount for the next purchase or the new purchase or something, and cross-selling or it could be even an external coupon and cross-selling is when you promote something, another product, okay, based on that product, that at least simulates or in some way it connects with the main product that they just bought. So, for example this is the example I was going to give you it's a baby clear outlet plugs, right, and the baby toilet plug. So, welcome to Parenthood. Since you bought this, we want to help you. Here's more things that you can get and you're going to get these products. You head to storefronts and you get some offers from those products. Boom, so they're buying this, but they're also, oh, these guys also sell this, because maybe when they get this through their Amazon. They're like oh, I also need this. So you're cross-promoting that seller. Okay.

Rafael:

So list building it's extremely important as well. As we all know, Amazon is their own ecosystem and they have the last say in everything. So, like Kevin was saying about his calendars, it doesn't matter if he sells them on Amazon or not. He has a list. So Kevin doesn't even need PPC because he has a whole list already. So that's one of the things that you should be doing list building. So it's basically just as a gift.

You can create a strategy. Number one is a gift. Basically, you create a lead magnet from your website or app and you just tell the customer like hey, you want this, we need this in return, and they gave you this, which is this well, you can ask for several thousand information, email, phone number, et cetera. Or strategy to a newsletter. You know, create a newsletter with interesting content to promote, to promote it and put it in your insert card. You're giving value. For example, we have a client that he sells bonsais. I didn't know this, but bonsais are very much. It's like a culture, like there's like a thing for bonsais and people are really into it. So they read newsletters, they read articles, they see videos, they watch videos. Part of this newsletter is giving value to them, so that's how they're building their list, also through social media.

Rafael:

This is, for me, the best strategy up to date, which is an app. Why? it's also going to depend on the type of product you have. But why the app? Because the app you're always going to have them there. There's nothing more intimate right now, technology-wise, than the phone for a human. It literally holds our work, our life, our secrets, our laughs. Like, if you leave your house without your phone, most likely you're gonna return back home just to get your phone, because it's literally a third arm that we don't have. So by having that, you have so much access to that particular buyer. For example, this is QR an app that it's going to help you, you know, work out and it's going to give you a workout. It's a workout app, right? This is the one I'm using for to get ready to for BDSS in Hawaii soon Kev. I'm just kidding, I don't have a six pack, so this app is going to help you that and there that you can promote also other types of products. For example, I have another app which is a scale. I bought a scale and that scale helps you track your weight through the app. And through the app, sometimes I get push notifications which is hey, we just launched this product, would you like to look into it? Or hey, we saw that you're hitting your fitness goals. We have this new product that can help you reach those fitness goals, et cetera. So there, you're going to give a lot more value. And what are they doing? They're just cross promoting, they're cross selling. So that's, I mean, I think that's brilliant.

Rafael:

Remember, one step at a time. It's depending on your level of being a seller. If you're in stage one and you just launched your product, focus on reviews. If you want to do everything at the same time, great. But if not, if you want to take it step by step, focus on reviews, then focus on repurchase marketing and then build in a list all right, but this is a must at the end. If you want to build a brand, building a list is a must. Another thing if your package is, you don't want to create it in any way possible, like you know, maybe you don't want to destroy or interrupt this opening process you can add it to a label like the top, because you all know that it can only be a sticker, for example, every bottle or not every bottle. Most of the bottles have a seal on top right, so if they have a seal, why not put it there? They either way have to open it up, so why not put your discount or give them that value there? For example, these are supplements. Hey, next bottle you get 50% off. If I like them, I'm going to use that 50% off coupon 100%.

Rafael:

So another thing that you could be doing, which I love this one is A-B testing. Marketing, just like life, it's not one plus one equals two. Marketing is just trial and error. Trial and error. Obviously, you're spending a bunch of money. You're investing a bunch of money into your future, so you want to mitigate that fail as much as possible. For example, when we were doing Kevin's videos for the Germ Shark, we ran like 100 pick food tests. We were actually the company that ran the most pick food tests. Why? Because we want to mitigate the most amount of errors as possible. We didn't come out of the studio we're like, oh, let's just create this, it's going to be a winner. No, we tried it out a lot of times. So what you could do is, in your packages you can have two QR codes and see which one converts the most, depending on your product. Again, and you know, get creative and that's it. Um for overachievers, make sure that you're evaluating your KPIs. So repeat purchasing metrics. Are they buying this again? Is this working? Is it not working? Brand loyalty metrics. Are they going back? Are they not buying back off Amazon influence, Amazon attribution, advertising and sales. Percentage of off Amazon sales. For example, Kevin gets a lot of off Amazon sales because he has that list right and that is it.

Kevin King:

That was good, good stuff, Rafael. I want to just do something real quick before we get into answering specific questions. Come and listen to what I'm about to say. You, absolutely positively, can send people out of the Amazon ecosystem. Okay, you do. You can put your social media links. You can put a link to your website. You can do that. Quit following for the misinformation that's all over Facebook that people are talking out their ass, that don't know what they're talking about are doing. Quit it. Quit spreading this stuff. I see this in the chat and it pisses me off because you're wrong. This is one of the reasons I created Freedom Ticket back in 2017, when Manny Coats came to me and said hey, do you want to create Freedom Ticket? One of the reasons I did is there's so much misinformation out there. Quit falling for it. You can absolutely do it. There's certain things you cannot do. Raphael showed you that Bradley just posted in there like you, don't want some people to go buy this on Target instead or Amazon's competition, but if you're going to create an app, that's a brilliant thing. You can create apps with no code software now, with AI, you don't even have to be a programmer. You can go and create a very basic app and say it's a great lead magnet, download this app. You know, he said he showed the example of the one that's for monitoring your weight. Um, which is probably a little bit more elaborate, but you can create a very simple little app. People are more likely to download a cool app that goes with their product than they are. Um, you know, if I'm doing dog treats, I could do a dog training app. You know it's got a few videos embedded in it and it's a great lead magnet.

Kevin King:

You can send people off. What you cannot do is anything around reviews or influencing reviews or something like that. But you can send people off, you can capture information. Just don't do anything that would hint at influencing reviews. That means putting five stars. That means saying leave us reviews and then putting five stars under it to say, kind of imply that you want five stars To say if you have a problem, contact us. Otherwise, go leave a review on Amazon. Don't do anything, don't offer discounts. If you leave us a review or if you do that, I'll give you a coupon. Don't do anything like that to incentivize reviews on Amazon. That you cannot do, and don't even do it on your own website, just so that there's no gray area there. But you can send people off and they can buy things on your website too. Okay, so I want to get that straight. Okay, so quit falling for the misinformation, quit.

Bradley Sutton:

All right, tell us how you really feel, Kevin. But let me start pulling up some questions. First of all, we answered Oleg. Oleg says Kevin answered my question before I even asked. That's perfect, all right. So let's just-.

Kevin King:

No, I think Kane says you can't. Yeah, they don't want you sending to other marketplaces, like that's what Kane just said here. You can go to your own website and they don't want you sending people over to Target or to eBay or over to a competing website. I would steer clear of that kind of stuff. Saying our product is available and you put the Amazon logo, the Target logo, the Walmart logo, that is a no-no. But taking them to your own website to do after-sale warranty, to get an app, to get some sort of other accessory for your product that's, an add-on to the product, or to grab a coupon for their next order on Amazon, all that is fine.

Kevin King:

Hope says that coupon codes last for 30 days on Amazon. Then you have to create a new one. So you can't. What you do is you put a, you create a QR code you can use Bitly or whatever your favorite QR code tool is and create one that goes to a specific landing page and then you update that page every 30 days. You create a new coupon and you just update the page. You update that page so that QR code stays the same. So even if your product doesn't sell for a year, you're updating the page, not the QR code to a specific place. That's an easy workaround.

Rafael:

Yep, and also not even coupon codes. Maybe you want to offer something new now, that QR code that Kevin's saying that you can update. You can do whatever you want with it. It's your QR code, basically.

Bradley Sutton:

I have one here. I know what I saw here that would have got this flag, but I just want I'm curious about what Kevin saw. Maybe you saw this one. But Maria says hey, I know somebody who had an insert that said let us know how we did Leave us a review on Amazon. We value your opinion. With a QR code below which said for a free book on the dangers of what their product was working to protect. Scan the QR code and Amazon close the listing, force the seller to remove these inserts. The seller did not ask for positive reviews. Is it not okay to ask for reviews at all? I know what I saw here, that that might have triggered it. What about you, Kevin?

Kevin King:

That's an incentive. You're basically I mean it doesn't directly word for word say it, but that can be read as an incentive that if you leave us a review, we're going to give you this free book. You can't do that. That's a no-no and that right there is an example of you've got to keep your nose super clean on anything around the words reviews and you're tying them together. They didn't say hey, go leave us a review and we'll give you a free book, but they tied them together in that same paragraph and you can read into that. That's kind of what they're implying. Don't do that. That will get you in trouble. As far as number of QR codes, I would never do more than two and put them on opposite sides of the page or opposite one at the top, one at the bottom, or opposite sides on the bottom so they don't get crossed. But I would never do more than two. One is best. You always want people to take one directed action. One action is always better than multiple and confusing them. But if you have a valid reason, you could put two, and I think that would. That would be okay.

Bradley Sutton:

All right. Mahak said how do I generate QR codes to direct customers? So there's, you know, any QR code generator can do it Helium 10 Portals. If you have access to Helium 10, you've got access to Helium 10 Portals you can create the QR code there. You know, Rafael showed some examples of QR codes in his presentation, but pretty much any QR code.

Rafael:

And also Mahak, it's not just creating the QR code. Make sure it's something like Kevin said, like it's in their face, like they want to see it, they want to scan it and it's not just like scan this, because most likely they're not going to scan it. You want to get, I would say, 5%, 10% of those QR codes scanned at least. If you're getting less than that, you should re-evaluate how you're presenting that insert packaging.

Kevin King:

Hope what you just asked is a no-no. Can I ask for an honest review in an email follow-up after they enter the review on a landing page? No, don't do that. Basically, Amazon will see as like you're filtering reviews. So you're saying, go leave us an honest review on our own landing page. They're typing it and, even though you made the confirmation page, may automatically say, uh, please, uh, you know, be kind and post this to Amazon or somewhere whatever. Amazon could see that as that you're filtering. Like if they left you something negative, then you're not asking them to do it, and if there's something positive, you are asking them to do it. So don't, don't do that. You can ask, you can say on your we love reviews, please leave us an honest review. That general wording by itself, with nothing else around it. Any other stuff about a free book or something is like way down the page or somewhere else or not even on there. That should be okay. You got one um.

Bradley Sutton:

Marcy says how many QR codes per insert do you think is acceptable? I've got one for my YouTube and one for my Facebook group. I want to add one for man. She wants QR codes all over the place. I want to add one for a 10% off, a coupon with an attribution tag so I can get the brown referral bonus. What do you guys think?

Kevin King:

Uh yeah, I just answered that. I said don't do more than two, don't do more.

Rafael:

Okay, I would present it. Marcy, maybe I would present the 10% in a different way. Maybe not a QR code, maybe it's just like literally just a code. But again, that does expire, like Kevin said. But I'm with Kevin 100%, I wouldn't do more than two. Like you saw in the light bulb example that I gave you, there was one at the top, one on the bottom. It wasn't next to each other, because it can get tricky like that. You want to separate. Even the color was separated in the package. It was like a different color in the background. So you want that separation as well.

Kevin King:

Tadara is asking can we add samples of other products and inserts or offer to send free samples? Yeah, you can add samples as an insert, especially with little accessories. Here's a free. If you're selling something sewing, here's a free button kit. Or here's a free bead kit or something. You know we have 16,000 other colors available on Amazon. Here's a free sample as a gift. You know there's little gifts like that work. I mean there's a video. Rafael will understand this there. Back in the day before that everything was digital, I had to order to do all of our video production. We had ordered beta tapes and we had ordered these big beta tapes, uh, and HD tapes, uh, these, you know, they're big like squares that you put in the big cameras and we'd order them out of this company in Philadelphia and every time they would send me these, these packages, uh, with my shipment of 10 tapes you know these tapes were like a hundred dollars a piece or something I would get two little packages of M&Ms, like you see at Halloween, the little, tiny, little sample size packages of M&Ms, and during the summer they didn't put those in there because, but instead they put a note sorry, due to the heat, these might melt, you know, and so they wouldn't put them in and it would always tick me off that I didn't get those two little packages of M&Ms. These are, you know, 20 cents. But the fact that I would get those in there was a thing so surprising people with a gift can be great.

Kevin King:

Another thing that I've done with a power to insert on my dog products is I've offered us I've had where I sell antlers, I sell bully sticks, I sell duck treats, I sell a variety of other dog treats, and what I'll do is I'll make a sample pack and I'll say get a free sample pack of all of our seven dog treats on Amazon that we sell on Amazon. I'll put a picture of the Amazon listing photo and actually you know and put it, put it on there and say we'll send you a sample pack with this along with a coupon. Just pay $7.95 shipping and handling. It costs me like $4 to send it out. $3 basically covers the cost. I send them a sample pack through the mail. That way. They have to give me their address, they have to give me their phone number because I'll say this is for how we deliver delivery, updates and shipping tracking numbers is by phone, so give me a valid phone number and then we send that sample pack out and in. There is a sample pack, and then there's a coupon that says get this on Amazon. I mean 20% off your first order, your first bag, use this coupon, it works really well. And then I capture their name and email address and I'm driving stuff back to Amazon. I'm creating this whole circle and it works really, really well.

Rafael:

Amelia has a good question.

Bradley Sutton:

So Amelia said here can you improve our current package design? If yes, would the insert card and the package design be connected to our current branding design and what would the creative process be behind this?

Rafael:

okay, um, I don't want to do any sales right now, but yeah, we can help you. But just in case, um, the insert, I would say that you do need to, um, to keep it harmoniously, um, I would say like it should be aligned to your branding. That's why it's a branding. It should be aligned to your branding. And if you can actually put it within the packaging, maybe you wanna save money in the insert cards and you wanna put it on top of the lid of the box or something like that. You could do that depending on your budget. So many questions that I have to be able to answer that correctly. But, yes, and the process you do it is what I was talking about. You should have understanding the product, the niche, the buyer persona, their needs, their troubles, their fears, everything that you can gather from them and give them to that, okay. So maybe if it's a fitness product, I'm trying to get fit for BDSS. Okay. So for me, it was getting something to help me maintain my weight scale, understanding where I should eat, what time I should eat. So when I was looking through products to help me with that, the insert cards or the products like the hero images gave me that it was like, oh, this scale has an app. It was through the hero image. I was like, okay, let me check this out, and that's how I got hooked on that scale. So yeah, I hope that answers your question, amelia.

Bradley Sutton:

All right, we got a question from Joseph, who's got a scenario here. He says all right, I've got this QR code. Says something to the effect of learn more about the benefits of our product here. Takes them to an about page on our brand website, which website is also a Shopify D2C website that has a shop page. Is that permissible?

Kevin King:

That's a gray one right there. Um, I would that. That's a gray one that one could be seen as either way. Um, I would probably, if I would probably, cordon off that Shopify page. Uh, I think Shopify allows you to do this. I think Esther Frystone has a landing page that goes on top of Shopify that allows you to corner off the rest of your Shopify site, like to focus it on a single product. Um, I mean, if they get creative and they hit a bunch of buttons and they might go back to your homepage, but I would avoid any confusion there. That's a gray one.

Rafael:

A question really quick from Henry. He says that all products need to have warranties. I'm not saying that your product shouldn't have a warranty, definitely if you want to include warranties. 100%. But what I'm saying is that what's going to take action to scan that QR code? Is it going to be the call to action for a warranty or is it going to be a call to action to like hey, for your next product, if it's a vitamin, for example, that you know they're going to repeat the consumption, here's 10, 15% off. I'm not saying don't include it, of course, 100%. If you want to include it, I include it. But when you say the call to action, what's going to be that action that's going to make them scan it? Is it going to be the warranty or is it going to be, depending on the product? That's what I'm trying to say there, just in case. I don't want to make any confusions there.

Bradley Sutton:

I was just saying Lance is wondering how to get in contact with Rafael. You can be connected directly to them at hubhelium10.com and just type in ShareIt Studio. They're all over social media as well. Rafael's on LinkedIn. If you're in Helium 10, the easiest way is just go to hubhelium10.com and enter ShareIt Studio and you'll be able to even see. Maybe if you're a certain member of Helium 10, you might get certain discounts with them as well if you're logged in on that page.

Rafael:

If you're seeing this, this is my insert card. If you're seeing this, if you say Bradley and Kev are the best, we'll give you a really good discount.

Bradley Sutton:

There we go. I like that. Kevin, you had a question you said you wanted to answer, or was it someone else?

Kevin King:

I just saw one. Someone said they're doing a. Where did it go? They offer a 100-pound Amazon voucher prize draw each month. It's an image or video tagged on Instagram or TikTok. Each image uploaded gets one entry in the drawing. Opinions, please. Yeah, I don't see any problem with that. That should be totally fine and that's good marketing. Yeah, so you should be totally fine with that.

Rafael:

Angela Reategui. I hope I'm not butchering your last name, Angela. She asked can I include a QR code for free e-book? Uh, yes, we've done it with clients, especially in the home and kitchen, like food sector. It's worked really well with them. Uh, so yeah.

Kevin King:

Kane's like says can we offer discounts only on Amazon? Can we offer coupons for our own website? Um it, you can offer a coupon for your own website but, like for accessories or something, I wouldn't do it for the same product. I wouldn't say, come and buy, you know this exact same product. Or you don't want to do stuff where you're putting people into their, into your flow. You know, if it's a subscribe and save type of product, Amazon's probably not going to like it too much that if you're trying to get them to come to your subscribe and save on your Shopify site versus you're on Amazon, that that's a gray area, and so I would. I would just stay away from something like that. But offering them a discount hey, you know you just bought this blender. We have an accessory kit. As an Amazon customer, you get 20% off. It's not sold on Amazon, it's only available directly from us. Then yeah, that should be fine.

Bradley Sutton:

All right. Well, guys, thank you for all the great questions. We're going to be back here next month with another guest, Rafael, Kevin. Thank you so much for joining. Don't forget to reach out to Share It Studio, hub.helium10.com. All right, guys, hope you enjoyed that training. Don't forget again, the full, actual detail of the training, without the Q and A and all that other stuff, is in the Freedom Ticket course. So go to your learning hub inside of Helium 10. And if you have no idea what Freedom Ticket is, want to get more information, just go to h10.me/ft for freedom ticket. And let us know if you're watching this on YouTube or somewhere else. What other advanced topics would you like us to do? A deep dive, Q & A and bring an expert on with Kevin? Let us know in the comments below if you're watching this on YouTube or another place. Until then, we'll see you guys in the next episode.

Helium 10 Buzz 5/24/24: Online Sales Surging | Amazon Alexa Change | Walmart Virtual Shopping

We’re back with another episode of the Weekly Buzz with Helium 10’s Chief Brand Evangelist, Bradley Sutton. Every week, we cover the latest breaking news in the Amazon, Walmart, and E-commerce space, talk about Helium 10’s newest features, and provide a training tip for the week for serious sellers of any level.

Target, Walmart shoppers seek home goods, grocery delivery online
https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/target-walmart-shoppers-seek-home-goods-grocery-delivery-online-2024-05-22/

Join the Amazon Ads team and our very own Bradley Sutton on June 4 and 5 for a free virtual event to help you maximize your brand and performance marketing during Prime Day, coming back this July. http://h10.me/primeads

Amazon plans to give Alexa an AI overhaul — and a monthly subscription price
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/05/22/amazon-plans-to-give-alexa-an-ai-overhaul-monthly-subscription-price.html

New Beta Amazon Advertising Product Launch - Canva Connect
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jeffreycohen_la-canvacreate-activity-7199484241636728835-1SAS/

TikTok unites ad tools (including new AI-driven products) with TikTok One hub
https://www.tubefilter.com/2024/05/23/tiktok-world-ad-announcements-ai-symphony-one-shop/

Amazon Ramps Up Logistics Expansion to Speed Delivery, Reduce Costs
https://www.pymnts.com/amazon/2024/amazon-ramps-up-logistics-expansion-to-speed-delivery-reduce-costs/

Amazon continues laying the groundwork for Prime to be to sports streaming what ESPN was to cable. https://www.axios.com/2024/05/19/amazon-nba-deal-nfl

Will Walmart Dominate Virtual Retail?
https://retailwire.com/discussion/will-walmart-dominate-virtual-retail/

In another part of our episode, Bradley highlights the latest from Helium 10, starting with a must-have Prime Day preparation checklist courtesy of Carrie at Helium 10. Tune in for updates on Adtomic's new features, including advanced custom PPC rules and insightful metrics that could be game-changers for your strategy. Don't miss our training tip that leverages Cerebro's historical data for seasonal product research, exemplified by a dive into Valentine's Day candy keywords that could give you an edge in the market. Whether you're new to the e-commerce scene or a seasoned pro, these discussions are packed with actionable advice to help you stay ahead of the curve.

In this episode of the Weekly Buzz by Helium 10, Bradley covers:

• 00:58 - Online Sales Surging
• 02:54 - Amazon Prime Day Ads
• 04:06 - Amazon Alexa Update
• 06:05 - Amazon x Canva
• 07:02 - TikTok One Hub
• 08:12 - Amazon Size Chart Tool
• 09:02 - Amazon Logistics Plans
• 11:33 - Amazon x NBA
• 12:42 - Walmart Virtual Retail
• 14:28 - Prime Day Checklist
• 14:58 - Helium 10 New Feature Alerts
• 17:05 - Get A Free Demo Of Adtomic
• 17:13 - Pro Training: Cerebro's Historical Data Analysis

► Instagram: instagram.com/serioussellerspodcast

► Free Amazon Seller Chrome Extension: https://h10.me/extension

► Sign Up For Helium 10: https://h10.me/signup  (Use SSP10 To Save 10% For Life)

► Learn How To Sell on Amazon: https://h10.me/ft

► Watch The Podcasts On YouTube: youtube.com/@Helium10/videos

Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

E-commerce reaching levels it hasn't released since COVID. Big changes coming to Amazon Alexa. Walmart releases a new virtual shopping environment. These stories and more on today's Weekly Buzz. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Hello everybody, welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I'm your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show. That is our Helium 10 weekly buzz, where we give you a rundown of all the new stories and goings on in the Walmart, amazon and e-commerce world. We also give you training tips of the week and let you know what new features that Helium 10 has that will give you serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. Let's see what's buzzing.

Bradley Sutton:

We've got a lot of articles today. I keep saying this guys, it's so weird how things just come and go Like I remember last week there's like three articles that was worth reporting on. This week we've got about eight, nine, so let's go ahead and hop right into it. The first story is from Reuters.com and it's entitled Target and Walmart shoppers seek home goods grocery delivery online. Now, this article was kind of talking about Walmart and Target, not too much about Amazon, but what is interesting here is that it's saying, hey, US online spending experiencing a rebound, spurred by high gas prices, convenient delivery options and a surge in deals following a brief post-pandemic slump. Us retailers say Now the key stat here I wanted to bring out where it says here e-commerce sales made up 16% of total US retail sales in Q1 this year, the highest since they peaked at 16.4% when, during the height of the pandemic, in 2020 Q2. So a lot of you had, you know, super, you know huge sales during COVID perhaps, and maybe some of the sales slumped off afterwards. Well, this is kind of interesting. We're seeing some big numbers according to this article here. Now. Target especially says it's online sales returned to growth in the Q1 after more than a year of decline. So a year, week over week, it was declining and then finally, target start had an increase and that's probably going to keep going because of their upcoming release of Target 360. Walmart had a 22% surge in online sales last week, which exceeded the 17 percent growth recorded during the strong holiday season. Now, this again is interesting because, if it continues, what does that mean? That means good news for you guys. Again, this article didn't talk too much about Amazon, but if there is a general increase in online sales, you got to know that Amazon's got to be a part of it, since Amazon is the, you know, the biggest online sales channel or platform out there. So let's keep a close watch on this. Are your sales up the last few weeks? Hopefully they are.

Bradley Sutton:

Next article is just from Seller Central. An announcement on your dashboard you might have seen. There's Amazon. I think this might be one of the first ever. I don't remember this before Amazon Ad Summit, especially for Prime Day. All right, so this is June 4th and June 5th and it says here don't miss the chance to join our Amazon ads experts for exclusive workshops, in-depth discussions and more. Now, the cool thing is it's almost all Amazon employees who are doing this, but if you go ahead and register for this h10.me/primeads, you'll notice that on the signup page there's an outside expert. There. There's only one outside person, and this is a guy here with the name of Bradley Sutton. So check me out, guys. I flew out to Amazon's headquarters in New York to film this and it was pretty cool. We went over some just general strategies that sellers of all levels can learn from. So if you want to learn from the Amazon speakers and yours truly, again, go ahead and register for this. This is not a Helium 10 event. This is 100% Amazon. You can even see this in your Seller Central. Again, go to h10.me/primeads and register for this training that's coming up.

Bradley Sutton:

Next article is from CNBC and it's entitled Amazon plans to give Alexa an AI overhaul and a monthly subscription price. Now, this hasn't been confirmed by Amazon yet, but according to this, hey, amazon is supposedly not going to include Alexa free of charge in Amazon Prime subscriptions anymore and it's going to offer like a more generative AI kind of feel to it. Because, you know, like Alexa believe it or not is like 10 years old now and it's kind of like almost antiquated, you know, when you compare it to a lot of the generative AI things that you see out there. So, again, there's no comment from Amazon on this, but it's going to be interesting to see why, because how is this going to affect shopping with Alexa? We've been talking about for years how you know you should probably optimize your listings for Alexa, but the you know, until now, sales from Alexa is not that great, right, and it's probably because the experience is not that intuitive, right. But if there's this huge overhaul with Amazon Alexa. It would kind of like be you know. Go without saying that the shopping experience might be a lot easier on there. And now, all of a sudden, it could be exponentially more important that you do optimize your listings for the Amazon Alexa AI, whatever it's going to be. So just something to keep your eye on. I'm not 100% sure this is going to be like a big thing for Amazon if they start charging, I mean, who knows, like I'm not even sure I'm going to pay for it. If it's like $3 a month, since I have like a million Alexa devices in my house, sure I'll pay $3 a month, but if they're going to be like oh yeah, you want generative AI and it's going to be $30 a month, I might just go ahead and give up my Alexa devices because that that might not be worth it. So again, let's. And how it's going to affect shoppers and sellers.

Bradley Sutton:

Next article is not really an article, but from our buddy Jeff Cohen from Amazon. His LinkedIn post talked about Canva. There's going to be a new kind of like collab between Amazon and Canva so that you can seamlessly connect Canva to your Amazon ads creative library. You know, as we know, there's a lot of like generative AI tools where you can create images. Even Helium 10 has that in Adtomic and even other parts of our tool suite. But it's going to be interesting to see, hey, what new features does Canva allow you to do that the generative AI couldn't Like. For example, generative AI the one that Amazon has doesn't really allow you to put text on images. So if you're trying to create infographics or something like that, you really can't. You still have to go to Canva outside right. So maybe this could all be now in one you know kind of like process. You can go ahead and create infographics with text thanks to this Canva integration. Let's see how that works out.

Bradley Sutton:

Next article is from tubefilter.com and it's entitled TikTok unites ad tools, including a new ai driven products with TikTok one hub. All right. So this is a an appeal to advertisers. It said um, where they talked about some new things coming to TikTok, including an ai driven tool named TikTok symphony and a marketing optimization solution for TikTok shop. Now this is especially going to affect those who are doubling advertising with their TikTok shop strategy. These new improvements, this article says, will enable new opportunities for advertisers who are already seeing strong returns on TikTok In a newsroom post recapping TikTok world, the app noted that 61% of users have made a purchase either directly on TikTok or after seeing an ad, while 79% of TikTok users show a preference for brands that demonstrate a clear understanding of how to create content specifically for the platform. So, hey, you know we've talked a lot about TikTok shop. I'm not selling on TikTok shop yet. I'm going to very soon. But let me know those of you who are also selling on TikTok have you seen this new platform yet and do you think it's going to help you with your advertising?

Bradley Sutton:

Going back to Amazon Seller Central for the next article here, something entitled brands can now add size charts with the new self-serve tool. So, you know, are you selling in apparel or do you have a product that has like size variations? Well, now there's this brand new tool that you're automatically going to be enrolled in if you have brand registry, and this new size chart tool is going to have features such as existing size chart templates that can be used for new charts, the ability to apply a size chart from a single product to up to 1000 ASINs across entire product types. So you're not having to make 1000 different size charts anymore, you just create kind of like one template and then apply it to the rest of your products. You can also receive real time instruction to improve your size chart accuracy. So if you want to get more information on this, go ahead and check your Seller Central dashboard.

Bradley Sutton:

Next article is from Payments.com. I found this one interesting. It's entitled Amazon ramps up logistics expansion to speed delivery and reduce costs. Now, in the past and weekly buzz, you know we've talked various times about Amazon like downsizing their footprint as far as warehouses goes. But now it says, hey, amazon has leased, bought or announced plans for over 16 million square feet of new warehouse space in the US this year alone, according to this report, and this is in addition to they're already over 400 million square feet of real estate. It also mentions how it says they've overhauled their domestic shipping network, shifting from a centralized network to nine regions that are designed to operate independently. All right. Now, again, they're trying to get goods closer to consumers, enabling faster delivery times and lower cost, it says. In Q4 of 2023, amazon reported more than 65% increase in orders delivered same day or next day in the US compared to the previous year.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, it says, to support this new approach, what is Amazon doing? Well, we know what Amazon is doing. Right, it says here it's requiring itself and third-party merchants on the platform to hold inventory across multiple locations rather than in a few centralized places. Well, that's a nice way of saying that, causing Amazon sellers to pay more fees if we only send it to one or two locations, as opposed to spreading it across the country. But also something interesting says the company has been opening inbound receiving centers, which are warehouses that are from like 600,000 to 1 million square feet to store goods across the country. All right, so they're opening up smaller warehouses in rural areas as well for last mile delivery stations. So it's going to be interesting how Amazon kind of like you know, expands their network. How Amazon kind of like you know, expands their network. You know it talks about here that this is partly maybe in response to Walmart being able to fulfill through all their 4,600 stores. Right, so Amazon's, like you know, amazon doesn't have stores across the country as much as Walmart does, so it wants to get a little bit closer to the consumers to give faster delivery time. So, again, all of this is something that's going to affect Amazon sellers. It already has. Part of this is causing us to have new fees, but then is this, you know, faster shipping time going to cause customers to order more from us. You know, then, maybe in the long run, this could actually help Amazon sellers. Let's see how this works out.

Bradley Sutton:

Next article is from Axios.com. It says Amazon's big league ambitions and, just briefly, it's talking about how, you know, amazon might be part of this bid with, like NBC, to broadcast NBA basketball, professional basketball games. It talks about it has a deal with the NBA. It's been doing football, you know, like a Thursday night football for the last few years. It's talking with a regional sports network, one that I used to watch my LA Clippers on, where they're going to try and pull it out of bankruptcy and maybe get games on Amazon. Now, this is it. Why would you care about this? Maybe you're not a sports fan like I, am right, but this is important because we all know that Amazon is really pushing sponsored TV and all these new ways for average sellers to be able to have ads on their streaming platforms or another kind of like media in which you, potentially, might be able to run ads, and so the more deals that Amazon makes like this, the more opportunity for you to get your products in, you know, in front of different audiences.

Bradley Sutton:

Last article of the day is from retailwire.com and it's entitled will Walmart dominate virtual retail? All right, so this is kind of interesting. Virtual retail All right, so this is kind of interesting. It says Walmart has launched a virtual shopping flat platform called Walmart Realm. All right, now, this is an innovative marketplace, it says, that includes a unique blend of influencer led virtual stores and it creates an immersive shopping experience for consumers. Now, part of this is like these. Virtual, it says consumers. Now, part of this is like these virtual. It says fantastical worlds of shopping that it creates in virtual environments that allow users to interact with products, but they all also offer nostalgic online games, making the shopping process engaging and entertaining. Now, it says, at the core of this, this Walmart realm, there's distinct virtual shops that are led by influencers and inspired by social trends and, for example, a few of these. One of them is called so Jelly. This is described as an underwater playground filled with vibrant colors and whimsical surprises, providing a playful shopping experience. Now, it says, in addition to these themed shops, it's also going to have content from their creators, enhancing product discoverability and engagement. Now, for those watching this on YouTube. I'm just going to play this video here where you can kind of see a little bit of how this virtual world is. It's kind of wild Like I'm not sure if I want to shop in this kind of thing, but hey, this could be the future of online shopping and Walmart could be a pioneer in this. I'm sure, if it's successful, we'll see that coming to Amazon as well.

Bradley Sutton:

All right, that's it for the news this week. One quick note before we go into our next feature is Carrie, here at Helium 10, made a cool checklist, a printable PDF that you can use as a kind of like guideline for what you need to do to prepare for Prime Day. So in order to go and download this checklist for free, go to h10.me forward slash prime list, h10.me/primelist, and then you can just enter in your email and we'll email you this PDF for free help you get ready for Prime Day, which is coming in July. All right, let's get into our new feature alerts from Helium 10. And these are going to be from Adtomic. There's actually nine different updates this week. I'm only going to mention a couple of them and then refer to some of the others, and you know, for those of you using Adtomic, you can hop in there.

Bradley Sutton:

Now. One of them is you know you've always been able or not always, but for the last couple of months you've been able to create custom rules in Adtomic so that you can kind of like help reach your own goals for your bidding right Now. A lot of you guys had feedback on what you would like to see, and so now we have, more than ever, different criteria so that you can design your own PPC rules, like you've always been able to make it off of hey, if my ACoS is above this and below this. But now you can do it all based on things like the impressions, the current bid, the conversion rate, the click-through rate, the number of PPC orders spend, et cetera, et cetera, and then even the actions. You now have more options Like, for example, instead of just increasing or decreasing the bid based on the criteria that you put, you can say, hey, take the cost per click and multiply it by this target ACOS, right? Or multiply the current bid by this target ACoS. There's a lot of new features that you guys ask for and that we now have. So if you haven't checked out the custom bid rules in Adtomic lately. Make sure to hop in there and do it.

Bradley Sutton:

Another thing that we have here in Adtomic is on the analytics page. You guys wanted to start seeing some of the Amazon metrics that we didn't have in Adtomic, such as impression rank and impression share. You're going to be able to see that now on the analytics page of your Adtomic dashboard. Now, I mentioned that that's just a couple of the new updates to Adtomic. Some of the other ones are you can add keyword harvesting and negative rules in the campaign builder. You can now sync your data on demand from Amazon to Adtomic. You're going to be able to see day partying heat maps now and when you're creating day partying schedules. The list goes on and on. Make sure that you are up to date with everything that is in Adtomic, and if you guys haven't used Adtomic, interested in trying it out, go to h10.me/adtomic for a demo.

Bradley Sutton:

Now let's get into the training tip of the week. So we were at the Billion Dollar Seller Summit in Kauai, Hawaii, and it was interesting that, for a hack, Carrie mentioned something about doing historical analysis. Now, this is something that's not new, like it's been around for two years and most of these. I think there's only two people in the room had said they had used this before. All right, so I was like you know what this needs to be our training tip of the week, because it's super valuable, my opinion, one of the most valuable things that we have here at Helium 10. Now let me set the stage here for the first use case of looking at historical data on Cerebro and, by the way, this is for those of you who have the diamond plan and up. Now, let's say you're in a seasonal niche, or looking at a seasonal niche Like right now we are in what? May-June of 2024.

Bradley Sutton:

Valentine's Day passed, and if you were to look up a certain product in Cerebro for now that was maybe a top seller for Valentine's Day, you might not be able to see too many good keywords, right, you're not going to know what were the main keywords for it during Valentine's Day, because already Valentine's Day was months ago, right Now. Here's an example. Let's say I was using a Helium 10 Amazon brand analytics tool in Blackbox and I was like, hey, during February 18th to February 24th, let me look for keywords that had 2,000 search volume each, that had the word Valentine's in it and that got some sales and I could see a whole bunch of keywords here, such as Valentine's Day decorations, men's Valentine's gifts, etc. And then here's one Maybe I'm interested in Valentine's Day candy and for that week of February, right before Valentine's Day, I see that the number one purchase product, or the number one click product was Reese's Milk Chocolate Peanut Butter. All right. Now, if I look at on Amazon, now that that product here in May and June, I can see that this product isn't even in stock. There's not even a buy box here. All right.

Bradley Sutton:

So if I actually ran it in Cerebro right now and I was like, hey, what keywords is this product ranking in the top 10 for? As you guys can see what I've done here, for search volume of 500 or more, look what comes up? Zero, there's no keywords that come up for it. Right. So it's like if I want to get ready for next year for Valentine's Day and I want to really, you know, do well with a Valentine's Day candy or something I'm kind of like, not, you know, able to see, what keywords do I need to put in my listing? I can't, I don't want to wait until February to actually see. But then this is where the historical Cerebro comes. All I have to do is hit this button right here called show historical trend. And then I want to go back to February, right, first of all, I can see here, and if I hit the show historical trend, I'm going to be able to see the history of how many keywords, month by month, that this product has been ranking for. And then when I actually go into February of 2024, I do that same exact search. Hey, what were the keywords that had 500 search volume, whereas ranked between one and 10. And now I see over 10 keywords here, all right, like, for example, reese's hearts or Valentine's Day Candy 2,000 search volume. Valentine's Treats 20,000 search volume. During February that keyword was nowhere to be found right now because nobody is searching Valentine's Treats, right? If you're searching Valentine's Treats in May and June, you got some relationship problems, probably. So this is the first way in which you can do this Looking at seasonal products.

Bradley Sutton:

Take a time machine in Cerebro to go back and look at when that product was really at its peak in its season. What keywords was it getting sales from? And now, you know, maybe come the end of this year, November, December the search volume for those Valentine's Day keywords is still low. That's when I want to get my product maybe in stock and start ranking for those keywords and then come February everybody's going to try and like, play catch up to figure out what's the main keywords. I'm already on page one for all. What are the best keywords for that product in Valentine's Day? All right? So that's use case number one. Here's use case number two. Let's say that you are checking out your competitor, like right here, here is a rival coffin shelf. This coffin shelf is actually the Amazon's choice for coffin shelf right now, not the helium 10 one. And I'm looking here at the BSR chart history, all right. So I can see with this helium 10 BSR chart, looking at last year's. So I can see with this Helium 10 BSR chart, looking at last year's, I can see that, wow, look at this, like in December or you know, the sales were pretty okay, especially in the middle of December, right, look at this BSR of less than a hundred thousand sometimes. But then look what happens in January They've got like 200,000 BSR. So the sales really went down when you look at December of last year to January of this year.

Bradley Sutton:

So, again, let's look at their Cerebro, right? So I just run Cerebro on them and I could do that with one click. I just hit keywords right here on their product page and sure I can see where they're ranking for right now. But what I want to do is hit the show historical trend and then I'm going to open up in two windows hey, what were the keywords that it was getting in sales from in December compared to January? So, for example, here I opened up their December keywords that's when their sales were popping Right and I just did a filter of hey, what were the keywords that had a thousand search volume where it was ranking in the top 10? You could see there's 10 keywords that it was getting sales from right here in December. Now, in another window, I'm going to run the historical trend again and take that time machine. I just took the time machine to December of last year. Let's take that time machine to January of this year Remember, that was the month that I saw they had low sales. And look at this there's only six keywords that hit that criteria of a thousand search volume, organic rank one through 10. So now what is the next step? Well, the next step is all right.

Bradley Sutton:

Where were the keywords where they maybe lost their rank. You know, I could see here, coffin bookshelf is on both lists, so they. They kept their rank right there. But look at this keyword here emo decor thousand search volume. They're organic rank two. Look, when I hit January, they aren't. They aren't even in the picture for emo decor, right. Look at this keyword gothic shelves, 1100 search volume they're organic rank four. Oh, gothic shelves right here, they're still organic rank six. So that's not a good example. Here's another keyword here gothic bookshelf, thousand search form. There are page one, position three during December. But in January they were no longer there in the top 10 for that keyword. So now, all of a sudden, I have a picture of my competitor, or this could have been my product, right, if I notice a big drop in sales and now I know like, oh shoot, this product lost sales because they lost rank on these certain keywords. I can do this the opposite way. What if I saw a month where sales increased a lot? Well, I'm going to look at the previous month and say, hey, what keywords did it all of a sudden hop into the top 10? And now I know, wow, these are keywords that are money driving keywords, because there's a direct correlation with them getting the top 10, with their sales increasing. So there's so much possibility that you can do with this.

Bradley Sutton:

Guys, this is like probably one of the top three features, if not top two, in the entirety of Helium 10. And a lot of you are sleeping on it. So, if you've got the diamond plan, this used to be a Helium 10 Elite only and I was like, man, this is too valuable even for Helium 10 Elite, like I would pay Helium 10 elite just to get this. And then we moved it down Like we always do with everything down to the next plan, and now it's only. It's available even if you have diamond. So, guys, if you have diamond, you got to be taking advantage of this. If you don't have diamond, this, in my opinion, pays for itself. This one feature is like what diamond should be, you know, like that makes diamond worth it. For me, I would pay double just for this feature. That's how valuable this is. So, guys, make sure to make use of Cerebro Historical Trends. All right, that's it for the news and features and training of this week. We'll see you next week to see what's buzzing.

#563 - Amazon PPC Bid Management and Dayparting Tips

Is the Amazon marketplace's tide too strong, or can new and seasoned sellers still navigate the choppy waters of Amazon PPC to find success? Join Shivali Patel, along with Matthew FitzMaurice from Pacvue, as we chart a course through the intimidating yet rewarding seas of Amazon advertising. This TACoS Tuesday, we're not just talking shop; we're equipping you with a compass and map to master keyword research, manage bids with precision, and understand the rhythms of dayparting that keep your budget afloat and your goals in sight.

Amazon's landscape is dominated by PPC, but that doesn't mean getting organic sales from your campaigns is a lost cause. We share a lot of tactics for enhancing retail-ready content and fine-tuning your bids to catch the eye of shoppers sailing by. Learn how to stay vigilant on the metrics that matter—CPC, impressions, and click-through rates—while also steering the helm of your PPC campaigns with the discerning eye of a captain deciding when to lower sails (daily budgets) or adjust course (bids). Our discussion also offers insights into managing the choppy waters of high-cost keywords and understanding when it's time to make a strategic retreat.

Our final topic dives into using Amazon advertising to claim your market share. We uncover the secrets of sponsored product placements, brands, and display campaigns, aided by the navigational tools of Helium 10's Adtomic and Pacvue. Whether you're launching a new product flotilla or reinforcing the fleet of established offerings, we're here to help you sail smoothly through budget considerations, historical data analysis, and the essential practice of continuous testing. All hands on deck—this episode is a voyage to the heart of Amazon advertising success.

In episode 563 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Shivali and Matthew discuss:

• 00:00 - Amazon PPC Q&A and Ad Strategies
• 05:53 - Optimizing Keyword Campaign Performance
• 06:57 - Strategies for Boosting Organic Sales
• 11:37 - Optimizing High-Cost Keywords in Campaigns
• 14:09 - Optimizing Keywords for Market Share
• 16:41 - Keyword Performance Evaluation and Decisions
• 17:01 - Optimizing Amazon Advertising Performance
• 18:59 - Analyzing Sponsored Product and Display Performance
• 20:16 - Optimizing Sponsored Display Campaigns for Success
• 23:35 - Optimizing Keyword Campaigns for Efficiency
• 25:53 - Maximizing Amazon Campaign Performance
• 28:19 - Automations in Advertising Platforms

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Transcript

Shivali Patel:
Today, on TACoS Tuesday, we answer all of your PPC questions live, while also discussing the nooks and crannies of bid management, day partying, different ad types and so much more.

Bradley Sutton:

How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. If you're like me, maybe you were intimidated about learning how to do Amazon PPC, or maybe you think you just don't have the hours and hours that it takes to download and sort through all of those sponsored ads reports that Amazon produces for you. Adtomic for me allowed me to learn PPC for the first time, and now I'm managing over 150 PPC campaigns across all of my accounts in only two hours a week. Find out how Adtomic can help you level up your PPC game. Visit h10.me/adtomic for more information. That's h10.me/adtomic. Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I'm your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that's completely BS-free, unscripted and unrehearsed organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. And this episode is our monthly live TACoS Tuesday show, where we talk about anything and everything Amazon, Walmart, PPC and advertising related with different guests, and today's host is going to be Shivali Patel. Shivali, take it away.

Shivali Patel:
Hello guys, this is Shivali brand evangelist here at Helium 10, and we are back with a TACoS Tuesday episode. You guys are in for a treat. I know you have plenty of advertising questions and we have a special guest expert here to answer those questions for you. So with that, I'm going to go ahead and bring on Matthew, who is here with us to answer your questions. How's it going?

Matthew:
Good Thanks, how are you?

Shivali Patel:
Good, good. Thanks so much for jumping in. I know people have plenty of questions to throw your way, so before we really jump into those questions, I want to talk a little bit about you. Do you want to tell us a little bit about your background, what you do here at Pacvue and your, I guess, history with advertising.

Matthew:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I'm Matthew Fitzmaurice. It's nice to meet everybody. I initially started in traditional advertising at a local agency in Baltimore where I live, very focused on kind of account management there, had exposure to social campaigns and kind of the traditional out of home. It was interesting. And then I kind of found my way into e-commerce and kind of felt it to be more relatable honestly, just like being on Amazon so much and just kind of interacting with different brands and products on what I felt like was a deeper level. So that's kind of how I got my start in e-com. I've been in e-com in general I guess for probably four years now, specifically managing mostly PPC campaigns kind of at the enterprise level in some form of an agency to client relationship. It's been the majority of it. And then I have loved my time at Pacvue. Leveraging the tech has been fantastic. I think it is absolutely best in the industry. Helium 10 has been a fantastic add-on as well. So it's been awesome, it's been great.

Shivali Patel:
Amazing. Yeah, I know advertising is really the bread and butter for so many brands and businesses and so being able to understand that or have a really good pulse on it is so important. So I know, because there's so much that goes into the advertising metrics and monitoring that what would you say are some underlying factors that really affect PPC that you want to keep a pulse on?

Matthew:
Yeah, I think goal setting is huge. I think understanding what you're trying to achieve allows you to set the framework really appropriately for any campaign, for any platform, for any retailer. So I think for me it really comes down to understanding the end goal, and I think contextualizing what those KPIs are tracking towards is also really, really important.

Shivali Patel:

Now we already have one filing in. We have Kristy asking Hi, I have a product and sell to retail but worry that the Amazon fees will be too expensive. Is it too late to be successful on Amazon? So I would say no, but I want to hear your side of things as well.

Matthew:

Yeah, no, I totally agree. I don't think it's ever too late, I think, obviously, understanding what those fees are associated with. I know there's a lot that goes into it and fees can get out of hand quickly with Amazon based on packaging, shipping, the list goes on and on. But I would say, do as much research as you can try to understand what those thresholds are and what your capacity is. And I would say, obviously, once you're in Amazon and in the network, the upside is large. So I would say, not too late and definitely give it a try.

Shivali Patel:
I would definitely agree there. I think it just depends on if you know where to look, and there's certainly plenty of opportunity there. Amazon's growing year over year All right, well, in other news of PPC. So we said it depends on the goals. Right, going back to that conversation, and you're looking at keywords. So how would you say you kind of tackle keyword research for, I guess, a new seller as well as for somebody that you're auditing an account for?

Matthew:
I think there's a lot of ways you can go about it. I think the way that I always start is kind of in the mind of a shopper how do I look for the product? What are the things that I'm typing into the search bar to say, hey, how do I find this? I think Amazon is being used more and more like a Google or you know being or not that many people use big probably, but probably more like a Google right, where people can search and interact with products and do some almost preliminary research just on Amazon without having to go to Google. So I think, try to stay in the mind of a shopper, kind of as you're getting going and then from there, Helium 10 has some fantastic tools. Magnet is something that I use frequently looking at search volume, looking at competitor ASINs that are on similar terms, things like that to kind of get a feel for the category. Any add on that you can kind of have from the Helium 10 tool, even in the search bar within Amazon, gives you related terms based on search volume. If you're in Seller Central there's SFR, things like that. So I would say, use those tools as much as possible, but try to stay in the mind of a shopper and experiment. You can run auto campaigns and run different reports to generate what kind of new keywords are being pulled. So I mean, the list goes on and on. But to start, I would always say think like a consumer.

Shivali Patel:

But even on that note, let's say that you see you want to rank for a specific keyword and you're ranking at the bottom of a page, right, and you want to get back up to the top. How would you really go about changing, maybe the campaign that you're looking at? For example, when is a good time to negative match a keyword?

Matthew:

Yeah, it depends how specific you want to get with your actual campaign, but negative targeting can be really helpful if you want to be very, very laser focused. I personally am a huge fan of exact match keywording. For me, I feel like I have the most control over it. I know exactly where my ad is going to place if, obviously, you win the auction. But for me I definitely will default to the exact match and then from there, I think, understanding what my budget limitation is, leveraging things like day parting and trying to get the most out of every dollar. So that way my ad is serving as efficiently as possible on the right times of the day to kind of get that engagement and then drive up organic rank.

Shivali Patel:
We have Daniel asking what would be the effective strategy to boost our organic sales for our product. Currently, 60% of their sales come from PPC sales and they want to get their organic sales to improve more than their PPC sales.

Matthew:

Gotcha, yeah. So this is a common problem. Amazon and a bunch of other marketplaces are becoming increasingly more kind of pay to play, if you will, where the majority of the sales are going to come from, those top four sponsor placements, which makes it competitive, can make it very expensive, and driving that organic sales share up is really important and I think really some of the things that I've done that have been helpful is kind of, you know, adjusting some of the more you know quote unquote retail-esque metrics, making sure your page is retail ready. Having content developed that is bulletproof is as good as you can possibly make it, and then kind of coupling that with that PPC strategy of making sure that your bids are targeted to exactly where you want them to be. If strategy of making sure that your bids are targeted to exactly where you want them to be, if you're casting a really large net, it's difficult to gain that relevancy. So I'd say, be prescriptive where you know you want to be and then from there just track how you're progressing up the page. And then you know always I would say always test. So test things like day parting schedules, test things like different bid multipliers to see what it takes to get out the page and then from there I would just kind of keep iterating and keep making little tweaks and trying to refine that as much as possible.

Shivali Patel:
Definitely. I think split testing is a large part of it, and then refining that based off what you're learning. What metrics are you really looking at when you're considering day partying and doing all the split testing?

Matthew:

Yeah, I think again, it kind of depends on the goal. But if the goal is just strictly for organic sales, what I'm looking at is kind of cost. I want to see what those CPCs are. I want to see kind of what the relevance of and kind of try to determine what the right to win is for my product in those particular campaigns and the particular auctions. So looking at CPCs, looking at impressions, looking at clicks, click-through rate, things like that, just to kind of see what that level of engagement is mostly.

Shivali Patel:
Okay, and I see we have another fantastic question from Joy that says I'd like to know in which case I'd like to lower the daily budget and in which case I should lower the bid. I want to understand the difference in situations when to lower the daily budget and when to lower the bid.

Matthew:

Sure, yeah, I think a lot of times they go hand in hand. I think if there are strict budget restraints that are preventing you from spending to X amount or a budgeted cut, or you need to pull money from one bucket and put it into another, the budget transition would be the most concrete. I think what happens when you start decreasing bids within a campaign is those bids out over a certain period of time will kind of almost naturalize if that makes sense, where you can have a campaign budget be, this is extreme, but say $15,000, and many of the keywords within one campaign can have lower bids, higher bids, but kind of have room to kind of breathe and almost live and go up and down day to day. I think if there's one-off cases where it's like we need to pause ads, we need to get this off, you know the listings as quickly as possible. Reduce budget, reduce bids, and then that'll pretty much suppress from an advertising standpoint how visible that is. And then I think in terms of when to increase, kind of on the opposite, if you're finding efficiencies and kind of finding where that keyword sweet spot is and what time of the day in particular you have the strongest right to win and when CPCs are reduced a little bit, that can be a really good strategy to kind of minimize the overall cost and make sure that you're getting the most for each click.

Shivali Patel:
When you're talking about, you know every keyword has different bids, so how do you really determine how many keywords you're putting into a campaign structure? Let's say you're looking at a new account or even an old account. Where would you like to see a cap for certain keywords or ASINs?

Matthew:

Yeah, I've done a lot of testing around this. Actually I've gone as low as two keywords a bit a campaign. One keyword as high as 50. So, I think it depends. I think when you increase the amount of keywords that are in a campaign you obviously run the risk of people clicking on them and then the cost going up. So I think there's a bunch of different ways to break that out where you can have kind of a priority campaign with your priority keywords. That might be five to 15 of your keywords that you definitely want to be advertising on, that are really important to driving your business. From there you can kind of have a secondary bucket where it's kind of the nice to have so you can kind of keep the bids a bit lower, don't necessarily need to win those placements to be driving the bulk of your sales. And then you can kind of have the expansion type of campaign where there might be more keywords where you're just testing to see the validity, which can maybe move up to the next bucket and then up to the priority bucket if they tend to do well. So it just depends on, kind of, I think, what you're trying to accomplish with each campaign or your overall strategy. But I found that to be really helpful, and kind of understanding those top priority terms I think between five and 15 keywords has been the sweet spot for me.

Shivali Patel:
Yeah, I think pretty much the same, even for my campaigns. All right we have. When the ACoS of a targeting keyword in a sponsored product campaign is high, how can I determine when to lower the bid or turn off the keyword entirely?

Matthew:
Yeah, good question, and this is something where it's going to be somewhat category dependent. There are some categories that are just wildly competitive, like vitamins, supplements, things like that, just one that comes to mind. Some of them are naturally going to be high. This is where I would kind of weigh out what that difference is, or kind of what your threshold is, and what I mean by that is basically if your sales are still growing, if your business is still growing and there's a couple keywords that may not be the most efficient. That's kind of the risk reward of like, how far do we push? Are the sales new to brand sales? Are you gaining incremental sales? I know incremental is one of those buzzwords but it is really important when you're considering do I lower a bid? If it's a really high search volume term and you're getting new eyeballs to your page, it might be okay to kind of let that run a little bit below the overall goal. But from there, ensuring that the rest of your campaigns are built out for efficiency and making sure that you're getting those sales and conversions where people are relatively determined to get your brand is going to be equally important in keeping the portfolio ACoS where want it to be so I think, use it as a guardrail. I don't think it's going to be the end-all be-all. I think it's an important part of the overall strategy that you're deploying, but if it's driving your business in the right direction a little bit of a high ACoS is something that could be tolerable, but if it simply is just tanking that campaign and is not driving the sales, then I would say that's probably when to pause.

Shivali Patel:

I think tolerable is a good word for it, because it does come down to risk tolerance as well as where you are in your seller's journey. I mean, if you're a little bit in the beginning, right, you're going to potentially have higher ACoS because you're still trying to get the clicks and the conversions and you don't necessarily have the social proof there.

Matthew:
Yeah, with new products too, it's tough to break into that kind of relevance threshold and work your way up the page. And yeah, for new products it's definitely a fine line. But I think just keep testing and keep reducing bids, keep increasing, keep trying to kind of remake how that campaign is structured.

Shivali Patel:

Definitely. Travis here asks how do you usually find a balanced approach to setting bids for keywords? Is there a happy medium for higher bids that get more exposure versus lower bids that provide a high return on your spend?

Matthew:

Yeah, I think this kind of goes into the conversation we just had. So a good example for some of the campaigns that I have. I break them out by category and branded and competitor and auto, all single ASIN, all exact match. Just is how I tend to run it. So I think it gives a very, very accurate read of what's happening with each bid. For some of my products that I would say are the big business drivers, I have a much higher tolerance to say. I can live with these bids being higher for this particular product, this particular ASIN and within that campaign there's kind of its own little ecosystem of these three keywords within this campaign drive 80% of my sales for this campaign. Those three I'm okay if the ACoS or ROAS is a little bit down from where I want it to be. In terms of some of those lower flighted ones, some of the longer tail keywords where it's not necessarily the core of the product, or the highest SFR ones. Those ones I'm okay with letting the bid be a bit reduced and those are going to be more of those efficiency finders where people may be putting in something that isn't the first kind of snap ready come to mind term for the particular product. So I tend to skew a little bit higher on the bids for the keywords that I know are driving the bulk of the sales.

Shivali Patel:

We have a question on how to increase market share further. They run sponsored and sponsored brand ads, product and brand ads. We use 80-20 rule, so is there something you can share on that?

Matthew:

Yeah, in terms of overall market share, I think it's important to understand how many campaigns that you actually are running. So the 80-20 split I think is very, very fair. It makes a lot of sense. I think sponsored product is going to be the core obviously of the business driving placement, so definitely would skew heavier towards that in terms of the overall market share. I would also take a look at what your competition is doing. Where are they winning kind of? Where aren't you winning? I think there's a lot that can kind of go into some of that exact match keyword. I'm not sure how your keywords are set up, but if it's phrase or broad, it may not be as focused as you want. And I think also when you're talking market share, you can go all the way down to the keyword level, get super specific where, if you're looking at, say, three keywords that drive the majority of your business, those are the ones that would really focus on kind of increasing and even reshifting the overall budget to kind of have, you know, that bigger chunk to those really important business driving keywords. I think that might be a good way to kind of also reshape the way we look at market share a little bit, but I would just try to capture again the most amount of sponsored product placements on the most important keywords that you have available, and just the consistency is going to be absolutely critical for that. I know budgets can change, things change, business happens. So the more consistent you can be with that strategy, I think it will start to increase over time.

Shivali Patel:

So you mentioned the most important keywords. On the alternative side of that, there's obviously keywords that aren't doing so hot. So Fernando asked when do you think it's enough to pause a target keyword when there's no sales happening, no PPC orders? How many clicks is enough?

Matthew:
Yeah, clicks is a tough one to measure. A lot of it depends on, I would say, search volume. If it's a really low search volume term you probably won't see the clicks or the sales kind of as a bit of a result. If it's something that has historically been like a top performer and it's changed, I would say that's kind of maybe warranting a test of let's pause it, let's try something else, let's try a different keyword or a group of keywords. I think sales for me is always kind of the north star and kind of the rest of those KPIs that we look at around them are good guardrails to understand how the overall business is achieving that sales goal. So I think if sales are very low, I think it's probably safe to say that that's okay to pause. But again, if it's something that's been tried and true in your strategy, I would try to rework it. Maybe even if it's an exact match, try phrase match, try some PAT targeting similar products on those keywords and see if there's any life left in it. But I think if clicks are low, like below 30 to 40 a month, I think that's probably a good time to reevaluate what the bids are and kind of just take a deeper look at what that keyword's actually doing.

Shivali Patel:

You are absolutely killing the questions, so I want to interject here with a question of my own before I continue with the questions that are being asked. So what sort of level would you say a seller needs to be to consider Pacvue as an advertising solution?

Matthew:

I mean the tool itself, I think can be beneficial for any budget. I've managed budgets that are in the hundreds of dollars a day as well, on the app or on the tool, and it's been seamless. I think there's a lot of data that it provides you that is incredibly painful to find in the actual UI and it's clunky, it's difficult. The way that Pacvue has it organized is very customizable. It's very streamlined and you can really find the answers you're looking for and really customize those pages to basically be driving to your key business goals, which it's effective, and I think it's been a total treat, honestly, to be able to work with it every day. I've really enjoyed it. So I can't speak highly enough about it, but I think, regardless of what your budget is and what your goals are, I think this tool would be a benefit for sure.

Shivali Patel:

OK, and with that, Michael asks can you elaborate a few of the most looked at report format sponsored product, sponsored brand and sponsored display?

Matthew:

Yeah, I would say for a lot of the stuff that I'm looking at I'm probably pulling the raw data and looking for how I want to twist it in terms of what I leverage in the actual Pacvue tool. A lot of the kind of the home dash screens of kind of giving that initial read of what's happening, are helpful.

But what I always find helpful is just kind of for sponsored product and sponsored brand specifically, kind of breaking out by product group or by brand or however your business is situated, looking at it by brand kind of the big, big metrics like spend sales, CPC, ROAS, conversion rate. I love to see that kind of at the sponsored product and sponsored brand level. I also love going through targeting type. So pulling targeting type with branded category, auto conquesting, pat and kind of evaluating that way as well and layering the two on top of each other then is incredibly helpful to get a read of what's happening, kind of at that 10,000 foot view more or less depending on the time frame you're looking at. But I think that's a good place to start and then from there kind of whittling down, going into the actual campaigns and pulling data that way. For Sponsored Display, I've always used it as kind of a nice to have. It's typically a little bit lower performing, but I think what it offers is the reach and I think from that side of it, looking at clicks, impressions, click-through rate, that's typically what I would be pulling to analyze the sponsor display campaigns I run.

Shivali Patel:

Sherry asks with the Helium 10 Adtomic function, how can I see, excuse me, Helium 10 Adtomic tool? How can I see visually when I change a bit, to know if the impressions are picking up over time? So you can go into Adtomic, go to the Analytics page or the Ad manager and then go to your campaign and target, put in a date range to whenever you made the bid change and then check out your daily impressions and then change the date to afterwards and check that as well. You can also go into Keyword Tracker and check out how your sponsored rank has changed as well. Okay, next question, what PPC strategy do you recommend for a newly launched product in a competitive niche?

Matthew:

Yeah, for this one I would definitely say pick the keywords that matter most to you. Focusing on those, I would say test out the CPCs, see what you're actually kind of going up against. From there, PAT targeting is incredibly helpful. If it's a brand new category, it's a definite cheaper rate for basically, the way that I describe PATs generally is kind of the nice to have, but it can be very, very strategic. Pick the number one product in the category, pick the highest organic rank and put a PAT on those particular ASINs and go where the eyeballs are going and you'll get it at a cheaper rate. You'll be on their PDP, kind of at the bottom of that carousel ad which is going to be lower volume in general. However, it's going to be a really, really good way to kind of have that brand recognition. I'm not sure how consumable the product is or if it's something that is, you know, like a subscribe and save option or kind of like a replenishment is high. But if your brand is being put next to those top performing brands in the category, it's at minimum when you are serving on those sponsored product placements. There's going to be that recognition which is going to be critical. So I would say, try to establish yourself on some competitor PDPs through product attribute targeting campaigns. From there also if you have a variety of products, your advertising sponsored brand campaigns can be really beneficial because you get to show 3 products for one campaign more or less, or one placement. CPCs can be a little touch and go there as well. But I would say, start there. Leverage your auto campaigns as well. Try to build relevancy. Continue to run the keyword reports from those auto campaigns, see what's winning and keep your pulse on search volume and just go after a couple of keywords hard for a while and I think that should help build up whatever niche you're in.

Shivali Patel:

Adam's question is in terms of testing new strategies like dayparting, do you suggest we start a new campaign or just make tweaks to existing ones?

Matthew:
Yeah, I'm a big fan of keeping existing. I think that the algorithm is going to reward campaigns that have been live longer and there's going to be more data behind the campaign. You're going to have just more context to pull from. So I would say, keep your existing campaigns and just continue to iterate off of that. If it's day parting, in particular, if you're looking to expand into further testing, then I'd say probably would warrant a new campaign. But for day parting in particular, stick with what has the most data, because then you'll, when you go to compare what your changes are, you'll have a much larger sample set to say, did this work versus what we had before? And I think that's where I would go with it, just in terms of the evaluation part.

Shivali Patel:

If I want to reduce wasted spend on broad campaigns because there's a lot of wasted spend on single click keywords. Should I start making exact campaigns to harvest my profitable keywords, or should I keep them both running and see what performs better? My main concern is that if I shut off my broad campaigns, my exact campaigns are not going to perform as well.

Matthew:

Yeah, really good question. I mentioned a couple of times. I'm a huge fan of exact match keyword campaigns. I think you have complete control over everything in terms of what's in your campaigns, what your bids are, so I am a huge proponent of it. I think again, at minimum it's worth a test. I think broad serves a purpose. I think it can generate keywords. It can kind of help you at least get the product visible.

Whether or not it's always a one-to-one is a little bit tough to kind of determine. But I would say, look through your broad keywords and what's being pulled in. Some of them are very, very far off what you want to be. So I would say, pull back on spend. As you've kind of developed your PDPs and your content and kind of your relevancy on some of those keywords, I would pull back from that broad and move more into the exact and from a performance standpoint I would expect it to perform well because you are targeting exactly where the sales are coming from at a very prescriptive level. So you then would have complete control over how much money you're funneling to that and kind of how aggressive you want to be. So I think it's definitely worth a test at minimum.

Shivali Patel:

Hello Gonzalo. We have how many clicks on a keyword target without sales before closing it, lowering bids or dismissing it?

Matthew:

Yeah, I would say evaluate what keyword it is. If it's a long tail low search volume term, then I think probably pretty safe to keep the bids either very, very, very low or pause. If it's a really high priority term for you, I would say stick at it for as long as you can tolerate the cost and see if there's a way to break through and become more efficient if the auction dynamic changes at all. But I think a lot of it's going to come down to how high that search volume is on the term, but I would say if it's driving sales and your desired ROAS is like $3 and you're at a $2.15 or $2.20, I think it's worth pursuing it. Again, I say sales is kind of the North Star here. So I would say before pausing anything, evaluate kind of what it's doing for your business and then move forward from there.

Shivali Patel:

Eric has a question that says for a well-known brand with large global media spend but brand new to Amazon, how would you structure all Amazon campaigns to maximize performance on a $5,000 per day ad spend for five products?

Matthew:

Certainly starting with sponsored product placements, and I would say breaking into the category terms is going to be absolutely critical. If it's a well-known brand, that brand recognition piece, which is very difficult to build, that box is checked. So I think that's a huge benefit and then just really trying to find those areas where your shoppers are looking for you is going to be really, really important. So I would skew pretty heavily towards sponsored product category campaigns, probably get an exact match and I would have for your five products five separate campaigns for those, and then I would also layer in some branded campaigns. I think this is going to goes back to which I had about it earlier. But if someone searches for your brand and they don't see you, that is an immediate missale and obviously not a great shopping experience. So I would say have some branded campaigns as well to layer on. And, depending on what that overall cost is going to be between those two ad types, definitely work in the auto campaigns, keep those low. And then, depending on how much you have left over and if you have creative assets, sponsored brands are going to be huge with, just again, kind of putting those products on display, giving your brand a little bit more of a real feel for people shopping. I know it's difficult to kind of attain that on Amazon a lot of the times, but lifestyle imaging, sponsor brand videos is something you can leverage as well, and I've done a ton of testing with the AI generative media creative within Amazon and I would say, if you don't have creative, try the AI tool. It's really, really interesting. I could go on for hours about it, but it's a really really good way to kind of get some sort of creative live for sponsored brands. So I would say kind of to kind of recap that, definitely sponsored product category campaigns, one, followed by some smaller budget branded campaigns with auto campaigns, and then expand to sponsor brand if you have the budget for it.

Shivali Patel:

Do you use any software for automation, such as Adtomic? If yes, what are the basic rules and criteria you suggest for creating any sort of automatic updates?

Matthew:

So I personally use Pacvue and the automation tools within that are, again, fantastic. There's a bunch of different ways you can go about, I think, automation in general. But I would say, make sure that your goal is very, very clear. It's just kind of blanketed statements for automation in general. Make sure your goals are very, very clear and always have that safeguard of if you're going to increase bids to a certain point, make sure that there's a cap on it. The last thing you want is to have, check your ads console and all of a sudden your bids are $40-$50 because that automation continued to increase based on the threshold you set. So make sure there's some safeguards in place. But for Adtomic I can't speak to Adtomic in particular, but for Pacvue overall there's a whole litany of automations that are used for profitability, for weeks of cover, for impression gaining, for new-to-brand driving. So I think that it's an endless kind of whole of test and learn, potential and all kinds of good stuff. So I would say test, test, test for automations for sure.

Shivali Patel:

Yeah, and when you're inside of Helium 10, it's the same exact thing when you're setting up those rules. I know we've talked quite a bit about goal setting here today and that definitely is true even inside of Adtomic. When you're doing your rules, it's going to really depend on what niche you're inside of and what your risk tolerance is, how much budget you have, what you're bidding on your keywords, and then you can go in and decide from there. I mean I know that as a standard I've gone in and done 20 clicks, no sales, you're negative matching that keyword. So it really just depends. But Adtomic certainly has ways that you can put in those rules and automation, so you're not spending so much time on trying to audit your entire campaigns. So with that, we've had a really great list of questions here today and I apologize if I didn't get to some of the newer ones, in which case we have a Facebook group. So make sure that you guys go to our Facebook group, you go to Helium 10 members and post up any of those questions that you really have, because we are active in there and we do answer those questions and if not, somebody else definitely can. So make sure you guys are tapped into our communities, and thank you so much, Matt, for being here. We appreciate you coming on and sharing your time and knowledge.

Matthew:

Yeah, of course. Thanks for having me and hopefully got to the bulk of the questions for everybody. Yeah, it was a treat to be here. I appreciate it.

Shivali Patel:

Likewise. Likewise, All right with that, we are done. We will see you guys next time, Take care.