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

#549 - Top 10 Secret Amazon Hacks with Kevin King - Part 2

Elevate your Amazon selling game and witness your profits soar as we unpack Kevin King's strategic genius for e-commerce success. Brace yourself for a rollercoaster of advanced tactics, with Kevin dropping a bombshell technique that astonishingly generated a million dollars in just five days. It's all about agility in this game. Kevin's insights into cash flow management are pure gold: learn to spin inventory faster than ever, and keep your business lean to dodge the dangers of overstocking.

Navigating the ever-tightening maze of Amazon's rising fees and e-commerce complexities is no small feat, but Kevin's expertise shines a beacon of hope. He meticulously dissects the anatomy of a winning Amazon presence, from optimizing your supply chain to perfecting that crucial main product image – it's your ticket to making a splash in a sea of competitors. And let's not overlook his emphasis on the three cash flow commandments: gross profit rate, growth rate, and inventory cycle mastery – these are non-negotiables if you're serious about your bottom line.

Finally, we're serving up the inside scoop on Helium 10 Elite’s treasure chest of tools, training, and opportunities that could catapult your business into the stratosphere. Picture this: monthly trainings, exclusive software, and networking with the crème de la crème – it's a game-changer. Plus, we're letting you in on Kevin's sneaky, yet effective, title optimization loophole that's a total game-changer during those high-stakes shopping seasons. So buckle up, sellers, Kevin King is about to take you on a journey to the peak of your Amazon selling potential!

In episode 549 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Kevin discuss:

• 01:51 - Maximize Amazon Profit With Efficient Cashflow
• 08:09 - Maximizing Amazon Profit Margins
• 14:14 - Optimizing Product Launch With Helium 10
• 17:38 - Learning About Helium 10 Elite Features 
• 21:12 - Helium 10 Elite Program Benefits
• 21:32 - Outrank Competitors, Increase Profit
• 27:26 - Kevin Teaches Advanced Strategies
• 28:05 - Amazon Title Optimization Loophole
• 31:20 - Amazon Title Optimization Techniques
• 35:04 - Intellectual Property Rights in AI
• 36:28 - Helium 10 Elite Sign-Up Process

#548 - Top 10 Secret Amazon Hacks with Kevin King - Part 1

Listen in as we team up with e-commerce maestro Kevin King to uncover some of his most closely guarded Amazon strategies and hacks, designed to both save you money and significantly boost your profits. In this first installment of a two-part series, Kevin generously shares insights from our new and latest version of the Freedom Ticket course, revealing the fundamentals of branding, product selection, and customer service—essential knowledge for any serious Amazon seller. Not only do we cover these basics, but we also tease some of Kevin's 'ninja' strategies, giving you a taste of the powerful tactics he discusses in the Helium 10 Elite Mastermind Program.

Our conversation with Kevin continues as we tackle the world of Amazon PPC, emphasizing the crucial role of conversion rates in successful campaigns. We delve into the importance of understanding and optimizing your brand entity score and the innovative ways you can leverage tools like Amazon Comprehend within your Q&A sections to boost product rankings. The dialogue shifts to the evolving landscape of AI, examining its transformative effects on e-commerce. Kevin and I discuss how savvy sellers are utilizing AI tools to generate everything from compelling images to high-quality video content, and even crafting targeted ads with platforms like AdGen AI.

Wrapping up this content-rich session, we focus on strategies to maximize conversions and enhance the overall customer experience on Amazon. Kevin shares practical tips on pricing strategies for attracting product reviews, the psychological impact of using an 'index image' to display product benefits, and the importance of establishing a unique guarantee that resonates with your audience. Moreover, Kevin illuminates the potential goldmine of including optional insurance charges in direct-to-consumer sales and the art of presentation in online retail. Tune in to hear how these tactics, along with high-quality visuals, can revolutionize your approach to online sales in the era of AI-driven e-commerce. Stay tuned for part 2!

In episode 548 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Kevin discuss:

• 00:00 - Secret Amazon Hacks With Kevin King
• 04:41 - Helium 10 Elite Training Webinar Hacks
• 06:06 - Improving Amazon PPC and Brand Entity
• 09:41 - Maximizing Q&A for Keyword Ranking
• 13:53 - Answering Questions on Amazon for Ranking
• 17:03 - Maximizing Rewards With Business Credit Cards
• 21:38 - AI Tools for Amazon Sellers
• 26:05 - Maximizing Conversions With Product Indexing
• 26:49 - Maximizing Reviews With Dummy Listings
• 31:15 - Testing Guarantee Names With Helium 10
• 31:25 - Direct to Consumer $4 Insurance Strategy

Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

Today is part one in a two-part series with Kevin King, who's gonna open up some of his top Amazon hacks and strategies with you guys for the first time in a while. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think.

Bradley Sutton:

Are you looking to learn how to sell on Amazon? The Freedom Ticket course made by Kevin King is one of the most popular courses ever created for Amazon sellers. It's got over 90 modules and 40 hours of detailed, step-by-step training to help get you started on your entrepreneurial journey. Now this course costs $997 but Helium 10 actually covers that cost of the course for any Helium 10 member. Find out why tens of thousands of students love this program by going to h10.me/freedom ticket. Don't forget that if you do sign up for a Helium 10 account, don't pay full price. Use our podcast discount code SSP10 to save 10% off for life.

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 every year, every two years, Kevin King comes on and opens up with our audience some of our best hacks. And now, for the first time ever, we're actually opening that up right here on the podcast. So we are going to go ahead and have a recap of some of Kevin's top strategies that he opened up with a live audience and let's see what you guys think. There are some killer ones here. This was supposed to only be an hour, so I thought I could fit into one episode, but hey, Kevin had too much fire, so we're actually splitting this up into two different episodes. Here's part one. Hope you guys enjoy it.

Bradley Sutton:

We're going to be revealing some things that a lot of Amazon sellers maybe have never even heard of, and these are things that are designed to help you save money and make money. Two of the things that maybe is the reason why you're even in this Amazon game in the first place right. Now, something that's important, though we're going to be talking about hacks, if you want to call them that, or kind of ninja strategies you see that little ninja logo on the bottom right there but selling on Amazon is not just about knowing the latest hacks and tricks. These definitely can help but remember, we are not trying to take away from the very valid point that you have to know about branding, how to pick products, how to do keyword research, how to do your accounting, advertising, customer service. The fundamentals are still very important and so we've got the Freedom Ticket Program if you guys are interested in that. So some of you might, after watching this, be like, wow, you know what? I am not of this level yet. And don't worry, you're still going to be able to get value out of this regardless of the level you are. But if you're like man, a lot of this stuff is over my head. He's using terminology I haven't heard of. Freedom Ticket Program might be for you. That is something that beginners all the way to advanced sellers can take as a refresher course on the fundamentals of Amazon and we have a brand new one - brand new version first time in over two years. The fourth version of Freedom Ticket is coming out imminently, just in a couple of weeks. So make sure to stay tuned for that. Anybody who is already a Helium 10 member, you guys will be able to get access to that.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, I mentioned that Kevin is one of the main trainers of our Helium 10 Elite Mastermind Program-that's the one that I've been a part of since, way before I even worked at Helium 10 and probably the most popular thing that's part of this mastermind is every month, Kevin gives his ninja hacks. He gives like usually seven ninja hacks, and these are quick, actionable nuggets of knowledge that can help you immensely in your Amazon business. I think a lot of these hacks that he gives every month are valuable to the majority of Amazon sellers, and with those hacks, two guest speakers join him on these trainings and they share the latest strategies that's working right now. And so that is the basis of what Kevin is going to be talking about today. Today, instead of this being behind the closed doors of the Helium 10 Elite Mastermind, which most of the year is closed, he's opening up some of his favorite ones from the past doors of the Helium 10 Elite Mastermind, which most of the year is closed. He's opening up some of his favorite ones from the past couple of months with you, so you're going to get a sneak peek, without actually being Helium 10 Elite members, on the kind of level of knowledge that being part of this mastermind can help you.

Kevin King:

Welcome everybody to this webinar. Like Bradley said, we do this every single month, usually on a Thursday. It varies on the exact Thursday, sometimes around the middle of the month, but we do a Helium 10 Elite training and what I want to do today is basically, like Bradley says, open up the doors and share some of this with you. So I've gone through from the last few months, some of my favorite stuff. Then I'm going to share that with you today, absolutely free. So some of it will be the ninja hacks, the first six or so things that I have seven ninja hacks. That's what I do every single month. So I have seven of them here for you today as well. I'm going to share six of them with you, and then the seventh one, which is the one Bradley just talked about, where someone made a million dollars selling over a five-day weekend. I'm going to show you that hack. You've got Easter coming up, Mother's Day coming up. It could make a huge difference for some of you. So that'll be at the very end, so make sure you stay to that. If you leave earlier, you're going to miss the number one hack that could make you a lot of money and I've taken a few slides from some of the presenters that have been in the Helium 10, the guests and a couple. Just a little section of some of what they presented, and you know, when they presented it, they presented it their way and in their voice. I'm just going to give you a quick little summary of those, just so you can get a taste of the kind of stuff that you find in Helium 10 Elite and share that with you. And you're going to find some actionable, good stuff today.

Kevin:

Number one this is something that you're going to fail at. You know, everybody's always like PPC. I hate PPC. It just drives me crazy. You know, and you're going to actually fail at PPC unless you fix this metric. This is something that nobody really talks about. Aaron Cordova is actually the one that shared this, and I think Destaney Wishon has talked about it and a few other people have talked about it. But if you don't actually take a look at this metric, your PPC is just going to drive you crazy and cost you through the nose.

Kevin:

What you want to do is you want to check the benchmark conversion rate for your brand. Now you're going to need brand registry. So if you don't have a trademark filed and you're not brand registered, you won't be able. What you want to be checking for is, if you're not at the bare minimum median conversion rate for your category, you're most likely going to be spinning through the nose on your PPC and it's just not going to work like you want it to be. Your ACOS is going to go and your TACOS are going to go through the roof. This video here is about a minute video. I'm going to play it. I'm going to have to hold up a little speaker next to my microphone because for some reason the Zoom is not letting the sound, but Aaron is going to explain this to you on this video. Here we go.

Aaron:

Basically, you find your conversion rate compared to everybody else. You go to campaign manager okay, campaigns. If you know how to get the campaign manager that you have other problems, campaign manager, you go here. Then you go to the side it's called insights and reporting. You're going to get a brand metrics okay, the brand metrics are awesome. Okay, in here you're going to pick your brand. You're going to get brand metrics, okay, the brand metrics are awesome.

Aaron:

In here, you're going to pick your brand. You're going to pick a category. In this case, I'm going to pick sports water bottles. Okay, select that guy and continue. Okay, then you're going to go in here and you're going to press this little view detailed metrics for your brand in this category. This is going to be horrible. I apologize, this is something we haven't really worked on very well. Check out this. Customer conversion rates your brand 4.9%, category median 10 and sometimes a lot of them, they show the category top okay. This is an embarrassment. This listing is an embarrassment. Okay, it is half as less than half as good as the median, which, when you're just at the medium, your product probably will not even be profitable because you're literally average, essentially horrible. But this is how you open the door to see if you're going to have a best seller at the very, very, very, very minimum. You got to be at the category median.

Kevin:

If you're not, at that category median then you need to adjust your listing. You need to fix your product page. You need to fix your product page. You need to fix your listing so that you can convert higher. Otherwise you're going to be fighting an uphill battle on everything. All right, that's number one. Number two this is how you can boost your brand entity score. How many of you ever heard of a brand entity score? I bet there's hardly any of you out there. There might be a couple of you have heard of a brand entity score. Does anybody know what the brand entity score is? Everybody has one on Amazon.

Kevin:

If you're a seller on Amazon and this affects your rank, it's a score that Amazon does. There's a lot of factors in the A9 that affect your rank. There's a ton of factors but the brand entity score plays a major role in how do you rank and you can affect this with your Q&A section. Amazon doesn't just look at your keywords. They don't just look at your title and your bullet points and your back-end keywords. They're reading everything. They're reading the Q&A section. They're now using AI to analyze your images. They're taking a lot of stuff into account when they're going to rank you and the Q&A section plays a major role. So if your Q&A section is fairly empty, that's a problem. You section is fairly empty, that's a problem. You need to get that full. That's one of the ways that some people, when they first start out and they have no reviews, they fill their Q&A section and you watch what you can do. You can rank a lot quicker. But this brand entity score is something you want to pay attention to.

Kevin:

How do you find it? There's something called Amazon Comprehend. Now this was shared by Matt over at ClearAds, originally on LinkedIn, and then he presented it in detail at my recent Billion Dollar Seller Summit and then we've shared it here as a hack. He's allowed me to share part of it, so I can't show the whole thing, but he allowed me to share part of it in my newsletter and here.

Kevin:

But it's called Amazon Comprehend and what you want to do, you can access this. There's a link there at the bottom. It's on AWS, on Amazon AWS, and it's an API. So it takes a little bit of programming know-how or how to get into this thing. It's not too bad but it's not like straightforward.

Kevin:

But with this Amazon Comprehend, once you get access to the API, what you can do is you can maximize your Q&As for keyword ranking. So the Q&A section on Amazon on your product. You want to maximize that for keyword ranking. So what you want to do is you want to remove the bias from search. So your description and all the content on your listing, they have a bias towards the seller of the product. So Amazon knows that you're optimizing your listing like you're making this the best and you're like saying that my product is the greatest thing since sliced bread. But Amazon's like how do we know that Kevin can say his product's the best, but maybe it's actually not so good despite what he says or whatever claims he's making? So we want to know from the customer what do they actually think? And let's take what they actually think and factor that into how we're going to rank this product. So they use the Q&A section and reviews both of those to do this. So if you don't have reviews and Q&A, you have a bias.

Kevin:

So what you want to do is you want to come in and gather questions that people might be asking about your product. So how do you do that? If you don't know, if you don't have legitimate questions and people haven't asked real questions yet, you can go out to tools like Ahrefs or Semrush. Those are big SEO tools so they have a free aspect and there's a paid aspect. Or you can go to answerthepublic.com. That's Neil Patel's company. Neil spoke at the Sell and Scale Summit Helium 10 did about a year and a half ago. But answer the public and you can just type in a keyword. You can type in you know, if you're selling dog bowls, slow-feed dog bowls, you can type slow-feed dog bowl into answerthepublic.com and it'll spit back. It goes out and reads Reddit and all these different forums and says these are the questions people are asking about slow-feed dog bowls. So you can take those as a seed and you can then use those and have someone ask those on your Amazon listing and then you, as the seller, answer them just to get some in there. But you're going to answer them in such a way that you want to make sure that you answer yes or no. Amazon is looking for yes or no answers. Big answers are great, but if you can start, if someone says, does this slow feed dog bowl keep my dog from having diarrhea, you want to try to phrase your answer in the form that you say yes or no and then you can say other stuff and put additional keywords in there for ranking and all this.

Kevin:

But they're looking for yes and no answers to questions and that's how they can guide. Like, if someone types in slow-feed dog bowl stomach problems or something they're going to know, yes, this one actually helps it. So you want to get multiple questions in there and then what you're going to do is you're going to use Amazon Comprehend. Before you put these questions in, you're going to actually and the answers, you're going to use it to actually get a score. So it's going to return the sentiment. So you're going to ask the question, show that, upload that into Comprehend, put the answer and then make sure you're getting a high percentage of confidence. Amazon Comprehend will give you a score back. It's on like a zero to one scale and it will give you a score back and you want a high level of confidence towards Amazon interpreting your response as positive or negative.

Kevin:

Now you can also do this and go look at your competition's reviews. You can gather it from there. You don't have to go to answer the public. You can get what people are asking on other people's products and use those and once you find the ones that have the high confidence. Then what you want to do, uh, which one? Like I said, is zero to one, but one is the highest. Those are the ones that you want to get onto your listing and those are the ones you want to put onto your listing.

Kevin:

So what you're going to do is you're going to these newly found questions that score high on the confidence, using Amazon Comprehend. You're going to go and actually, either maybe you have a buyer account that you buy stuff from Amazon you can ask the question or you can get your friends or family or someone to ask a question. Remember, this is not review, so it's okay. You can get someone to ask a question. Or, if you're on a Facebook group, say, can you ask this question? And then you go in there as the seller this is important, it gives you a little bit more weight and answer the questions. Whenever someone asks a question, Amazon pings. I don't know what the number is now three to five, ten people says, hey, do you know the answer to this question? But one of them is always the seller. You want to be the first to try to get in there and answer before someone else does and messes it up. They may answer too but you want to get yours in there as quick as you can, so you go in and answer it with that yes or no or whatever. When you ran it through Amazon Comprehend whatever it gave you as the highest score and this is going to help you rank on Amazon. It's a pretty cool little technique.

Kevin:

Here's another way. Everybody's always got cash flow problems. Money, money, money, money, money. How do I pay for this? How do I pay for that? Not everybody has a rich uncle or deep pockets. If you have decent credit, this is a way that you can actually extend your supplier payments for 60 days with zero interest. It's pretty cool. It's called the Amazon Plum Card, so if you have decent credit I don't know if this is available to people in other countries. I'm not sure what their exact rules are on what countries you have to live in to get this. Obviously, US citizens can get it, but Amazon has a whole bunch of, I mean sorry, American Express has a whole bunch of different cards. The Plum Card actually gives you discounts for paying early. So if you charge all your PPC or you charge whatever you want to charge suppliers. Whatever you want to charge, if you pay it early they'll give you a 1.5% discount. Or they have an option where you can extend it for 60 days and don't have to pay any interest as long as you pay the minimum due. You got to make a minimum payment. As long as you pay the minimum due, they'll give you 60 days to pay that. So this can be a great way. If you're trying to juggle some cash is to use this card.

Kevin:

A lot of you are saying, Kevin, that's all great, but my supplier doesn't take credit cards. How am I supposed to pay my supplier with credit cards? I always have to wire money or use Alibaba Escrow or something or whatever. Actually, there's a service called Melio. This one right here, Melio Payments that allows you to actually pay by credit card anybody, so you can pay suppliers. They do charge a fee, so it costs you about 2.5% to 3% roughly. So they do charge a fee because they get hit with processing fees but that fee is often less than what you would pay in interest or to get a loan, or origination fees or something else, and so that is an option, especially if you combine this.

Kevin:

If you're really cash flowing, you can go to bankrate.com and you can do a search for 0% interest credit cards and there's a lot of credit cards that have 12, 15, 18 months of 0% interest. So if you go there and actually apply for one of those credit cards, you have decent credit. You can get a 0% interest credit card that you can ride out for a while, while you're growing your business and use Melio payments to pay it. You're basically paying a 3% fee, which is basically a 3% interest, which is dirt-cheap in today's world. Now another credit card you might want to consider, if you're already selling and you're running a lot of PPC especially, is the Amex Business Gold Card. This is not the regular gold card, not the consumer gold card. It has to be the business gold card but it gives you 4x points on all your PPC spend up to $150,000 per card. So you can get 600,000 points on one single card in a year.

Kevin:

And I know one of the guys that comes to one of my events, the Billion Dollar Seller Summit. He actually, and I'm not sure if he's in Helium 10 Elite or not, but he has like 10 of these cards. He lives in Brazil and he cycles through them, so as soon as one hits that $150,000 on his PPC spin, he just swaps out the card. He says he's flown first class everywhere in the world and hasn't paid for a plane ticket in years and flying first class with him, his wife, his family, that this card is an amazing card for that. So there's different credit cards for different purposes but those are two that you might want to consider and you can transfer these to different airlines. You can transfer them to hotels.

Kevin:

You know Bradley is always going out to the, he's always doing the Maldives honeymoon strategy. He's been out to the Maldives three or four times. A lot of you may not realize that's not Helium 10 sending him out there. They're not saying man Bradley, good job, dude, here's a free trip to the Maldives. No, he's using his miles and his points to go out there on his own and do this stuff for you. But this is one of the ways he knows how to do this. There's another site called points.me where you can see what's the best place to transfer stuff.

Kevin:

There's a ton of stuff around this but I just want to show you this. Really cool. We could talk about this for hours of all kinds of cool stuff you can do, but I just want to show you these really quick. Now here's some AI. AI is the hot thing right now. Everybody's AI, this AI, that. There's some stuff that everybody's just sticking AI on the end of everything, even if it's not really AI. But I want to show you 11 really cool tools. There's a lot more but these are just 11 tools that you may find useful in selling e-commerce, that may come in useful in helping you with your images or helping you with research, or helping you with a few different things. Before I do that, if you have not seen this, this is from Sora, S-O-R-A, and this is video. It's not publicly available yet, but karavideo.ai has a wait list right now and they're gonna be the first to offer this.

Kevin:

This is studio level quality imagery on by video by prompting. So you type in a text prompt, you type in a paragraph, say I want a video like this and it will make the video up to I think it's 30 or 45 seconds right now, maybe up to. It's going to get to where it can do much longer videos and entire movies, but it's amazing. I'm going to play this for you. There's no sound on this, so I'm going to play this for you.

Kevin:

But this video here of these mammoths walking and these people walking through a Tokyo with the cherry blossoms, this little animation here. This was all done in minutes by typing in a prompt. So, like those mammoths, this was the prompt that was used. That's the exact prompt. Several giant woolly mammoths this was the prompt that was used. That's the exact prompt. Several giant woolly mammoths approached, treading through a snowy meadow, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That's what made that video.

Kevin:

In fact, there's movie producers now that are saying this is going to change everything. We're going to be able to do entire movies without movie studios. It's crazy. You're going to be able to do product videos and lifestyle stuff and all kinds of crazy stuff with it. So keep your eyes on this, and I would recommend you get on the list at karavideo.ai so when this opens up, you get some of the first access to it. They're a little bit worried about how authentic this is right now, so they're putting in some safeguards, but it's really cool technology.

Kevin:

Now, notice there was no sound on this one, because this doesn't make the sound, it just makes the video. So you need sound. So what has happened is ElevenLabs has a tool that will take a quiet video for example, that mammoth and it will analyze what's in the video and it will make the sound of, like the mammoths crunching the snow or making their horns their sound, you know. Whatever. This is an example of a video I'm about to play here. It may be a little bit hard to hear I'm going to hold the speaker up to it of a video I'm about to play here. It's maybe a little bit hard to hear, I'm going to hold the speaker up to it, but this video was made with a prompt, silent. And then this ElevenLabs went in, analyzed the video, what's in the video, and added all the sound effects using AI in a matter of minutes. So let me.

AI audio:

In a place beyond imagination, where the horizon kisses the heavens. One man dares to journey where few have ventured. Armed with nothing but his wit and an unyielding spirit, he seeks the answers to mysteries that lie beyond the stars.

Kevin:

This is pretty cool stuff. You're going to be able to do some amazing stuff with your products, with your advertising, with everything. This is coming and it's important to stay on the cutting edge of this, because if you're first mover in a lot of this stuff, you're going to have major, major advantages over your competition. Now there's more to this, though. It even gets cooler. You can actually now do ads with AI. These ads will go out and this adgen.ai will actually go to your Shopify site. It will go to your Amazon listing. You can put in the URL of your Amazon listing and it will create ads formatted perfectly for Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, everywhere, automatically based on that. Then you can do some modifications, but it's really cool. So you can give it a brand name, you can give it a URL, you can give it a subject and it will automatically create the ads for you. This is another one Pika Art which will take a still photo and add animation to it, and then you can automatically change it. You can just type in the background and it automatically changes. It's called pika.art. You can change your top. Here you have a monkey. Let's put some sunglasses on him. You can do this. You can just drop in a still image that doesn't move and you can add movement to it. It's really cool where this stuff is going. This is a prompt. You can take a screenshot of this. I'm not going to go through the whole thing or you'll get this in the replay. They'll show you actually how to use peak art to add movement, which can actually dramatically increase your engagement rate on social media or any kind of advertising you do. It's amazing stuff. There's crazy stuff that's out there.

Kevin:

Now some additional tools, Chad Rubin went through a bunch of AI tools and he said these are some of the ones that he considers to be the god mode of AI frameworks. I'm just going to buzz through them really quick. You can take notes and go check them out later. One is called booth.ai. It generates studio-quality product photos in minutes, so you don't even need a photographer anymore. Another one called CopyMonkey. This optimizes your Amazon listing. There's others like Shoelix, and there's quite a few out there that will do this, but CopyMonkey is one you might want to check out. There's ReviewScout, which, if you're a reseller or a wholesaler, it'll give you deep insights into the competition and buyer box trends for wholesalers or resellers. There's one called MContent, which also helps you do all kinds of great imagery change out backgrounds, put your product in special scenes. They just introduced some new cool tools just this week, so MContent is really good. He's presented on the Helium 10 Elite as well.

Kevin:

DoMyShoot’s another one that will help you do all your visual content. So basically it's AI as your photographer. Instead of spending $5,000 to take everybody to the beach, you can upload your product and put it in any kind of scene that you want. frequently.ai is another one that's really, really good. Another that has all kinds of answers to all kinds of questions. Another one is the valky.ai, or some people know it as Shoelix. That one's another one that's really popular. So these are all some cool Amazon or AI tools for Amazon sellers. Another one is iphoto.ai will help you create your listing images where you can upload your product and drop it into all kinds of scenes, modify it, do testing on different images and different backgrounds. It's really really cool. So those are some of the AI tools that are out there.

Kevin:

The number five here. This is from Ayana at YLT Translations. She presented on the Helium 10 Elite and she said you know, this is a cool little trick on how you can get more reviews. So you have to be selling in additional marketplaces. If you're just selling in the US marketplace, this won't work. But if you're set up to sell in other marketplaces, you know Amazon combines the listings. When you don't have a lot of combines the reviews, I'm sorry. When you don't have a lot of combines the reviews, I'm sorry when you don't have a lot of listings from other marketplaces. So what she's saying is you can create dummy ASINs and of your target products and then list them in all the different marketplaces. Now someone buys it, that's okay, but you can also create dummy ASINs and then what you do is you and each one of those make sure they're in all the same browse mode. She has the steps here make sure that the localized listing is live, at least the tile and some bullet points, so you put a legitimate you know it's localized and it's in the right language and it's written right and put a really low price so that viners don't get hit, because most people don't realize that sometimes, when your price is high, vine reviewers don't take your product even though they might want it, because once they hit $600, they have to pay taxes on it.

Kevin:

So a lot of people don't realize that in the United States that anything over $600 in gifts, they get a 1099 from Amazon at the end of the year. So if they got $10,000 worth of products at retail price and they then have to pay, Amazon says this is what we gave you in gifts. It's just like winning. If you went to the Price is Right or a game show or Jeopardy or something, you have to pay taxes on those winnings. Or if you went in Vegas over $10,000, you got to pay taxes. So this is a lot of times, they won't take your product if it's a $49 product because they're like ah, that's just going to add to my taxes. But if it's temporarily $9.95 while you're getting the vine reviews and then you put it back at $49.95 later, they might take it. So you want local low pricing and then you go out and you get.

Kevin:

You do vine reviews everywhere and then they'll all combine together. If you do them in multiple marketplaces and if you really get do this right, you can get up to 2,400 different ones. And some of the ways you can do these. You know these quote-unquote dummy listings that she's got on the right-hand side there. You just do different colors of a product. That's kind of like a dummy listing. It's like, okay, I have azure, I have a cobalt, I have a navy, a sapphire sky teal, and then you could have your supplier make just a couple of each of these colors and then you send those out. This is a really cool way to actually get your reviews up and then, once you get enough reviews in a marketplace, it wants to keep sharing these. It'll just share that marketplace usually, but this is a way that you can get a running start. It's a pretty cool little technique.

Kevin:

This is from Matt Koston. He presented a couple months ago on Helium 10 Elite and this is one of his tricks. That he showed is this is how you can convert like crazy with what he called an index image. This he calls it the. It's the image in your listing that will be the top reasons why your product is the best. This is not your main photo. This is not your photo number one. This is what he calls this photo number two, and it's an index of your products. Is why I think it's why he calls it the index damage, and what he says is you need to number the benefits. A lot of people are using call-outs, they use infographics but they don't number them. He runs a company that does testing and split testing and all kinds of stuff and he says that they've tested this to the end of the earth and back and this is what works. So you want to actually have numbers like this. So something like this should be your second image the five reasons you love, or the seven reasons, or the three reasons.

Kevin:

Odd numbers are always better than even numbers. Three, five or seven or nine always work the best. Why do I do seven ninja hacks every month for Helium 10 Elite? Seven is a magic number when it comes to psychology. But here he's got the five and look, there's numbers. That's important. He just doesn't list them. People like order and when they see numbers, their mind can sort it and they can read it quickly and it makes sense to them. So the numbering system here is critical, not just the fact that he put the main point, the main benefit and capital, and then explained it in bold and a little bit larger and then explained everything else below it in light blue. But he's got these numbers. That's the critical thing is numbering it.

Kevin:

And then you notice here. On the third one, there's a US flag. US flags for Americans can up your conversion rate dramatically. You don't have to have a product that was made in the USA. You can say you're a USA company. Now, if you're going to say it's made in the USA and put a flag, it needs to be made in the USA, don't lie. You can say we're a small US company and you can have a flag.

Kevin:

Now, I see people sometimes make mistakes where they put a flag and they put it inside their graphics or their photos and they don't put it in red, white and blue. They put it in green or they put it in some other color. Never, ever, do that. The flag always needs to be in red, white and blue and look like an American flag. Don't change the colors on it to make it fit the graphic it needs to look because that instantly says a message. But these little things can convert really really well for you.

Kevin:

It also says add a golden guarantee. Amazon automatically guarantees if they don't like the product they can return it. But you want a golden guarantee. You almost want to name it. Give it some sort of crazy name the PX22G guarantee or something. Don't just say it's money back guarantee or 100% money back or satisfaction guarantee. That's all just common. Give it some sort of crazy name - the dog barker, the tail wagging guarantee or something like that. The outlandish almost ridiculous in your guarantee name. So here's some examples 100%, no mosquito bites guarantee. Bottom of the bottle guarantee, lifetime never lost guarantee. Give it some sort of name like that, not just money back or your satisfaction guarantee or some general thing. Give it a name. It resonates with people and will help your conversions. Like I said here, the generic like 30 money-back guarantee gets just lost in the noise. Test your guarantee names too. You can use Helium 10 to do that. There's other tools out there, but Helium 10 has it built in. Where you can, actually they have a relationship with PickFu but you can do it through Helium 10 and test the guarantee names as well. The number of sales you make is far higher than the people who will take advantage of the guarantee. So don't worry about a guarantee.

Kevin:

I have something in one of my things I do direct to consumer and I have a $4 insurance charge. It's optional but it's automatically on the order form. They have to cross it out. If they don't want it, it fills it in, but then they cross it out and about 30% or 40% of the people pay that $4. And every year, if I send out 5,000 orders, I might have three people take me up on it. And so, out of 5,000 orders, if 40% take it, that's 2,000 people that pay me $4. That's eight grand and I had to replace three orders. There's big money in this. So don't worry about a lot of people taking advantage of it. Some will.

Kevin:

There's also something called the squeezed benefit test. You take a look on the left. This is the original graphic that someone had. Has all the bullet points. This is what you normally see and what most of you're probably doing. But look at the one on the right same type of stuff but much easier to read, numbered, organized with icons. This converts people on Amazon buy photos, they don't buy products. I think Perry Belcher originally said that they buy photos, they don't buy products. So your photos are crucial to your conversion and they're going to become even more crucial with AI. This is the test. And look at the difference, even of people, it's 76%. That's 100% certainty that this is a much better option. So this is a cool little tactic that you can do.

Helium 10 Buzz 3/27/24: Temu Taking Amazon Customers? | FBA Donations | Walmart Beauty Updates

Could Amazon's reign be waning as headlines buzz about a shrinking user base? We're slicing through the noise to bring you the real score on Amazon versus Temu. This and more on today’s episode!

► 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

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, interview someone you need to hear from and provide a training tip for the week.

Down By 2.6 Million Users, Amazon Could Keep Losing Customers To Temu
https://www.forbes.com/sites/petercohan/2024/03/21/down-by-26-million-users-amazon-could-keep-losing-customers-to-temu/

Sellers who use FBA Donations now have access to donation certificates
https://sell.amazon.com/blog/announcements/fba-donation-certificate

Walmart's Beauty Aisle Blooms With New Products, Bigger Savings
https://corporate.walmart.com/news/2024/03/27/walmarts-beauty-aisle-blooms-with-new-products-bigger-savings

Amazon’s latest Brand Protection Report: How we’re cracking down on counterfeit products
https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/policy-news-views/amazon-brand-protection-report-2023-counterfeit-products

Amazon will have to publish an ads library in EU after all
https://techcrunch.com/2024/03/27/amazon-dsa-ads-library-cjeu/

If you're wondering about details on the Amazon Remote Fulfillment with FBA program, I should say formally the program formerly known as NARF. Let’s dive into the details on how you can be selling in the Amazon US marketplace and then, with a click of a button, start selling in Canada, Mexico and now even Brazil. Make sure to check this episode out.

For savvy Amazon sellers looking to stay ahead of the curve, this episode is packed with insights on the latest features from Helium 10. Discover how 'most clicked' labels and the X-Ray Chrome extension can enhance your competitive analysis and advertising strategy. Plus, Carrie shares the good news for Helium 10 Platinum members who now have access to the ABA top search terms tool. Whether you're a new listener or a seasoned veteran seller, this episode promises to arm you with the knowledge and tools to refine your product strategies and make informed decisions in the bustling marketplace of Amazon and Walmart.

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

• 00:52 - Temu Up Amazon Down?
• 03:06 - FBA Donations
• 05:25 - Walmart Beauty
• 07:07 - Amazon Brand Protection
• 08:51 - Amazon Ads Library
• 09:48 - SSP #547 - Amazon Remote Fulfillment with FBA Program
• 10:50 - New Feature Alerts
• 15:24 - Pro Training Tip: ABA Top Search Terms For Platinum

Enjoy this episode? Be sure to check out our previous episodes for even more content to propel you to Amazon FBA Seller success! And don’t forget to “Like” our Facebook page and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you listen to our podcast.

Get snippets from all episodes by following us on Instagram at @SeriousSellersPodcast

Want to absolutely start crushing it on Amazon? Here are few carefully curated resources to get you started:

• Freedom Ticket: Taught by Amazon thought leader Kevin King, get A-Z Amazon strategies and techniques for establishing and solidifying your business.
• Helium 10: 30+ software tools to boost your entire sales pipeline from product research to customer communication and Amazon refund automation. Make running a successful Amazon or Walmart business easier with better data and insights. See what our customers have to say.
• Helium 10 Chrome Extension: Verify your Amazon product idea and validate how lucrative it can be with over a dozen data metrics and profitability estimation.
• SellerTrademarks.com: Trademarks are vital for protecting your Amazon brand from hijackers, and sellertrademarks.com provides a streamlined process for helping you get one.

 

#547 - Amazon Remote Fulfillment with FBA Program - Sell in Canada, Mexico, & Brazil

Ever dreamt of expanding your Amazon empire internationally with just a few clicks? That's exactly what we're unpacking with Jaisal Jivanji from Amazon Canada and Irais Garcia Enriquez from Amazon Mexico in our latest chat. We're tackling the Remote Fulfillment with FBA program head-on, discussing the seamless process of selling across borders using your US FBA inventory. You'll find out how this can lead to a significant boost in product visibility and sales in foreign markets, which now includes the vibrant landscape of Brazil.

Struggling with keyword research for an international audience? No sweat, because we also dissect how Helium 10's Magnet tool comes to the rescue, enhancing your targeting prowess. We spill the beans on Bradley’s journey leveraging the program, the automatic translations of listings for local markets, and the nuances of handling images and A+ content across different Amazon platforms. It's a great episode to watch for logistical insights, from managing shipping times to utilizing Amazon's metrics, complemented by third-party tools that could be the game-changer you've been looking for.

Now, let's talk money. Navigating the currency exchange and pricing strategies can be daunting, but we're breaking it down to make it practical and straightforward. With Amazon's handy Build International Listings (BIL) tool and Amazon Currency Converter for Sellers (ACCS), we explain how to keep your pricing strategies smart and your international profits in check, even with fluctuating exchange rates. Say goodbye to pricing headaches and hello to transparent, surprise-free customer experiences in Canada, Mexico, and Brazil. Big thanks to Jaisal and Irais for their expert insights—it's just what you need to consider taking the plunge into these exciting markets.

In episode 547 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley, Irais, and Jaisal discuss:

• 00:00 - Amazon Remote Fulfillment Program Discussion
• 03:45 - Expanding Your Amazon Selling Internationally
• 09:21 - Cross-Border Fulfillment Eligibility and Shipping
• 12:32 - International FBA Shipping and Localization
• 16:56 - Amazon Metrics and Marketplace Expansion
• 22:12 - International Sales and Tax Considerations
• 24:59 - Currency Exchange and International Pricing
• 27:20 - International Price Synchronization Options
• 32:09 - Amazon Fulfillment in International Markets
• 36:34 - International Sales Success in Project X
• 37:15 - Expanding Sales With Remote Fulfillment

► 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 representatives from Amazon Canada and Mexico who are going to talk all about the remote fulfilling with FBA program, where just in three clicks you can instantly be selling your products in Canada, Mexico and now Brazil. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. I want to enter in an Amazon keyword and then within seconds get up to thousands of potentially related keywords that you could research. Then you need magnet by Helium 10. For more information, go to h10.me/magnet. Magnet works in most Amazon marketplaces, including USA, Mexico, Australia, Germany, UK, India and much more. 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 a special episode because for the very first time, we have got somebody who is from Amazon Canada, also Amazon Mexico on the show. I've had people from Amazon USA, I think, Amazon Singapore and different places, but I'm just expanding out the marketplaces here. We've got Jaisal and Irais here. Welcome to the show, guys.

 

Irais:

Hello everyone. Thank you for inviting us.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Now, right before the show, I was like now the way you pronounce your name is Irais and that's how I would say it, but like that just sounds like so awkward. So I'm just going to go with Irais and she says she's not going to be offended there and Jaisal I couldn't even begin to exactly pronounce it, but so I'm going to start with Jaisal. What is the origin of your name?

 

Jaisal:

So my name is actually originated from a town in India called Rajasthan, and there was a princess back in the day whose name was Jaisal, and there's also a city called Jaisalmer, so that's kind of where my name came from.

 

Bradley Sutton:

See, I like knew there was a good story behind it. You know, Bradley, there's no, there's nothing going on there. You know, like Irais is or at least the English spelling is like a flower, you know kind of thing. So, all right, we've got. So I was already pronouncing it wrong, so it was Jaisal instead of Jaisal. I don't know why I was saying it the right. Okay, I got it now. Now, Jaisal, you we're in Canada, are you at right now?

 

Jaisal:

So I actually live in Dallas, Texas.

Bradley Sutton:

Dallas Texas, okay.

 

Jaisal:

Yeah, our team sits in Seattle and in Arlington, and then we also have a team out in Canada.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, all right now. How long have you worked for Amazon?

 

Jaisal:

For a little over two years, so it's been a really fun ride so far.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Now, have you always worked on the? You like Amazon Canada in different marketplaces, or did you do something else like for Amazon USA, or what's going on there?

 

Jaisal:

Yeah, so the whole time I've been on Amazon Canada, I've been on the Remote Fulfillment expansion team for the entire time, so it's been I've definitely gotten really used to this team and I've learned a lot from the team as well.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Now we're gonna be talking, we're gonna go in depth here, but just something I've wanted to know. I always you just said Remote Fulfillment. Now I have always referred to this as NARF right North, because I swear it used to be called like North American Remote Fulfillment. But now I don't see that those initials anywhere on Amazon did it? Was that an official term or is that something I made up, or did you guys have that and then you just erased the NARF and now it's called something else.

 

Irais:

Yes, you're right, it was called North America Remote Fulfillment, but the thing is that the moment we are now expanding to other countries, it doesn't make sense to call it North America. That's why we only, we're only staying with Remote Fulfillment with it.

 

Bradley Sutton:

That's all. We're almost giving a spoiler alert right there about later on in the show. We're gonna be okay now. Okay now, I guess. So like I gotta start calling it something, but that's. That was such a cool name though, NARF, you know, it's so easy to remember that. All right, let's. Let's switch to Irais. Now, where are you located?

 

Irais:

So I am in Mexico City and I worked at the office that we have in Mexico City.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Is that where you're born and raised?

 

Irais:

Yes, yes, I haven't been living all my life here. I went to give my tour of the world for 10 years and came back to Mexico City, and I've been working at Amazon since four years now four years, and I hope.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Let's just start in an degree. You know the reason why I brought you on kind of like representing Amazon Canada. By the way, that's a really cool sweater you have on there. I haven't seen that one special edition, but is you know? I want to talk about Remote Fulfillment now in general. You know, I'm an Amazon seller in the USA now me personally, I don't remember when I enrolled, but I'm already enrolled in it. But there's probably a lot of people listening to this show maybe who haven't. This might be the first time they're even hearing about Remote Fulfillment. So you know what? Let me take a step back. What is Remote Fulfillment? Either of you can answer this.

 

Irais:

So Remote Fulfillment, it's a program that allows sellers to use their US FBA inventory to expand to other countries like Mexico, Canada and now Brazil. What we do is like the inventory that you are sending to the Remote Fulfillment Center, to the sorry, to the fulfillment centers in in US. Amazon uses to fulfill the orders internationally once there is a sale in another country.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Cool now. So that's just basically in a nutshell what it is. Now I'm a seller who's maybe hearing about this for the first time. How do I know if it's something that I should probably look into? Or maybe there's a kind of seller where it's like nah, this is probably not for you yet.

 

Irais:

Well, really, for I think, for any seller that is already selling in in US BISBA I think it's something really great to try, because you're already selling with FBA in US, you already have your products there. The only thing you need to do is enroll. Actually, we are I'll explain further down but we are doing automatically enrollment for some eligible sellers and once you're enrolled, you're basically instantly selling in other like internationally, because it's Amazon who takes care of the rest. We are basically, once we enroll you, we are going to duplicate your ASINs or your offers that's how we call it in Amazon ASINs and you're we're going to duplicate your offers and products to the other countries and then you will be offering those products to new clients and you will have more opportunities to sell right. So I think it's very easy. You don't really need to worry about sending inventory to other places, you don't need to invest on that and everything is taken care of by Amazon. So I think it's very easy. You don't really need to say, oh, am I ready?

 

Bradley Sutton:

I'm not ready, because Amazon takes care of everything now, Jaisal, you know, for me when I first enrolled in it, when it was called NARF like the very first one that I made sure to get into was Canada, would it be safe to say that probably most people are, you know, who are selling in the US probably make that one their first enrollment. And then how does somebody enroll in it these days?

 

Jaisal:

yeah, of course. So from the way to enroll standpoint, we do have that auto enrollment that I used to talking about earlier. But also if you want to double check to see if you are enrolled, you would go into your US Seller Central side and check the inventory tab and go to Remote Fulfillment and there will be. We have like a new UI as well and there you should be able to see like which countries you have launched in, and it's literally just like a click of a button all right.

 

Bradley Sutton:

So I'm here for those watching on YouTube. I'm going in one of my accounts right, I'm pretty sure it's enrolled inventory and then Remote Fulfillment with FBA, all right. And then here it is right here. So I would hit then marketplace enrollment, right, and then there it is All right. So then you would be able to see the three marketplaces and it says I'm enrolled. And if it wasn't enrolled I would have just selected it here and then hit update. So everybody who's listening if you guys are, you know, if you guys are running on a jog right now or you're in your car, you know, please Pull over to the side of the road or just wait till you get home, but go into your Seller Central, hit the Menu button on the left hand side, go to inventory, mouse over that and then select Remote Fulfillment by FBA and literally right after there It'll be just maybe a couple of clicks to enroll. If you are not now, let's say somebody wasn't like me and it said not enrolled, enrolled, just like. If I. From the moment right now they click on this, is it instantaneous that they're now in the program? Does it take 24 hours about? How long would it take them to get up and running?

 

Irais:

If you do it manually, you will go through a small flow like after this page. You have another flow when it will just let you know that we are duplicating your ASINs with building international listings tool and once you are enrolled it can be Instantly. It may take up to for you 24 hours, but most of the times it's on the same day.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Excellent, excellent. Now, for me, there were some of my products that, even though, as everybody just saw who saw my screen I am fully enrolled, but some of my products that weren't activated. So you know, that leads me to assume that, hey, some products maybe are not eligible. Um, I know, way back in the day, like six years ago, when I was working for seven years and when I was working for a different company, like they were doing Uh, a diet pills and like nothing was available for Canada because there was like regulations about that. But just, I don't sell any diet pills and this is where I sell coffin shelves and egg trays and stuff like that. But what are the kind of products that might not be just Able to qualify for this program with this click of the button?

 

Jaisal:

Yeah, so for each country they all have different importation roles. Um, products that are not eligible due to exportation rules Will not be copied to other stores by the build international listings tool, also known as the bill tool, and you'll generally see like an ineligibility message through that same UI that you were showing earlier. However, there are some cases where a product is eligible for cross-border fulfillment under a different fulfillment method, such as local FBA fulfillment or seller fulfilled, but it's not eligible for the Remote Fulfillment with FBA, and that could generally be because there are additional documentation requirements for customs or specific shipping or packaging requirements. Um, a good example is Remote Fulfillment does not export consumer goods, as those products often do need labeling in local languages. And if your product is not eligible for Remote Fulfillment and is not restricted for sale in the target store, you can still send it directly to the country for sale through FBA in each country, or you could list it as a seller fulfilled offer. Um, a good rule of thumb is like if you want to see a full list of restricted products per country, you can visit our Remote Fulfillment page and review what you can sell in the manager listing section now I think, oh, one of the most common or I have.

 

Bradley Sutton:

I have a list of common questions that, I gathered from people in our community, when you know, asking about this program, but I think that probably the number one thing that people want to understand is the, the shipping. So, first of all, if I turn this on and it's tied to my FBA US inventory which, by the way, I'm not, um, not sure if I want to make sure everybody understands that it's what we're talking about here, I am not sending inventory, physical inventory, to Canada warehouses or to Mexico warehouses or to Brazil warehouses, it's taking from my us inventory. So Somebody sees, though, a prime batch. If they're shopping on Amazon Mexico, like they, they search for a coffin shelf, how would you say something? The atahood right here and it says Amazon Prime right there.

 

Irais:

Yes, yeah, I think that's one of the main benefits of the program is that your ASINs have a prime batch when they are Distributed by Remote Fulfillment. So, although they might take longer, a little bit longer than the ones that are currently already in Mexico, but they are considered prime.

 

Bradley Sutton:

That was my next question there. So they see the Prime Badge. Now what is the average shipping time that they might see, assuming obviously even in America you could have a Prime Badge and it might say 10 days because the inventory is being checked in. But let's just assume that the inventory is completely checked in. You know I have got tons of inventory. What's the average shipping time somebody in Mexico or Canada might see on my listing?

 

Irais:

Yeah, uh. So On average to Mexico and Canada it takes Less than seven days. That's the time that the around you will see is that the target?

 

Bradley Sutton:

I know it's completely brand new this month of, but is that the target also for Brazil or might take a little bit longer for there?

 

Irais:

Yeah, so for Brazil, given the distance and obviously the size of the country, we are targeting now around 30 days, and which is also an average for products that are coming from other countries, locally Brazil.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Excellent, excellent. Now, obviously for Spain or for Mexico, it's automatically translating my listing into Spanish. For Canada, is it changing it at all to like Canadian English? Not that it's that different, but you know, like, like, for example, British English. You know a diaper is called a nappy or something like that. It's still English, but it's, it's different. Like is there any translation happening? Or like. Does it translate to French? For, like the people in in Quebec who view Amazon and French?

 

Jaisal:

Yes, it'll translate to French whenever you're looking in that for the French.

 

Bradley Sutton:

But not changing it to like a Canadian vernacular or anything like that, right, yeah, okay now. So that's my second part of my question. Is all right, so Amazon is automatically translating my listing to either French or Spanish or Portuguese, I'm assuming for Brazil. Now what if I, being a Helium 10 user, and I like might know the keyword that people are searching in Spanish and Portuguese and the keyword that Amazon translated might not be what I like? Am I able to go in and override that translation?

 

Jaisal:

Yeah, so it depends on the listing. If it already exists in the target country, just as it works in the US, you can propose changes and seller support will make the adjustment when they believe it's pertinent for the listing. However, if the listing is new in the target store and you're the first one to list it and you own the information, you'll be able to make changes as needed after localizing with the build international listings tool.

 

Bradley Sutton:

So then it wouldn't be editing the listing per se and, like manage inventory, I would need to go to the build international listings to change the. You know, like I want to change a couple words in the title, that that would be the tool I go into. Yeah okay, perfect, perfect. What about A+ Content? How does that translation work? I'm not. I don't think I've ever looked at my A+ Content. In my North American remote fulfill, or see, I keeps using the old term Remote Fulfillment by FBA Listings. I don't think I've ever even looked at how what's going on with my A+ Content.

 

Jaisal:

Yeah, so honestly, similar to how you do it in the US side for Canada or for the store that you're selling in, you can go exactly to where your A+ Content listings would be and upload it there. It doesn't automatically translate over, you may have to tweak some things, but it'll be in the Seller Central for that respective country speaking about localization, one thing, another thing I have not done is my change my images.

 

Bradley Sutton:

So, for example, I have some infographic images right where I might have some text on there. Obviously, Amazon is not changing. You know, editing my images for me, changing that to English, it is it possible? If I'm using the same as in and smart, it's my product, you know. I've got Brand Registry, you know and everything. Can I change the like a certain image in the Mexican marketplace to put Spanish? You know, if I have like the features you know listed in one of my images and I want to change the Spanish, am I able to change that image or it's now going to overwrite that to my US listing?

 

Jaisal:

It won't overwrite. So whatever you do on like, for example, if you do it on your Canada Seller Central, your Mexico Seller Central, it's not going to override or impact anything that you do on the US Seller Central side. It'll just stay for that target country.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Give me good stuff here, like I was worried about. I was worried I think a lot of sellers might have been worried about that one. You're telling us what we want to hear. Now one thing I noticed to you know, like I don't ship inventory directly to Canada, but something that's cool is I can. I can still see them. We have some high and cool metrics here. Let me just show my screen to the listeners who can see this. But, like search, career performance and things like that, I can actually go to Canada and Go to Mexico and see that, even though, like again, I never registered to just for FBA in Canada or Mexico, but since I am part of this Remote Fulfillment, I can actually see the really cool metrics that Amazon has been giving for these different Marketplaces. And then, obviously, you know, if anybody's using Helium 10, you guys all have access to the same functionality for Amazon, for Amazon USA, Amazon Canada, Amazon Mexico, Amazon Brazil, our tools like Cerebro work and magnet where you can do your keyword research and things like that. So in the past, a lot of stuff that Amazon USA sellers had, you know, like they didn't have it right away for Mexico and Canada and the other marketplaces about at least all of the main things, definitely has access here now, where you know I talked about this a little bit before. But for again, for the, for those just joining us, where, at what point Should I be like, hey, this is something that I need to go all in on, and then maybe I've been doing it for a while and then I'm like you know what I don't want to have 30 days for shipping to Brazil. I don't want to have those eight days to Mexico or something. Maybe I should consider actually doing the whole process of taking my inventory, some for a certain product and shipping it to FBA in those countries.

 

Irais:

I think that's a great point. It's really good considering at some point, migrating to local FBA Just because FBA has better seller experience, like you say, is like it has shorter shipping times, for example, and which can benefit the sellers. Conversion now. And but to the question one. I think it depends on multiple things. I think the minimum seller should consider is first, having a stable demand of the products they want to sell. You know to make sure the products you're going to send they are actually going to have a Sales. The second one is that sellers need to have figure out the export logistics. You need to have a Look for the information like what products can you send? You know that sometimes our Exportations about the materials that you can export and like maybe having the support of a broker sometimes. And finally, also making sure that you comply with the local laws of the country you're targeting right. Some countries and ask you to have, for example, a local tax ID, which is a process you need to do in in that country. Or some other countries, for example, they ask a specificity, a specificity story about labeling Products, know, and so all of those things we need to think about before, just like sending the inventory to the countries.

 

Irais:

But, like I said, it's a good Option to think about it because it will. It will help yourselves and also one another point that I want to mention is that you don't need to decide of Removal filming or FBA. You can always choose both. Actually, it's something that we recommend because, for example, you can use FBA for the ASINs that they have a high turnover rate or they have a stable demand, but if you want to try new ASINs, you can enroll them first in removal filming and so that you can try you know the demand, see how it hits, how they work, and you can use be using both Programs at the same time. Also, FBA is a good option and for the products, like Jason said, for the products that are not Eligible in removal filming, you know, like, for example, if you also sell consumables, you can try to sell consumables via FBA and the rest of your products in removal filming.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Interesting now. Now, Jaisal, you know, one question I had was you know she just mentioned about like tax implications and things like that, for when you're actually sending inventory there. I think that's a very top of mind Topic for sellers is like, wait a minute, like anything has to do with another country, like, alright, my product is crossing the border, am I gonna get tax? Like do I? I'm doing Remote Fulfillment? Am I gonna get a separate tax bill? Or do I have to clear customs for each order? Like all these, all these questions they might have, like which might be holding them back? Um, but correct me if I'm wrong, but in removal filming, is it true that I really don't have to worry about those things?

 

Jaisal:

This is probably, like our, one of our top five questions that we always get. So when customers buy products through Remote Fulfillment with FBA, the buyer is actually the importer of record and must pay any import duties, taxes and fees. Amazon kind of simplifies the import duties process by estimating the amount that will be due and adding it to the amount the customer pays at checkout. You also do not have to present income taxes in other countries, since your sale is occurring in the United States, so sellers may continue with their tax-specific obligations in the US in the same way as before joining Remote Fulfillment.

 

Bradley Sutton:

If I'm looking in Helium temp profits or in Seller Central, when I'm downloading my financial reports and everything, the order might show that it went to Canada or something. But is everything pretty much the same as far as the numbers go? My shipping, my fulfillment cost is the same and there's no extra fees. That's affecting my profitability. Is it almost 100% the same?

 

Irais:

We can talk about also the fees. I can already explain how it works. So in Remote Fulfillment the products have two fees, just the same as any product in USFBA. So the first fee is Remote Fulfillment fee, which replaces the USFBA fee it's the same one. And we have the second fee, which is the category referral fee, which depends on the kind of product that you're selling and that will be. It varies depending on the country where the sale is occurring. So, besides these two fees although they can be higher because, for example, in Remote Fulfillment, fees varies depending on the size of the product, the weight and also the country to which you are sending the product Although these fees may be higher we have the tool bill that we have mentioned. But the tool does is it adjusts the prices in the targeted countries with those fees, including those fees in the price and any other extra costs that you might have, so that the price already includes all these additional costs and sellers will get a similar profit as they get in US. So to the question what we are doing with PIL is protecting the margin of the sellers so that they have a similar profit as they get in US, and that's how we can comfortable say that you will be having almost the same profits as you have in US.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. So let's say for whatever reason, the currency exchange rate is fluctuating greatly, day by day or week by week. Is once a week or once a day? Is the price maybe showing up as something like is BIL changing my price to reflect the currency fluctuations?

 

Irais:

Yeah, so maybe it's easier if I give an example. But for example, so what BIL is going to do is have your US price as a base. It will stay connected to the other listings or to your products in Canada, Mexico and Brazil and the moment that you do, for example, a manual adjust price in the US, it will adjust all other countries, considering the fees difference in each of those countries and it will also consider, like you say, exchange rates for each of the countries. One point that I want to make sure is clear and that sellers know is that if sellers do a change manually to the price in the target country for example, they go and they make a change manually in the price in Mexico that will break the connection with the US price. So BIL will not be connected anymore, and that's something that selling partners need to be careful with. Sellers can totally go and manually change prices in the targeted countries, but that will be breaking the connection. So there is a way to connect the sellers, the listings, again through the BIL international listing tool, which is in global selling. You can reconnect all your listings, but it's just to have this in mind. You know, like not making manual adjustments if you want to maintain the connection with your US prices.

 

Bradley Sutton:

That's super interesting. So if I never have touched it, it's going to go ahead and edit that for me, but if I mess with the price once, just like in Seller Central or something, then that breaks the connection. I literally have not seen this page in probably years, but I'm looking right now on my BIL international listings page and, for example I guess at one point I selected these things as default, but it's interesting. Like it says here for Canada, it tells me what the exchange rate is right now. And then it says, for price synchronization, I can choose the list price and the sale price, or list price only. So that's good to know. If I'm doing a sale in the US, that means, if I have this selected, it'll go ahead and reflect as well in Canada. And then it says here I can for Remote Fulfillment with FBA. The choices I have are same as the source marketplace adjust for fees, which is what I have. The other options, though, are same as just same as the source marketplace percentage above the source marketplace, or percentage below the source marketplace, or fixed amount above. So very interesting. And then I also have self-fulfilled options here. Like me, I have a lot of skews that I actually self-fulfilled myself, and I don't know why I put $25. I guess I didn't want anybody ordering from Canada or something. I put a markup of $25 here. But, interesting, I had not been on this page at all. I had no idea about these things. So, as a matter of fact, you just told me I'm working on something with our product team where we can do prices, and I didn't realize. So if I'm manually editing a price, it is no longer gonna go by these rules.

 

Irais:

then yeah, just to be clear, it's manually adjusting the price in the target country. So if you change to the store of Mexico and then you change the price in pesos, no, if you change it in US, obviously it will stay connected, and exactly that's how the tool helps to change accordingly the prices in the other countries.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, all right, interesting, interesting. Now here we're talking about all these foreign currencies and things like that. Jesso, If I'm trying to open this up, do I need a Canadian bank to get my disbursements from? If I'm just an American seller, do I need a Mexican bank to be able to receive the payments, or how does that work?

 

Jaisal:

Yeah, so now actually, Amazon will manage this for you through a tool called Amazon Currency Converter for Sellers, or otherwise known as ACCS, that you can set up in Seller Central as a deposit method. That way, your funds from other countries are transferred to your assigned bank account to receive deposits in the US.

 

Bradley Sutton:

So literally at that moment that we talked about earlier in the show, when I'm enrolling, that's it, like there's not a bunch of other steps I'm going to have to jump through. All right, we talked about the cost. We talked about taxes and fees and banks and disbursements. I'm sure I'm forgetting some other things, but just in my just thinking about this program, a couple other questions a seller might have is maybe on the customer side. You said that they're the importer of records. So just out of curiosity, you're no tax code expert or anything, but on average, is it a lot of fees that they're having to pay? Like if they're buying my coffin shelf back there for 25 bucks that's the base price with shipping. The typical Canadian customer, though, what's their bill going to be like? Is it going to be double that? Is it just a certain percentage of that?

 

Jaisal:

Yeah, I mean, I think it's an important aspect. But what we really want to highlight is that with the Remote Fulfillment program, buyer will be charged for the taxes.

 

Bradley Sutton:

The price that the customer sees, though, is it just the listed price, you know, after the currency conversion, or is Amazon automatically building those you know taxes and things like that, into that retail price?

 

Jaisal:

Yeah, so whenever the seller is going on to Amazon.ca and they want to buy your product, they will see actually what the price point is plus the tax and the shipping fee. Ah, so that's good.

 

Bradley Sutton:

So it's not like you know like, see, that that's, that's a worry, like when I used to export to Canada and other countries, you know, off of Amazon. You know, maybe 15 years ago or 20 years ago, I would get some customers that would sometimes reject the shipments because they're like, I got this crazy tax bill that I had no idea you know this is how much, but kind of like, there's no surprises because Amazon is telling them how much, how much it's going to cost. Oh, that's a comfort to hear.

 

Irais:

I was just going to compliment that. For example, for Mexico, the price of the AC versus US is very similar. It will only get adjusted by the, by the shipping fee which is going to be added to the price if there is no taxes, Amazon is not going to add any, any extra fees and, like you say, it's really convenient, for example, for me when I'm like I want to buy a brand that is not available in my country and that I want to bring it, and it's really nice to have you know like a exact date when I'm going to get it and that I don't have surprises of when the package arrives. Like you say like, oh, I am due another 50 bucks for what I am ordering.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, good to know. Good to know. What about returns? So you know, Amazon obviously has a generous return policy. Is it kind of like the same for people who buy through mobile film? I don't even know what it is like. You know 30, let's just say 30 days. They have 30 days, is it the same? And then what's the process? You know, like for like, I had to return something from Amazon the other day and it's just like all right here, go drop it off at UPS or we'll send you a label to return. How does it work if it's a Remote Fulfillment product?

 

Irais:

Yeah, it's exactly the same from a buyer's perspective. You also have the Amazon promise that you can return items within a certain time First, I think Mexico is 30 days and you'll get a label, a shipping label, that you can paste on your package and you'll deliver it to the same place, where, or even you can also call for someone to pick it up at home, and it works exactly the same way. Amazon will take care of bringing back the product to the US. So that's I think it's important for sellers to know. We don't bring the product to the FCS and locally, we take it back to your inventory in US. So once it gets to the US, it will be re added to your inventory.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Now, what are some educational resources that people can search for, maybe in Seller Central If they want to find out more about this? How would you suggest people can learn more?

 

Irais:

inside Seller Central. I think there is two main resources sellers can use. One is the help page of Remote Fulfillment with FBA that you can search by using the search bar. You can place Remote Fulfillment. You will find the help page. We also have a revenue calculator that sellers can use. Also, by typing revenue calculator, you will find it in the search menu. The only thing you need to make sure is that once you are in the revenue calculator, you need to choose the store where you are targeting and the store where your inventory is in, and you will see the option of calculating fees with Remote Fulfillment so that you are able to compare what is the best channel for you or what will be your net profits using one channel or the other one. And finally, you always have seller support, which is a really good resource for a lot of sellers.

 

Jaisal:

Just like sending your question or requesting a call, and they will be able to help you, yeah, and also just to add on to that as a seller, if you do have any country specific questions, one piece of advice that I like to give is search for those questions in your Seller Central that is accounted for that country. So if you have a question, for example, on Canada right and you're looking on how do I expand into FBA in Canada, you would literally go into your Seller Central side for your Canada account and type in selling in Canada from the US with FBA and you'll get information on how to expand that way.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Excellent, excellent. Now just to give people an idea of what this could mean for you and everybody's accounts is different, but I have literally done no optimization. I haven't even edited my keywords or anything to make it right. All I did last year in one of my accounts is just turn on the Remote Fulfillment. Let me just show you, guys, my Helium 10 profits window here. But in one time period in Project X, my Project X account, I did $132,000 in USA and by never even looking at it, not even touching it at all, never having to ship something myself to Canada, I did $10,000 in Canada. So is that going to make me a millionaire by selling in Canada? Mexico only did a couple of hundred dollars, but still that's almost getting to 10% of my revenue by not even lifting a finger, just clicking a couple of buttons to enroll, and I was able to increase my sales in this one time period by $10,000. So, guys, if you haven't enrolled into this program, definitely do it. Not only are you going to be able to sell in Canada, but also Mexico. And now the newest member of the team is Amazon Brazil to really tap into that marketplace. So, Jaisal and Irais, thank you so much for joining us today and giving us all this knowledge about this program. I hope that all of our listeners are going to be enrolled by the end of this episode and maybe we'll bring you back next year and see what's new with the Remote Fulfillment program. So thank you so much for joining us.

#546 - Walmart.com PPC Campaign & Listing Strategies

Ever wonder what it takes to turn your Walmart product listings from lackluster to lucrative? Ryan King, the savvy CEO of BlueRyse, joins us on the airwaves to share his expert strategies for maximizing your presence on Walmart's digital shelves. Together, we navigate the intricacies of PPC, the subtleties of listing optimization, and the crucial metrics that could make or break your profits. Ryan's advice, drawn from the cutting-edge tools of Helium 10, affords a masterclass in finessing your financials and leveraging Walmart's ever-growing online platform for unparalleled brand growth and diversification.

In the vast sea of selling at Walmart, standing out is an art form, and we've got the brushes and palette to help you paint a masterpiece with your product listings. Our journey reveals how to ensure your offerings are not just indexed, but also scoring high on Walmart's listing quality score. We cover all bases from the precision of backend attributes to the finesse required in product type optimization. We also dissect the importance of competitive pricing and swift delivery, how to ace the A/B testing game, and even how Walmart's fulfillment services can provide a much-needed boost in ranking.

As the curtain falls on this episode, we've left no stone unturned in the realm of Walmart PPC and the emerging tactics of brand conquesting. Imagine targeting competitor brand terms, a concept newly possible on Walmart, and the advantage it hands you in the grand chessboard of ecommerce. Wrapping up with a flourish, we dabble in the complexities of SEM strategies and the nuances of bidding wars, closing with a heartfelt word of thanks to Ryan for his insights. So, tune in and equip yourself with the secrets to selling success on one of the world's most formidable marketplaces.

In episode 546 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Carrie and Ryan discuss:

• 00:00 - Walmart Listing Optimization for Increased Sales
• 01:47 - Expert Insights on Walmart Brand Performance
• 04:54 - Leveraging Social Proof in E-Commerce
• 08:58 - Optimizing Search Terms on E-Commerce Platforms
• 12:48 - Maximizing eCommerce Channel Expansion
• 18:07 - PPC Strategies & Updates for Walmart
• 24:19 - Untapped Brand Defense Opportunities
• 29:42 - Expanding Opportunities in Walmart Marketplace
• 32:36 - Optimizing Walmart PPC Bidding Strategies
• 36:26 - Tips for Completing Applications Successfully
• 40:00 - Secret Strategies Ryan Uses

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Transcript

Carrie Miller:

Walmart PPC and Listing Optimization Strategies to increase sales on the Walmart marketplace. This and so much more on today's episode.

Bradley Sutton:

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.

Carrie Miller:

Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast brought to you by Helium 10. My name is Carrie and I will be your host, and this is our Winning with Walmart Wednesday, where we go over all things Walmart, we tell you the latest and greatest news about Walmart, we answer your questions and we have an amazing Walmart expert guest. I'm going to just tell you a little bit about some Helium 10 tools, because I haven't really mentioned these a lot lately. I wanted to make sure that everyone is aware that Helium 10 does have a lot of amazing tools that support Walmart. So we have X-Ray. It's going to help you with sales estimates and so much more. We have our Cerebro and Magnet tools that help you find amazing keywords for your listings. We also have our Profits tool and our Keyword Tracking tool. In addition to that, we have Adtomic, which is our paper click advertising management software, so that is extremely helpful. We've added day parting and a lot of other amazing things to Adtomic, so it's definitely the best it's ever been and highly recommend checking that out if you haven't checked it out. All right. So today I want to bring on our guest, and I'm really, really excited to have him on today and his name is Ryan King, and so thanks so much for being on. Ryan is a CEO and co-founder of BlueRyse, which is a Walmart agency, and I've actually known Ryan for a few years now. We met at the Billion Dollar Seller Summit and we definitely connected on Walmart stuff, so he's definitely an expert in the field and I'm really excited for him to share all of his knowledge with everyone today. I know he was on last year, but for anyone, Ryan, that doesn't know you, can you go ahead and tell a little bit about yourself to the audience?

Ryan:

Certainly. Yeah, thanks for having me on here, Carrie. Glad to be on this episode here of the Serious Sellers Podcast, specifically talking about Walmart. So yeah, BlueRyse is a full managed service agency focused specifically on Walmart. We've been operating with third party and first party brands since early 2020. And our focus is on everything from content optimization, ad management, catalog management, interfacing with Walmart personnel, all these other elements with regard to, ultimately, the focus of maximizing Walmart brand's performance on Walmart.com.

Carrie Miller:

I want to first start out and just ask you, because you've been in this Walmart game for quite some time, what do you think the main advantages are for third party sellers to start selling on Walmart and do you think it's a really good opportunity?

Ryan:

Yeah, absolutely. It's a great opportunity. I think the advantages have continued to grow over the years. They haven't diminished. One of the reasons we saw the opportunity on Walmart was as brand owners ourselves. We began and launched and grew brands on Amazon back in the day, starting in early 2013. And we were looking for ways to, as brand owners, de-risk a bit, diversify revenues back during the aggregator boom. Part of the factor was how do we increase multiples, all those kind of elements? I think all the principles remain the same as to why those would be advantages. If you're truly building a brand, then you're looking to identify what are the channels that make sense to increase sales, increase profits overall and to de-risk. So that's one advantage of finding other marketplaces, other channels to sell through. Beyond that, there's just the fact that Walmart is pushing heavy and has been pushing heavy into the online marketplace space. They understand that for them as a business, as a retailer, while they're the number one retailer in the world, e-commerce certainly has been a major growth factor for others competitors like Amazon and everybody else, and so Walmart understands that they need to compete in the digital shelf. That means they want more sellers, they want a broader assortment, they want great products so that more shoppers come and have a great experience. So that has led to Walmart heavily focusing on building out their third-party marketplace over the last several years. I would say a couple other that come to mind social proof and reviews and ratings have been always on the forefront of e-commerce sellers' minds, especially in the Amazon space, such large motes. I haven't looked at this example in a while, but earbuds, Bluetooth earbuds. When I looked at it, probably two years ago, the average review count for Bluetooth earbuds on page one for Amazon was somewhere around 40,000. At the time, the average review count for that keyword, which was a high volume keyword, on Walmart was around 800. And so just the opportunity to enter the market. You know, if you had wished you had. You know the buzz for a long time was Walmart is Amazon of 2012 or whatever it may be. Walmart is in its own right of maturing marketplace these days, but the opportunity still exists. In that way, I think, the other ones. There is a bit of a different shopper base, and so if you have a broader assortment, your heroes on Amazon or other marketplaces may also translate to be your heroes on Walmart and you can just get a continued growth of that assortment. However, we also do see because it is a different shopper, a different marketplace, sometimes some other products that may not be performing as well in your catalog on Amazon might be your top performers on Walmart for various reasons, and so it breeds new life into your catalog, potentially. And then, finally, if you really want to identify ways of growing the brand, and maybe brick and mortar retail is a desire of yours at some point, then there is a credible pathway to getting products into brick and mortar. We work with brands all the time. Who that is part of their play, whether they've begun with conversations with merchants first, and it's a let's test and see and let's get it in, or if they're native e-commerce or D to C first, and they're, they're engaging with us in order to optimize and maximize performance planning on that conversation in the future. We see those dots connect quite consistently to at least get a conversation. So all the above and then, for those who have FOMO you know, to kind of trigger the FOMO, that it's, it's a bit of this is the opportunity to get in now, even if it's maybe a mid to longer term play for some brands. Get in now while you, while the opportunity is there, while there's more access to account managers and others who are aligned incentives with you, to get your assortment online on their marketplace.

Carrie Miller:

Yeah, amazing, yeah, those are all really amazing reasons. The next question I have for you is you know, people are always wanting to know how can I, you know, increase my sales on Walmart. So what are some strategies you have for listing, optimization and just increasing sales on Walmart?

Ryan:

Yeah, you know, I know a lot of these have probably been covered repeated ways, but it bears repeating again would be step number 1 is making sure you're not just If you're gonna, if it is a secondary or tertiary marketplace in your mindset and strategy and you're not paying attention to the unique ways you need to optimize for Walmart, then unless you're kind of the you hit the trend at the right time in the in the search volume at the right time, Walmart with an optimized listing, you're not gonna see great sales lift. And so Step one would be, know the Walmart marketplace. Understand how the algorithm works, understand what product listing optimization means, understand that it needs to be original for Walmart's marketplace and how that impacts sales. And so if I was looking and we can talk about I know we've talked about this several times in the past to some key things to look at, let's just jump forward and assume you're on the marketplace, you're trying to grow sales in your troubleshooting, first step I go to is on the listing itself. Or actually the first step would be double check search term volumes, and this is easy. Segue into talking more about Helium 10 tools, because that's what we use is look at your category. One simple way to do it you can either start with your own listing or you start with competitive listings. But one way we like to do it is as well as you go to Walmart.com, go to the category and sort by bestseller, you'll probably get a lot of 1P brands, meaning in store brands, those they're popping up at the top list. But go ahead and pull up X-ray if you have Helium 10 X-ray and scrape the Top 10 out of there and then plug those in, analyze them through Cerebral and get that, that search term volume list, and identify where are the search volumes? Are you optimized for those? One thing to call out if you're in a consumable space or anything that might be more related to grocery, for example, Amazon search volumes, you might have found success with different types of search terms. But there might be high volume search terms on Walmart you haven't even optimized for Because Amazon wasn't a grocery first type marketplace or that type of place. So there's, there can be high volume keywords that would not even exist really On the Amazon marketplace that are going to be high drivers on Walmart. So identify, get, make sure you're looking at the right search terms. Secondly is just make sure you're indexing and ranking before you even think about ranking. Are you indexing? And one of the fundamental areas that you've got to look at to make sure you're indexing properly is your category. Are you on the right shelf path? But if you go into growth opportunities and you click on your listing in your kind of table of products that show up there product type widget will show up and look at that product type and I didn't try and identify. Is this the right? Does this fit? Product type determines what the back end attributes are on your listing that you need to fill out and, just as a quick aside, you need to fill those out as exhaustively as possible. It's only getting more and more important to do so. While your listing quality score is not as heavily Impacted by attributes as it used to be, your visibility and relevance are, and they only increase increasingly. Be so. So fill those all out. If, even if it's a not applicable, you know, even if it's saying sports team and you're a toothpaste brand, you know, make sure you just say none are not applicable, whatever is there, and then test the product type. We've talked about this in the past and we can talk about it again if you like. But testing that makes sure your listings are optimized. So the algorithm on Walmart's giving you quantitative feedback Between your content, which is your back end attributes, your title, images of long and short descriptions, and are you at? You get mostly ranking benefits around 80%. But if your long term play is really to be best in class and to open up other doors with potential features and other things, 95% or higher is your goal offer. So price parity with other marketplaces is key, and speed of delivery. So, whether it's using something like a deliver, we heavily recommend just using Walmart fulfillment services. They continue to get broader distribution. You're instantly credited in the score with utilizing theirs and getting 2 day delivery. So use the levers that Walmart’s given you on the marketplace, and we can talk further about other ways. If someone's listening saying I've done all that, I'm at 95%. I don't know what else to optimize. We're using WFS. There are other things to continue to do. We could talk about whether that's how do you look at imagery in a way to convert? How do you utilize advertising? How do you drive external traffic to listings? What's its impact? We go a variety of ways. Maybe the last thing I'll say, though, is the first question. The last thing I'll say is maybe the first question you should ask yourself is what's your overall business case? So sometimes we have sellers come to us and they're saying I don't want to do anything, Amazon's my main channel. I would like to sell in Walmart. What can I do? And there's going to be certain limitations. If you're saying I don't, price is going to be determined by my other marketplace, not by Walmart, or something like that, you've got to be aware of those and what you're long, how the impacts, the levers you can pull on Wal-Mart. Now there's some interesting features coming out, like couponing and different things that can maybe allow for greater flexibility there.

Carrie Miller:

Can you talk a little bit about how to product AB test your product type, because I know you mentioned that In there. Just how to optimize, because I know you know certain product types reach more keywords. So how do you just keep track of the keywords that you? Maybe you Get impressions for an ad or like how do you really determine which one has better keyword reach?

Ryan:

You can do. There's various methods. It's whether you're doing advertising. You're just saying we're not. We're not getting on to your goal when you're running advertising for any keyword. Really, if you're using search and grid, which is a sponsored product, that's what most people are thinking about when they're leveraging advertising on Walmart, you're competing for Page 1. It makes sense that from a conversion standpoint, most people aren't going to Page 2, Page 3, but literally you're competing for Page 1 because the Top 4 positions are awarded potentially for the keywords in the categories for sponsored product and the next 2 out of every 10. But you've got, on average, around 40 products on Page 1 of the listing of the search results. Those same positions are being repeated across every page. There is no, I didn't get position 1 Page 1. Maybe I'll get position 1, Page 2. Position 1, Page 1 is repeated across every page. You've got to compete for those top positions. In order to do that, keyword relevancy matters. You'll get the signals If I'm showing up and position 200 from my ad reports or whatever. Or if you're using Helium 10 again and Keyword Ranking Tracking and maybe turn on boost for those keywords where it may be and track on a real-time basis best you can, how you're performing on those keywords. Obviously, make sure it's in your title. Title has the highest ranking, has historically had the highest ranking influence on keywords. You can only get about 1 or 2 in there because you don't want keyword stuff. Then in your description both points, all those things as well. Make sure it's in your listing. If it's in description and key features, repeated just a couple of times, make sure it's readable and flows naturally. Once you've made sure it's in there, then track, get your baseline. It's not truly an experiment if you didn't really record ahead of time. Am I running an experiment? Otherwise, we use the word experiment like when we just tried something and failed but we don't know what we learned. Get your baseline, see what your rankings were. Before you try something, use Helium 10's Keyword Tracker. Then go into growth opportunities, go into pick that listing, get to that middle widget that says product type. Make sure you record which one you are right now. I've used this example in the past with you, Carrie, I believe. But one case study we did was involving a client who was in herbal supplements. Their product type it was an herbal supplement and their product type was actually an herbal supplement. The product type was a one-to-one exact match. You would assume this is the best product type to be in, but we weren't indexing for them, no matter what we did for probably 10 to 15 major keywords that we knew they should get. We went to that widget. You pick. I think it's a reporting issue. It doesn't say switch product type or anything. You have to click the link that says reporting issue. It'll give you usually 4 to 5 choices of other product type. You think it is. Basically what it's doing is creating a support ticket for you and you can submit that request of change. It's not a guarantee that it'll happen, but persistence pays off. We recommend making requests of that change once you've been informed that changes happen. Then watch for us. What we saw was in that product, all the keywords we needed were instantly indexing for and began ranking within the first couple of pages of results. That was the beginning of the journey. That's a general standard practice for us in making sure we're in the right product type as well.

Carrie Miller:

All right, that's really good. Yeah, that's a really good strategy. I've used your example many times because people ask me about that a lot. Usually, when they get in the right product type, they start to see a lot more traction. Thanks for sharing that. I want to get into advertising because we haven't talked a lot about PPC on Walmart, on our podcast here for Walmart. I think a lot of people have questions about it. I wanted to just get your. I know you have some basic strategies or just thoughts about PPC and then also some new things that are coming that you think people should take advantage of. Then, once we're done with that, we'll get into some questions from the audience.

Ryan:

By way of really brief recap for those that have been around the Walmart space, I've heard of it over the past couple of years. A lot of people were shy about getting into Walmart PPC in the earlier days because it used to be a first bid auction, which meant fundamentally different than how you would be used to utilizing Amazon. Whatever you bid is what you paid. People were just blowing through their entire budget because they were trying to figure out if they could get a keyword to rank and they thought if I just spend more, I'll get placement. In those cases they were bidding $4 a click and they were winning position 40. They were getting the click and they were spending $4 for a click on position 40. The good news is shift to second bid auction. That's been around for quite a bit now. Really, what you're talking about when we're talking about PPC is fundamentally you've got a sponsored product, which is broken down into two types of campaigns: auto and manual. You've got search and grid placement. You've got item carousels that you can get in search results. You can get item carousels on product detail pages as well as next to the buy box placement. You've got on the manual campaigns, you've got exact match, phrase match and broad match, then auto campaign is what it sounds like. You're letting the algorithm do its thing. You've got some placement modifiers. You can do modifiers for app, desktop and mobile. In some other ways you can tweak things. The big thing to know still with Walmart PPC is it's heavily influenced by algorithms. Determination of are you relevant for those keywords, and so that has a. I mean that's common practice and most ad retail media platforms. But it's a heavy influencer on Walmart. So you do need to approach it from an organic signal, cell signals as well as PPC. When you're trying to rank through PPC you just can't spend your way to the top. You need to be in striking distance. The top 256 organic ranking results qualify for placement and searching grid, but you're ultimately trying to outperform whoever's in position at least 40, or at least position 30. And so it's usually a hand and glove kind of operation of how you're going to drive signals to the platform for purchase intent, showing that relevancy, and then continue increase your PPC so that you're stair stepping your way up to, ideally, somewhere in those first four positions or somewhere on that page 1.

Carrie Miller:

How do you get to those 200 and it's 256?, like if you're at spot 300, how do you get down to that spot?

Ryan:

Yeah, it depends. It's really specific on the categories. You know, the one other element when we're talking about keywords and search volumes on Walmart is there's not as many long tail keywords. The keywords just don't go as long. So you're probably going to see a significant drop off on volumes after some of the major keywords in a lot of categories. Maybe long tails, around two to three keywords long, are going to start dropping off significantly. As kind of a frame of reference, we would say, if you can find keywords up over, if you're finding 10 keywords in your category that are relevant to you, up over 7000 in search volume, that's pretty good. There's. There are ones way bigger, but identifying those to go for to get in the top 256, you may pretty quickly already appear there. I would say pick your, maybe not the biggest keyword to put in your title right away, but maybe that second tier keyword to put it in your title and some other places, and then plan on changing it over time as you grow. But some ways to drive traffic you know whether a lot of sellers already have, whether it's influencer traffic, whether it's Google ads traffic, whatever else, if you already have a traffic funnel that's leaning to DTC or anywhere else. Consider splitting a little bit of that traffic over for a period of time to Walmart at least, and you'll be rewarded. A lot of the signals of external traffic are rewarded heavily on Walmart behaviors like certainly purchase, but even behaviors like we've, you know, add to cart purchase. Any of those elements are signals that register with the algorithm and help sending signals of relevancy to get you in that top 256. The biggest one being someone searches, finds your products and purchases. So anything you can do to do that is a big help to get that going.

Carrie Miller:

All right, that's very interesting. And then also, you've mentioned conquesting as something everyone should be doing. Could you just explain what that is on Walmart and you know how people can start utilizing this?

Ryan:

Historically you could not do brand cron questing on Walmart. You can't. You obviously can't put trademark terms in your listings. That's just a copyright issue but an advertising. Until just very recently you haven't even been able to brand conquest. Really, there's kind of some ways around that. But now you can kind of the headline. So what we'd recommend is for those brands that are starting to show some relevancy or do things and you know there are heavily branded search terms on Walmart. We've noticed Walmart is leans typically more in a lot of categories towards branded search terms with high volume. So this has been untapped opportunity for a lot of brands. Unless you're running an auto campaign to get you, you get buy box placement, you know, just under their buy box on their PDP. So now you can actually set up a manual search, a manual campaign, and you have to have, you have to use exact match keywords and you can use. Just put in every variation of that brand name in there and you can win. You can't win position 1 or 2 with that brand, but you can get beyond position 2. In most cases you're eligible to actually show up in grid for their terms and so that's one that most brands that have not been playing defense as much may still be asleep on right now. So it's a good opportunity, at least for now, until some of those brands start allocating defensive budget in that way, those brands will be again because of relevancy and how it impacts how much you have to pay to win versus someone else that's more relevant. Brands are going to effectively get a discount for defending themselves because they're the most relevant one, so they're going to have to pay less than you to defend. But if they're not really bidding on it at all, this is a great opportunity.

Carrie Miller:

I think that's really exciting because I haven't actually done that strategy at all yet. So I'm going to definitely get on that today and see what I can find, because I have found so many branded search terms that I think would be really great to target in the past, but I wasn't able to. So that's really good, okay, so let's go ahead and get into questions from the audience. So I'm going to start with this question here. It says I have two questions. So what type of keywords are better for sponsored and manual campaigns? And I guess that's one.

Ryan:

I would kind of say what I said earlier probably is it depends on what stage of the lifecycle you're in at Walmart. So if you're trying to build relevancy and it's a new product without much sales history yet, I would probably recommend starting with exact and maybe phrase in a manual campaign of those kind of second tier keywords. Go after the long, the longer tail, build the relevancy there. Every conversion is going to help with relevancy of other keywords in your listings. So begin and stair step up. Another great strategy is at the same time you might want to often will will wait a little bit to do auto campaigns or maybe do it also at the at the same time that we're starting some manuals, but with a low spin threshold, so it doesn't go crazy and pick unirrelevant keywords, irrelevant keywords, but using ultimately gold. Also be using automatic keyword campaigns or automatic campaigns to harvest the performing keywords into your manual and put those into exact match. And then the last tip I would give is using the bid modifiers in manual campaigns to really kind of take over. If you have auto campaigns as well, manual campaigns are going to perform really well in search grid and so you want your manual campaigns really doing the work for those high, high volume keywords in your grid versus maybe your auto. So that'd be a few of the tips I'd give you.

Carrie Miller:

Let's go to the next one. It says I heard you say that more 1P sellers for more might be moving to 3P. Is that good or bad for other sellers?

Ryan:

I certainly thought I didn't. I don't recall saying it, but I made up. Yeah, so the Walmart basically is leveraging the third party marketplace for a lot of reasons. One of those is historically with 1P Brands, meaning brands that Walmart has entered into a contract relationship with, where they're owning inventory and setting the retail price, those things. One of the ways that Walmart wanted to test out more of the assortment with a brand, develop a meaningful relationship, would be they would select a small subset of the products, get them in-store and distribute or online and Walmart would manage everything. Then they used to tell brands that they would do. Another program called DSV. I won't go into all of it, but it was still in an owned relationship. What we've seen is a shift more towards merchants, buyers, telling brands to put the remainder of their catalog on the third party marketplace now that it's become more mature. Is it good or bad for sellers? On one hand, good in that as you have more recognizable established brands continue to increase their assortment on the marketplace. That's bringing more shoppers, more eyeballs to the marketplace. That's good for everybody. Bad, meaning more competitive. Advertising on keywords, certainly retail media ad spend we've seen increase year over year as Walmart grows the program. That's the natural life cycle of any platform. It will certainly get more competitive. Margin's may decrease over time. If you maybe have had your business model has been dropshipping and just trying to find those places where 1P brands are there's gaps, where 1P brands aren't really owning the marketplace. I still think there's a lot of opportunity there on the third party marketplace, but they're starting to catch wind of it on Walmart as well. There's challenges there bit of both. I think there's plenty of opportunity as Walmart's marketplace continues to grow. I don't think we need to be worried right now about, are you getting squeezed out of any opportunity? This is still early stages on Walmart's marketplace.

Carrie Miller:

I agree there's still tons of opportunity. The next thing is is there a way to get your products from WFS or Walmart probably into in-store? Do you have to apply or be invited to have your products in Walmart stores? I think this is a good question because it seems like with open call, it's just US products, but is there a way for products that are made in other countries? If you can expand on just that whole process, I think a lot of people are curious about this.

Ryan:

Yeah, you mentioned open call, which is for US manufacturers. There's been different times where I think two years ago, two to three years ago, they gave FirstBot at the Apple to Walmart marketplace sellers. They got to apply first and got an opportunity. Outside of that opportunity there is if you're growing an account, if you're seeing sales and showing volume, showing growth. Some of the stepping stones would be identifying if you could get an account manager or a strategic account manager to work with on your account, identifying category manager, somebody else to begin discussions with. That starts with usually getting opportunities turned on and growth opportunities, whether that's seasonal promotions, whether that's flash picks, other elements as you continue to invest and show performance there. Walmart's team they are brick and mortar team and they're a marketplace team or basically one team. A lot of buyers and merchants will look across their whole category, even on the third party marketplace, as they're evaluating opportunity. These conversations could happen and you could ask for an introduction. We've had clients that have just a category manager. Somebody else has reached out and said would you be interested in talking with a merchant about potential opportunity for in-store? There's a lot of pathways. I don't think there's a defined Walmart's probably not going to lay out for you. Here's how every marketplace seller can contact a merchant but continue to invest in sales and growth on Walmart marketplace and those conversations certainly can happen.

Carrie Miller:

Yeah, that's exactly what I always hear from Walmart directly. They say to prove it on the marketplace, basically All right. Next, this is a good question: Any insights on the new SEM feature? Will that feature help ranking or index on keywords used as a GG search, maybe Google search?

Ryan:

We've had a few that we've worked, we've tested out. Sem. Vertic is still out right now in the early stages. Any kind of early testing. As far as depending on the goal, if the goal was measured by, do we see direct conversion at a higher row, as than you would for sponsored products, which is lower in the ads funnel, more towards conversion anyway than earlier consideration steps in the funnel. It's a lower conversion at this point but there are potential advantages. I'm still waiting to clarify this element. I believe it's true, but again because we haven't worked with a lot of resellers or people that are competing with others for their own buy box. I did hear in a recent webinar and I haven't been able to go back and fact check again by one of the product developers for SEM that one of the impacts of SEM is that you could run SEM even when you're not presently in the buy box and you could drive traffic to your instance to get the sale. For those who are struggling to win buy box, that may be a pathway to getting more sales and conversions by ads aren't going to serve on marketplace when you don't have buy box but if you're running SEM. It sounded like and again I need to. I try and fact check everything before I say it and I heard it said once and I want to make sure I heard it specifically, but that definitely perked me up and I need to go back and verify. I believe what was communicated was you can run SEM through Walmart when you're not in the buy box and direct to your instance of you owning the buy box when traffic gets there. That's one opportunity.

Carrie Miller:

Let's see. I've only been selling on Amazon since October. I have 9 reviews and 1 seller feedback. Is this enough to apply to sell on Walmart?

Ryan:

The exact criteria aren't shared publicly as to what is in that decision factor. There's a lot of factors. I'll see you all next video. What ultimate? I think that the safest thing to say is what Walmart's looking for is that you have established yourself as a company that shows that you're making good products, strong history of seller satisfaction, so customer support, and that you're a legitimate company looking to do business. The other factors they're looking for are your products, a meaningful addition to the marketplace? So are you adding products to the marketplace that makes sense to them? That's a really broad filter and subjective maybe. So I can't tell you what that looks like. If you have 9 reviews, maybe on one product and it hasn't been as long I'd probably have a lot more questions as to why you want to jump to Walmart at the moment. Maybe you see the opportunity and that might be the primary marketplace that you want to pivot to. Those are my initial thoughts. It'd be hard to answer further without knowing more context. Carrie, I don't know if you have any things.

Carrie Miller:

Well, they said something, too, about that. They have one product with multiple variations, and I actually have seen other sellers that have one product with multiple variations get on there as well because it's a new, interesting product or really something that would work well on Walmart. So it is really dependent on that, and I've seen some people get on very easily, having not sold for very long, and then others have a harder time. So it is kind of interesting how it's a little bit subjective on there.

Ryan:

And what?

Carrie Miller:

Definitely want to be established. Make sure all of your stuff is matching. That's the biggest thing. Your address needs to match and everything needs to be tight on your application. But yeah, anything else that you want to add.

Ryan:

Yeah, no, sorry for stepping on you there. Yeah, no, that was basically what I was going to say too. If you get an initial reject, don't assume that is because a human looked at your application and determined you were not a fit. A lot of the rejections can happen because the bot has looked at, maybe your information, has did not match between what you submitted and what maybe is included in your business documentation. To illustrate the point is we talked about 1P brands coming over to a three P marketplace at the request of merchants. We still get  1P brands that get rejected when they've applied on their own to 3P marketplace after they've been through even more rigorous vetting because they're in a 1P relationship already. So the bots may trip on it and it's worth reaching back out to try and appeal if you need. Even if you get the message of there is no appeal, there are usually ways to find out.

Carrie Miller:

And I'm going to just take one last question. We've had a lot of amazing questions. We're kind of running out of time here, so this one is what bidding strategies have you found most effective for optimizing Walmart PPC campaigns, and why?

Ryan:

Big question yeah.

Carrie Miller:

That's all I'd like to just answer.

Ryan:

We could do a whole another episode on this one Bidding strategy found most effective optimizing PPC campaigns. So depends again what your goal. What do you mean by optimizing? Do you mean optimizing for growth, which is going to be a lower TACos, ACoS, low RoAS, potentially because you're looking to increase market share and it's a longer play? In that case, that sponsored brand, sponsored video. I didn't talk about sponsored video. If you're looking for what's the quick wins with a higher ROAS, things like look in your category, look at the search terms Our other brands are already using sponsored video. There'll be one placement on mobile or on desktop for that search term on any page, and if you're not seeing those, that's low hanging fruit. I would go for a sponsored brand. You've got to be brand registered first, but once you're brand registered, you can create sponsored video ads. So that's one way out. Optimize I would just make sure that to optimize a PPC campaign, I think that the basics of making sure your listing is relevant and make sure your listing is optimized first, and so that'd be one major factor that we see just a lot of brands miss. They think they've got the bid strategy right and that they've got the campaign architecture correct. But if you don't have high relevancy already for those keywords, you're not going to take a lot of ground. So in general I would say you want to, in any given campaign, not oversaturate your ad groups and not oversaturate with keywords in each ad group. So maybe up to five keywords in an ad group and maybe three to five ad groups in a campaign so that you can be tracking where that spend is really going and tweaking from there. But then I'd also say the biggest level ups we've seen is when you combine really the PPC optimization with organic. So blend consider offsite traffic advertising as well in some way to blend and improve the performance of PPC. So PPC will get cheaper for you when your relevancy grows and you'll be able to maintain it more. So that's often an efficient way to optimize a bit more. No otherwise to that. But I'll end there for now.

Carrie Miller:

Thank you again so much for joining us. I think this has been a really fantastic episode full of a lot of information for everyone. I'm sure everyone that's listening will want to go back and listen to this again. But thanks again for all of your expertise in sharing the secretive strategies and we really appreciate you and we'll probably hope to have you on again another time soon.

Helium 10 Buzz 3/22/24: TikTok Shop Update | Amazon Accelerate | Walmart Summit

Join us as we unpack the latest buzz in the Amazon and Walmart world, from their exciting announcement of their conferences to TikTok Shop's strategic enhancements amidst shutdown rumors.

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We’re back with another episode of the Weekly Buzz with Helium 10’s Principal Brand Evangelist and Walmart Expert, Carrie Miller. Every week, we cover the latest breaking news in the Amazon, Walmart, and E-commerce space, interview someone you need to hear from and provide a training tip for the week.

Mark your calendar—Amazon Accelerate, our fifth annual selling partner conference, is returning to Seattle from September 17 to 19, 2024!
https://sell.amazon.com/blog/announcements/amazon-accelerate-2024-save-the-date

With a Ban Looming, TikTok Pushes Forward with New Commerce Features
https://www.retailtouchpoints.com/topics/digital-commerce/with-a-ban-looming-tiktok-pushes-forward-with-new-commerce-features

Walmart replaces plastic e-commerce envelopes with recyclable paper
https://www.greenbiz.com/article/walmart-replaces-plastic-e-commerce-envelopes-recyclable-paper

Walmart Seller Summit 2024 Announcement
https://www.walmartmarketplacesellersummit.com/

Switching gears, we talk about how you can get discounts on your Helium 10 membership with the refer a friend feature. We also share a handy tip on leveraging historical search data to capitalize on seasonal trends, proving that strategic advertising on low-volume keywords can give sellers an edge before peak season hits. So, join us for a riveting exploration of these developments and take away actionable strategies to enhance your Amazon and Walmart selling journey.

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

• 00:41 - Amazon Accelerate Dates
• 01:45 - TikTok Shop New Features
• 03:58 - Walmart Replaces Plastic with Paper
• 05:02 - Walmart Seller Summit
• 06:23 - Helium 10 Refer a Friend
• 07:25 - Pro Training Tip: Historical Ranks And Search Volume
  

Enjoy this episode? Be sure to check out our previous episodes for even more content to propel you to Amazon FBA Seller success! And don’t forget to “Like” our Facebook page and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you listen to our podcast.

Get snippets from all episodes by following us on Instagram at @SeriousSellersPodcast

Want to absolutely start crushing it on Amazon? Here are few carefully curated resources to get you started:

• Freedom Ticket: Taught by Amazon thought leader Kevin King, get A-Z Amazon strategies and techniques for establishing and solidifying your business.
• Helium 10: 30+ software tools to boost your entire sales pipeline from product research to customer communication and Amazon refund automation. Make running a successful Amazon or Walmart business easier with better data and insights. See what our customers have to say.
• Helium 10 Chrome Extension: Verify your Amazon product idea and validate how lucrative it can be with over a dozen data metrics and profitability estimation.

SellerTrademarks.com: Trademarks are vital for protecting your Amazon brand from hijackers, and sellertrademarks.com provides a streamlined process for helping you get one.

 

#545 - The Secrets of Successful Amazon PPC Campaigns Unveiled

Unlock the full potential of your Amazon advertising efforts with the expertise of PPC maestro Destaney Wishon of BTR Media, who brings a wealth of knowledge to our illuminating discussion on Amazon PPC strategies. Listen as we dissect the limitations of relying solely on ACoS metrics, advocate for sales volume and profitability harmony, and delve into her firsthand experiences with Helium 10’s powerhouse Amazon PPC tool, Adtomic. The conversation takes a turn into the synergy of PPC and organic ranking approaches, providing you with actionable insights to enhance your ad campaigns and achieve success in the Amazon marketplace.

Get ready to navigate the tricky waters of Amazon PPC campaigns for non-repeat purchase products, where we tackle the tactical acceptance of losses to build organic rank and the criticality of budget allocation for long-term gains. The episode is packed with rich strategies, including leveraging Amazon's Search Query Performance reports and optimizing bids with precision. Discover the art of juggling multiple product variants in PPC and the effectiveness of single keyword campaigns, all while managing to maintain a robust presence in a competitive niche market, like supplements.

 

Our TACoS Tuesday program culminates in a robust discussion on keyword match types, revealing how exact and phrase matches can coexist without cannibalizing each other's potential. Destaney shares her valuable insights on sponsored brand video ads, the finesse of managing bids outside of Amazon's console, and the tactics for handling unprofitable long-tail search terms. From the strategic considerations for small-budget brands to the nuances of keyword research and Amazon PPC tips for new sellers, this podcast episode is a great resource for anyone looking to elevate their Amazon advertising game and carve out their brand's success.

In episode 545 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Destaney discuss:

• 00:00 - Amazon PPC Strategy Q&A With Destaney
• 02:44 - Understanding PPC Strategy and Metrics
• 06:06 - Custom Bidding Rules in Adtomic
• 10:00 - Amazon's Impact on Organic Ranking
• 13:08 - Establishing Product With Profitable Keywords
• 16:11 - Maximizing Amazon Product Visibility 
• 19:24 - Controlling Bids for Amazon Search Results
• 21:05 - Amazon Advertising Strategy and Optimization
• 23:39 - Day Parting Strategies on Amazon
• 25:22 - Amazon PPC Strategy and Keyword Research
• 26:47 - Amazon Seller Strategy and Consumer Behavior
• 30:25 - Improving Product Visibility on Amazon
• 35:56 - More Amazon PPC Strategy and Tips
• 42:18 - Understanding Amazon Suggested Bids

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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)

► 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 one of the top minds in all the Amazon PPC world, Destaney, back on the show and she answered all of your live questions on Amazon advertising that, actually, this was no doubt the best set of questions we've ever had on the show. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think.

Bradley Sutton:

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.

Bradley Sutton:

Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I am your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that is our live monthly TACoS Tuesday program, where you go over anything and everything Amazon PPC related, and we throw in a little bit of Walmart here and there, as well. And so, for those who this is your first time to the show. What we do is we bring on an outside expert once a month to answer live on all of our platforms, your top PPC questions. There's no question that's too basic or no question, hopefully, that's too advanced. We'll answer them all. So let's go ahead and invite our very special guest. For the first time since last year from BTR media, we've got Destaney in the house. Destaney, how's it going?

Destaney:

Whoa. Well, now you have me a little nervous. You said you know, hopefully we don't have any questions too advanced. We'll see what happens.

Bradley Sutton:

Well, for you, like, I might not say that for all of our guests, but you know, since Destaney's on here, it's like, nah, like you can ask anything.

Destaney:

We'll see what happens.

Bradley Sutton:

Give us a quick bio of yourself for those who might not have heard your previous episodes and previous years here and this is the first time I'm listening to you.

Destaney:

Yeah, of course. So I've been in this space for seven years, worked everything from some of the largest brands on the platform to also the small sellers. I feel like we've worked with a lot of people that have gotten up and gotten ready and launched, and I've done nothing but Amazon advertising for seven years straight. So I think personally, I've managed over $500 million worth of spend, every category, every scenario I think I've dealt with this point. Used to be founder of better AMS, we've now rebranded to BTR media.

Bradley Sutton:

Now that we've established, you know, what you're talking about, we're just going to hop right into it. Before I get to the user's questions, I had some things I wanted to ask. I'm going to ask some questions about Adtomic. I have got some general questions, but actually, first let me get to the general question. So I know there's been a, I don't want to call it a movement lately, but maybe there's more awareness of in the industry about, hey, it's not always just about ACoS when you are trying to, you know, determine or strategize with your PPC. But my question first of all is there a certain level that that statement applies to? Like, if I'm a brand new seller and you know I don't have, you know, this big budget to and I'm not trying to build this humongous brand and try to get awareness out there, should I still be maybe using that as my primary metric? Or if so, is there a certain level where all of a sudden, I need to be shifting my metrics I'm looking at?

Destaney:

I think, in simplest answers, you should always be shifting your metrics. In the beginning, cash flow is king. That's what matters the most, right, especially as a individual seller. You are financing every next round of inventory and if you can't afford that inventory, you're not going to have a brand. And how do you make sure you can afford that inventory while making sure that, marginally, you're in a good spot, which is where ACoS comes into play, right, you can't just hemorrhage money.

Destaney:

That being said, when you're launching, you also need to make sure you're driving volume and improving your organic rank and getting more review. So I think, in the very beginning, ACoS may be less important as you're driving that velocity. It's more about margin. So, all that to say, I think there's a million different variables. We have brands that come to us and like hey, our only goal is a $3 row. As this is a marketing budget, it doesn't influence anything else. We have brands that come to us that are solely focused on profit margin at scale. So we need to make considerations for what that looks like.

Bradley Sutton:

Love it. Love it. All right, excellent. Now let's go hop in Adtomic because, you know, for the first time you and your agency are getting into, you know, using Adtomic and using it for some of your clients. You've only been doing it for a couple of months now. What are some of your initial kind of reactions, like how, what are the strengths that you guys have been noticing about it?

Destaney:

Well, I think there's a few things I want to hit on here is one, our agency has always used Helium 10 from like a keyword research, organic rank, BSR tracking perspective, which is why I was like, hey, let's see if there's better integrations we can do.

Destaney:

Everyone who's been following me knows I preach the relationship between PPC and your organic rank. So that was what was really insightful for us is like okay, let's see what it looks like. Managing it all within one tool and being able to track that overall relationship. At its simplest, I think Adtomic drives a lot of value. And giving you one view of all of that, I mean, you can go immediately into your search terms tabs and pull up search volume, and that you know. As anyone who's managed a brand, I get millions of questions of why are my sales down week over week, and being able to overlay things like search volume is super important, I mean beyond that. Day parting hourly parting is always a hot topic within the industry and being able to stay in tune with all of those new rollouts or generative AI. Those are things that most of the industry is behind on right and you've always relied on native ad console to make those adjustments. But now having in a tool that allows the simplicity of scale has been a major value add.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome. Awesome. Now, one of the things that Adtomic has released in the last few months or so is the ability to make your own custom rules. You know, we always allowed you to make a certain level of custom rules but now even for your bid management. And so you know, as we just mentioned, you know, obviously you know some people might still be doing ACoS, people might be doing RoAS impressions. There's so many different things and we pretty much allow anybody to choose like, hey, whatever you do, this is what you should.

Bradley Sutton:

This is, you know, you can go ahead and implement it in Adtomic. Now, you know, having, you know, spent some time in there, what would be your suggestion First of all for, like you know, maybe a newer seller or, you know, medium sized seller, if I'm looking to, like, create my own rules for bidding. There's literally a million possibilities so I might be overwhelmed. I know there's no one size fit all answer here, but maybe can you give a couple ideas about what you would suggest somebody to do to put in Atomic so that it manages their bids effectively.

Destaney:

Yeah. I'm going to start philosophically here, in that I always say that anytime a software opens up the Black Box and allows for rule creation, they're putting themselves in a risky position because, in my opinion, most sellers don't actually understand bid management appropriately, right. It's only like the advanced sellers that can really hop in and truly understand bid management. So the fact that you all have opened it up for everything and taken that risk is huge in my opinion because that is the biggest flaw of some of the softwares in the space is they don't give you that customization. All of that to say everyone who's like hey, I have all of the power to, you know, give myself a 5% ACoS. Be careful, because a tool is only as good as your ability to use it. Like, truly. I've audited and vetted almost every single platform.

Destaney:

I feel like we've gone through building our own rules customizations. Most people don't actually know bid management well enough to build their own rules, but if you do, I think the biggest things that we look at is we create rules for the different outcomes we want. If we're launching a brand new product, then we're creating rules that are based off sales. So we're going to be taking a deep dive into hey, what is the conversion rate and what is the sales? And we're going to build rules for maximizing that increased bid when I have a certain conversion rate.

Destaney:

On the flip side, if our goal is profitability, we're going to work backwards from our ACoS or our RoAS goal. We're going to say, hey, let's build rules that are based on lowering bids when our ACoS is too high and maybe layering in our conversion rates also low, let's go even lower, right. So those are the two simplest ones that we look at, but it really needs to be strategic. You can create rules that are based off the phase your product's in, whether it's launch, consistency, profitability, organic rank. You can create rules based off your overall business outcomes, which is always an important one is what is that key RoAS that you're going to optimize for all of your campaigns, but just making sure not to over complicate it in the beginning. And once you start to understand the correlation between CPC and RoAS, then you can start building in a little bit more customization around lifecycle and things like that.

Bradley Sutton:

One more of my questions. I get to be selfish and stop in the host here and decide when to bring in the user's questions. But just going back to that topic of ACoS versus other metrics, I think there's so many people who have for years, just that's all they've thought about and they're like well, doesn't it make sense? Like hey, if I'm losing profitability because I'm spending more for my advertising and this is how much it's costing me per sale, like should I always just automatically lower my bids because I need to be profitable? But can you explain why? No, that's not always the case. That might actually be hurting you in the long run.

Destaney:

So the reason it's become so much more important to not always focus on a low ACoS is because Amazon's search results have become more saturated with ads. I think everyone amen right from the pews here. The reason being is obviously Amazon's making a lot of revenue off their advertising but also they've done a great job of their relevancy and still having a clean customer experience. The problem with that is if you start slipping an organic rank and you fall to page two or page three. There's a joke of, you know, the best place to bury a dead body is page two of Google. Well, Amazon's very similar right. A lot of people don't go to page two and page three. So if your organic rank starts slipping, you're going to be in a tough spot. Now, why does your organic rank slip? Well, you either have a decrease in conversion rate or you're not driving the amount of sales or units as your competitors, right?

Destaney:

Anyone who's watched Bradley's honeymoon period philosophy knows that a lot of these factors influence your organic rank. So there's a level of Amazon advertising that just drives sales, and we know sales improve your organic rank. So your PPC directly correlates with your total sales, right. The more sales you drive, the better your organic rank is the more reviews that are going to be left, which is going to improve your conversion rate, which is going to drive more sales, which is going to thus spin the flywheel. So that is why it's really important to understand the PPC relationship between your total sales. You know some people we've had quite a few clients say I'm going to stop PPC completely, which is fine for 30 days. Your profit's amazing. And then 60 days or 90 days or 45 days later, their rank starts dropping and now their total sales are decreasing even more. And, as we know, with profit there's economies of scale. You may want to drive a lot more units at a lower profit margin, but still end up with a higher overall profit if you improve your organic rank.

Bradley Sutton:

Let's go ahead and hop into the live questions we've got from YouTube. RH says we're optimizing a mature campaign. How frequent should I do it and what is the look back window you prefer?

Destaney:

I'm going to start with look back window. That one's easier to answer. We typically look at last 30 days. The reason being is you don't want to really look longer than that because there's a lot of variables that are going to affect your look back window. If you start going to 60 and 90 days, you're going to be getting into seasonality. You could have major conversion rate changes over that time frame. So we like to look at last 30. Last seven's almost too small because of your attribution window. That being said, if you lower your price or you have something crazy going on that changes your conversion rate, you probably need to look at a smaller look back window.

Destaney:

When it comes to how frequently do you optimize, there's a lot of different opinions in this space and I don't think it matters too much. If we're being honest, we optimize when we have enough data to optimize. So once I get a certain threshold of clicks, I typically start making bid optimization decisions based off that click threshold, which is something that you can build out again within Adtomic. So if you have $100 price point product, you're going to need more clicks to have enough data right, because customers like to think and click and take a longer time to purchase, so really depends.

Bradley Sutton:

Next question here. This is from Steven from YouTube. How long do you think you should run PPC at a loss to establish a product? It's not a repeatable purchase product.

Destaney:

That second part of that question is super valuable. If it's not a repeat purchase product, we typically run on a loss during the organic rank period, right. When we're trying to get up to closer to the top of the page. So that way, as we go higher up on the page, that means we don't have to rely on PPC as much to drive all of our views. So that is what we use as our lever of success. If we get into the top 40 for some of our top keywords, then maybe we're going to start focusing more on profitability. Again, it also depends on what your general margins are. If you have $50,000 set aside where you can focus on organic rank, then maybe it makes sense to start from the beginning at a loss. But if you don't have that money set aside cash flow is important then maybe you need to focus on layering in more profitability-focused keywords and bid optimization.

Bradley Sutton:

And Amazon Girl says do you have a strategy to increase brand share in Amazon using PPC and what do you recommend?

Destaney:

100%. So Pacvue actually released a study, I think, two years ago, that 70% of click share goes to the top placements on the page, which, as we know, are typically sponsored ads. So we've ran this for a lot of our original CPG brands. We'll create campaigns specifically focused on top of search for two to three of our top keywords that we want to increase brand share for. So we're creating campaigns that are solely focused on brand share. That's what the name is in the campaign title. We only focus on the exact match.

Destaney:

So we have really good control and we just bid really high. We bid high enough that we're winning as much impression share as possible. Now we may not be able to afford to win that impression share 100% of the time. It can be really expensive at top of search. But we have those campaigns set aside so we can increase and decrease our budget as needed. Then you can go into your search query performance report and say, hey, for this keyword that I'm focusing on brand share. What is my search query performance and am I actually increasing brand share in that scenario?

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, I think search query performance is amazing, that Amazon has released that data first of all, and so powerful, I think, for sellers. But I think one popular strategy let me just get your viewpoint on this is like hey, let me see where my conversion rate for a keyword is better than the average since Amazon shows that. And then hey, if I'm not doubling down on or if I'm not showing up at the top of search, I need to go ahead and double down on that, increase my bid, whereas on the flip side, would your strategy be like? Maybe my overall conversion rate is not as good as my competitors, maybe I should even consider pulling back a spend. I know that's a kind of over-generalization, but is that kind of like your general strategy there?

Destaney:

100%, especially on the advertising side, like that's where a lot of people waste spend. They're saying you know, I'm selling a purple pin, this is a maroon pin, right, and maybe they bid on purple pin and their conversion rate is terrible and they're like let me keep spending on that turn, let me drive more people to there, because maybe they're going to start converting. They're not right, unless you adjust your listing to say, hey, this is purple and not maroon, and it'll hurt your organic rank if you drive a ton of traffic to terms that are converting really poorly because Amazon's saying, hey, customers are landing on this page but they're not buying. They don't need to be at the top of the page. I want to put products at the top of the page that are going to drive sales.

Bradley Sutton:

A YouTube question from Silver Arrow says how, on sponsored products, can we promote all variants to take up real estate to dominate the niche? Amazon only allows one variant to display. This might be promoting all colors on PPC, so yeah, in most categories.

Destaney:

Most, I was going to call that out.

Bradley Sutton:

You know, like you can only show up organically for one. You know, I've seen like energy drinks.

Destaney:

Yep.

Bradley Sutton:

You know like I've seen other categories too, or every single variant, but on PPC it's usually the same. For sponsored product, yep, but would I mean, I'm not saying I suggest this strategy, but theoretically, if somebody's really just concerned about real estate on page one and they are in a category where only one sponsored product or one organic can show up, would it be all right? Here's my organic rank and then maybe my sponsored product for that keyword is another variation, maybe my three. I put three sponsored brand headline, you know, ads for three different products, maybe a sponsored video for another one or something like that. I mean like other than that. Is there a way that you can force Amazon to get multiple things when it's not natural?

Destaney:

There's no way to really force it. Like you said, there's also a lot of inconsistency in Amazon testing how they're breaking out variations, so we've never found a great way to do it. Sponsored brand headline search ads the best way to show all of your variants. We do have a few brands that have actually split up, especially if it's like flavor variations chocolate protein versus vanilla protein. They've seen a lot of success splitting those up. That's not for everyone because now you're having to put PPC costs behind two different variations, right. It gets a lot more costly even though you are making up more market share. The only other small thing I would say is like from a cannibalization perspective, like you said, make sure you're running different ads at the top than what you're organically ranked for and make sure you're running brand defense ads on your product detail page.

Bradley Sutton:

Jalil says when using a single keyword campaign, do you use a top of search modifier, and what percentage do you find the best results with? I usually do 10% to 20% when using a top of search.

Destaney:

This one's a difficult, right, if you're coming from some of the other software companies in the space whose placement modifiers to optimize all of their bids. We don't recommend that strategy at BTR media because it gets really complex. If my only goal is to win top of search, I just bid really high and then also put a modifier on.

Bradley Sutton:

Thank you. Thank you. If somebody else says I like that, I always felt like it's not so popular to say that and I'm like man. Am I in the minority here? Like, why am I the only one still old school?

Destaney:

I will go a tiny bit deeper. The problem with modifiers and a lot of people haven't probably dove into the documentation on this is there's a little asterisk that says Amazon will only apply the modifier based off the likelihood of a sell. So a lot of people are assuming that every single time the click happens that modifier was applied, and that's not true. So it just, in my opinion, causes a lot of inconsistency. You want to win top of search? Go bid $50. Within five minutes you'll see you're at it, top of search, and then you'll see the CPC. It took you to get there.

Bradley Sutton:

What I tell people is, you know, maybe without Helium 10, I might do that. But the reason why I always stayed old school and just was controlling my bid was I don't need a top of search modifier. I'm not going to give Amazon the wheel in cases where I don't have to. You know like and just trust that Amazon's going to do exactly the right thing. I'm going to fully control the bid because I just put that keyword in Keyword Tracker, or actually in Adtomic, you can actually see the keyword ranks too, and within three hours I'm going to see three consecutive ranks where I can see oh, I obviously need to increase my bid, or, man, I'm already at the very top of search, you know, naturally, on sponsors, so maybe I can pull back and just see where it is. So it's like you don't have to guess where you're showing up because you just put in Keyword Tracker, put boost on, you'll know right away. It's refreshing to hear somebody else say the same thing here.

Bradley Sutton:

Another question from YouTube, Rebecca says is it still recommended to put the same keyword in all three match types? And also, does it hurt your organic rank to pause keywords that aren't relevant to your product but are not performing?

Destaney:

This is a great question. We run in all three match types for our brands because there's different purposes. Our exact match we know exactly where they're showing up on the page. We have a lot of control. Our phrase match opens up a little bit more opportunity for keyword research. So if I'm bidding on Chapstick, I'm going to start finding oh, people are typing in I don't know peppermint Chapstick or vanilla Chapstick, so it helps me expand that. Broad match does the same. It's a good keyword research methodology for us and if you have good bid management, it's going to allow you to harvest a lot of new keywords.

Destaney:

If I'm a really small brand and I don't have a big budget, I would probably only focus on exact match and phrase match internally. They do not compete. That's a misconception and I pulled our agency data yesterday on this. Exact match has driven $9 million in sales for us at a 15% conversion rate. Phrase match is also driven $8.9 million in sales at a 13.5% conversion rate and broad match was a little bit under that because we lower our bids on broad match conversion rate I think was the lowest at maybe 12%, but because we had good bid management. Our RoAS and ACoS was the same on almost all of them so they act in a different manner.

Destaney:

Right, it's still expanding. And then the other quick question is does it hurt your organic rank? Not necessarily, but you got to think it's slowing your sales volume down so it could in the long term hurt your organic rank. The better answer is just lower your bids. Right, if it's a great keyword with a great conversion rate you can't afford, maybe top of search, lower your bid to make that term profitable, even if sales slow down.

Bradley Sutton:

A lot of great questions say this is pretty cool.

Destaney:

Good questions.

Bradley Sutton:

Gregori says my ad sales are driven by 60 to 70% by a sponsor brand video. Because of that, I'm not well ranked on my main keywords our sponsor brand ads. I'm assuming he's talking about both sponsor brand and sponsor brand video. Are these helping with ranking at all? So I think what he's talking about is like maybe he's got a video and it's showing up on the Coffin Shelf page or a Coffin Shelf search results. Somebody typed in Coffin Shelf now if it was just regular sponsored product ad, that's definitely going to help the algorithm. But if somebody clicks the sponsored brand video ad from that same search. Me personally, when I tested this maybe one year, two years ago, it didn't have as much impact, if anything at all. What are you seeing lately?

Destaney:

Pretty much the same. So sponsor brands video has almost no impact from what we've seen, other than the fact that again, you're still driving sales. So there's a small factor there. But let's talk about why, really fast, sponsored products make up 70% of your sales, when ran appropriately, because they have more real estate on the page than anything else. Sponsored brands video have two placements on the search results and one on the product detail page so their real estate is so much less that they don't really drive enough overall volume to make a difference. And then when they do drive sales, it's being distributed across multiple ASINs typically. So if you just look at like the math, they drive a lot less sales to specific keywords and that's why and then sponsor brands video again is considering all of your brand halo, not necessarily correlating a keyword to a product from an organic rank perspective.

Bradley Sutton:

All right. Rebecca said hey, do you think there will be a chance to create bid rules where we can lower the bids on certain days and times? You can do that in Adtomic, so make sure to do that. We call that schedules. A lot of people just call that day parting. But Amazon, I mean, do you think Amazon will allow or will have that in seller central?

Destaney:

I do. I think it's on the roadmap. Actually, one thing I'll throw out there is I don't recommend using Advertising Console for this. So put this in the shortest way possible. Amazon has an API called Amazon Marketing Stream that actually shows you hourly insights on spend and sales. Adtomic uses that all the software providers use it. From an API perspective, Advertising Console does not give you that access into the insights. So within ad console, you cannot see when someone clicked on an ad at 3pm on Tuesday but purchased on Wednesday at 9am. Adtomic’s giving you that so you can actually day part appropriately. Advertising Consoles not. That being said, what you can do in this scenario lower your bids to the level that you need 100% of the time and then increase your bid when you're performing best right. So just inverse what a typical day parting is. Lower the hours that you think you're performing poorly, increase when you do incredibly well and just run the inverse of day parting.

Bradley Sutton:

My buddy DotadaSilva says he's got a two part question here. So what's your suggestion on a bunch of my unprofitable long tail search term reports? If he combines it all he sees $9,000 in spend with zero sales, but they have less than 15 clicks. So maybe he's got some rule that says, hey, if I find a search term that has 25 clicks, let's go ahead and negative, but this doesn't qualify as that. He says all are very relevant keywords impression is good. So what should I do? Should I lower the bid or should I negate them, or should I put them in a separate campaign?

Destaney:

If your brand is only focused on profitability, I would just pause them. I would not negate. I don't think so. And this is again. This is a difficult situation to pin on the brand. My personal opinion is 10 to 15 clicks is not enough clicks to actually make a decision. What I would do is I would lower your bid on all of those data collection long tail keywords so that way, even if you have 200 of them each getting 10 clicks each, you're not spending enough money to really make a big enough difference. You're slowly collecting data until you figure out whether or not that keyword converts at a $1 bid. It's going to be really costly to collect that data across 200 keywords and 15 clicks, right? I don't really know if it'd be valuable putting them in a separate campaign. I would just lower bid.

Bradley Sutton:

Do you skip the last two days of the look back window?

Destaney:

Yeah. That's traditionally recommended 100%. If something crazy happens then no, it's not necessary. You could still look. But fun fact, I believe the window Amazon last presented between the time that someone searches for a product and makes a purchase is over five days, right, which is crazy. So if you run an ad and you see your spending driving law spend on Monday, there's a good chance that person's not checking out until Friday, which is my whole day parting soapbox. But we don't need to get into that.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah. It's kind of, you know, like it's funny, because this is why, as Amazon sellers and this is a completely generalized statement, but we as Amazon sellers should not be looking at our strategy based on what we do as consumers, because me personally, if I click on something, I'm buying it. And then what opened up a whole world to me was when search crew performance ran. I was like, why are these numbers so low? And then, yeah, I talked to Amazon about they're like no, this is only looking at those who take action in a 24-hour window after a click. I'm like and like who doesn't buy something when they add it to the cart? And then I, all of a sudden, I started asking people and I was the weird one. You know, people are like.

Destaney:

Yeah, yeah, like.

Bradley Sutton:

I had a whole bunch of stuff to my cart and I think about it for a couple days and then I'm like what? So? So like again. This is not necessarily just PPC, but if you guys are running your businesses based on your own consumer behavior, guys, that's not the majority out there. You got it. You got to have strategy that applies to more people.

Destaney:

Yep.

Bradley Sutton:

Get the next question we got or do our first one from LinkedIn, from Tobias. What is your approach about auto campaigns? Do you just use them for keyword harvesting, or is there something more about it?

Destaney:

Auto campaigns do win unique inventory, like in stop, so they actually influence the frequently bought together section. Occasionally, you'll see a sponsored ad there. Sometimes you'll see a sponsored ads and like the lightning deal section. So that's a good reason to continue to run auto campaign. So we do continue to run them for almost all of our products. We also aggressively keyword harvest. Like all of our systems are built out for quick keyword harvesting, so we run them in segmented close match, loose match, compliments, substitutes in order to go ahead and make sure we're consistently getting great keyword research. We don't really recommend running your auto campaigns with more than 10% of your spend historically because you don't have a lot of control. But we do continue to run them because of the unique inventory.

Bradley Sutton:

Any circumstances for which you would recreate a new exact match campaign, or why a key phrase would do well under broad match but not exact. So I'm not sure this is what she's asking. But, like you know, sometimes I've heard people say, hey, I've got a good keyword. It's in my, my exact manual campaign. It just gets like very low Impressions. But then I put it in a new one and all of a sudden it gets impressions which doesn't, you know, make sense. But is that just what we should do? If we don't see it have good impressions, just try it again in a new one.

Destaney:

Yeah. It's definitely worth testing. I think you know let's talk about Chevalier's. Second point here is sometimes when you harvest a keyword from your auto campaigns or broad match and you put it into exact match, it doesn't perform as well, or the reverse. The reason being is your campaigns and your keywords attract or collect relevancy, right, Amazon's an algorithm, so they like to make database decisions. So maybe you have the keyword Chapstick in an auto campaign.

Destaney:

That's always done amazingly well for you, and the reason it did well is because it was a 17-cent bid on page 5. And then you go ahead and you pull it out and you decide to try to put it in a manual campaign at a $2 bid and all of a sudden it does terrible, and that's because it's showing up a different placement on the page. You put it into a new campaign and now you're showing up at the top of page one and all of your competitors have 50,000 reviews. So your conversion rate looks worse, right? So all of that to say test like we definitely move our keywords around and harvest a hundred percent. We also will create exact match campaigns for different purposes. We have ranking campaigns then we have profitability campaigns. They're both bidding on exact match. One of them is just focused on ranked ones, on profitability, so we do recommend that.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay then just one other tip out there for people who maybe it's on a brand new product and, no matter what you do, you can't get many impressions when you know that there's search volume for this. It could be a relevancy issue where Amazon just doesn't think that your product is what it is and the way you can kind of have visibility and not using Helium 10. Guys, put the product in Cerebro and then look at the column that I would say 99% of Cerebro users don't look at, but in my opinion it might be one of the top three things in the entirety of Helium 10 is look at the Amazon recommended rank for it. This is a live pool directly from this one thing that, for whatever reason, Helium 10 is the only one that's been showing this for like years, but it's what Amazon thinks the product is.

Bradley Sutton:

So if you see Amazon recommended rank one through 20 and it's a bunch of keywords that aren't really what your product is, it means Amazon is confused. And if that keyword is like at number 300 or maybe not even on the list, then yeah, you're not gonna get impressions for it because that's literally how Amazon decides what it's going to show you for. So that's just another way you can get some visibility at least into that. Steven says how do you, oh, it's a good one, how do you approach keywords that used to convert very well but they've fallen off for a month or more?

Destaney:

I want. I'd be very curious if conversion rate is the metric Steven's actually calling out here, or if he's looking at it for, or if he's saying ACoS used to be better and now it's not. If your conversion rate has changed, the biggest thing I'll take a look at is did your listing change? Did you have a drop in review count to review quality? Did you make a change to your images? Why? Like?

Destaney:

The real question you're asking, Steven, is why did customers stop buying my product after landing on my page, which isn't necessarily a PPC issue, right, that's a listing issue. Now there is a small portion of this which could be a PPC issue, and that's maybe. You used to show up at the top of the page and now you're showing up at the bottom of the page and your conversion has changed slightly because share of shelf is different. You're now being compared to different products depending on where your ads are, but more than likely, if it's a conversion issue, that is a listing issue. It's rarely a PPC issue. When you talk about conversion, if it was an ACoS or a RoAS issue, then more than likely your bid management changed or your conversion rate changed.

Bradley Sutton:

Jillil says, when dealing with supplements that are in a, that are a complex and not just a singular ingredient, how would you do your keyword research and PPC strategy? For example, a joint support supplement with five ingredients versus something like vitamin C, which is a singular ingredient? Destaney, what is up with these good questions?

Destaney:

I know it's a great. . .

Bradley Sutton:

I don't know like you just attract, I gotta have you on all the time you can track some of the best stuff.

Destaney:

This is a great question. I'm very familiar with this category and the core answer is Stop getting caught up in just the keyword research, right? This is one of those things where, to Bradley's point earlier, stop thinking as a seller and start thinking as a customer. No one is typically tight. Well, that's a lie. Most people are typing in joint supplements. Most people are typing in vitamin C supplement, right? So target those.

Destaney:

The problem is knowing that category. Your CPCs for both of those are typically around $20. I've worked in them very familiar. You can't afford those usually. So you do start layering in more ingredients because if a customer types in vitamin C, they don't know what they want. Right, they want some type of vitamin C. But if they type in vitamin C deficiency for so and so and so it's going to be a lot lower search volume, but they're going to convert much higher because they've done their research and they know your product is what they're looking for. So just create campaigns for both. Create campaigns for your top singular keywords that you probably can't afford but you're going to give a low budget to anyways, and then create campaigns based off the ingredients. Maybe it's one ingredient, maybe it's probiotics with fiber, I don't know I'm totally making that up and then create another campaign for probiotics with vitamins or collagen and then figure out what's performing best and scale what's best and pull back on what's not.

Bradley Sutton:

Toseef says I'm getting good sales of the good ACoS on a keyword. Should I always keep on increasing the bit of that keyword or not?

Destaney:

It depends, really. You know you're looking at this on a micro level. If your overall account is within your ACoS, then maybe just keep it. If you have a little bit room to grow, then raise your bid and drive more sales.

Bradley Sutton:

But looking at the keyword rank also is good too. If you're already at the top of the page, you know there's no sense to necessarily, you know, increase your rank because then maybe somebody else is just going to do the same thing and now you're everybody's just driving the cost up needlessly. Brent says I've got multiple products that I'm targeting the same search terms. If I have multiple campaigns for multiple products bidding on the same search terms, am I artificially driving up the bids?

Destaney:

No, the only time you have to worry about this is if you're running out of separate seller central accounts and then competing.

Bradley Sutton:

Were you surprised when the keyword report added for ASIN targeting? What's your approach about ASIN targeting and how much sales do you need for extra campaigns for specific ASINs to push them separately?

Destaney:

Not surprised. This has actually been a thing for quite some time and pretty much it's saying, hey, I'm targeting this product, but this product also indexes for these top five keywords, so let me show up there. In general, you got to consider, Amazon is moving into a more AI model. It's going to be a lot less paper click and a lot more shopper intent. That's included. I, theoretically, have seen sponsored products also run retargeting. So when things are out of my control, I try not to worry about it and what I do instead is be more concise with my campaign structure so that way I can break out my reporting.

Bradley Sutton:

Matt says I've got a variation listing. I got a 10 pack and a 20 pack. Should I drive people traffic to the cheaper option which tends to sell better?

Destaney:

Yeah, I would. So you got to think about it from a PPC goal. The only thing you want is to bring people into your listing. The lower price point is going to bring them into your listing. That doesn't mean they're not going to buy the 20 pack. We almost always recommend running on the lower price point even though your margins are going to look a little bit worse or your performance is going to look a little bit worse RoAS wise. You're going to bring them into the listing and then they're still going to buy the more expensive if they want it.

Bradley Sutton:

Tracy says how many keywords per campaign or ad group and what's a good way to structure.

Destaney:

So one thing I'm going to run through really quickly is we personally run one campaign, one ad group. We run multiple ad groups because your budget is on the campaign level. Amazon makes you set a hundred dollar budget, whatever that number is, and then, if you have multiple ad groups, you can't control if this ad group is getting $50 or $20 or $30. So I run one campaign, one ad group and then we typically put 10 to 15 keywords. There's no perfect answer. There's a lot of myths in the space. The end of the day, it's however much budget you have. I have brands that have millions of dollars of budget so I can set 200 keywords in a campaign because I know I have enough budget to collect data on all those keywords. For most people, we recommend anywhere from one keyword for your top driving to 20 keywords and not going over that.

Bradley Sutton:

Just a quick one before I forget. This is one of my questions. Obviously, one of the rules that we can do for keyword harvesting in Adtomic is like say hey, this is, if I find a keyword in an auto or broad or phrase campaign at this threshold, I want you, as an Adtomic to move this to my exact manual campaign. What is? Obviously there's different strokes for different folks, but is it two purchases? Is it three purchases? Is it two purchases or three purchases, or four purchases plus a certain ACoS? What is a decent rule of thumb?

Destaney:

When I originally started, so I'm going to throw that out there from simplicity's sake. I think I did two sales under like a 100% ACoS. The reason I kept my ACoS high is because I knew when I harvested that keyword I could just lower my bid at the end of the day. What really matters is that it's driving sales. Conversion rates another important one to layer in is like your average conversion rate. As long as it's higher than that, you're fine.

Bradley Sutton:

Sandy says we're thinking of lowering retail to. I'm assuming he means maybe the retail price to improve conversion rate. Have you seen a better conversion rate when using a lower everyday low price or a coupon?

Destaney:

It depends on your competitors. Of course, a lower price is probably going to improve your conversion rate. At the end of the day, would you be better off optimizing your listing better and maintaining a high price? Would you be better off adding more value to your product? Those are things you can consider, because the problem with lowering your price is you get into a race of chasing the bottom. All of your competitors can also lower their price. The real value add is improving your product.

Bradley Sutton:

What's been working for BTR media and your clients as far as custom images in sponsored brand campaigns and types of sponsored brand video campaigns because I feel like this changes year over year what performs best.

Destaney:

Yeah, I think the biggest thing is obviously CPCs have gotten a lot more competitive with video and creative, as people are doing it more and more.

Destaney:

So, yeah, I think that's it, thank you. I have gotten into arguments about the generative AI sponsor brands and a lot of people are like, yeah, and you know it's not working, it's terrible, but we've seen amazing performance. We've actually split test against commercial grade creatives that, like, professional brands have used, and generative AI is in line with it. Of course, it's up to your prompt, but don't over complicate it. When customers are on Amazon, they're not looking to click on commercials, they're looking to click on something that looks native to the platform, which is where I think AI does a decent job of simplicity. So, you know, for Christmas last year, we took a brand that has like 2000 ASINs and we used AI to make every single ASIN like Christmas. We just added a little Christmas tree and it did incredibly, incredibly well because people knew it was a seasonal item.

Bradley Sutton:

All right. Last question of the day, it's from a brand new person to the Amazon. I'm sure there's a lot of brand new people out there. Maybe they were too shy to ask a question, but real simple. Hey, Ashlyn says I'm a first time seller. Just give me some tips about what I should be thinking about when starting with PPC.

Destaney:

I think the first and foremost is obviously going through all of the resources available for Helium 10. I don't know if people actually deep dive on everything that's available, even if it's as simple as going through like the Adtomic training. I know Travis. I watched a few videos where he was like training on concepts, not just the software itself. Amazon advertising also has an amazing accreditation program I have to shout out. We send, we've hired interns out of high school, sent them through the accreditation program and they've been managing accounts after like three months. Obviously, we also do a lot of training on top of that but Amazon's invested a ton in their accreditation program. So when you log into Amazon advertising, you can see their learning console. Highly recommended. Every brand owner, every team needs to get certified in Amazon advertising accreditation.

Bradley Sutton:

Last thing of the day is just a hey, what's your 30 or 60 second tip, PPC related that you can share with the audience. Could be about anything you want.

Destaney:

Everybody needs to better understand the correlation between your bid and CPC and your CPC and ACoS and RoAS. That is like one of the most important things as a brand owner to understand if my increase, my bid, what happens? Right, our bid is the number one we can control. To Bradley's point, you have accessibility with the Adtomic. Dive into those resources and start understanding bid management. If you don't learn anything else, learn bid management within your tools and your brand.

Bradley Sutton:

Well, Destaney, thank you so much for joining us again. We're definitely going to be seeing a lot of videos that have training that we've been filming, that you're going to help users out there, you know, expand their knowledge in PPC. And if I saw some questions in chat asking about Adtomic, so if again the website to get a free demo, h10.me/adtomic, and then how can people find you on the interwebs out there If they'd like to reach out directly to you?

Destaney:

Can I answer a bonus question, just because it came up. Okay, so I'm going to talk about suggested bids because I see it nonstop in the Helium 10 groups and it just came up here. When Amazon's giving you a suggested bid, they're taking the average of what every single competitor's bidding and the placements on the page top of search could be $30, bottom of search could be $2. So their suggested bids are an average of all of those placements. So, yes, you can bid a lot lower and still win impressions, because you're probably showing up on page two or page three or the PDP, and you may not. You may bid the suggested bid and still not show up on page one. You may have to bid 20 times higher because you have one person increasing the auction, which doesn't influence the average. So keep that in mind. If you want to learn more, find more, I post a ton of content in the groups, on Facebook, on LinkedIn. I think is where we post the majority of our content and you know, check us out btrmedia.com.

Bradley Sutton:

All right. Thank you so much, Destaney, for joining us, and we'll see you in a little bit.

#544 - Amazon & TikTok Shop Seller Strategies

Listen in as we welcome Delaney Del Mundo, a veritable goldmine of e-commerce expertise with a rich background from Walmart to the pulsing beat of TikTok Shop and the competitive arena of Amazon. Our conversation traverses her journey from the sunny streets of Los Angeles to the pioneering days at Walmart.com post their Jet acquisition. Delaney is now the Director of the Amazon strategy team at Vendo, where she masterfully balances profit and loss management, SEO support, and listing optimization. As we explore her current role, you'll discover the ins and outs of her approach to fostering brand success across diverse marketplaces.

Tune in to hear Delaney shed light on the complexities of affiliate networks and content-creator partnerships that can make or break a brand's profitability. With the ever-evolving landscape of e-commerce, we tackle TikTok Shop's growing influence on content strategies, emphasizing the critical shift from keywords to engagement. Delaney also provides valuable insights into Amazon's new inventory fees, offering strategic advice for navigating these changes without sacrificing the bottom line. The conversation pivots to a holistic view of business health, focusing on the vital lifetime value to customer acquisition cost ratio.

In our discussion, Delaney takes us through the intricate process of using Amazon’s Search Query Performance, revealing how strategic analysis can lead to improved visibility and sales. By leveraging tools like Helium 10’s Cerebro and Market Tracker 360 for competitor analysis tools, she unveils techniques to stay ahead in the competitive e-commerce landscape. Delaney's enthusiasm for these tools' potential to revolutionize market analysis and her anticipation for future enhancements are infectious. Whether you're a seasoned seller or just starting, this episode is packed with strategies to propel your brand forward in the dynamic world of selling on Amazon.

In episode 544 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Delaney discuss:

• 00:00 - Strategies for E-Commerce Success
• 04:14 - Strategic Amazon Management and Planning
• 10:32 - Walmart Marketplace vs. Walmart Stores
• 13:09 - E-Commerce Strategies and Amazon Inventory Fees
• 20:58 - Search Query Performance for Sellers
• 21:09 - Search Query Optimization and Market Analysis
• 26:16 - Market Analysis Tools and Travel Tales
• 28:04 - Utilizing Time Tracker for Competitive Advantage
• 32:00 - Maximizing Brand Visibility and Cross-Sales
• 36:05 - Upcoming Event in Manila

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Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

Today we've got an industry expert with a lot of experience on Walmart, TikTok shop and Amazon who's gonna be giving us tons of cool strategies, including some that no one has ever talked about on this show before. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Sellers have lost thousands of dollars by not knowing that they were hijacked, perhaps on their Amazon listing, or maybe somebody changed their main image or Amazon changed their shipping dimension so they had to pay extra money every order. Helium 10 can actually send you a text message or email if any of these things or other critical events happen to your Amazon account. For more information, go to h10.me/alerts.

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 now we are having for the first time in the show, Delaney. Welcome to the show.

Delaney:

Thanks, Bradley, happy to be here. I think it's long awaited on my side, so glad to be joining you today.

Bradley Sutton:

Yes, yes, Now we first met at least you know, I've known about you because we've worked with Vendo a lot in the past, and I think I met you first at the maybe in Puerto Rico, at the billion dollar seller summit, and I looked across the room. I was like she looks like a white flip like me, which, for those who don't know us, half Filipino and half American, and that's what I am. I don't look like it. She does, and so I was like are you just what Filipinos do? Like? There's that Jokoy’s joke where they're like oh yeah, my mom was Filipino when she sees somebody. But I did that exact same thing. I'm like Filipino, American. And she's like, yep, I'm like, oh, I could. Then me too. And anyways, we bonded there and I was like all right, a fellow Filipino American in the Amazon world, we got to have you on the podcast. So no, that's not the reason why I had you on the podcast. I heard from your boss that you are an A player and know your stuff and I'm like that's the kind of person we want on the show. But anyways, Delaney, enough about me and my rambling here. Let's just start with where I mean we met Puerto Rico, but where in the world are you right now? Where do you live?

Delaney:

Yes, Bradley, I'm out in Los Angeles, so actually not too far away from you today. But speaking of the Filipino American, yes, you're right, it seems like my mom's genes might be stronger than your Filipino side. I got the Sinigang and the Adobo in the fridge. Don't worry, I'm more than I think.

Bradley Sutton:

Yes. There we go.

Delaney:

But yes, I'm out in LA.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome, is that where you were born and raised?

Delaney:

Yep, born and raised in LA, lived for a few years out in New York but made my way back here. So, plans, where do you live? In New York? I lived in the city for a few years and then also in the upstate New York area, so Nice.

Bradley Sutton:

I lived in Brooklyn myself for a couple years. Where'd you go to high school? In LA?

Delaney:

High school. I went to Burroughs High School out in Burbank.

Bradley Sutton:

In Burbank? Okay, nice. And then how about college?

Delaney:

College, Hamilton College in upstate New York.

Bradley Sutton:

So a really very rare that somebody gives me a college or university I have never, ever heard of.

Delaney:

Yeah, there were 1800 kids in the entire school. So super small community, but small and tight.

Bradley Sutton:

Well, what do you study?

Delaney:

I studied economics.

Bradley Sutton:

Interesting Now, when you graduated, did you work at all into there, or did you already find e-commerce by that time? Or what's your journey to e-commerce like?

Delaney:

Yeah, so I actually got my start over on the Walmart side of the business, so working for Walmart.com as soon as Walmart had acquired Jet. So I was part of that group of individuals and then found my way on the brand side for a few years working at Walmart.

Bradley Sutton:

What did you do at Walmart?

Delaney:

So you might have told me that, but I forgot it. No, no, no, I managed the beauty category there. So on the dot-com side worked closely with the store merchants and grew the beauty channel.

Bradley Sutton:

Interesting, okay, and then how did you get to the Amazon side of things?

Delaney:

Yeah. So then from there, ended up shifting over to the brand side. For a few years worked for a beauty brand and at that beauty brand managed all their retailer.com channels, so Zulily, eBay, Walmart.com, Amazon.com, etc. So a bit more full circle. And now here at Vendo, leading, of course, the Amazon team as well as TikTok shop, which is one of our newer channels that we launched just a few months ago now. And then, of course, as you know, Bradley, you've had some of our Walmart.com teammates on the podcast as well.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, and then what do you specifically do, like what's your specialties? I guess what's your daily? I know actually you actually do a podcast as well, but outside of the podcast, what are you doing for clients?

Delaney:

Yeah, so I'm the director of Amazon strategy, so I lead our team of account strategists here. But in terms of what Vendo does everything from P&L and forecast management towards direct management of the Amazon channel, managing advertising, marketing etc I'm more on the strategic side. So a lot of what you would look at from listing optimizations, SEO support, ranking, impact and really just understanding what strategies were implementing to hit brands top line and bottom line goals, both on the three-piece side and our one-piece side of the business through vendor central.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome, awesome. All right, we're going to start broad here and then go narrow as we go on. But you know, since you have, you know, your company and you yourself have dabbled, I guess you could say, in a lot of different marketplaces. Be it, you know, amazon, Walmart, TikTok shop is kind of like the top three. What's just your state of the union in 2024 about the trajectory of each of these? Are all still going up. Is one skyrocketing over the other? Is one of them going down, one of them staying flat? What's your outlook for this year?

Delaney:

So I think, as far as trajectory, TikTok shop has the greatest potential Just being. Their affiliate network is so strong and the platform itself is extremely simplified, so it's not hard for a lot of sellers to join TikTok shop right now, and just in terms of their affiliate network. We obviously know that creator connections on the Amazon side has been in beta for quite some time, but I think TikTok shop has the upper hand when it comes specifically down to affiliate, just because of the ease of the platform and the fact that you can set these targeted collaborations per item, per creator that you reach out to. So Vendo has an in-house influencer and affiliate team which we're able to leverage, of course, but that allows us to glean great insights on the targeted collaborations and the open collaborations on TikTok shop.

Delaney:

Amazon specifically, I mean we'll see. I think they're always on an upward trajectory, given the amount of data that they have access to and just as far as shipping and logistics, they're always ahead of the curve there. But we have to look out for specific categories. If we look at platforms like Temu, which I know generated a ton of buzz after the Super Bowl with how much they're investing in different ads, Fashion categories, we know that Amazon referral fees are dropping in some of those categories. So we'll see. Right, I think Amazon's going to probably have to take some action across categories if Temu starts to undercut price and we'll see if Amazon also starts matching there.

Delaney:

And then Walmart.com is a silent killer. I mean, they have their stores that they're able to leverage. So with their store specifically, that opens up a ton of opportunity. I think that oftentimes a lot of Walmart.com sellers don't realize that if they are, or if they have the potential to sell on the one-piece side of the business, that opens up a whole new avenue with online pickup and delivery. And many times Walmart.com sales are grossly underreported because unless you're investing in to illuminate, you don't see those OPD sales naturally. So you might think the channel is smaller than it is, but it's really larger than what it appears to be on paper, just given the level of data that Walmart actually has versus what it discloses.

Bradley Sutton:

All right, I know you're a little bit out of the Walmart game, but I'm going to ask you a Walmart-specific question because I just want to see how relevant this is. This is something that I've been telling people, but my experience is about six, seven years old now. So I used to work for this company that does supplements and they're kind of like a famous company. They would do infomercials and things like that and I was their sales manager and people don't understand the size of Walmart brick and mortar because it was like, you know, like I was so proud of myself, I grew their Amazon sales from like $500,000 a year to like $3 million. I would have Walmart PO. That was for 20 SKUs, by the way. I would have Walmart POs for their one SKU that were like in the one to $2 million, just because of how many stores you know Walmart has, etc. So it was like it dwarfs Amazon, you know, unless you're like a huge whale on Amazon. Now, that being said, like what I, a couple of things I did was I started a couple brands or not a couple of brands a couple of products on the brand on Amazon, and then I moved it to Walmart. First of all, we already had a somewhat of a relationship with Walmart and then Walmart.com buyer, you know saw that I was dominating one of the subcategories and they're like all right, let's bring this I don't remember what it was called, but it's kind of like what Amazon calls vendors, a vendor central or something, where it's like, hey, we'll buy this from you, so that's shipped and fulfilled by Walmart because it's doing well. And they're like cool.

Bradley Sutton:

And then they're like hey, it started doing well there. And they're like, hey, let's take this and let's add this to brick and mortar. And that's when, obviously, you know, sales blow up. Now For me that's what I tell people of that story about like, how, why? Even though maybe if you just start something on Amazon or Walmart, you know sales could be 10 to 150 to one Amazon or Walmart. But the reason to start on Walmart is if you start, you know, making some waves, you can start selling to Walmart and then potentially, you can just get in front of a buyer because you can't, you know, just come in off the street and say, hey, I've got this cool new product, you know, would you just put it in Walmart brick and mortar? You know, unless you've got connections, is that still valid in 2024? Like is that kind of like the process that could potentially not guaranteed, obviously, but that could potentially happen.

Delaney:

Absolutely 100%. And I think that is sometimes what a lot of brands make a mistake with on Walmart.com or just in Walmart stores in general, is they go to Walmart stores too early. And if you go to Walmart stores too early then that really does a number to your brand from a profitability standpoint. So that's why Walmart marketplace is a great avenue for you to start, because you can even get Sam support, which is a strategic account manager on the Walmart three P side of the business who can help you and make sure that you're pulling those levers and in growing your brand on Walmart.com to go to stores. So yes, Bradley, 100% a great avenue to start. And looking at again just Amazon versus Walmart strategy, it isn't just let's go bring all of our Amazon's use over to Walmart, because both algorithms are getting a lot better from a pricing standpoint at identifying different prices. So we've seen pricing down to the price per ounce standpoint. So it doesn't even matter sometimes if you're launching completely different UPCs, they're still matching. So it's really important that before you launch on Walmart.com even if you've been selling on Amazon for quite some time you think about maybe differentiating different pack sizes or just different flavors of your product. That way there is a difference there that you can grow a completely new set of products.

Bradley Sutton:

Before we get to your specialty, which is Amazon, let's talk a little bit about TikTok shop. It's a different marketplace in that I've never sold in TikTok shop, so please feel free to correct me if any of what I'm saying is wrong, but to me it's different because it's not like something that you could do traditional keyword research. I know there's some tools and helium tents working on some things now that can analyze hashtags and things like that, but you don't really have control over what's necessarily indexed or getting to page one. It's like so just dependent on just the virality of something or a famous influencer showing it. Is that kind of what you see? It's kind of like completely hit or miss, where you have the least amount of control over your success. As far as on just regular TikTok shop, obviously you have control over how you advertise and how many impressions you get, but as far as just a post going viral and getting a lot of sales from it, do you feel like you have not as much control as on other platforms, or is that changed?

Delaney:

No, 100%. You're correct in that as well. I think that's why the affiliate network is so powerful, but is also. You need a defined strategy there. You need to know your exact demographic. You need to know which subset of creators you're looking to target, based on their engagement rate, their follower count, et cetera and you really need to do a deep dive into their content to make sure that they fit the brand, because you can reach out to as many creators as you want to through there, but at the end of the day, if they're not gonna generate sales from your brand, you're now giving away free samples and that could impact your bottom line. So I think yes as a whole. Definitely from a ranking standpoint, I think TikTok shop's going to evolve in that sense. When you're setting up items, there's specific keywords that they want you to be focusing on, but those are all of the benefit driven keywords or the main claims and the listings, so it doesn't appear that, from a ranking standpoint, those hold as much weight. It's literally how many pieces of content are you pushing out and how is the engagement of that content? So it is incredibly important that you have a solidified content strategy, and TikTok shop allows you to. There's like a get inspired section and you can see a bunch of content that's currently working on the platform that you could pull from in different categories and get ideas on how you can be capitalizing on that for your brand too.

Bradley Sutton:

Moving to Amazon. I'm not sure if you have experience in this much at all or if you've looked into it, but last night I for the first time, kind of like, took a deep dive into the new inventory placement fees that are coming. I was just seeing here and there, like some I don't know, I don't want to say horror stories but people are getting really scared, like, oh my goodness, my shipping is going to be 2x, mine's going to be 3x. I'm like what, for reals? So I went and what I did was I looked in my own account and by the time this episode is airing it's going to be in full effect. So I'm sure we'll know more. But I was like, yeah, there was a shipment that I had sent to one location only. I didn't choose to just, amazon had me do it. I guess it was like a hundred units of some coffin shelves, right, and it was like 77 bucks or something, because it was like shipping from San Diego to LA and so you know like it's obviously 77 cents per unit. And then I was looking all right in under the new world if I shipped to one location in California, which is obviously my preference, because it took probably a day to get there right. And it was cheaper. It was like a 68 cents per unit charge. So I was like, wait a minute, it is like double. You know what it is Like. Have you looked into this at all and started like thinking about for your clients, like what you're going to have to suggest to them to do or if they're going to have to change the way that they send replenishment?

Delaney:

Yeah, I mean most of them right now don't send to a single location, but it is very category dependent and so that's what we've seen. So for some categories specifically, there's actually a savings attached to it, but others, like yours, of course, Bradley, you're seeing a steeper charge there. So I think it does 100% matter and that's something in which we keep PNLs on an item level and are updating those PNLs whenever a new FBA fee is introduced, whenever a new inventory placement fee is introduced, just so we can understand the impact of some of these newer fees. But majority across the board, we are seeing increases due to the inventory placement fee. So it's just something that now a lot of our brands that do ship to a single location they're really going to have to evaluate whether that is worth it for their business or not 2024, what is different than a couple years ago or even then, then last year?

Bradley Sutton:

like what are your? You and your clients having to do a lot differently. There's a lot that's the same. Hey, keyword research is keyword research. Sure, I you know there's some people who might are predicting changes that might happen when Amazon rolls out new AI stuff. My personal opinion is that might, may or may not happen, and even it does happen. I still think traditional, like you know, keyword research and stuff is still going to be important, because you still have to let Amazon know what the product is. But, aside from speculation and stuff, just what are you having to do differently nowadays, whether it's advertising, whether it's listing optimization, whether it's a plus content, whatever that you weren't doing last year, maybe a year ago or two years ago?

Delaney:

The biggest change, I think, has just been the continued focus on profitability. I think that into last year as well, profitability was at the forefront of the business, where maybe a couple years ago it was more so focused on top line growth. But now really, as brands diversify their channel strategy, their understanding that, you know, with some rising Amazon fees, their bottom line maybe doesn't look as good as it did a couple years ago. And that's where, on the vendor side of the business, we're really looking at LTV to cat ratios, because a lot of our brands might be more hesitant to discount.

Bradley Sutton:

I know what that means, but explain it to everybody else out there.

Delaney:

Yeah. So LTV lifetime value, cat customer acquisition costs. So you want the LTV versus cat ratio to be healthy. A lot of agencies will probably tell you a three to one ratio is more so on the healthy side, which basically just means that what you're paying to acquire for a new customer, they're generating at least three times that rate in their overall lifetime value. In other words, they're coming back to repeat purchase from your brand. And I think that as we run promotions and we participate in some of these tent pull events, we're getting more and more pushback from brands who don't want to engage in, let's say, a Prime Day or a Black Friday, cyber Monday or any other tent pull moment that exists for their brand. But we're able to pull reports in which we analyze okay, how many new customers are we generating during these periods? And then for that cohort of new customers, what is their lifetime value in the next six, nine, 12 months? And in many cases that metric is healthy. And if you look at Helium 10 Market Tracker 360, Search Query Performance, keyword tracker, you'll see that in keyword tracker, your non branded keywords are experiencing an increase in overall organic rank during that time. Because of that increase in organic rank Search Query Performance, your purchase share is growing on that particular subset of keywords. And then you pull back a larger time horizon and for many of our brands looking at Market Tracker 360, they're doubling overall market share, while brands that aren't participating are decreasing in market share, and for extended periods of time. So thanks, Bradley, for all the innovation on that side, because that has helped tremendously. But it's really understanding what are the dynamics in the market and when we're not participating in these events, how does our market share change?

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, let's definitely talk in a little bit about some Helium 10 tools like Market Tracker 360, but Before then you mentioned, like Search Query Performance, how what's your best use cases for Search Query Performance? And or, if you're using it, product opportunity explorer in Amazon, because I think it's so cool that Amazon has is releasing so much more data than back in the old days. Some people say, what at Helium 10, aren't you scared of like? No, it's great. Like every time Amazon releases something, it helps us make even our tools better and actually validate some of the things that we've always shown. So we love it when Amazon opens up new data points. So, how are you using like what's the? You know you could probably have a whole episode about Search Query Performance or OX, but maybe the top, like one or two things that that you think sellers can be getting value out of.

Delaney:

Yeah. So on the Search Query Performance side, it's really identifying. First and foremost we look at where is your click share greater than your impression share? This is going to be your probably subset of keywords in which there's a ton of opportunity. There just might be a visibility standpoint You're not showing up. Let's see what we can do in terms of optimizing our listings for these keywords. Looking again into Cerebro and doing a reverse look up there to see what are my opportunity keywords in which I can improve my ranking on page one four and then tying that into okay, once I do that, how is Search Query Performance cleaning insights into changes in my overall click share, impression share, add to cart share, purchase share and what does that look like over a prolonged period of time? So a lot of people might look at okay, I want to look at a larger subset of keywords to go after, but really you should narrow this down to probably your top five to 15 at the onset subset of keywords that you're tracking regularly in keyword tracker and also in Search Query Performance to see how that changes. So in Search Query Performance again, just understanding, is my purchase share growing on these terms as I prioritize them more and then putting that back into our ads. And where am I ranked in terms of my top of search impression share for these particular terms? Is my top of search impression share now growing as I want to invest more and two and more relevant for these terms? And then three, let's look back at Search Query Performance and see how my purchase share is growing.

Delaney:

And then, on the opportunity explorer side, I think that's a great tool. Just understanding, okay, how saturated is my niche? Looking at the top 90% of clicks, is there opportunity in this niche? If my brand is looking to launch a new item, that's where we see the most value in it is okay. How many products have been launched more recently within this niche? What does the opportunity look like for pricing? What does the opportunity look like for reviews? Where do we need to be at within that particular niche to be at the category average so that our conversion rate is benchmarked within the category average? And then I really love the review aspect of things, so being able to really update your content to see positive review sentiments, negative review sentiments, and how are we tackling some of these things that are going wrong within the category as it exists? So, as you said, brad, that we could talk about it for probably three episodes, but that's the basis.

Bradley Sutton:

Good stuff there. I'm just waiting in anticipation for it to be available, like in the API. Then that's going to allow Helium 10 to do a lot more, even fun things, and combining it even more with Helium 10 data points I love looking at. For example, what is your impressions compared to the search volume? Because theoretically, the impression should be a little bit higher than the search volume, because if you're showing up at the top of the page, maybe an organic and in sponsored, you would have that more. But then it's like all right, let me bring in the exact two graphs of sponsored and organic over the last week or month and like oh okay, this is why it's not where I need it to be. I need to improve. You know there's just like so much fun stuff that that could definitely happen.

Now, another tool you mentioned Market Tracker 360, a lot of you know, or some of Helium 10 users out there, might not be familiar with that tool, because it's actually one of the first tools that I think Helium 10 has. That's kind of like really for large sellers or agencies. You know, like you guys like almost everything Helium 10 has. You know we've got billion dollar companies like Lego or something using it, and it's just as applicable to a brand new seller. But this is one of the probably the first tools where I was like wow, I'm not sure I need this. Personally, I'm not that huge of a seller anymore, like maybe only I think I might have only done like half a million or 750,000 last year. I'm like I'm not sure this is for me, but some people just like yourself, you really get a lot of use. So for most people they've never even seen what it does. Can you just briefly talk about how you guys use Market Tracker 360 and how it helps you guys?

Delaney:

Yeah, absolutely so. In Market Tracker 360, you can either choose a subset of products so oftentimes you're going to choose your competitors or you choose some top keywords within the space. Those are the two most heavily used use cases that we use here. So we'll choose a bunch of the non-branded keywords within the space and we'll put those into Market Tracker 360. And then what it will do is it will pull a bunch of competitors and also your product that are relevant for those specific keywords and literally build a market for you. So, using this market, you can see what is the percentage of overall sales that each competitor is generating, as well as what is this track back to a dollar value. And, yes, we have spot checked that multiple times and it is a pretty accurate there in terms of the sales that it's pulling. So what we do is we'll include that in our product launch phase.

When we receive a new brand into the Vendo pipeline, we look at okay, how are they situated within the market right now compared to these top competitors? And of course, we know who the top competitors are. The brand has shared that with us, and then you can dive deeper into different filters that you can set so you can say, okay, I only want to filter this to a title that includes this keyword, like, let's say, the title includes protein powder or it is situated in this specific category or subcategory. That way you can really define that market even more so, and now you don't have as broader of a set of different competitors in that market. It is a lot more specific to your overall market. Or, if you only want to benchmark it towards like five competitors versus the entire market, you can do that too and exclude specific competitors from showing up there. So that's the basis of Market Tracker 360 and how we use it. But then it goes even further deeper into there's different keyword insights that you can see through Market Tracker 360. And where are those competitors now winning? How has the ranking of those competitors on the organic and the sponsored standpoint changed with time? So that's probably my favorite tool in Helium 10, Bradley.

Bradley Sutton:

Nice, nice. What about the regular side of Helium 10, which I know you have a lot of experience with? What's your favorite tool? And then my secondary and it's use case. And my secondary question would be if you had a wish list of your top thing that Helium 10 doesn't have currently, doesn't have to be Amazon, could be about Walmart, could be something about TikTok shop. What would be the number one thing? If you were like, hey, I can be the Helium 10 director of product for a day, what would you make our team get started on working for you?

Delaney:

Yes. So I'll start with your first question related to my favorite tool. It has to be Cerebro. Just going back to the roots, looking at the time tracker function that you guys have more recently added, it's probably been probably not even a year yet, right, Bradley? But that tool is extremely powerful because, again, if you have a brand that experiences a ton of seasonality, you can go back to those specific periods in time to see how you were ranked on specific terms, as well as how your competition is and also what are seasonal terms that you need to be taking advantage of. And I think that is often something that a lot of brands miss is hey, there might be 500 searches per month for this particular keyword now, but three months from now there's going to be 5,000. So what are you doing with that information? How are you getting ahead of it from a creative standpoint? How are you optimizing your listings to make sure that those specific keywords are being highlighted? And then, on the advertising side, your competitors probably aren't going to know to be winning on those specific keywords either. So you could get the upper hand by understanding I need to be ranked on page one at this exact moment of time, on the top half of page one, ideally in the top three to five slots. And once I can get there, then I know that when this search volume hits its peak I'll be the competitor that's getting a majority of the conversion share there. So that's got to be my by far my favorite aspect there.

Delaney:

And then apologies, Bradley, I'm on the second question, related to what I would like to see from an agency side. My vendor central experience probably speaks to including a few more vendor central aspects in there, just because from a purchase order standpoint that is a huge area that we would leverage. But honestly, I think from an FBA standpoint I would have to say forecasting, because I think that inventory management is a huge challenge for a lot of brands and forecasting allows us to better understand what our projections and what our inventory demand is going to look like throughout the year. And then my second one, if we're throwing things in here, would just be variations. So I know with inventory protector you can update maximum order values and things like that. If we could directly change variations in Helium 10 or really be able to decipher, maybe even submit cases for variations that are wrong some more technical things there, but all things that I feel like would be extremely powerful, because that's where a lot of time is spent trying to update things that maybe Amazon is using. It's not updating, even after multiple cases.

Bradley Sutton:

Cool, cool. Now, before we get into some of your final strategies of the day, if people want to reach out to Vendo Commerce guys, one of the easiest ways is just go to hubhelium10.com and type in Vendo, which is Spanish for I sell. So whoever made that company name is a genius and you can reach out to them there. But if people want to follow you or reach out to you, how can they find you on the interwebs out there?

Delaney:

Yes, you could find me at delaney@vendocommerce.com and, as Bradley said, also have a podcast that I know Bradley will be joining me on in a couple weeks Vendo Commerce Velocity as well as on LinkedIn. I'm on there, delaney@vendocommerce.com.

Bradley Sutton:

A couple, maybe quick hitting SST, what I call my 60-second strategies. By the way, that's also something that comes from my Filipino side, because I think that's how our mothers or grandparents would call us when they're trying to. You know, come over here. But anyways, for everybody else, that just stands for a 60-second tip. So what is a couple of 60-second tips or strategies that you can talk about that our sellers can influence?

Delaney:

Yeah. So, from a more data-centric standpoint, make sure you're leveraging both Helium 10, Search Query Performance and product opportunity. Explorer tons of insights and the way in which you're telling a cohesive story for your brand. If you combine those tools, they're not meant to be used in silo, they're meant to be used together, but also from a competitive aspect, using the video placement aspect and sending videos. Putting videos on your competitive ASINs is something that's really fundamental, but at the basis of it is just more organic visibility for your listings. So, again, you can add your own branded videos onto competitors listings within the video manager. A lot of brands don't do this, but they will show up if the full video stack is not filled by your competitors. So something to look out for.

Delaney:

Also, from a cross-sale standpoint, a lot of brands aren't currently leveraging things like targeted cross promotions in which you buy one product and you get 5% to 10% off another product, or the add an accessory widget. A lot of brands think that, yes, that's probably only a SaaS core function if you are investing in that program, but we've seen through filing of multiple cases, you can have that add an accessory widget pop up there and then, just in terms of prime, exclusive discounts. I know that sometimes, and more often, you're seeing that when you add SKUs and prime exclusive discounts they might be getting rejected. So for that I would suggest creating a new SKU, and what we've seen that is that if a SKU is being flagged specifically for FBM or for internal policies, then you can create a new SKU. Add that new SKU instead to your prime exclusive discount and it will still run because that history won't be tied to that new SKU. So those are a few things, but on a larger basis. For a 60-second hack let's say a very not even hack, but tip is to know your PNL, and Amazon has a lot of different tools. Helium 10 has a profits tool to help you understand that. But you do need to understand how much margin you have to work with and evaluate your PNL on a weekly and even a monthly basis.

Bradley Sutton:

All right. Well, this has definitely been a strategy field episode. Now, on the personal side, you got married last year, so congratulations. Where was your honeymoon? I was living vicariously through your Instagram honeymoon, but where was it Wasn't Maldives. It wasn't the Maldives honeymoon.

Delaney:

I know, but where'd you guys go? You're going to need to change the name of your honeymoon launch strategy, Bradley, but we went to Italy and then we ended up in Santorini. So a bunch of different spots in Italy and then Santorini in Greece was my favorite.

Bradley Sutton:

What's some of, overall, your favorite travel spots. Is that something you do, or was that you know? Do you travel with any kind of frequency, or are you more of a homebody?

Delaney:

Trying to travel more usually, stay stateside, go to Hawaii a decent amount. I can't really get tired of Hawaii, but in terms of some of my favorite places I've been, probably Spain is at the top of the list. So many great places in Europe. But I would say if you haven't been to Santorini, I don't think I'd ever be able to go back, but it is definitely worth a visit.

Bradley Sutton:

Speaking of Spain, you got to get Darren to send you in May, probably our next Helium 10 Elite workshop. You know we do a quarterly workshop is probably going to be in Madrid in May. So business, business trips/second honeymoon bring your hubby along and, you know, soak up the nightlife in Madrid and the museum. I like, I like how it's both. You know like I can hit those like really cool museums and architecture, and you know they've got good restaurants and nightlife over there. So tell Darren, I'll put in the good word for you. Let's, let's hang out in Madrid next year.

Delaney:

Yeah, we'll put in the good. I will definitely be bringing that one up to him. So thanks for that, Radley. And then we'll have to make a trip to the Philippines.

Bradley Sutton:

Yes, well, I'm actually going soon. The Amazon is doing their first event, or not? For the I missed their first event, actually in March, but or in February, I should say. But they're actually doing another event in a couple of months, so, offline, I'll give you some details that they haven't finalized a date on that. But yeah, there's second every event in Manila, and so there we go. You can go and visit some family too and support the community out there.

Delaney:

There we go. That sounds great. I definitely need to go back.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome, all right, well, thank you so much for joining us and it was great to see my sister from another mister right here on this show, and I look forward to being on your show in a couple of weeks.

Helium 10 Buzz 3/15/24: Amazon Big Spring Sale | New AI Listing Help | FTC Investigating Fees

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, interview someone you need to hear from and provide a training tip for the week.

Amazon’s new Big Spring Sale is coming March 20-25—here’s everything you need to know to shop deals on spring essentials
https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/retail/amazon-big-spring-sale-faq

Amazon now lets sellers create listings through a URL by using AI
https://techcrunch.com/2024/03/13/amazon-now-lets-sellers-create-listings-through-a-url-by-using-ai/

Exclusive: The FTC is probing Amazon’s new controversial fees in its $140 billion seller business
https://fortune.com/2024/03/08/ftc-amazon-seller-fees-inbound-placement-low-inventory-antitrust/

Everything you need to know about Amazon Business, one of Amazon’s fastest-growing ventures
https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/what-is-amazon-business

NEW Store Spotlight format - Custom Image links to store subpages!!

Also on the docket is Kevin King's upcoming free live strategy webinar which promises to be an invaluable resource for Amazon sellers of all levels. Discover new earning avenues with Helium 10, and get the scoop on the expanded day-parting schedules for ads that could change how you place your ads based on time-of-day performance data. Plus our training tips of the week talk about how to use the Helium 10 Profits tool’s Expenses tab and the Inventory Heat Maps tool. Don't miss out on these insights that could make all the difference to your e-commerce success.

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

• 00:56 - Amazon Big Spring Sale
• 02:20 - Amazon AI Listing Tool
• 03:24 - FTC Investigating Fees
• 04:44 - 2 Factor Sign On
• 05:35 - Amazon Business
• 06:53 - New AD Type
• 07:34 - Meltable Inventory
• 08:31 - Live Webinar with Kevin King
• 09:32 - New Feature Alerts
• 13:15 - Pro Training Tip: Profits Expenses Tab & Inventory Heat Maps

► 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:

A non-Prime Day event was announced by Amazon. You can use Amazon AI to create your listings. If you've got a website. Soon, you have to use two-factor sign-in for signing into Seller Central. These stories and more on today's episode of the Helium 10 Weekly Buzz. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Series Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I am 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 going on in the Amazon, Walmart, and e-commerce world. We let you know what new tools and features Helium 10 has come out with and we give you training tips of the week that will give you serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. Let's see what's buzzing Couple news articles that might be of note, and something that just kind of came out of left field that I didn't even know about was that Amazon has this sale event that's coming up out of nowhere next week.

 

Bradley Sutton:

It's not really a prime day, but it's kind of like a prime day. It's called the Big Spring Sale. It's going from March 20th to 25th. Now, I haven't been paying much attention to announcements. As far as deals and my deals dashboard, was there something announced about this? Could be, but maybe I missed it, my bad. But basically this is not a Prime Day because it's not only for prime members. Now, some prime people get exclusive discounts on some things, but this is the very first ever event of its kind and there's going to be all kinds of different discounts. Amazon says here People are going to be able to shop these deals at Amazon.com forward slash big spring sale starting on March 20th. Now again, I don't know too many details about this, but Amazon is really pushing this out. It was all over the news. So even if you didn't jump in and run a deal during this time, well, first of all, you might be able, you might want to do some kind of deal during the 20th to 25th or, at the very least, be on the lookout for increased traffic during this time, all right, so it might be a time to do a coupon if you were so inclined, or might want to check your PPC budgets a little closer, just in case there's a lot of extra traffic that might be happening due to Amazon promoting this event.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Next article is from TechCrunch and it's entitled Amazon now let sellers create listings through a URL by using AI. All right, so in the list your products basically let's say you haven't sold on Amazon before, or at least you haven't sold a certain product Instead of just putting the name of the product in the search bar. You know, like normal, let's say you've got a Shopify website or your own.com website where that product is listed, you can paste the URL of your product into the Amazon Create Listing page and it's going to use generative AI to kind of like extract the details of the listing and create like a description for you. So it's interesting, you know, if you're somebody who trusts AI a lot for this kind of thing, this is a completely free service. From what I understand, it might be worth a try. So I know Amazon really wants to promote off Amazon brands, to get on Amazon. I think that this is one of those things that could definitely help them.

 

Bradley Sutton:

On the flip side of Amazon news, fortune.com is reporting that the FTC is probing Amazon's new controversial fees in its $140 billion seller business. All right, so this is the fees we've been talking about on this show for the last few weeks, and so many sellers are in an uproar. First of all, don't forget, guys, check back on our weekly buzz. The last couple of weeks, we show how it's not as bad for many sellers as it seems to be due to the reduced FBA fees. But, yeah, like there's some serious stuff going on, especially for those people who are doing pallets and truckloads and containers and things like that. I'm seeing people having to pay thousands of dollars more for shipping. Now the funny thing is, what have I been saying for like a year about this FTC case? The FTC case is like full of nonsense that not one Amazon seller could care less about. They think that they were pulling a gotcha on Amazon for this, that and this, and literally they have no clue how Amazon sellers feel, because there are so many other things that Amazon sellers are concerned about, the things that the FTC was trying to like focus in on. However, that being said, for the first time, hey, this is something that is concerning to Amazon sellers, and so it's going to be interesting how this plays out. For the first time, the FTC might actually have something that Amazon sellers are worried about, and so let's see how this investigation pans out.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Next article is from your Seller Central dashboard and it's entitled to factor authentication will be required for Seller Central sign in. Some of you guys have that already, but this is going to go in on March 28th and you're going to have to use a mobile number or authenticator app to do it. All right, so this, guys, is is, in my opinion, highly recommended even before March 28th. There's so much like hacking going on out there and password hacking and things like that. I think on most critical websites, especially your Seller Central account, you should have two factor authentication. On matter of fact, you should have two factor authentication on a helium 10. All right, guys, you know the helium 10 always has that available. So if you don't have that on Seller Central or helium 10, go in there, turn on two factor authentication to keep your accounts secure.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Next article is from Amazon. Now, this was interesting to me because it says everything you need to know about Amazon business, one of Amazon's fastest growing ventures. All right, so I think most of us have known about the Amazon business program, where you can kind of, or businesses who are registered with Amazon, when they shop, they have a little bit different experience. They can get like quantity discounts and just business discounts and they see different things. It actually reached $35 billion of sales in 2023. All right, so this is quite interesting. This article goes on and say more than 6 million customers are now buying on Amazon business. This includes small and medium sized companies, and also Fortune 100 companies use Amazon business, such as Intel and City and John Hopkins University, et cetera. Now if you want to get more information to see, are your listings, are you enrolled in Amazon business? You know what's going on there. Just just going to Seller Central guys and type in Amazon business and you'll go to this dashboard where it talks about the Amazon business Seller program, all right, and has a whole bunch of frequently asked questions, tons of details about the ins and outs of this program. But it's kind of a surprise. It was kind of surprising to me to find out that that is actually one of the fastest growing programs that Amazon has.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Next article is not really an article, just a post from Destaney’s LinkedIn, where she discovered, or her team discovered, a new ad format. All right. So this is something that she says combines the traditional sponsored brand format of showcASINg three ASINS with a custom image, but also layering them in the value out of a store, spotlight add and the sub page navigation and she put here a sample of that where you can see like the different links here in that custom image. So that is going to be interesting if this is going to be rolled out to everybody. Has anybody actually had access to this and been able to test it out? Let me know. In the comments below Last article, something that we have now reported on, I think four years in a row that's how long we've been doing the weekly buzz. Always around this time of year the same little article comes out, just as a reminder. So I'm just going to go ahead and throw it out there again.

 

Bradley Sutton:

By April 15th, guys, you have to remove multiple inventory from Amazon. Now, a funny thing is is when I was typing out, the little ticker that you see here on the side, meltable, doesn't seem to be a word that my spell checker understands, like I always thought meltables are. Anyways, I digress, meltable is a word to Amazon and you should know what your multiple inventory is Heat-sensitive products, you know, chocolate, gummies, jelly and wax based products. You have to get those out from April 15th to October 15th or else Amazon's going to toss it All right. So just make sure to go ahead and take care of that. All right.

 

Bradley Sutton:

One thing I wanted to give you guys a heads up on is that Kevin King is doing a live strategy session. He hasn't done this in probably over a year from helium 10. It's going to be a live webinar and you guys can actually tune in. H 10.me forward slash Kevin King live. All right, so you can register there. H 10.me forward slash Kevin King live 100% free webinar that he's giving on March 21st, Thursday at 9am. All right, this is so important. I'm going to be doing it at midnight from the Philippines. I'm going to be on the webinar with him and he's going to give such strategies as two proven techniques to make a million dollar main image, seven AI tools Every Amazon seller should be familiar with and a lot more high level strategy. So, regardless what level Amazon seller you are, make sure to register for that workshop. h10.me/kevinkinglive.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Let's go ahead and hop into the Helium 10 New Feature Alerts of the week. The first one is a way to make money now with helium 10. Just as a regular user. There's two different ways, all right. The first way is you guys can actually go to your dashboard and on the on the very right hand side where it has your name. Might be hard to see it here on my window, but if you click on your name on the right hand side of helium 10, you're going to see a button that says become an affiliate, all right. So that's, if you have, like a community or you know, YouTube channel and you think you've got people who are, who are following you out there, well, becoming an affiliate, you could get 25% commission for life, all right. So somebody clicks on your ad for helium 10 or a video or a link that you put out for helium 10. They sign up for helium 10. You don't even know who they are. You've never talked to them and you never talked to them again for the rest of your life, four years from now. If they're paying helium 10, a hundred bucks a month, guess what? You're getting a check for $25 every single month for life, all right. So that's a pretty cool thing. There's also, for some reason it's not in my account, but I think most everybody else if you click on that your name you also have something that says refer a friend or something like that, or refer a customer, where it's not an affiliate whole plan. But if you just have, you know, like a buddy who wants to start learning Amazon, you want to get him started. In the freedom ticket program you can get discounts on your own membership by signing people up. So there's two new ways to make money with helium 10 becoming an affiliate or doing the customer referral. So again, check that out on the right hand side of your dashboard.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Next update is in our tool inventory management. All right, so something that people have wanted for a long time is the ability to have multiple warehouses, multiple 3PLs A lot of people they have, they don't have or they're not like me, and they have all of their inventory in one warehouse. They might have a East Coast warehouse, a Texas warehouse, a West Coast warehouse. Well, now, if you go to your inventory, you're going to have the ability to add multiple warehouses. So it's right here on your warehouses page, you can add as many as you want and then put the specify the inventory that is in each of those warehouses and then, basically, when you send inventory to Amazon, you choose which warehouse is coming from. The inventory is going to be drawn out from there. So remember, last week we announced that we now have inventory management for all of the European marketplaces. Well, now we have multi warehouse management for this tool. Anything else that you guys would want for inventory management, please let us know.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Last Helium 10 New Feature Alert is in atomic and it's our day parting schedules now released for all ad types. And then it's also across all of North America, all of Europe and all of Asia. All right, so you can look at your sponsored product, sponsored brand and even sponsored display, heat day parting, like heat maps if you were. So that's like. Here I can see, hey, for my whole account. Oh, my goodness, my a-cost at 3 am Is absolutely abysmal. You know, maybe I want to turn off my ads or lower my bids at that time, but hey, my a-cost at this other time might be pretty good. Maybe I want to increase my bids, maybe I want to pause my bids, maybe I want to increase my budgets. All these things that you want to do, you need to do it based on information, and so what helium 10 is showing you is the performance of your PPC by Time, hour of the day and by day of the week, and even by your Campaign. So make sure to check that out. If you have atomic day parting across all marketplaces, all ad types. All right, let's get into our training tip of the week. There's actually two things you know.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Thinking about the Amazon fees, I think that a lot of sellers are very conscious about, hey, I need to save pennies wherever I can. I need to know where my money is going. So there's a couple things that I want to show you that every single helium 10 member has, whether you have platinum or diamond, or even if you have the starter plan. All right, so these tools are in profits. Now the first thing I'm going to show you is your expenses, all right.

 

Bradley Sutton:

So did you know that with it, just a couple of clicks, you can find out how much you are paying Amazon per month, like, for example, my FBA fee charge for storage in February last month? I can see right here is a hundred and eleven dollars. That was actually up by forty dollars over the previous month. If I'm wondering which are my products that are getting those storage fees, I just hit that button for the February month and I can see at the ASIN level everything that I am paying storage on. I can see Wow, I got fifty dollars worth of storage for these bat bath mats that I just launched. All right, kind of sucks I shouldn't have, maybe. I'm like why do they have to pay fifty dollars? When I just launched it? You know How's that, but whatever, if I think it's right or wrong, at least I have visibility and I'm not just throwing money at Amazon Without knowing where it's going. All right. So make sure to check that out and then, as you guys might have seen from my workshop last week that, or a few days ago that we did you have a way to automate this where, if you're getting more storage fees or more refunds, things like that, you can actually Automate this alert and have helium 10 let you know that your storage fees are going up. All right, so that's on your insights dashboard. One more thing that is going to help, like when you're launching and help me when I was launching is Are the heat maps inside of helium 10? All right?

 

Bradley Sutton:

So, for any of your products, if you are just about to launch, you might want to make sure that your inventory is Distributed across the country. So the way you can do that is go down to one of your product tables like I'll go ahead and pull it up here for the bat bath Matt and then you want to hit inventory maps. Okay, and then now you're going to see the map of everywhere where your inventory is, and I can see here. I don't even have any in Texas, maybe they. That seems weird to me. You know Austin has some of the most bats in the world. Why don't they send any inventory to Austin? You know, for for my bat shaped coffin mat, but tons of inventory here in New Jersey, more inventory in Maryland, over here, Utah and Florida, and then I could also see my sales distribution based on certain times of the of the month, or I can look at it at the state level, or in the past week, in the past month, whatever, and I can see wow, okay, I've got a lot of sales in Florida during this couple day time period, so maybe that's why there's they sent so much of my inventory to Florida. So make sure to check out those heat maps.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Sometimes, when you're launching a product, you want to wait until Amazon distributes that inventory a little bit more evenly across the country, so you might have your maybe listing closed for a couple days until they distribute it more. And then that's when you turn on your PPC. Well, instead of being blind about where Amazon has distributed your inventory or trying to find some hard to find report inside of seller central. Just go into profits. Go into inventory heat maps and see every single warehouse when your inventory is across the country. All right, guys. Thank you so much for tuning in this week. That's all for the news and feature alerts. Make sure to tune in next week to see what's buzzing.

#543 - VAT, Compliance & International Expansion For Amazon Sellers

Join us on this episode, as we sit down with Jerome de Guigne, a seasoned expert in international business and Amazon marketplace strategies. We take a trip across Jerome's impressive business career, which stretches from France to Luxembourg, and uncover the crucial steps he took to carve a niche in the world of Amazon. Listen in as Jerome lays out the intricate process of aiding brands in scaling their operations and mastering the art of value creation on this global platform.

This conversation also welcomes Jacob McQuoid from Avask and throws light on the hurdles U.S. companies face when stretching their commercial footprint to European shores, such as VAT intricacies, regulatory hoops, and the ever-present language barriers. But it's not a one-way street; European entities eyeing the U.S. market have their fair share of VAT tax complexity to navigate. We bring in perspectives from professionals at firms like Avask and explore tools like Pacvue and Helium 10, providing a lot of insights for Amazon brands planning to cross these transatlantic bridges.

Finally, we touch upon the wisdom of starting small and testing the waters when it comes to international expansion. This approach allows businesses to minimize risks and optimize for market receptivity, a strategy underscored by the shared knowledge from this episode. So whether you're an experienced Amazon seller or new to this realm, this episode is packed with invaluable advice and strategies for taking your Amazon business to new international heights.

 

In episode 543 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley, Jerome, and Jacob discuss:

• 00:01 - Expanding Amazon Sales With European Experts
• 02:49 - Value Creation Through Amazon Specialization
• 06:45 - International Expansion Strategies for Amazon Sellers
• 09:25 - IRS and European Tax Authority Comparison
• 16:51 - Navigating International Business and Online Presence
• 20:10 - Navigating VAT and E-Commerce Expansion
• 22:38 - Understanding VAT for American Sellers
• 29:39 - US Sellers' VAT Number in Europe
• 31:08 - Comparing Import Tariffs
• 35:24 - Starting Small for Market Testing

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Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

Are you a North American seller interested to expand to Amazon Europe, or maybe vice versa? Are you interested in advanced Amazon advertising strategies? Well, today, I went to Germany to interview in person two experts on these topics. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think.

Bradley Sutton:

Want to keep up to date with trending topics in the e-commerce world? Make sure to subscribe to our blog. We regularly release articles that talk about things such as shipping and logistics, e-commerce in other countries, the latest changes to Amazon Seller Central, how to get set up on new platforms like New Egg, how to write and publish a book on Amazon KDP and much, much more. Check these articles out at h10.me/blog.

Bradley Sutton:

Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I'm 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. Another episode here coming from the opposite side of the world. I'm in Frankfurt, Germany and was able to interview a lot of different people. For the first time on the show, we've got Jerome here. Jerome, welcome.

Jerome:

Thank you very much. I'm super happy to be here and it's nice to see you on this part of the world.

Bradley Sutton:

Excellent. So you know, like I do with first time guests, we need to find out about you. And this is important too, because, like I don't know much about your back stories. What country in Europe are you from? Germany, France, so I have.

Jerome:

I'm all about going international, so my background is international also. I was born and raised in France but my mom is British. My dad is French. I lived in France but I also lived in Turkey. I lived a bit in Germany, in the UK and now I'm office design Luxembourg. So a lot of different experiences all over the world.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, excellent, excellent. Now, what did you? Where did you go to university? In what country?

Jerome:

So I went to university mainly in France, so first in the nice city of Grenoble, which is not too far from Lyon. It's in the Alps Mountains, really nice to do like business and management. And then afterwards I did an MBA in a school in Basin Paris but had campuses in Germany and in the UK and also in the States. I did a week in Texas, for example. It was really interesting. So like multinational is really my thing.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, excellent. Now, upon graduation, did you enter right into the business world and what you had studied, or what did you do?

Jerome:

So I went to work two years into the chemical business at that time it was called Atofina Archema. Now, it's like I was helping the head of the subsidiary there. So doing a lot of things, helping on IT topics, on business topics for two years. And then I came back and I worked for 10 years for a Chinese group and that's where I started to work in Luxembourg. And then afterwards, I was looking for a job and couldn't find one. So I said I'll start my own company.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, and what was that company?

Jerome:

So at the beginning my idea was say, okay, I want to bring value, because when I did my MBA it was all about okay, how do you create value for your ecosystem? Because value has a price and you know, and then you can sell. So my first idea was to help people expand and grow in terms of sales. But I had been doing a lot of Amazon business in my previous company and like, step by step, I found out that a big pain point for people in Europe at that time so 10 years ago was not understanding Amazon and I said, oh people, it's simple, let me explain to you. So I went into step by step into the Amazon business and that's where we become specialized in Amazon.

Bradley Sutton:

Amazon is not a typical segue from somebody just coming from the business world. How did you first, just you know, think about that as a good aspect, you know, like Google or friends?

Jerome:

So my background was really distribution, since I was head of Europe and EMEA for this Chinese brand and we were expanding into countries having subsidiaries, having distributors, and so it's about selling right and then I started to work with companies and helping them expand and actually even 10 years ago, the or even more 10 years ago, the fastest way to expand was Amazon and it actually really started when a German brand I knew from before told me okay, take care of the international distribution of our brand, which was binoculars, and I said, okay, well, you know, the best way is really Amazon and that's where we really started to go there. So we mostly started from vendor background because bigger brands were working on vendor and now we have probably 70% seller, 30% vendor in terms of people we help.

Bradley Sutton:

So what about you? During this time, were you selling on Amazon yourself as well?

Jerome:

So I never sold on Amazon myself. I was always selling in the name of a company and, like I said, I started as a vendor, so selling to Amazon rather than selling on Amazon, and I've been helping a lot of sellers but never sold myself. Help friends. But, yeah, never went into it. It's a bit of a dream at some point to do that.

Bradley Sutton:

For your agency for the last few years, are you focused on any particular aspect of Amazon or like PPC, for example, or it's A to Z? What is your focus on? What you help sellers with?

Jerome:

It's very much A to Z we focus. We've got three main topics we focus on. One is global expansion, so it's helping anyone to go from Europe to the US, from US to Europe to US to Japan, to anywhere in the world, and it's really whatever they need. That's the first thing we focus on. The second thing is retail media. It's one of the big topics we do is like how do we help them expand better thanks to retail media. So advertising, PPC, DSP, AMC, whatever there is. And the last thing is technology.

Jerome:

So we're not a SaaS company but we use a lot of tools. So Helium 10 is one, Pacvue is another one. We also partner with SalSify, for example, on the PIM side, and we have built our own dashboard. So those three topics Global Expansion, Retail Media, technology are three topics we're very focused on and we try to help people through those different things. So it's really, for me, it's A to Z especially in those aspects. So anybody, for example, we've started to sell on our own accounts for brands who can't sell. So for me, it's like an additional. We're not really a distributor, but if a brand can't sell themselves, it's okay. We'll set up a seller account and we have one in the US. We have a seller account in Europe and we have one in India also, for example. So anyone who wants to expand in any way, we are here to help them.

Bradley Sutton:

Let's talk about the first thing you mentioned about the international expansion. I mean, there's probably 35 different combinations you can have. You know, Japanese person selling on America, European person selling in Japan, a person from Dubai selling in Mexico, you know, etc. etc. Let's talk about some of the more common ones. Probably the most common for our listeners would be I'm a US-based company doing pretty well. Now I want to get started in Europe because that's the second and third biggest marketplaces, UK and Germany. The thing the elephant in the room for a lot of people is like oh my goodness, VAT and things like that. So what are some of the main obstacles and maybe difficult things to navigate for an American company who wants to get started in Europe?

Jerome:

Great question. For me, the three things. The first thing is regulations and taxes. Regulations. So the thing is like am I allowed to sell those products in Europe? We're talking with a supplements brand, for example, in the States, and it's like okay, the way you talk probiotics, for example, or can you have that keyword on your listing all of that? So that's a first hurdle. We today were speaking with AVASK and AVASK is a great partner. We partner with to deliver, like VAT services and also help on regulation.

Jerome:

The second thing is languages. Obviously, you need to have a great service and you need to have great content for the local people and that's something we are partnering also with a company, YLT Yanak Krekic, who's delivering great service, for example. So typically, we create a hub of people we work with. And the third part is logistics, supply chain. It's like, okay, how do we? Will you get your products to Europe? Like, will you have a warehouse in Holland? Will you go directly to FBA? Who will be your importer of record? That also we work with AVASK and some logistics company. So, even before going into advertising, content and everything, you've got those three things as regulation, translations, in a sense and supply chain.

Bradley Sutton:

What are some of the steps that somebody needs to take as far as the basics that everybody needs to do? Like you know, there are some things that are kind of like nice to have. There's some things that are need to have. For example, let's talk, you know, let's talk about the need to have for getting started in Europe. I don't need to form a company in Europe. I can use my US company, but I need to. What something that everybody has to do? Is it the VAT register for VAT?

Jerome:

Yeah. So one thing you can't. Well, same way as in the US you can't play around with IRS, right, and in Europe you can't play around with the tax authority. So VAT is a must and my recommendation is that, typically, Amazon tends to underplay and when they sell the service of expansion, they tend sometimes to be a bit optimistic about the simplicity of VAT. It's not that simple, it's not over complicated, but you need to speak with people who know this stuff. AVASK is a great example of people who really know this stuff. So that's the one thing you need to be set up in at least one country. I don't know, we want to go in all the details, but you need at least one country. Best is to be listed in or having VAT in every countries in Europe but you need at least one to be legal and compliant.

Bradley Sutton:

Let's do the opposite. I'm a European based company. I want to sell in the biggest marketplace in the world Amazon, USA. You know, I know like way in the old days and now on Walmart, you know, actually still for in some situations you do have to have like a US corporation, but nowadays I can. You know, I'm registered in Germany. I can go ahead and register as an individual or as a person. What are some things that I, absolutely, have to do that are in obstacle to some Europeans for selling in USA?

Jerome:

So our assumption as Europeans that everything is simple in the US and generally doing business in the US is much easier than in Europe. Like you have much less regulations, there's less hurdles. Now on the tax side, it's still quite complicated and as a European, I had to learn okay to navigate that. Because you can have a company in the States, in one state who's like, its addresses one state but if most of your sales is in another state, the other state where you're doing the sales might say no, no, I want you to pay your taxes where you're doing your turnover. Or if you have employees, it will start say no, then there's a fight between the different states.

Jerome:

For us in within one country, that doesn't happen. Like if I'm living France, you won't have the south of France trying to fight for you to pay your taxes and south of France doesn't make sense. Yes, so this you have to learn. So here again, you need to speak to the professionals, because taxes, you can't play around with and it's once you've understood, you've understood it or you have someone doing it for you it really goes smoothly. It's also that in some states in the US the tax accuration is automated between Amazon and the states, but in other states it's not. So it's like navigating that and understanding that is a bit complicated and if you're not an accountant, you'd rather work with someone who's a specialist and we work a lot with, like AVASK, for example, or specialists who will help you navigate that. So for me, it's focus on what you're good at and try to outsource what you're less good at to make sure you don't make mistakes.

Bradley Sutton:

What are you using Pacvue for? For your clients and maybe you know, some people out there might be wondering what kind of amazon seller or large corporate or large company might have use for Pacvue as opposed to Helium 10. So what are you using now Pacvue for?

Jerome:

So I think, we probably started to work with Pacvue and Helium 10 both the same time, a long time ago. So I think we started in 2019. I think, the first agency in Europe using Pacvue. Basically, we were looking for a tool and what I did is I asked the teams. I said I don't want to take the decision. I wanted the really the users to audit the different tools and decide which one they wanted to work with. And they decided to work with, at that time, to with Pacvue.

Jerome:

What we did is there's a lot of rules on a lot of features sorry on Pacvue, for example, rules to like improve your campaigns and as an agency, you've got you know 50, 70, 100 brands you work with. So you have a lot of campaigns and you have to have rules which help you optimize. You can't be checking every campaigns all the time. So you have rules really helping you optimize things. So we've been using Helium 10 from day one also to understand the market, make research, and we've used Pacvue really to optimize campaigns and do a better job in terms of advertising for our customers.

Bradley Sutton:

Are you using Pacvue for non-Amazon platforms at all?

Jerome:

Yeah, so we've started to go on Walmart, for example, in the US. So we are using Pacvue on Walmart on the platforms in Europe. Not all of them are linked on Pacvue because some of them are smaller. So it really depends. But on the major, we try to use Pacvue, as much as possible, because it's our sort of system of record today in the company.

Bradley Sutton:

And Helium 10, what is your team using Helium 10 like? What particular tools or what kind of strategies are you guys using?

Jerome:

So they are using it every day, I would say. So they are checking on the consulting side. Our consultants are checking, like the Market Tracker, for example, or the keyword researchers, like, example, when you were saying, okay, should we go into a new market? Okay, let's see what. You know how many researchers are done on the brand or on the type of product. Then the teams are also working when they're doing their SEO, like checking, you know, keywords and backing keywords and also campaign keywords. They checking all of the tools.

Jerome:

For me, Helium 10 is amazing because each time I go, it's like, wow, there's so many tools and I feel like there's a new one each time. So I have a hard time keeping track of all of them but I know they're using it daily to really on one or the other bit to improve things altogether. And because we have a content team, we have an advertising team, we have a consulting team, an analytics team, they check different things, each of them for different purposes and Helium 10 has always been amazing to me, like the amount of wealth and value they provide on so many things and that's as a day, as I said, a day to day tool we use.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, excellent. Now what kind of, you know, strategy help that can you give to our users? We usually ask our guests like, hey, give us a tip or a strategy. You know it could be about international expansion, could be about PPC, could be about health, could be about which French football team to follow. Anything that you want to talk about. What some strategies you can give our listeners?

Jerome:

So, yeah, I'm not a big soccer man so I won't go there because I might embarrass myself. No, the thing I typically say when you talk about global expansion is there's a lot of potential but there's a lot of hurdles. So probably you want to start small or start focused. So if you're in the US and you want to go into Europe, maybe you start in Germany and or in the UK because language is easier. Just make a proof of concept, go there, be successful and then start to expand. Because if you start to go in six, five, six, seven countries, then you have five, six, seven campaigns to build, translations to do. There's a lot of work.

Jerome:

So probably do one, show that you can be successful in one of the European countries and then expand. Same in the US, you probably don't want to maybe take all of your catalog and take a smaller part of the catalog, make sure you're successful and then expand. So for me it's like start small and grow from there. Learn, try to learn. Because international we're talking about earlier with other people today is like, you know, we say they're saying culture eats strategy at breakfast is like cultural things are very strange, like what happens how customer behaviors are different. So get used to it and to start with something and build on it.

Bradley Sutton:

Love it, alright. Now, one way I know people can find and reach out to your company is if you go to hub.helium10.com type in E-C-O-M-A-S. Is that right? What are other ways that people can find you, your company, on the interwebs out there?

Jerome:

So we're very vocal on LinkedIn and the team produces a lot of content on retail media on the street topics like retail media, technology and global expansion, so we do try to share as much as possible with everyone. I was honored to be named one of the Amazon Retail Media Advertising Ambassadors, so one of our job is really to share as much content as possible on advertising specifically and one of the advice I gave it was about globalization. If I talk about retail media is like AMC. Amazon marketing cloud is one thing which today is open. Really, if you're doing DSP and PPC, hopefully tomorrow it will open to PPC also only. I would really recommend people to look into it. This is giving you advice, like learnings, which will get you to the next level in terms of advertising.

Bradley Sutton:

What is the first thing that somebody just getting into DSP or AMC? What is the first thing they should maybe if they're just getting their feet wet?

Jerome:

So one feature, for example, which is already in Pacvue, which is day parting with AMC you will get even more granular information, a bit like with Facebook. You will know we've run some studies for some of our brands where you get information on the persona, like who is buying your products, like is it you know male, what age, what location, and then you can tailor your messaging, your content, everything you're doing, to really focus on that target customer you have. So that's one example and there's many others you can bring on AMC. We're just starting and people are just starting to get like insights from it. So for me, it's like get first, get into it, and it's not super easy so there's a bit of a barrier to entry. So, once again, either you can, you have got enough knowledge to go in yourself or ask for people for support, and there's a lot of great people. We can help. But there's a lot of great people on AMC which can really help you. Pacvue, for example, has got embedded some AMC features already. So I really look into it because that will be a game changer and for me, like they will probably be a change of like a crossroads people getting into it and who will win? And the others lagging behind.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, all right. Well, thank you so much for coming on and hopefully, see you on my side of the pond next time.

Jerome:

Indeed, thank you very much.

Bradley Sutton:

All right. So our next guest is one of the hosts for today from AVASK. We're in AVASK, Frankfurt office. This is not your main office. I believe the main office is in London.

Jacob:

Southampton, so it's about an hour south of London.

Bradley Sutton:

We're here in Frankfurt, Germany. And this is Jacob, who I met originally in Korea, spoke at an event that I did over there. And what is your title here?

Jacob:

So I'm the head of business development and commercial services, so responsible for client acquisition. You know have a team based here in Germany, in UK, in Spain and in Italy. So we're supporting, consulting clients, helping them expand.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. Now, how did you get into the e-commerce world? Like, what's your backstory? What did you? Where did you go to university? What did you study? And then your entry into the job world.

Jacob:

Okay. So in terms of studying, I actually did Creative Media in college and then just directly went into working straight from there. So I started as an Account Manager for a finance company and then transitioned to AVASK. I've been here for five years. So that's the kind of a short background but yeah, been at the company for a good amount of time now.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. Now, last time we had somebody from AVASK was Melanie, was on maybe, probably almost three years now ago. There's some people who might not know about you guys. So you know elevator pitch with an amazon seller and elevator. How do you tell them what you guys do?

Jacob:

Yeah, so we help people expand cross-border, so getting to different markets and try and make it as frictionless as possible. Kind of the biggest area for us and kind of the one we've been working in the longest is Europe. So supporting US sellers, you know, Chinese sellers, European sellers, sell all around Europe but that's not it. But like kind of in a nutshell, that's our main service, but essentially we help people get into different markets and make it as frictionless as possible.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, so now you know, we just had Jerome on a couple minutes before you. He talked about some of the you know things that people need to be concerned about going from US to Europe, vice versa, maybe going to another marketplace. And he mentioned you guys too. So let's talk a little bit more in the weeds. About some of the you know, like this is what I call the unsexy side of e-commerce. You know the sexy side is PPC and Keyword Research and finding new products and developing your brand. The unsexy side is stuff that actually is arguably even more important, you know, getting your taxes in order and your business entity. So we touched a little bit with Jerome about the VAT and things like that.

Bradley Sutton:

But let's, let's dig into it because, like me, it just I've never sold. I've never done VAT here myself in Europe, and it's for a lot of, you know, US base sellers, like it's kind of like this monster of a thing that we have to worry about. Like, do I need to get it in every country? Do I have to report to every single country? Is it only if I am at a certain level of sale? So you are very familiar with what American sellers probably need to be educated on as far as this goes. So just take it away and let us know what we need to know about VAT in Europe to start, I would say, there's a bit of a, especially in the us.

Jacob:

I've been at the company for five years. Especially now over the last few years, has been a lot more regulation introduced in Europe. So when I first started at the company, there was a lot more US sellers who were interested in expanding because there was less regulation and people weren't as advised. But governments have caught up a little bit. There was a lot of that fraud so people weren't actually paying VAT. And that's not just you know American sellers, that, sellers from all over the world. But now marketplaces are Amazon a lot more regular, regulated, so they have to enforce it. So it stops people from wanting to expand. You know a lot of Americans they say, okay, VAT, how do I do of that? Okay, they don't worry about it, and I think that's quite a lot of the story in America.

Jacob:

For a lot of clients that I've spoken to, essentially VAT, like the system that we have in Europe, and in lots of other places as well, is completely different to the US system. Obviously, the US system, you have tax added on at checkout so you only have to worry about pricing your product and then in the majority of places, i.e. Amazon, and they're going to add the tax on, whereas here in Europe, you are responsible for adding the tax. So when you're listing your product, so you know, if you create a new listing and you need to make sure you include VAT. So I've had lots of customers who want to expand into Europe. They've gone for it. They didn't consider that the VAT would be part of the price that they actually put on the listing. And then you know, a month later, two months later, they've got the VAT bill and they have to pay that and they hadn't actually priced it into the product.

Bradley Sutton:

So like you're saying, like the buy box price should indicate it or it needs to be, it's separate?

Jacob:

No, it's just inclusive. So like, if you list your product for 24 pounds, for example in the UK, that 24 pounds is inclusive of the VAT. That's not going to add any VAT at the end.

Bradley Sutton:

What is the approximate VAT?

Jacob:

So for the UK, it’s 20%.

Bradley Sutton:

So that means if I've got a product that I'm selling for the equivalent of 25 dollars, let's just say, I need to make that at least like 30, 31, 32 dollars, to include that VAT, because that's what I'm going to end up paying the government.

Jacob:

Yeah, exactly. So you have to look at the net price. So 25 dollars add to the 20 percent, so add another five dollars to get it to 30. And then out of that 30 dollar sale, once it's converted, the portion which was the five dollars would be paid to the government and the rates are there or there about. So like we're here in Germany right now, the rate here in Germany is 19% so slightly different, but there are there abouts.

Bradley Sutton:

Now in America, you know, after three years ago or so, we have the Marketplace Facilitator Rax. You know, like that was a huge headache before, where people didn't know in America. Like, all right, I live in California, I know I got to pay California Sales Tax, but you know, do I have a Nexus or whatever we call it in all the different states. And then Amazon's like or actually all online marketplaces were like there's some law passed or something where it's like, all right, you guys are the ones who have to collect it. Now we as Amazon sellers, hopefully we don't have to. That's what I've been doing. We don't have to worry anything about it. We don't add it to our price or anything. The customer is paying for it but Amazon collects it. They remit it. Now in Europe, what it sounds like number one, we do have to add it to the price, as you just said. And also, Amazon is not remitting that. I've got to hold on to that money.

Jacob:

And then so previously that would have been correct. But as of a couple of years ago, Amazon and now and marketplaces are responsible for collecting and remitting VAT for non-European and non-EU sellers in the EU. You still need to price it so, like in that example we had, that was $30. That $5 would actually be deducted from you and be paid to the government on your behalf. However, you still need to report all of those sales via VAT returns in different countries where you've got different liability, like similar to Nexus. Nexus means you've got a liability, basically. You'll have to get a VAT number when you have a liability and you can create different liabilities and free different kinds of means, but the actual money will be deducted and paid by Amazon but you still have to report it.

Bradley Sutton:

So that's at least one burden off. And then now is Amazon withholding that from your disbursement? Then each two weeks?

Jacob:

Yeah. So that would get completely withheld. So Amazon should be withholding it and then paying it on your behalf.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. Scenario A, I plan to open in all European marketplaces plus UK. So UK, Germany, France, Netherlands, Spain, Italy, et cetera, et cetera. How many VATs am I needing to register for?

Jacob:

Depends. So you've got options. So with Amazon, you've got options for how you can actually use the FBA system. So, like obviously, in US, you send to a single FBA center. You have no control over where they're good to go. Amazon can transfer them to different warehouses. It's one country. It's lots of different states, lots of different tax laws, but it is one country, whereas with Europe you've got many different countries. So UK, we separated from the European Union the free flow of moving goods essentially. So whenever good to travel from UK to EU, they need to go through official borders. So customs checks, there needs to be paperwork, there needs to be declarations, et cetera. A lot of sellers now treat the UK separately and they just have their own separate supply chain directly into the UK. You need a VAT number there as a US seller so you can store your products there and sell your products, whereas in Europe, for FBA purposes, you've got options.

Jacob:

Amazon have their main fulfillment centers in Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Poland and the Czech Republic. You can select which ones you want to have your goods in. Whichever country you decide, you allow Amazon to store. You've got an Enable Infantry Replacement on a Seller Central so you can disable and enable. If it's enabled, you have to have a VAT number because Amazon store your products there and that's creating a Nexus. Essentially, you create a liability. You've got to have a VAT number there.

Jacob:

So you could just start with one for the EU and you can list your products. So you could say right, I'm going to store my products in Germany, I'm going to list them in Italy, I'm going to list them in France, I'm going to list them in Spain, but they will all be fulfilled from Germany. Now the pitfall to doing that is Amazon charges you a significantly larger fee for fulfillment. So whenever I speak to sellers as long as they understand that because I've got people who you know they only want to get the one VAT number, because getting six or seven or however many you need to get is complicated and it means a lot of paperwork et cetera to get set up but at the same time, they don't quite realize the Amazon fees that you get charged. And I've come across cases where, yeah, it was an extra three or 4,000 pounds to get the VAT numbers but they ended up spending extra 40,000 pounds in fulfillment fees. So, like understanding, that's quite clear, but you can start off with not too many, which makes it easier for sellers.

Bradley Sutton:

A lot of American sellers are very familiar with rough costs of like tariffs and importing custom duties from China to the United States. Some have more. That's why you know maybe some people are moving their factory to India or other places. How does it compare, though, because most I would say 90% of Amazon sellers are probably manufacturing their products in China or India? How does the custom duties and tariffs compare on a percentage wise importing to the US as opposed to importing to Europe? Are there differences between like UK and EU?

Jacob:

Yeah. Depending on the products, the UK and EU used to have the same tariffs because of the UK separation. We've got the UK Global Trade Tariff and EU's got what's called the TARIC system. The rates for those two systems I would say probably 99% of the same and that will change over the course of time, but it wasn't going to all change immediately. There is some differences but you might find certain products have much higher rates in Europe. So you also get anti-dumping duty.

Jacob:

I'm not too sure if there is anti-dumping duty in the US, but this can be products that might be damaging to the environment or harmful to the environment so they put the rates up really high. But understanding it before you actually start shipping the products is easy to do. As long as you've got the right people to do it. You can understand the rates, understand if there's a difference between the rate. One thing you do need to be careful of, especially as a US-based business, not just US as a non-EU-based business, the particular country we're in right now, Germany the way that they look at imports for non-EU-based companies is sometimes different to an EU-based company. So I've had a lot of clients who they've imported stock directly from their supplier in China or in India into Germany, and the German customs office have revalued that stock. So instead of using the transactional value, so the cost of your products, the insurance and the freight, say €10,000, they've looked at it and they've taken the retail price and then minus Amazon fees, minus VAT, so to say 60% of retail, which then that 10,000 does end up getting to 50,000, and then they've been charged 5% on the 50,000 instead of 10,000, so suddenly you've got five extra costs. So that's something to look out for and be aware of, because I've seen it happen quite a few times.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. Now, before we get into your last strategy of the day, just as a reminder, if this is all overwhelming to you, it's not something that you just can't ignore and pretend that it's not there. It's stuff that you have to take care of if you're doing cross-border or getting into new marketplaces. If you guys want to reach out to AVASK, the easiest way to remember to contact them just go to hub.helium10.com and then just type in AVASK, A-V-A-S-K right there inside there you can have the portal. There might be some specials depending on your level of Helium 10 membership that you might have available to you. Other ways that people can find you guys on the interwebs out there.

Jacob:

Yeah, so all the general means like LinkedIn, Instagram or just avaskgroup.com, so A-V-A-S-K group.com, and yeah, you can contact us directly for those means.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, all right. Now what's your last, you know, something I like to ask some guests is like a 30 or 60 second tip or strategy, that it could be about any topic you've talked about today.

Jacob:

Yeah, okay. So I would say, first of all, do consider Europe, but maybe take it slow, because there's a lot of red tape and there's a lot of history with American sellers in Europe and people getting stung by governments because of certain situations that happened in the past. Things are different now, so there's a lot more regulation that makes it easier for sellers to make sure they're doing the right thing, but it also puts more barriers to entry. You can start small. Like I said, you don't have to go for all of the countries. Start small with one.

Start looking at the other countries, so like if you wanted to start in Germany, what are the biggest markets? Open your listings in the other markets and see if you start getting sales trickle in and then kind of make targeted decisions based on where you start to see growth. And that's what I think is good because we get a lot of people that are like right, I need to go for everything, I need to go for it straight away. Some cases really good, some cases they don't get the sales they expect and then they have to attract. So, depending on your position, obviously, would depend on what you decided to do, but if you're just considering it, you're not sure. Try that way because you're limiting your exposure in terms of compliance. You can start off small, your costs are lower and you can just see how the market goes.

Bradley Sutton:

Alright. Well, thank you very much for sharing your knowledge and thank you for hosting us here for our first onsite podcast here in Germany and our AVASK and Helium 10 Elite event, and maybe we'll be seeing you at a future conference again.

Jacob:

Thanks, Bradley.