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

#529 - Increase Amazon Profitability in 2024

Ever wondered how the savviest of e-commerce entrepreneurs keep their profit margins healthy amidst rising industry costs? Buckle up as Benjamin Webber, a true maverick in the Amazon FBA realm, rides through the podcast to share his unique tactics. He's not just playing the game; he's changing it by using his own truck as an Amazon carrier, slashing his shipping expenses, and keeping his company's financials robust. With a 10% hike in gross sales and an ever-expanding team, Ben breaks down the logistics of becoming an Amazon carrier, the operational efficiencies that keep his business ahead, and why sometimes the best move is to quite literally take the wheel of your product distribution.

The chessboard of global e-commerce is complex, but Ben is a grandmaster at maneuvering his pieces. He unveils his strategies for managing inventory across continents, discusses the art of optimizing check-in speeds, and serves wisdom on tackling geographic conversion issues. His narrative takes us through the meticulous dance of manufacturing diversification—from Asia to the Americas—and the savvy logistics of East Coast shipping. As Ben's company eyes a leap into Amazon's global marketplaces, he lays out his blueprint for facing the squeeze of shrinking margins, fortifying supplier relationships, and negotiating like a pro.

In a world increasingly driven by AI, Ben has mastered fusing technology with human creativity. This episode isn't just about listing optimization and tweaking ad strategies—it's a glimpse into an advertising revolution dictated by sponsored rank and AI's role in it. And when it comes to product development, Ben and his team are tapping into AI to conjure up innovative solutions to everyday problems. It's a thrilling ride through the intersection of data, technology, and human insight, where Ben exemplifies the adventurous spirit of online selling. Join us, and let your e-commerce curiosity be captured by his exceptional vision and trailblazing tactics.

 

In episode 529 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Ben discuss:

• 00:00 - Amazon Carrier Strategies and Profit Margins
• 06:45 - Optimizing Amazon Stock Check-in and Distribution
• 09:08 - Inventory, Manufacturing, and Global Expansion
• 10:52 - Product Warehouse Benefits 
• 15:43 - Amazon Advertising and Listing Optimization
• 16:52 - Analyzing Conversion Rates and Product Quality
• 24:31 - Factors for Retiring Products 
• 25:33 - Warehouse Efficiency and Competitor Analysis
• 31:50 - Using AI for Product Development
• 33:52 - 2024 Tips and Unique Strategies

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Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

Today we've got a popular guest back on the show, Ben, who's got very unique strategies, such as he made himself an Amazon carrier so that he can deliver with his own truck his FBA replenishment orders 15 minutes away from him for free. 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 dimensions 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. 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's completely BS free, unscripted and unrehearsed, organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. You've got a serious seller back for, I believe, the second time here on the show, Ben. How's it going, man?

 

Ben:

Good, how about yourself?

 

Bradley Sutton:

I'm doing just delightful. So I take your North Carolina, which is why I switched hats here at the last second rock in this Charlotte hat. Here Is Charlotte where you're at, or what part North Carolina are you on?

 

Ben:

Yeah, I'm in Charlotte.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, been out there long yeah.

 

Ben:

I came here in 2002 and never left.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, all right. So if you guys want to get more of his backstory, guys write this down episode 379. We went a little bit more into his background there, so we're not going to go too much. You know more into. You know how his superhero origin story, want to catch up and see what cool stuff he's been he's been working on. That was a great episode, by the way. In there he talked about how he had a three million dollars in retail arbitrage sales and he has his cult following now in the Amazon world on the speaker circuit. A lot of cool stuff we talked about in that episode, including you know how to hire for your Amazon businesses and whatnot. But let's just catch up. You know now we're in 2024. You know I think the last time you're on the show was like end of 2022 around there, so it's been, you know, full year. How was your 2023?

 

Ben:

It was good. Our big priority was expanding obviously expanding product lines, and then just figuring out the best ways to manage what we have so that we can grow and scale as efficiently as possible.

 

Bradley Sutton:

How many employees are you guys up to now?

 

Ben:

So we have the warehouse and then we have an international team. So collectively we're between 60 and 70.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Excellent. Now what was you know, just from a gross sales overall, all channels, if you were to compare 2023 with 2022, how did you guys do?

 

Ben:

We're up maybe 10%, so it didn't really push too hard this year.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Now, something that I think a lot of sellers might have said compared in 2023 to 2022, is profit margins were down due to increased cost, whether that be inflation or cost of goods, Amazon fees, PPC how was your profit margin?

 

Ben:

Yeah, it definitely went down a little bit, not as bad as I guess a lot of people have. That I've talked to have run into. But one of the big things that helps us and I think we talked about this before is just that because we are in Charlotte and there's a CL2, the CL22 warehouse is in Charlotte we're able to deliver a lot of our own inventory. So we're a last mile delivery driver or delivery provider for Amazon. So we don't have to pay to ship in to Amazon. We pay somebody $15 an hour to drive a truck with 12 pallets and they're 20 minutes from our warehouse. So as far as the inbound shipping costs and those expenses, those don't really hurt us too badly.

 

Bradley Sutton:

So that whole, so you ship everything then from your manufacturing to your warehouse and then so that that quote unquote landed cost that ends up being your cost to Amazon as well. Essentially, yeah, how did you even know that that was possible to do?

 

Ben:

Several years ago we were about to stock out of. As you know, we sell a lot of fourth quarter products and kind of joke toy products, and we're about to stock out of one that we sold between 800 to 1000 units a day, which is a fairly substantial issue. So we actually loaded up a cargo van and drove the cargo van to Amazon, talked to us our way through the front gates to deliver it and they took it and so we did that once. Then we did it again and we got through again the third time. They're like no, you can't do this and so like, okay, but somehow we have to be able to do this. So we looked into Carrier Central and figure out how we could become a last mile carotter, which is incredibly easy. It takes about 15 minutes to fill out a form and then you have to show that you can back in and out of a parking spot Incredibly easy. So in that January we bought a truck and the rest is history from there. But it was. It came about because we were about to stock out and panic and we're like well, what's the worst that can happen?

 

Bradley Sutton:

So then theoretically you can also do this service for other people, that you would be the carrier and then other people can just store their product here at warehouse and then you would deliver. But for now you just pretty much do it for yourself. Is there like was there any kind of minimums? Like, hey, you have to have a dock high truck, you have to, it has to be this size, it has to be order, you know, like it has to be at least X number of pallets, or what kind of requirements was it.

 

Ben:

So basically it had to be palletized and it required a dock high truck, and I forget there was. There's a code you have to send them that you get for just having a truck, so it doesn't really matter, you're going to have it anyway. But dock high and palletized products. And what we did was we looked up what the largest truck that we could buy without having to have a CDL was, which in North Carolina, is a 26 foot box truck, and so that holds 12 pallets.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Did you have to have, like a company that's a registered trucking company or something?

 

Ben:

Nope, I actually had a friend who was trying to do this for some of their products because they were just the same issue where they're about to stock out and Amazon wasn't checking them in fast enough. And one of the benefits of what we do is and this is I don't know how long this will stay that way, so I'm probably going to jinx myself by saying it, but our stuff gets checked in faster than anybody else's. So, like this year, we had stuff that we delivered in December that was checked in three days late.

 

Bradley Sutton:

We were able to pick that exact DC to get the stuff into when you're creating your transfer shipments.

 

Ben:

There are a number of softwares that you can use that let you pick and direct where you want it to go to.

 

Bradley Sutton:

But what is that? So that's not something that you can do on your own, just in seller central.

 

Ben:

It. Well, yes and no, it's not something that you can directly do, but typically if you're sending case packs in, they're going to try to send that to the largest distributor center nearest you or distribution center nearest to you. At least that's what we've seen Even before, like when we weren't using a software for it. We're sending about 65 to 70% of our case packs all went to Charlotte, so they're still trying to keep stuff. As far as the case packs that, they're just sending them to the nearest large distribution center. At least that's how it worked out for us.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Now, have you looked into, or do you know yet, how this change to their shipping program is going to affect you, if any at all, with this whole thing where people now have to pay if they're only sending it to one location? I mean, even if that's the case, it's still got to be better. I'm assuming that you'd still choose that.

 

Ben:

Yeah, it'll cost us more now, but it's still better to deliver to ourselves. The bigger issue, honestly, was the minimum stock levels. Because we're able to deliver so quickly and because we know that Amazon is checking in so quickly, we've been able to run very, very, very lean, and that's going to get.

 

Bradley Sutton:

They're going to punish you now, right?

 

Ben:

So now we're going to have to put. Over the last month we've been having to send way more inventory than we ever had before in because we have to meet the minimum stock requirements to not get charged, though I had the fees there, so that's honestly the bigger issue for us.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Have you ever taken a look at in Helium 10, at our inventory heat maps to see what they do with your inventory day by day and then how long it takes them to distribute? Because sure, you can get it checked in, but if everything just sits there in Charlotte for a week and then all of a sudden somebody's in Portland and their buy box says yeah, two weeks delivery date, then that might be conversion issue for certain geographic areas. Are they getting your inventory out to the country pretty fast?

 

Ben:

Usually within two weeks, but it is something where there's definitely some gaps, where we have been not fulfilling the West Coast, for example, is efficiently, as we probably could be.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Now, what about the fact that you're I mean I'm assuming you manufacture your stuff in China, India or where you?

 

Ben:

manufacture it. So we have manufacturing in China, Mexico, India, Canada, the US and I want to say Vietnam as well.

 

Bradley Sutton:

So what about the stuff coming from Asia, the fact that you're not, that you're sending it to you in the middle, not completely in the middle, but is it coming to the East Coast port first, or is it coming to California?

 

Ben:

We send a lot of it through Savannah Georgia.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, okay, and so, even if it wasn't going to your warehouse, is that where you're routing it? In the old days, if you were going directly to Amazon, it would still go to the East Coast first.

 

Ben:

We always sent directly to our warehouse just for having the flexibility. For a lot of our products there are varying pack sizes and we'll repackage as needed in the warehouse to make sure that we're filling the ones that we need to. So we've always sent it to ourselves first For that reason. Then also just from a flexibility standpoint as far as inventory management, where if you send it from China you're basically going to have to send in 90 to 120 days to make sure that you're covered or just have constant orders going. If we send it to our warehouse first, we can keep the Amazon fees lower for storage by storing it. For what amounts to about? I think last time we calculated it we're paying like $6.50 a pallet or $7 a pallet, something like that, to store it at our warehouse. So the amount of money that we're saving off of the Amazon fees by storing it to ourselves and then sending in smaller shipments versus sending in the bulk ones that a lot of people do.

 

Bradley Sutton:

All right, makes sense. Yeah, I was worried a little bit at least. Like, wait a minute, you know like some of your savings might be gone if you're still having a bring things into the port and like California. And then you got to ship it all the way Right, stick it on trains or trucks to go all the way to North Carolina. But the fact that it's coming into already on the East Coast, that doesn't make it too bad. Okay, so that's pretty cool.

 

Ben:

Honestly, that's one of the things that we're looking into for 2024 is seeing if we want to find a 3PL out on the West Coast so we can send some inventory there for the heat map issues that you were bringing up, where we can send stuff to the West Coast DCs from there and then keep doing everything else from Charlotte so that we can make sure that we're covering the country. And also, if there's a way to bring stuff in and have it on the West Coast already, then it just makes things easier.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Now what other you know? We've been talking about Amazon USA. What other Amazon marketplaces are you selling on worldwide? And what about other domestic here in the USA marketplaces like Walmart, tik Tok, etc.

 

Ben:

Honestly, we haven't pushed that hard on the non-domestic Amazon sites just because our logic has kind of been well, the US is the largest market. If we're able to successfully sell something here, we're going to be more successful than selling something in another market. So we would rather come up with a new product to sell in the US versus taking the time and energy to push externally. But that is something that started to change over the last year. We are in Canada, we're in the UK and we're going to expand through Europe over the next year as far as Amazon, and then we have our own Shopify sites for all of our brands, and then we do a good bit through Walmart as well.

 

Bradley Sutton:

What's your strategy, like you know, going into 2024, now that margins are decreasing, I mean, are you raising? Are you planning to raise prices? Have you raised prices? Trying to cut costs in unique ways? Pull back on advertising? How does somebody you know, because it's not like you know, this is just something that you're facing, like we talked about earlier. A lot of people are facing it, and some worse. Why do you think, other than the shipping thing, you haven't been hit as hard as others. And what's the plan to you know? It's not like costs are going to go down anytime soon. So how are you going to? You know, stay above water.

 

Ben:

Yeah Well, I mean, one of the things is, before we started the podcast, you and I were discussing how you were just in China and like going and meeting with your manufacturers and actually having those conversations, you can get better rates, you can get better terms, you can get a lot of benefits. You can also see what they can and can't do and find a lot of products that you can make with the same manufacturer. And the more things you buy from one manufacturer, the better rates you're going to get on each of those orders. So going directly to your manufacturers and talking to them is a way that you can massively improve your, your costs and also the terms you have. Like, with some of our, some of our manufacturers, we don't pay until 90 days after the products has come to our warehouse.

 

Bradley Sutton:

How long have you been with those manufacturers?

 

Ben:

I like to ask for some Wow yeah.

 

Bradley Sutton:

And have you visited them there in where they're at and got out to meet and stuff like it?

 

Ben:

And met their family, took their kids presents like or we're very close with them. But it's something that you can like you, that's something that you can build. And again, even if it's somebody that you aren't close with, the more that you can, more you buy from them, the more likely they are to give you better rates, better terms etc. So that's one thing. As far as the advertising goes, one of the things we started really pushing over the last probably six months is just kind of figuring out what are where our product deserves to be ranked based off of price, quality, everything else compared to our competition on specific keywords, and adjusting our advertising based off of that. So if we look and we say like, okay, we're really the fourth best product on this keyword, we're not going to push heavily for our with our advertising to try and get to the number one spot, because eventually we're just going to drop back down to the number four or we're going to have to keep spending a ton of money. So we've adjusted our ad spend to match where we feel like we should be on that keyword and if we drop below that then we'll raise it. But if we're there we'll leave it basically where it is, and that's actually significantly improved our profitability, because we're not spending as much to rank up on something that we won't stick. Because you're not going to stick at the top, then why are you trying to get there? It's not going to, you're just wasting money.

 

Bradley Sutton:

So are you like you know? Obviously, like you said, you know, price is an easy, easy one to know. If you quote unquote deserve to be there. You're looking at, like conversion rates by keyword and search, career performance or things like that, or what are some other factors other than just strictly price?

 

Ben:

Yeah. So we'll buy every single product and bring it to our warehouse and do comparison tests so we'll look and see like okay, this one, like, let's say, we're selling a paper plate we can see like, okay, if we put sauce on this for an hour, it leaks through Ours doesn't. So for the sauce we rank better than them, or the size that it takes or the amount of weight they can hold. It can hold as far as food, things like that, where you're just testing to see the quality of your product versus theirs. So it's not just the quality of the listing and conversion, it's also the quality of what you're actually offering to the customer.

 

Bradley Sutton:

That's interesting. I've never heard of somebody doing that. Where it's like at the keyword level, how do we stack up so that we deserve you know to. You know like, like a product could do really well, like in that situation, for like a keyword like heavy duty plates, or you know big meals or some, or for you know watery foods or something like that, whereas maybe another one would be, you know, floral looking plates, where it's more aesthetic and you could rank or you could rate, I should say, differently for each keyword.

 

Ben:

Exactly and it also helps you figure out which way you want to direct your, the copy and photos and everything that you're putting out for the listing, as you see like, because I mean, everybody is doing competitor research before to figure out, okay, how can I say that I'm better than this one? But if you don't keep doing that throughout it, you're going to get passed off. But also, if you look at it on a keyword level, like we're doing, you're able to save a lot of money on advertising by not bidding on things you shouldn't.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Now, speaking of listing optimization, you know that was one thing that we focused on the last episode I remember. You know you talked about. You've got some listings that are 100% puns and a different, you know, and that helps with your conversion and stickiness of customers. What are you like? Are you guys using AI? That's something that's just kind of blown up, probably since the last time we talked. What other listing optimization strategies you're doing in the last year?

 

Ben:

Yeah, and, like you said, ai is massive. I mean the ability to identify a customer avatar immediately, to put the reviews in and pull whatever, extract whatever data you need to from it with like quickly, efficiently, and to have essentially a professional copywriter write your listings for you. One of the things that I enjoy doing, which has led to some good results and some terrible results is to pick like a few famous copywriters or famous advertisers that I find interesting and then have them have a conversation about the product. So if you say, like these four people discuss paper plates and why someone would buy them, and then they go through and the AI talks like those people and has a conversation, and you can see people who are way smarter than me discussing how they would sell it, why they would sell or what they think people would be directly interested in and how they would position it, and so I like doing that. Also for coming up with brand names If you have like the top branders in the world, you can just say have these people discuss what my brand should be if I'm selling X product. So kind of expanding outside of just saying write me a bullet point with the including these keywords with 250 characters or less and yada, yada, yada. Trying to like, think outside the box a bit more, to be more unique, because at this point anybody can use AI. It's trying to figure out ways to use it in ways that other people aren't yet and especially trying to get add to what the AI is doing, add emotional language to it, because AI is okay at emotional, but not great. So if you can put something in that appeals directly to the customer while still using the the pitches from the AI, we've had really good success with that.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Now what, if anything is, would you say, is the biggest difference when you're taking one product from Amazon and making a listing on Walmart, Like, have you seen something that definitely works and something that you always have to change because it's completely different on Walmart, or is the general structure always pretty much the same and you're just doing the little things that you know, the little requirements that Walmart has, in order to differentiate it?

 

0:21:40 -

Yeah, I mean we are trying to obviously match what Walmart says, but it just seems like on Walmart you want to be way more direct. Like, keyword stuffing doesn't work as well there. It seems like there, at least for us. It hasn't May for other people. But just being more readable and fluent with the way that we create the listings has led to better results versus just trying to stuff too many keywords into it as we possibly can.

 

Bradley Sutton:

What else are you doing differently Something we haven't talked about in this episode or the last one, I mean, you know to manufacturing in USA and keeping respectable profit margins. Having 70 employees, this is not something that, you know, like any Amazon seller can achieve. There's got to be some more other unique things that have helped you reach this level. What do you think those are?

 

Ben:

Now you're putting me on the spot. I think the you know that I have three main partners that I've worked with from the start and I think one of the things that we've done really well is division of labor and creating the SOPs and the backbone for everything that we need in order to run the business, so that we don't have to be involved in the day to day as much as we used to and had to at the start. So we are able to look into things like Amazon fee changes. Look into things like okay, how can we get to China and improve our costs and fees there. Like having the flexibility by building a powerful team to and like our team is. I mean, I would say our VA's are probably smarter than me, so they're better at the job that I am at this point. So like being able to get to that point where you're able to have the flexibility to scale mentally going forward has been massive and we actually like, from the start, the way that we kind of divided it was, we had one of my partners was focused on incoming products. The other was focused on running the warehouse. My role was mostly building the products on the marketing side, and then we had one person whose role was essentially figuring out how we're going forward. His job has always been to push things forward, to figure out what we need to do and then having him he is very, very good at systems so he'll be able to come in and look at what we've done and see the systems we built and say, no, you all are idiots, change these three things. That's going to be much better.

 

Ben:

So, like, being willing to constantly, always, constantly be improving on what you're doing Is one aspect of it, but also always looking forward. So figuring out, like, how do we dodge whatever the next big thing is and I mean, if you look at the and I know you know Steve Simonson, but like whenever he's talking, he's always talking about, okay, what's happening in China now and how is that going to impact things? A year for now, it's two years, or now five years or now.

 

Bradley Sutton:

So even just looking ahead at stuff like that, where You're able to make decisions that mean that you're not going to be Sure changing yourself in the long run for a bigger game, now, I think something that successful sellers also have to know how to do is when to pull the plug on on products and everybody and this is one of those things that there's not one size fits all, everybody has their own criteria. How do you guys decide what to what to retire as far as the product goes? Is it strictly just you know a profit margin? Is there a certain sales velocity that you need to to maintain? Is it you know? If the reviews dip below a certain you know point, what's your decision-making factors on it?

 

Ben:

Honestly, one of the the biggest things we care about is how annoying it is to deal with. So just just being perfectly honest, because we do have, we do have a very wide catalog at this point Counting our kind of variations. We have over a thousand skews. So when we're looking at things and figuring out what we want to do, if the way, if we're sending it to the warehouse and the warehouse has to touch it four times, even if it's making more money, we may want to cut that faster than something the warehouse doesn't have to touch. So we look into not just the profitability of the product but also the profitability of the product compared to the labor, how labor intensive it is. And Also, if the warehouse people don't like dealing with it, then and we're not making much money on it and why keep dealing? Why keep doing it? So that that is one of the big things. But beyond that it is Almost exclusively profit, profitability. Like I don't really care if I'm selling something a hundred, a hundred units a day, if I'm making $12 a day on it. I would rather sell one thing for $12 and a hundred things on the flip side, what is?

 

Bradley Sutton:

are the triggers where it's like, hey, we need to Launch this product, or we need to launch this you know new thing for this brand, or hey, we need to launch a new variation? Are you guys just? Do you have a department that's just constantly looking at new opportunities per brand, or or you're looking for certain signals in a market? How's that work?

 

Ben:

Yeah. So I mean we do look at every single review that we get and and. So if we see a lot of reviews come against saying I wish this were larger, I wish this were a different color, like the obvious things like that Are things that we that play into it, or we're getting negative feedback saying there are all these issues, then solving the issues is a very easy way to improve on that. But the the other aspects of it are Just. If we look and we see a competitor come in and they're doing something different and it looks better, it's doing better, it's taking sales away from us, then we figure out, okay, how do we beat that? What can we do differently? So a lot of it is competitor and customer driven, as opposed to Keyword or sales velocity driven you know you talked about.

 

Bradley Sutton:

You know you've Use helium 10 for years and your team has what. What is the number one thing you're using helium 10 now for? And if you were to Join our product team for a few days let's say you were to you were to be in charge of our product team what would be on your wish list on, like, how you would add something to helium-10 that we don't have right now. That would make your lives as on the Amazon side, yeah, easier the conversion rate trends for that keyword For each individual product.

 

Ben:

So if you're looking at it, you can see like, okay, this one is selling this number this month a day, but being able to go in and figure out if their conversion rate is moving up and down month over month, as opposed to just sales moving up and down month over month, because I think that the Conversion rate is just getting more and more important and at the keyword level, not just the overall conversion rate, but even at the keyword level.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, yeah, I'm dead. That's definitely the top of my list as well. You know, once Amazon, you know, make search query performance available in the API, then then that's like yeah, to me that's like a must-have for sure. All right, so now I knew you. You know you were like a nationally ranked tennis player back in a. You still get on the courts every now and then. What were your main hobbies last year of? You know like, hey, you need to get away from the Amazon world and just, you know, enjoy yourself. Yeah, what were you doing?

 

Ben:

So the US National Whitewater Training Center is in Charlotte so I learned how to whitewater kayak so I got a membership there. It's a closed course that they controlled the the flow of the water, so it could be anywhere from a class 1 to a class 5, depending on the day that you're out there with the rappers they're going to be. So that was my kind of fun. It was a 10-minute drive from our warehouse. So go Do some kayaking and then they have Like. On Thursdays they had concerts and stuff so you can go Hang out and be around people.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Now Is that just a local hobby for you, but or or? Now that you know I knew you travel sometimes too, or have you know when you travel? Have you ever gone real like a whitewater kayaking?

 

Ben:

I have once and it's way more terrifying. That's what I was about to say.

 

Bradley Sutton:

That would be a little bit scary if you're just doing a controlled environment one thing, but then to Be out there Okay.

 

Ben:

Yeah, when it's big stuff of a controlled water flow, if you flip over it's like, okay, I can handle this. If it's not controlled, we're the rocks. I don't know what's happening. I'm about to die, so that's not quite as good. But one of the things I've tried to do Well traveling is trying to try and go fishing Everywhere I go.

 

Bradley Sutton:

What were some of your cool places you've been to in 2023?

 

Ben:

Yeah, so I went to Fiji for the first time, Wow did you stay in over water like a over? Sadly, no, that was. I was not on an island that was conducive to that, so I'll have to. They'll have to be added to my next trip.

 

Bradley Sutton:

That's on my bucket list, fiji I've never been there.

 

Ben:

Yeah, it's, it's a beautiful place. I went to Estonia To the ambition event there, which I'd never, never been to Really Eastern Europe before, so that was a lot of fun to get to go and meet a lot of the sellers there and get to explore An area in a culture that I'd never gotten to experience. So I always enjoy getting to do stuff like that. Try to think of one more. I started in Greece in college and I got to go back there this year, so I'm going to go back and see what I saw in college and appreciated a bit more as an adult, from a historical perspective. Yeah, as opposed to the 21 year old kid who's just like if alcohol here, I need all of it.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Yes, your priorities are a little bit different at that age, I think it's like getting to go on an adult trip there was.

 

Ben:

It was a nice change.

 

Bradley Sutton:

You know, before we get into your final strategy of the day, if people wanted to reach you or find you on the interwebs, how can they find you out there?

 

Ben:

Facebook is probably the easiest. It's just Benjamin Weber and I think I don't have a picture of myself there. I think it's a picture of the Frank Lloyd Wright falling waters house. So if you, if you see a Benjamin Weber with a house, that's probably me.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Now we're at the stage where we asked for your 30 or 60 second tip. You already gave us a doozy, you know, with that, looking at the how you rank at the keyword level as far as how you deserve to rank. So do you have another one for us?

 

Ben:

I mean, obviously everybody's talking about AI now, but using that within your product development to expand on what you're doing. So one of the things that we used to do with our Entire staff was, every day, as a kind of learning, mental strength, mental training exercise Say what are 10 things that you would pay $50 to never have to deal with again. Then we look to see if we can make products out of those, and so we had this massive list of Thousands of these. Now we do that with AI. So we're going into AI and saying what are problems like, let's say you're in the kitchen category. You would say what are 1020, however many things you want to say things that people would pay 30 dollar, 10, what are 10 problems that people would pay $30 to solve In the kitchen, so they don't have to deal with that every time they're doing it and then see what results come back from that and look at the products that come from it. So it's a way to get essentially consumer research via questions with AI, versus having to go in and look things up. So just using the, the AI as a creativity exercise can be Incredibly huge for coming up with new product ideas, and that's where the last, like seven products that we've made have come from us Just typing questions like that into AI, and there are things that no one is selling on the market right now.

 

Bradley Sutton:

All right. Well, ben, thank you so much for joining us Again. You've definitely given us some insightful tips and you've got some very unique things that nobody else is doing, you know, like being your own Amazon last mile carrier, and everything is less, less great, and so I'll love to see what you do in 2024, and then we'll bring you back in 2025 and see how things are going.

 

Ben:

It sounds good. Thanks for having me.

#528 - How To Revive Suspended Seller Accounts and Outmaneuver Online Sabotage

Navigating the unpredictable rapids of Amazon and Walmart marketplace selling, we had the pleasure of being joined by Lesley, a maestro with a flair for reviving online seller accounts from the depths of suspension. In our conversation, we uncover the labyrinth of issues that can snag unsuspecting sellers, from the snares set by underhanded competitors to the resurgence of 'inauthentic' item flags. Lesley, drawing on her rich tapestry of experience that spans from journalism to digital marketplaces, guides us through the complexities of maintaining a pristine account on platforms like Amazon and Walmart, while also sharing her own transition from traditional business consulting to the fast-paced e-commerce arena.

The episode takes a turn into the shadowy alleys of the online marketplace, exposing the black hat tactics of less scrupulous sellers who resort to fraudulent reviews and other deceptive maneuvers to gain an edge. Stories of sabotage and extortion unfold, revealing the lengths to which some will go to undermine their competition and the sophisticated strategies Amazon employs to counter these threats. Lesley's insights prove invaluable for those looking to safeguard their ventures in this cutthroat environment, ensuring your business not only survives but thrives among the giants of the digital retail world.

 

In episode 528 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Lesley discuss:

• 00:00 - Strategies for Amazon Account Reinstatement & Protection
• 05:00 - Common Suspensions and Appeals on Walmart 
• 07:59 - Amazon KDP Issues and IP Theft 
• 11:10 - Amazon Account Suspensions and Prevention Tips
• 17:18 - More On Account Suspensions on Amazon
• 23:25 - Amazon TOS Compliance, Fraud, Extortion, and Black Hat Tactics
• 23:45 - Fake Orders and Amazon Locker Strategy 
• 34:20 - Lesley's New Book And The Importance of SOPs in Business

Helium 10 Buzz 1/18/24: Amazon Shopping AI Live | New Walmart PPC Ads | Germany Helium 10 Event

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 launches generative AI tool to answer shoppers’ questions
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/01/16/amazon-launches-generative-ai-tool-to-answer-shoppers-questions.html

FedEx announces its own commerce platform for merchants
https://techcrunch.com/2024/01/15/fedex-announces-its-own-commerce-platform-for-merchants/

Amazon May Start Charging Users for Certain Alexa Services
https://www.mensjournal.com/news/amazon-alexa-plus-subscription-service

Helium 10 Elite / AVASK Plus Workshop: A Day of E-Commerce Mastery in Frankfurt, Germany
h10.me/avaskgermany

The discussion concludes with a dive into using Amazon’s brand analytics data together with Helium 10’s Black Box to unearth niche keywords and product opportunities, offering you three different sets of strategies for identifying market gaps and leveraging data to enhance your Amazon-selling game. Join us for an episode that's not just about the news, but about giving you the insights and strategies to level up your Amazon journey.

 

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

• 00:48 - Amazon App AI Tool
• 03:21 - FedEx Marketplace?
• 05:02 - Alexa Plus
• 06:17 - Walmart Video Ads
• 07:08 - FBA Shipment Window
• 08:42 - Reduce Returns
• 10:32 - Europe Conference
• 11:33 - Pro Training Tip: Amazon Product Research Tools

► 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:

Amazon has started rolling out its consumer side generative AI shopping assistant. FedEx making an e-commerce marketplace. Walmart, sponsored brand ads and video ads, have a beta launch. A first-ever Helium 10 workshop in Germany next week. This and more on today's episode of the 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'm your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show. That is our Helium 10 Weekly Buzz.

 

Bradley Sutton:

We give you a rundown of all the news stories and articles that's going on in the e-commerce world 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. We've got a lot of articles today, so let's go ahead and hop right into it now. The first one here is actually from CNBC and it was an article Entitled Amazon launches generative AI tool to answer shoppers questions. Now, this is pretty interesting because you know we've been talking about this for over a year, about how amazon has been testing Different tools and they're going to be coming out with things that allow the consumers you know, like shoppers of amazon to perhaps have generative AI like Conversations when they are shopping. Now it hasn't gotten to that point yet. However, something new that has been spotted in the wild I haven't seen it in my app yet is that there's a prompt that asks customers questions about a specific item and then it returns an answer within a few seconds by summarizing information collected from product reviews and the listing itself. Now something to note again. Like I said, this is not some conversation like you can. You can do with ChatGPT. It says, unlike open-art ai's ChatGPT, amazon's new feature isn't equipped to carry out a conversation, but it can respond to creative prompts. It says on a listing for a woman's vest, it could write a haiku about the product.

 

Bradley Sutton:

How that Is going to help us sell products, I'm not sure. So take a look here. It says it was also able to describe the item in the style of Yoda from star wars. All right, and it actually had a screenshot of this. So I guess somebody who has this app they typed in Can you describe the product as if you are Yoda from star wars? And then the answer that this amazon app says Yoda why is jedi master would describe this product thusly. And it says crop puffer vest. Women wear zipper closure. Yes, okay, I'm sorry that was a bad Yoda impression, but literally I wasn't making that up. This is a screenshot from this article and it it answered about this product in this style of Yoda. Again, I am not sure how that is going to help us sell products. There's probably a lot of other things. I wish amazon might Maybe put a little effort into more than Allowing its ai app to respond in the or not in the voice, thank goodness, but in the tense of or the form of Yoda. But hey, it is what it is. Um, technology is getting kind of scary. Could this, you know, a future iteration of this actually help sales for us? Maybe it's too early to see so generative ai it. It's not coming anymore. It has come All right, so look out for this in your amazon app.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Next article is actually from tech crunch and it's entitled FedEx announces its own commerce platform for merchants. Now, right off the bat, let me just go ahead and say you know, I did a little clickbait. I said, oh, this might be a marketplace, no, FedEx says it's not a marketplace. it's this new commerce platform they're calling fdx, all right, and it's in private preview, with a wider launch schedule for fall of 2024. Now it's not really known what in the world it's going to be. You know, like they said, it's not going to be a marketplace. However, they did purchase this service called shop Uh runner a couple years ago, or a few years ago now, and it allows people to see estimated delivery time on websites, handle shopping carts, track packages, record carbon emissions for those who are interested in that managed returns, etc. You know, but they specifically says we are not in the business of the marketplace, we're trying to help businesses build the best possible experience From demand to post purchase.

 

Bradley Sutton:

So, like I'm just confused, like I have no idea what the heck this is. You know, since, since FedEx is not, you know, really being open with it, but you know, shots were fired Earlier this year or last year. Now when, when Amazon's like, hey, we're gonna be a shipping company. Now you know, like you don't have to be selling products on FBA, you can use Amazon as a shipping company, like that's like direct competition for FedEx and UPS. So FedEx is like I'm gonna clap back at you right and say, alright, well, let's get into the commerce game. How they're gonna do that? I'm not sure are they gonna be successful, who knows? But be interesting to watch out if there's a new player on the block.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Going back to the articles, men's journal comm had something Says Amazon may start charging users for certain Alexa services. They're gonna launch this thing called Alexa plus later this year and they're gonna be able to have exclusive Features and it's gonna be the revitalized, subscription based version of its voice assistant June 30th. Now this is another one I'm very skeptical about. I mean, alexa has not really improved in years, you know, and it's been struggling. I, if I were Amazon, I would not be trying to put a price tag on it Until it was proven to really really be better, because I'm just not sure that Alexa is worth any kind of money. Well, I know Alexa is not worth any money. You know nobody's gonna pay extra money for it now. Now Could they make something super cool again using generative AI? That would make it worth couple bucks a month potentially. But let's see. You know, the thing that affects Amazon sellers is Are more people gonna be shopping on Alexa because of some new features it might have? That's to be determined. Now that's gonna affect us, like not many people I know ever buy anything on Alexa, but if that changes, that would be very helpful to Amazon sellers.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Next article was actually an email I got from Walmart, so guys, check this out. If you got the email, you might be on this beta program where they say, hey, Walmart connect is it excited to inform me that we are testing sponsored brands and sponsored video inventory on browse and topic pages on Walmart site, starting last week actually, and it's gonna run a minimum of four weeks. All right, we have generated next Recommended next step, so check if you got this email and you can click on it. It says, hey, all self-serve sponsored search advertisers With scheduled live or net, new sponsored brand and sponsored video campaigns will automatically be updated and part of the test and they gave a couple of screenshots of how sponsored brand ads might look looks very similar to what we all know and love in Amazon Advertising. So check your email, whatever your Walmart email is, if you have that Next article is actually not article, but it's from the seller central dashboard and this is an update of something previously announced and it's Entitled automatic closure policy for shipments will be updated on February 1st.

 

Bradley Sutton:

All right, so this was announced before, but they clarified it a little bit. So let's say this is again Effective February 1st. Let's say you create a shipment, all right, using the send to Amazon workflow. So so you're trying to send inventory into Amazon from your let's just say, your own 3pl here in the United States or in Europe. Domestic shipment, in other words, from US addresses, if it has not arrived within 45 days After the shipment creation date, the Shipment will automatically be closed, all right. Or I mean, if it doesn't arrive within this, this time of the policy now for International shipments, that means you create a shipment that's going to be coming from your Chinese or Indian or Pakistani Factory. Well, you're gonna have 75 days from the shipment creation date. For most of you this doesn't have. You know this might not affect you, but but what if they're shipping delays? Or maybe you accidentally, you know, create your shipment too early and then you know Chinese New Year's came, you know, like what's happening right now, and then it delayed your shipment a month. You know, could you be pushing this time limit? It's, it's a possible. So just take a look at this in your dashboard if you have any questions. They clarified a couple of things, but you can't just create open-ended shipments anymore and, you know, expect five years later, or five years or five months later for Amazon to accept your package.

 

Bradley Sutton:

One last news article from the seller central dashboard this was from last week and it's something new on Amazon where it says reduce customer returns recommendation. This is in the growth opportunities tool and it's supposed to gonna tell you, like the financial impact of Money you could have gained over 90 days if you've done the recommended actions. This I can pretty much take with the tiniest grain of salt I have ever eaten, because I have never found value in these Estimations that that Amazon gives and I'm not trying to throw Amazon to the bus, I'm just keeping it real, guys but I haven't seen anything that gives me faith that this algorithm is gonna work. That being said, the reason why I'm bringing this up is because there's gonna be some recommendations that's gonna have. Now, this could be potentially, you know, beneficial. You know, forget the what's the potential impact. Just being able to see what the Amazon algorithm Thinks you should do will be interesting because it's supposedly, as this article says, it's gonna be based on Customers, customer issue trends and reviews and it's gonna compare your listing to other top-selling brands. Now that is something I could see that could be helpful where, hey, here's a brand that has a similar product and it's a really selling well and they've got, like this field filled out that you don't have filled out now. That could be Beneficial. The other thing that seemed interesting, but again I'm skeptical on, is it said hey, find out whether placing content in the title bullets or product description of your detail pages, we'll have the greatest impression on customers if they're just making this up, you know, like I'm pretty sure that us experience Amazon sellers probably no better than Amazon as far as how the algorithm works, as far as things like this. But again, if they've got some advanced new information that that is coming out, this could be a potential way to have insight into the Amazon algorithm. All right, so so look out for that on your, your dashboard as well.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Last thing, again, next week, a chevalier myself will be in Germany, Frankfurt, Germany. We are gonna be at our very first ever all-day event that Helium 10 is doing together with the VASC. So if you'd like to attend, go to h10.me/avaskgermany. It's only 75 euros to attend all day. We've got tons of speakers coming from multiple countries All over Europe. I'll be there myself. We're gonna have a networking social. We're providing food. It's gonna be in the Frankfurt airport, all right. So, like I don't care where you are in Europe, you're, you're like a Ryan air 30 dollar Ryan air flight away from Frankfurt. You don't even need to get an Uber. You just walk out of the terminal and you're right there. All right, guys. So again, h10.me forward slash a VASC Germany. Please come out. It would be great to see you all and meet you guys in person next week, on the 25th of January. All right, that's it for the news this week.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Next up, let's get into our training tip of the week, and actually it's multiple ones. I want to spend just a couple of times just showing you the power of the new Helium 10 tool that came out a few weeks ago in black box, called ABA, top search terms, which is for Amazon brand analytics. The possibilities are endless with the kind of research you can do, so I just picked a couple of scenarios here to show you. Let's pretend that you have a product or a factory that makes products made of bamboo. I actually have a brand that makes bamboo products and you're like hey, what are some trending bamboo Keywords, right, so. So then you go in and you go into black box, you go into the new tool, aba, top search terms, and then what you can do is you enter bamboo, just like you would in Amazon brand analytics inside of seller central. But then now I can enter in other things, like, for example, I'm gonna enter in the helium minimum, Helium 10 search volume of 500. I'm going to say, hey, I want to see where the top three clicked ASINs, okay, per brand analytics have a total of less than 200 reviews. Meaning, hey, these the top products in this keyword, they're not even, they don't even have that many reviews Overall. There might be some. You know room for me.

 

Bradley Sutton:

And take a look at the keywords that came up here. You know we've got like bamboo cool underwear here, bamboo boxer briefs. I'm already seeing like a you know some, some trends here. And then, as I scroll down here, this one jumped out to me bamboo lampshade. And right here in this brand analytics tool I can see, wow, okay, this has a thousand search volume. It's increased 35% this search volume over the previous week. And then I'm looking at these top three clicked and, yeah, these are products are fairly new. Look at this, the number one clicked item for this keyword only has five reviews. All right, so let's just go ahead and take a look at this on Amazon and I can see this Amazon page, like you know, the number one, page one, position one, only has 14 reviews. Position two, six reviews. Position three has a hundred reviews and it's sold a hundred units. So this is pretty interesting. You know, like I found a new niche, potentially for myself, if I'm selling bamboo products, just by using the brand analytics data together with Amazon or Helium 10 data allowed me to find this new niche. So guys, play around with that.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Option number two let's just say, hey, I'm doing some, some new research and I'm like, hey, I want to see a keyword that, per brand analytics, the total click share of the top three items are 70%, meaning that the top three click products. If you add up how much percent of the clicks they get, it's over 70%. But if you add up their conversion share, meaning what share of the sales of this keyword do these top three click products have, it's less than 35%. What does that mean? Think about that for a second. Theoretically speaking, if, if all products and listings were created equal, if there is a listing that or some listings that get 70% of the clicks, well, it should have 70% of the sales, right. But most, most keywords, most products are not created equal.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Sometimes people click into a product and they're like, wow, this is amazing, so it's conversion rates going to be super high. Other times, everybody's clicking into products and it's like, nah, we don't like this, this listing sucks, this product sucks, whatever right, and the conversion rates going to be lower. So that's what I'm looking for. Show me where there's a lot of buyer intent for three products. That means whatever they see in the search results, it looks good. So if they click it, it like 70, 70% of all the clicks for a keyword. That's a lot right, but everybody's clicking out of it and buying another product that wasn't even one of the top three click. So that's literally what I'm looking for here, using brand analytics. You know you can't do this in seller central unless you download stuff and make some pivot tables.

 

Bradley Sutton:

I'm also using some other Helium 10 data points like hey, I want these keywords to have 2000 search volume at least and at least three word count. I want these keywords. It not only has to match everything I just said, but I wanted to have a search volume trend that's going up. I want to see this going up 50% week over week. Search forms, like it's a trending keyword. And then take a look there's a hundred and 78 keywords that that had this like look at this one human dogbed that that's a crazy keyword. Human dog bed has a 500% increase in search volume. recently. All right, that that's kind of insane. there's other you know products here mini chainsaw, cordless. You know there's some, just random, one wagons cart, foldable. The heck is that cigar ass trays for men has a 1000% increase in search volume. And then take a look here the top three clicked products for this cigar ass trays. Look at this the number one click product for this keyword has 94% of the clicks but 0% of the conversion. So there's something fishy going on there. Everybody seems to love it in the search results but nobody likes it on the page. However, another product there had 0.6% of the clicks yet 11% of the purchases. So again, there's just so much valuable information in brand analytics that you guys can do for your product research. But now you have a completely new way to search for it using helium tens brand analytics tool.

 

Bradley Sutton:

One last scenario here. Let's say you're doing keyword research. Hey, you look up all the coffin shelves, let's just say, and you put all of the ASINs of the top selling coffin shelves into this tool and basically what you want to see is hey, where did any of these products show up as one of the top three clicked for any keyword? Well, boom goes the dynamite. You just put in the ASINs and within seconds you are going to get every single keyword where it was one of the top three clicked and you'll be able to see if it was one of the top three purchase. You can see it's click share Like here's a keyword I didn't even, you know, think about, for I might not even be focused on in for our project X coffin shelf, alternative decor. All right, that's a new keyword for me. I discovered it right here in brand analytics.

 

Bradley Sutton:

So, guys, if you haven't used this tool, make sure to use it. I believe for now it's open to diamond and up members. You know we always try and you know, give our tools first to elite, then to diamond and then it'll get down on platinum. But you know there's tons of you diamond users out there. So make sure you guys are getting the value out of this tool. Open up, play around with it. Let me know what you think. What other kind of filters would you like to see? All right, guys. That's it for our Weekly Buzz this week. Thank you so much for joining us. We'll see you next week to see what's buzzing.

#527 - Amazon PPC Strategies for 2024

Listen in as Gefen from Vendocommerce joins us in this month’s TACoS Tuesday episode to share expert insights on the evolving landscape of Amazon PPC advertising. We're unwrapping the tactics that have driven success in 2023 and looking ahead to what 2024 holds, with a keen eye on the emerging trend of vertical video ads. Discover how an integrated approach to advertising, factoring in the halo effect on overall sales and product rankings, can amplify your brand's presence during crucial retail events. We also delve into how to use Helium 10 to easily optimize and track these strategies for superior performance in the year to come.

In our conversation, we compare the accessibility of Sponsored TV with the robust control offered by Amazon DSP, especially for smaller brands looking to maximize their advertising efforts. Learn why testing and patience are critical when navigating these platforms, and understand the strategic organization of sponsored product campaigns to optimize ad groupings. Plus, Gefen imparts valuable advice on marketing products with different attributes and the potential pitfalls of violating terms of service when it comes to product hang tags on Amazon and Walmart. Tune in for an enlightening discussion that could reshape your approach to Amazon advertising.

In episode 527 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Carrie and Gefen discuss:

• 00:00 - Amazon Advertising in 2023 and 2024
• 03:10 - Vertical Video Ads Trend
• 09:29 - E-Commerce Behavior on TikTok Shop and Amazon 
• 13:13 - Amazon's Sponsored TV and Publisher Ads
• 14:25 - Comparing Sponsored TV and Self-Serve DSP
• 16:51 - TikTok and Amazon Trust and Fulfillment
• 19:19 - Amazon Advertising and Product Attributes
• 20:46 - Optimizing Advertising Creatives on Amazon
• 30:10 - Helium 10 Tool Cerebro

► 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

Carrie Miller:

Sponsored TV ads. What worked for ads in 2023 on Amazon and what to look forward to in 2024 with Amazon ads. This and so much more on today's episode of the Serious Sellers podcast.

 

Bradley Sutton:

How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. If you're like me, maybe you were intimidated about learning how to do Amazon PPC, or maybe you think you just don't have the hours and hours that it takes to download and sort through all of those sponsored ads reports that Amazon produces for you. Adtomic for me allowed me to learn PPC for the first time, and now I'm managing over 150 PPC campaigns across all of my accounts in only two hours a week. Find out how Adtomic can help you level up your PPC game. Visit h10.me/adtomic for more information. That's h10.me/adtomic

 

Carrie Miller:

Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers podcast by Helium 10. My name is Carrie Miller and I will be your host, and this is our TACoS Tuesday, where we talk about all things Amazon advertising, and we have an expert guest today. So this is Geffen from Vendo. So welcome, Geffen.

 

Gefen:

Hey, Carrie, it's a pleasure to be here.

 

Carrie Miller:

Thanks so much for joining us today. I'm very excited to have you on. I know you've been on here before and a lot of people really liked your episode, so we have some more good content for everyone today. And so for those of you, for those of the people in the audience that don't know you or know about Vendo, could you tell us a little bit about yourself and your experience, and then also about Vendo?

 

Gefen:

Yeah, 100%. So I'm the VP of advertising here at Vendo. So just a background on what Vendo, who and what Vendo is. So we are a full service e-commerce agency specializing in Amazon and Walmart, full service management From an advertising perspective. We have kind of brought in those services across Amazon and Walmart also to bring in things like programmatic, various retail media networks, as well as other marketplaces too, and so those have been incredibly, incredibly growth focused. I mean, 2023 was a very crazy year. The team did an incredible job from a strategic standpoint, from a number standpoint, to grow across the board and when it comes to PPC, as most of the people I hope know, on this call, a lot of those different strategies rhyme. So we've been able to replicate the immense success that we've had on Amazon. We brought it over to Walmart and then we brought that over towards the various retail media networks, as well as things like Page Search and Social with Google, facebook, tiktok, etc. Amazing.

 

Carrie Miller:

Yeah, so you guys are into everything. That's awesome. So I guess, since you were talking about 2023, what are some things that you think worked really really well Specifically in 2023 that you might carry into 2024? And then maybe some new things on the horizon because of just the changing landscape and things that Amazon is introducing right now.

 

Gefen:

Yeah, yeah. Well, I'll start with the second half of that question, because I think that vertical video is going to be a really big push for Amazon this year. I know that everybody's talking about that in the space. I'm very curious to see how it's going to be rolled out. I mean, if you think about it from a practical standpoint, it's going to take up more page real estate than the, than the former video format. Now they might have both horizontal and vertical in play. We also don't know where on the search engine results page it's going to show up. Is it going to show up on row four, which would be row four, five, six on mobile, potentially even row seven, depending on how, you know, zoomed in your screen is, or is it going to be at the bottom of the page? And I think those are big questions because that's going to place a big emphasis on where you're ranking. And so I think that that leads into the first part of your question, which is something that worked really well for us, because we don't look at ads in a vacuum, right?

 

Gefen:

So you know, ACoS is great, but obviously this is TACoS Tuesday and taco of your sales, yes, and so when we're looking at total sales, something that we brought in and I know it's a little vague, but we really looked at the halo impact of ad strategies and how they impacted ranking, ranking and total sales, right. And so when we focused our ad strategy maybe on a cost per customer acquisition model, maybe on a taco's model, and we look to really prioritize, hey, where are we showing up, right? So if, if we're driving all this traffic and we have a 20% conversion rate, let's say, on this keyword, are we tracking, using a Helium 10? Of course, are we tracking that ranking properly? To say, hey, we started running these ads aggressively on August 1st and if we've been tracking ranking on that keyword for the last two months since going aggressive on that term, where are we ranking now and how has it changed?

 

Gefen:

And are there broader KPIs that we're measuring outside of just direct ad revenue? And that worked really well for us because we centered that around 10 poll events and this is a really big strategy of ours. That is incredibly complex, it takes a whole village to actually execute. But when we, when we focus our customer acquisition and ranking models around major times in the year so think Prime Day, think fall Prime Day, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Holiday, and then, of course, if you're a one off brand, if you I don't know are ski related, then obviously your season is January to March. You know like there are differences, but really peak seasons. If you're able to focus your growth model around the times that are going to give you the most reward, then that worked really well for us last year and we expect to see a lot more of that this year, especially as we all expect people are going to be more deal oriented, the constant battle for margins. So the better ranks you are, the more organic sales you drive, the better your TACoS is.

 

Carrie Miller:

Yeah, so are you. Are you also maybe sending a lot of outside traffic for that ranking as well, or just utilizing? Can you tell us a little bit about that and what your strategy is there? That kind of goes in with what you were just talking about?

 

Gefen:

Yeah, absolutely so. One of the verticals that I oversee is paid search and social, and so that's going to be met in Google primarily. There's Pinterest, there's Reddit, there's now TikTok. That can drive back to Amazon as well. I think there's two buckets. I think you have the always on external strategy right, which is the constant drip of, say, a Facebook campaign that's driving, whatever the budget is $200 a day, $150 a day, whatever it is back to Amazon. We all know that Amazon is going to reward external conversion a little bit more. Also, the Amazon attribution program gives you a bit of a boost with getting up to 10% back usually around 5% to 7%, but up to 10% back on each sale, which is nice. And then you also get a boost in your actual ranking. The influencer programs that we've run specifically for 10 poll events again, to go back to that first point, those are the ones that have really kind of set themselves apart or set those brands apart, the ones that are willing to have very strategic and targeted strategies towards high return on investment periods. And so you have the always on, which is great, that is a constant, and we run that for many brands. And then we have a few brands, usually on the larger side, that are willing to invest some serious cash into some of the of Amazon programs that are just going to drive as much traffic as possible. Those are the ones that see big gains, and it's not necessarily that you have to hit a home run with one TikTok influencer. You can have 10, you can have 20, you can have 30 micro. That actually get you the same result potentially for cheaper. But you have less risk with putting all of your eggs into one basket, and so that external traffic has been really helpful.

 

Carrie Miller:

Yeah, I actually know some people in our elite group said that their ranking just organically just shot up just from their TikTok stuff that they were doing. They were focusing on certain keywords in their title and they just all the traffic from TikTok was really bad, yeah, and now there's actually a TikTok shop, so that's actually going to compete with Amazon.

 

Gefen:

We've actually launched multiple brands on TikTok shop. We're seeing phenomenal success with those. It doesn't necessarily directly translate to Amazon sales, but what we always say at Vendo and it's the approach we've taken that has been very successful for all of our brands is you can't separate your customers anymore, right, you can say that an Amazon customer is in its own bucket and they're never going to be a DTC customer, and vice versa. Yeah, every customer everywhere you're exposed is a form of advertising and you can't force a customer to buy in a certain place. So if you're available on TikTok shop and that's where they find you, maybe next time they're going to buy an Amazon, right? Or maybe they're going to buy your DTC. As long as you're looking at the business holistically and Amazon is a piece of that pie, or TikTok is a piece of that pie, then, and your business is growing, then you know that your efforts are pushing the whole business up.

 

Carrie Miller:

Yeah, I was saying that I think that a lot of people aren't necessarily comfortable yet purchasing on TikTok, so I think that's why a lot of people are just going to Amazon. They might be like, oh, I saw this on TikTok, but maybe it'll change eventually, because I think we're still seeing quite a bit of traffic on Amazon, even though TikTok is like not wanting anyone to do that. Have you seen that same thing?

 

Gefen:

Yeah, I can't remember what the exact term was. It was like I saw this on TikTok, or I found this on TikTok, or seen on TikTok, or something like that.

 

Carrie Miller:

Yeah, TikTok.

 

Gefen:

whatever the thing is, TikTok is game here, yeah it was one of the largest search terms a few months ago. And so, to your point, 100% right, yeah. And that is actually, I think, more proof to my previous point, which is, wherever they're seeing things, they're coming to other places, to their comfortable place to buy. And so if they're coming there and from an advertising perspective, we're showing up where we need to show up, then we're in a good place, right yeah, because then we're going to get that conversion and that you just you spent elsewhere. Maybe your customer acquisition was slightly higher, but you drove that conversion.

 

Carrie Miller:

Yeah.

 

Gefen:

And, at the end of the day, if you have a good product and your customers are loyal, then it's going to pay off in not even the long term.

 

Carrie Miller:

Do you see that a lot, because I know you do a lot of DSP too. Do you see that a lot with DSP, where you're kind of putting a lot into Amazon and maybe you don't necessarily see the exact conversion on Amazon, but then all of a sudden their website goes way up or kind of other platforms.

 

Gefen:

So a couple of points to that. So, when it comes to programmatic, there is there is native programmatic on Amazon, right so. And then there's also non-native programmatic, right, so we can use something like the trade desk that can kind of target any programmatic targeting across the entire internet. Basically, the latter, yes, right, so the latter we do see that kind of um, that kind of halo impact across either website, and you can, you can also measure that right. You can put in a pixel and you can actually, so you can also put in a pixel on the, on the um, on the Amazon DSP as well. So you can put a pixel on your website for Amazon DSP and even though traffic isn't necessarily driving to your website, it will still pick up if there are sales on your website or, at the very least, visits from that same campaign. And so the interconnectedness of this world is growing, where the advertising synergies are becoming a lot more um, a lot more intentional, and so you have to have the pixels on your DTC site, right. You have to be launching on TikTok, you have to be on Amazon, on Walmart, because if you're not measuring that, then you won't know if, if your sales are lifting across the board. And if they are lifting, then you don't know where you can take spend. Maybe you're bloated in one area and two lean in another and you can put those and so, uh, to your question, 100%. Um, we do see the halo impact from DSP with Amazon DSP specifically. I will say the biggest halo impact is actually in the performance of the PPC ads. Um, we usually tend to see, especially on our mid, mid to large size brands, um, when we launched DSP for them, their PPC ads tend to pick up in specifically in performance. So their, their ACOS tends to go down. Um, and that's probably because Amazon, as we all know, is a, uh, is a pay to pay platform, so they're just rewarding you with being further entrenched in their ecosystem.

 

Carrie Miller:

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I did have actually another question, um, kind of about just some newer things that are going on with Amazon. Have you started the using the, the TV ads and then also just the sponsored um ads that go to uh like things like Buzzfeed and um, I forgot what the it's called, I think it's uh Sponsored Product Ads but they go to publishers. Have you started using those?

 

Gefen:

So yeah, Sponsored TV.

 

Carrie Miller:

And then also they're sponsored ads that go to like Buzzfeed or yeah, yeah.

 

Gefen:

So two points. So, first off, Bradley’s point. We actually don't use Paki for Amazon. We uh use them for Walmart. Uh, we actually use software for Amazon, besides Helium 10, of course. But as far as management software goes, uh, it's, it's all manual, um, um, but, and we can talk, we can have a whole 10 podcasts just on that. Yes, there's a ton there, but as it pertains to sponsor TV, so that's something that Amazon launched at uh, unboxed this past year, um, and the goal is to create similar to how sponsored display is like DSP light, sponsored TV is like STV or CTV light, right, so they want to bring the, the, the TV portion of programmatic, into a self-serve area. There's pros and cons. The pro is that there's no minimum, there's no barrier to entry. You can throw up a video and it gets blasted out towards a bunch of different publishers at a um at a uh, fairly, fairly decent rate. It's a little bit more expensive, obviously, because you're not able to put your max CPMs or anything like that. At the same time, you have no control. So, similar to sponsor display, um, you know, if you work with and uh with an um, with an agency like Vendo, uh, we don't have any minimums on our uh, on our uh, on our DSP self-serve seat, so we're able to uh to say, hey, you know, if you want to spend a thousand or 2000 or 3000, you can, you don't have to spend 20.

 

Gefen:

Um, and so my recommendation is, if you're a very small brand, you're starting out, definitely test out sponsored TV. Don't expect because they're usually non-engageable, or or, if they are engageable, um, the really the primary KPI and what they're optimized for internally is views. Um then, don't expect a strong row as treat that as a top of funnel approach. Yeah, at the same time, if you do have a little bit more budget and you want some more control, go into self-serve DSP. You're just going to get more. You can choose what your destinations are, what your publishers are, you can choose your audiences, you can choose your retargeting. You can't in sponsored TV too, but there's just a lot more control and so, similar to sponsored display, it's a great launching pad. But I wouldn't say, hey, if you're going to take 10 grand and throw it into there, take 10 grand and throw it in the DSP, you're going to see better results.

 

Carrie Miller:

Yeah, that's very good advice for everyone, as far as the DSP, Very good advice for everyone, especially for smaller brands, Cause usually it's all you know, it's harder because a lot of people are focused on big brands with kind of strategies and smaller brands is like I don't know if it's time to do even DSP or the sponsored TV. So that's good advice about the TV and there is no real, like right time.

 

Gefen:

I would just say hey, if you have some budget, if your ads are performing well, test it out.

 

Bradley Sutton:

You know, we test as much as we can, I mean if it works, amazing.

 

Gefen:

You know. If it doesn't, then we know it doesn't and maybe we'll test it out later on. But we can put that budget immediately into other areas.

 

Carrie Miller:

How long do you usually test it for DSP? Two or three months or?

 

Gefen:

Technically, DSP is a 14 day window before it's actually giving you proper data and usually DSP you'll know within a month.

 

Carrie Miller:

Okay, that's good to know too. Okay, so then we have Chris Shipperling said to your point about trust people also want to see the product ASAP and Amazon owns product operations. I bought a product from TikTok which is from Shipbob. I'll say no more as a customer.

 

Gefen:

Yes, you can technically fulfill with Amazon for TikTok shop. I don't have too many details on that, but I know it's possible. I don't know how much of that is being conveyed to the customer, and so that's a great point about trust from the. From the customer standpoint as a seller, it doesn't really take much more. I don't know the fees, I don't know what it kind of entails, but I know that I've heard that is possible.

 

Carrie Miller:

I it is possible and that's definitely a better. You basically connected to your Shopify site and then use the fulfillment by Amazon. But I I did purchase something on TikTok and it was literally shipped all the way from China. So I didn't know that was happening when I bought it. So that is kind of the that's going to kind of ruin some trust, I think, with people. So something to think about moving forward.

 

Gefen:

If you even talk about Temu here either, because that's a different ballgame.

 

Carrie Miller:

Yeah, that's another one. All right, and let's see, Chris Shipperling has something else. He says, which, which is why you always KPI individual platform metrics, but blended CAC is so important when you do have several activities running to drive traffic and conversion. Completely agree with what you were saying, so yeah, 100%.

 

Gefen:

We use a cat model for a ton of our brands. We track new to brand customers on Amazon very closely new and repeat as well, and we have we have a lifetime value graphs that we track over multiple years to see what the actual return is for our clients.

 

Carrie Miller:

Amazing, that's awesome. Okay, so, Michael, would love to hear your thoughts on how to organize Hold on sponsored product campaigns. Thank you, you lost your audio there multiple skews in a category, independent skews, not variant ASINs that share many keywords. When is it better to combine ASINs into an ad group and let Amazon pick the best for separating each SKU into its own ad group or campaign?

 

Gefen:

Thanks, it's a phenomenal question and this is where you're going to hear the variation in answers. You're going to hear shows that advertising still, to an extent, is a good amount of art versus science, because there are different opinions and I manage my own brands for Vendo as well, and I've actually done both in terms of separating out and then keeping them together. So a couple of different things. Number one there are always differing what's the word differing attributes to a product, right, whether it's a count, whether it's a size, whether it's a color, at the very least you can separate out by that. So, for instance, if you have TVs, right, you might have a smart TV. Right, so let's. But you could have a 45 inch, a 55 inch and a 65 inch smart TV. So, right off the bat, you can look at the search volume. For what is a 65 inch TV bring in in terms of search volume? Okay, that's, that's a separate campaign, right, 55 inch, separate campaign.

 

Gefen:

And then to your question, my recommendation and best practice is you can never rank and and equally grow all of your products, right, you have to have a hero item or a hero couple of items. So, for instance, let's say you go back to these TVs. You've got, I don't know, 10 sizes, 354555, whatever it is. Some of those are going to be best sellers, right? More people search for 55 inch and 65 inch versus 24 inch, so you know that those are the ones that have the highest potential and those are the ones that you're going to want to rank. So you might as well take those, and maybe take three of them, and put them into their own hero term campaign, so smart TV, tv, etc. And then that way you're focusing the majority of your ranking spend on the highest search volume terms towards the few that are actually going to generate that sales and performance.

 

Gefen:

And even within that, I mean usually think about it. I mean, how many brands do you see that have three products ranked on the top row? Right, it's usually one. And so at the end of the day, we are going to try and diversify our sales as much as possible, but at the same time, one product is going to win out. And so to the last part of your question, when it's better to combine a since into an ad group on Amazon, pick the best when it comes to your hero items. Let's say you've got three and that whole product line the three best selling colors, three best selling sizes, whatever it is, put those into their own ad group and then Amazon can choose. If you're again going back to smart TV, it's like, okay, someone's typing in smart TV, Amazon's going to eventually know whether or not someone typing in smart TV is more likely to buy 55 inch or 65 inch. And you'll be able to see the conversion rate, you'll be able to see the performance and you can say that's good, that's not good, etc.

 

Carrie Miller:

We'll go into kind of ad creatives like videos and stuff. How do you optimize those? Are you doing a lot of tests and split testing? What is your process for creatives And so when it comes to the best.

?

 

Gefen:

So, again, we have five ad verticals. Every vertical requires different size creatives. So we have a phenomenal team working on our creatives that can really customize to whatever it is that we want or need. A Facebook creative is going to be different from a DSP creative. It's going to be different from a, from a credo creative. But to backtrack for a sec, specifically on Amazon, specifically for something like sponsored brands because you're sponsored brand lifestyle imagery and sponsored brand video, right, those the two main creatives that you're going to be generating. And I will say, first and foremost well, first of all, by January 31, all of your product collection ads have to have a lifestyle image on them, if not, they're going to be paused. So that's a note to everybody that's selling you need to have a lifestyle image on your product and ads, if not, they're just not going to show up. That's by the end of this month, but I've found, from a video perspective, having a video versus not having a video gets you 80% of the way there. Of course, it needs to look like decent, right, but if you have any form of a decent video made by, made by a graphic designer or software, that's good enough to pass for you to be like okay, I'm fine with that. You're 70 to 80% of the way there. Obviously, that 20% for much larger brands matters.

 

Gefen:

So that's where you bring in different testing, right, and usually that's at the discretion of the brand's creatives, right? We're not a full creative agency. We have creative support, and so what we like to do is we like to take their direction and actually make the asset. So usually they have a marketing team that's going to bring us either static imagery or video imagery, and then we're going to scale that into, let's say, three different videos from that static imagery of just like slideshows or whatever, and then maybe we'll test out those three. Now Amazon's sponsor brand video has different ad groups that you can test out, which is awesome. So you can do like three different ad groups there and whatever ends up working. Basically, from a CVR standpoint conversion rates going to be your primary KPI there Then that's the one that you go with.

 

Carrie Miller:

All right, very good, we actually have something else from the audience. I sell yoga pants. Can I print my website on the product hang tag? Does it follow Amazon and Walmart terms of service?

 

Gefen:

I don't think it does. I don't think that you're allowed to drive any form of traffic to off Amazon. Don't fully quote me. I am not an expert in all of Amazon terms of service. I know the ad portion. But if you were to ask me my two cents, I would say if you're referencing your website anywhere on your product and Amazon catches you, it's probably against TOS.

 

Carrie Miller:

I do actually on mine, have on our packaging our website, because we use the same packaging for all different platforms and I know big brands also have their websites in there and they even have you know things where maybe it's not enforced. Yeah, I don't know if it's enforced as much, but I think it's if you kind of drive traffic to your website or you're kind of contacting people with their info. But it is kind of a gray area there. So yeah, that is a hard one.

 

Gefen:

Yeah, it's tough. I know that on any assets you have on Amazon you can't do that. We've even made videos where, like at the end, like we've just taken a video from their website and put it onto sponsor brand video and it was like at the end, like the last slide was like buyonx.com.

 

Bradley Sutton:

And it got taken down. Yeah, exactly.

 

Gefen:

It just depends. I mean there's a lot of gray area. My guess is that's against TOS. Also to your point, Carrie if a lot of people are doing it, maybe it's not really a police stuff that much.

 

Carrie Miller:

Yeah, I think. I think the kind of differentiator is are you trying to drive traffic away from Amazon, or you know? I think it's also when you think about big brands. I don't think they're all going to change their packaging just for Amazon?

 

Gefen:

I guess that's going to not yeah, yeah, so that's also a good point.

 

Carrie Miller:

It's not really. You know it's when you're like you've got an insert and you're like buy this on my side or you know something like that. That's kind of a difference, whereas if it's just on your packaging, I think it's, it should be fine.

 

Gefen:

Yeah, um, that's actually a good question. So, do do branded campaigns help in the organic rank of your product? It's yes and no. So when you're launching, 100% yes If you're launching a new product line inside your existing product catalog, um to leverage your branded campaigns is huge. Or, excuse me, your branded traffic with branded campaigns is huge because that's how you build your sales velocity quickly. Same time, if you are seeing that you know a majority of your spend is going towards branded um, then I would look at the CPCs and I would say you're probably not um helping out with ranking as much as you could be for non-branded terms. Remember, amazon will rank you based on how you perform on non-branded terms. If you don't drive traffic to non-branded terms, you can't convert against them. If you can't convert, then you can't rank. Yeah, good point.

 

Carrie Miller:

All right. Another question from Douda to Silva how do you harvest search term reports from a main keyword running as phase type, phrase type? That uh generate tons of variations of the main keywords. Those keywords are all different, with one clicks costing me a dollar.

 

Gefen:

Yep, that's some. That's probably arguably the largest source of waste it's been. Um is phrase terminology, phrase terms, phrase keywords that generate one click, $1, no conversion. You have a thousand of them, you spend $1,000 and you didn't get anything as a result. Um, switch it to exact, pause it out and then test out them in like groups of 15 or 20. It's more manual work. It kind of sucks. But if you take the thousand dollars you spent, let's say over a month, and then you um, you take 500 of that, so you save yourself 500 and you put it towards 30 keywords and you test and let's say you generate sales after driving 10 clicks on each, on five of them, and then you use those as ranking campaigns. That's how you're able to scale the business. You're going to spend that money anyway. You might as well go deep rather than shallow, all right. Sounds like he was. He was testing me. He said correct.

 

Carrie Miller:

Hmm, that's. That's an interesting test, all right.

 

Gefen:

I'm glad I passed.

 

Carrie Miller:

Yeah, yeah, you're definitely passing all these little tests here from people. Um, uh, just on a kind of an ending note um, are there any other kind of things you want to leave for people in 2024? Kind of final thoughts of you know what to look forward to, what, what people should be focused on, and uh, and yeah, just any final words of advice search volume trends.

 

Gefen:

We use Helium 10, I mean hourly, but daily, obviously uh to to look at where the search volume trends are in the space. And when I talk about 10 poll planning, when I talk about uh, uh, high, high traffic times, um, it's just the nature of the beast that you are going to perform better at certain times of the year. Um, you need to have a strategy that is able to address low demand and high demand to what you need your business to do, and so the more demand you're tracking, um, the better, uh, you're going to be able to prepare for that. And just a very simple equation or a simple example, excuse me, is um, if you know that last year you did phenomenal in December, um, then take the steps in October and November to make sure you're ready for that. And if that might mean taking or spending less in August and September, if you do have an annualized budget, then make sure you're looking at December in February, so you know that by the time August and September comes, you know what you need to do to prepare for that time of year. And so you, you know, we have, for almost every term, we have four, five, six years of data. At this point. You know what the best times of the year are. Obviously, things change every year, but we do know that, hey, if you're a holiday or a gift brand, prepare for that Right. And if you, if you are a brand some brands don't, but if you are a brand that has a hard dollar budget, make sure you don't get to December and you're out of money.

 

Carrie Miller:

Yeah, that's a good point. Something to point out too about the Helium 10 tools Cerebro. We have um. It has shows trending if of keywords trending up or if it's trending down. So you can constantly check the trends and how much, what percentage, they're trending up and down. But then you can also do historical keyword searches for 24 months in the past. So that'll really really help. You know, you can kind of see year over year in the last two years what happened. But then you can kind of project also moving forward based on kind of the difference there and track it that way. So definitely, you know that's a really good point. Is, you know, kind of projecting out and making sure you plan properly your budget in the right places, very good? Well, thank you so much for joining us on this episode of tACoS Tuesday. If somebody wants to reach out to you, how can they find you?

 

Gefen:

They can find me by my email, geffen at vendor commercecom. Yeah, would be happy to talk anything. Advertising, um, we, like I said before, we run ads. If you can run ads on it, we do. But we take a different approach and that we make sure that we are looking at your business holistically and we're not just spending to spend, we spend to grow and so, um and so, because we spend to grow, we might recommend different strategies and say, hey, you know, even if it hurts us, right, because we take a cut from that, even if it hurts us. Say, hey, you know, you shouldn't spend 100 can meta. Maybe let's look at these different avenues or save that money for later on. We want to make sure that we are going to provide the best service for you guys.

 

Carrie Miller:

That's amazing. Yeah, thanks so much. I love you guys. Want to reach out to Geffen or Vendo? You need somebody to help you with TikTok ads or Facebook or Amazon or Walmart Walmart especially. I get asked all the time about Walmart, and Vendo is definitely one of the uh the top uh players in the game for Walmart.

 

Gefen:

So one of the largest advertisers on Walmart. Um, I think we have one of, if not the most, brands on Walmart advertising and um, we've just seen so much growth there.

 

Carrie Miller:

And so, yeah, thanks again for joining and thank you everyone for your questions and for joining us live, and we will see you again on the next TACoS Tuesday, which will be next month, and we'll have a different guest. But thanks again, Gefen, for joining us.

 

Gefen:

Of course, see you later.

 

#526 - How To Use Amazon Category Insights & Marketplace Product Guidance

Have you ever wondered how the savviest Amazon sellers pinpoint products that skyrocket to success? Join us as we navigate the complex landscape of Amazon's seller tools with insights from our expert guest, Yi Zhen from Amazon Singapore, who unpacks the secrets of the Product Opportunity Explorer, Brand Analytics, and more. We tackle the nuts and bolts of metrics that matter—from sponsored ad percentages to the telling average age of selling partners—all to equip you with a map for mastering sales trends and strategic inventory decisions. 

Unboxing the art of personalized promotions, this episode reveals how a deep dive into customer loyalty analytics can revolutionize your sales approach. We share real-life tales and tactics for waking up those hibernating buyers and how vital understanding customer lifetime value can be to your growth. From decoding top search terms to smart segmentation targeting, this is an arsenal of strategies you won't want to miss.

Lastly, we journey with Helium 10 to find niche markets where the quirky, like coffin-shaped cat trees, become a good product opportunity. Discover how leveraging data from Amazon and Helium 10 can lead to unexpected product triumphs, and why sometimes, the more peculiar the product, the more passionate the customer base. Our candid conversation wraps with a heartfelt thanks to our guest and a teaser of what's on the horizon for Amazon sellers. Tune in to get ahead of the game and keep your finger on the pulse of Amazon market opportunities.

In episode 526 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Yi discuss:

• 00:00 - Analyzing Product Opportunities and Customer Trends
• 03:51 - Understanding the Product Opportunity Explorer
• 12:16 - Product Returns and Display Color Analysis
• 15:43 - Tailored Promotions and Customer Loyalty Analytics
• 17:19 - Understanding Customer Loyalty Analytics
• 21:43 - Discover Niche Markets With Helium 10
• 21:55 - Analyze Product Opportunity With ASINs
• 29:21 - Analyzing Consumer Behavior for Product Development

► 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:

And today we have invited you back onto the show the second half of the episode. I couldn't cut it off because there's just too much amazing stuff that we're going over. So let's go ahead and get you the second part of this interview and let's learn all there is to know about product opportunity Explorer, brand analytics, customer loyalty dashboard. We're going to talk about a whole bunch of cool stuff. Here we go. Did you know that Amazon sometimes loses or damages some of your inventory? Usually they reimburse you for this, but sometimes they might miss things. That's where refund Genie comes in. What Helium 10 refund Genie does is we go check out your reports and see if Amazon owes you any money, and then we give you the reports that you need to submit to Amazon so that you can get your money back. If you haven't run this, you can have hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars that Amazon might owe you, especially if you've never used this before and you sell a lot on Amazon. So to find out more information, go to h10.me forward slash refund Genie. Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the series tellers podcast by Helium 10. I'm your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show. That's a completely BS free, unscripted and unrehearsed organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. What else, so what else we have?

 

Yi:

here. Okay, I will just move on to the other tabs, because each tab will have different interesting insights for us to know.

 

Bradley Sutton:

So this one speaking of insights, I just clicked on insights.

 

Yi:

That's right. So over here you'll be able to know wow, I mean you'll be able to see the different matrix for instance, how many percent of the products are using sponsored product top five products. How many click share are they taking out?

 

Bradley Sutton:

At one glance, you're a good saleswoman, by the way, really Kind of like me. She's like she does this every day, but she's like, wow, like this never ceases to amaze me, Like this is so amazing. That's like you're like me and Helium 10, like look at this Helium 10 thing, guys. Wow. Like oh, my goodness, like I'm speechless. I'm just like, yeah, I love it. I love the genuine. This is a wow thing because this is I'm seeing here the 90% of click, like how many percent of people are using sponsored products? How many percent is prime, you know, and it's like 100% right. But then imagine if you guys found a niche where it's like 50% only are using prime. Wow, that would be a real wow. Right there, exactly.

 

Yi:

Exactly. Yeah, I think the reason why I said wow is because I saw that the percentage of products using sponsored products is above 90%, which is pretty high compared to many other niche I've done research over. Usually, I think the average I've seen so far is between 80 to 90%. This is like 90 to 98%, so it's pretty high. I would say it's really competitive, which is why I guess, when you see in the search term, tap earlier on, the search conversion rate is so low, because I think way too many people are running advertising on this. It might be a bit expensive. Yeah, correct, correct, this might. It's a consideration point.

 

Bradley Sutton:

I'm not sure if you can give this information, but what does it mean here when it says number of successful launches, like what determines successful launch?

 

Yi:

I think actually, if you hover your mouse over the, over the matrix, you actually tell you. It means the number of new launch. It's been in launches in the past 180 years. Wow, it's in there, right there. We've annualized it. Didn't say that before.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Like I was like in the dark. This was like six months ago.

 

Yi:

Since I've looked at this, I didn't even notice that.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Yes, Number of new launches with an annualized revenue amount of over $50,000 in the past 30 days. All right, yes.

 

Yi:

I think we are just being more transparent, especially because many sellers are telling us they don't really understand this matrix. Can you explain this better, this product opportunity explorer? I think throughout the entire year I've seen so much changes and in fact it's for the better, yeah.

 

Bradley Sutton:

All right, cool. So I see this. By the way, for the people not watching this, I see there's columns for today, columns for 90 days ago, 360 days ago. Oh, my goodness, the one thing that tells me to stay far, far away. Not stay far away from this niche, but average selling partner age almost 10 years. So, like these are like experienced sellers in this niche and if you're a brand new seller, you might not want to go against people with 10 years of selling under their belt. So there's another piece of interesting information here. Pretty cool, all right. Next one here is or is there anything else on this page? No, I think we can move on to trends.

 

Yi:

Okay, yeah, I think what helps over in the trends page firstly is to identify the seasonality of the product and also when you should enter to sell. So firstly for this product, as you know, shower curtains typically is something usually people will buy across the year. Right, there shouldn't be much pigs, but from what I see over here I think there's a pig in July. Probably is because of Prime Day. Prime Day yeah probably is because of Prime Day, otherwise it's quite flat throughout. So I think, regardless of where you, when you launch, I think it's fine. But just take note, maybe when you do your inventory planning or when you try to you know purchase your product from manufacturer, maybe before Prime Day you might want to manufacture more, right? So it helps you to do your inventory planning for that.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Also. I'm just looking at this and the number of products goes down. So that could mean one of two things. It could mean that more products are going out of stock, like maybe this people in this niche are not keeping their product in stock come Christmas time and they're running out, or like the stronger listings are getting more powerful because now it takes less products to make up the 90 percent. But either way, there's a clear trend here where, from September where it was about you know 90 products that make up this niche, and then now in November and December it's down to 65. So that's a pretty significant drop there, pretty cool stuff.

 

Yi:

Yeah yeah. There are also many other matrix that you can just toggle into to just quickly see, like how this niche doing. For instance, you can also look at the search conversion rate, but I just quickly see and it's pretty stagnant throughout. In fact, I think it seems like it's increasing towards like slightly.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Oh, I didn't even know that I could hit this button and it shows me the graph history. Man, there's so much new stuff in here. I mean I swear. I looked at this like a few months ago I didn't know I could do all this stuff. Pretty cool, yes.

 

Yi:

Yes, so you can actually see, the search conversion rate seems to be increasing slightly, but yet the product count is decreasing. Maybe it's because, like, more products are stopping to sell or it's going out of stock, like you mentioned. So the remaining products are actually doing much better in terms of like search conversion.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, yeah, correct, correct Okay.

 

Yi:

Cool, okay. The next one would be purchase drivers. This is actually something new, and I noticed that not many sellers have access to this beta page, so for you that you are able to see this, oh.

 

Bradley Sutton:

I'm special.

 

Yi:

Yeah, you're special, yeah, so over here it's something new that I think it got released in October, so it's really really very recent. It will tell you what are the different features. They are leading to a successful sale or like a purchase by customer Right. So what are the important features I would say in this case? Then you could see the color white or it has to have curtain hook or the team is boho. Typically are the top three positive feature for this shower curtain. So maybe it's something you need to take note of when you come out with different variations for your shower curtain when you want to start selling it.

 

Bradley Sutton:

I'm going to read the little tool tip here where it explains what does positive drivers mean. It says here, because I didn't know, I was like what the heck am I looking at here? It says feature specific to this niche that positively impact the number of units sold by products within it. The impact is calculated by comparing the estimated sales of the products with that feature against the average units sold by all products in the niche. Okay, and then I'm assuming negative just means the opposite.

 

Yi:

It means the opposite here.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, all right, interesting. So this means people do not like the stripe pattern Exactly and they don't like that fabric one because it's not waterproof, I guess Correct, correct.

 

Yi:

So let's say if you can come out with something water resistant. Maybe you have a chance and maybe your advertising may not have to be that expensive. If they are not much similar selections, they are water resistant.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Anything else on this page, or can I go to the next one?

 

Yi:

The next one.

 

Bradley Sutton:

All right, customer review insights. So this is you know. We looked at the review insights based on like an ASIN. This is kind of just like based on the all the products in the niche right.

 

Yi:

Correct. Correct, and I also briefly talk about it for, like the particular ASIN just now, just that what you see over here is on the niche level. So you know, at the aggregated level for shower curtains, what are typical things that are wanted or not wanted by customers, and this is something I would say for you to work on, especially on the negative reviews for you to innovate your product in order to differentiate from existing products that are currently selling. Right, for instance, you see, there might be a seller selling the shower curtain a cloth shower curtain since 2014. But, let's say, if you're able to come out with a water resistant curtain which people like you can even like, win over some of the click share.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Yes, so water resistant is one. I'm looking here and I clicked on the negative and I see a lot of people have issue with the magnet. The magnet is not strong. I know exactly what they're talking about. I bought one of these shower curtain. I don't know if it's this one, but but it doesn't. Yeah, it doesn't. It doesn't work very, very good. Maybe I'm part of this percentage in this niche of these negative mentions here.

 

Yi:

Okay, yeah, yeah, I think people also talk about the thickness of the product. So, yeah, there's something very immediate. In fact, the mentions of thickness is 18%, which is significantly higher compared to the other topics, like magnetic strength, because magnetic strength, even though it's second, it's only 5%. So, in fact, something that you immediately need to work on will be the thickness of the shower curtain.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, I see that right here.

 

Yi:

Yeah.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, and then here at the bottom it says topic impact on the star rating. So yeah, the thickness is the number one, like everything else. Is that like two? Or point zero, point zero, two, but the thickness at 0.2, so like 10 times as much. So that's a easy way to see what people are complaining about.

 

Yi:

Correct, correct. So I mean looking at the product itself, even though we see like the product might be quite competitive in state in terms of like the sponsored products percentage, in terms of search conversion. But actually there might still be opportunities because people are quite strong about the negative review they are talking about. That means there are products on Amazon.com. They are not able to satisfy people that are complaining about existing product within this niche. So in this case, if you are able to come out with something different, position yourself differently, there might still be opportunities for you to go in. Yeah, even though there are multiple Asians available already.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, Alright, we're ready to go to the next tab.

 

Yi:

Yeah, the returns.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Let's see, oh return. There's another one of the new ones, because there's beta here.

 

Yi:

Correct, correct. This is something new. I think it was announced in Amazon Accelerate this year, which I think you are quite lucky.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Do you see my shirt on Word today? Look.

 

Yi:

I bet you don't even have this sweater here. I don't have it.

 

Bradley Sutton:

I was a speaker at Amazon Accelerate so I feel special. I got to have an Amazon Accelerate sweater. That's my word.

 

Yi:

Yeah, it's nice, it's nice.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Alright. So I'm looking at this literally my first time looking at this because I haven't looked at this and I see a lot of the same data points here as far as search volume and things like that, at the very top. But if I scroll down here under product returns insights, it gives me the percentage of mentions of certain things like. The number one thing was the display colors. There's that thickness right there, 8%. The material, the value for money. So yeah, that's interesting how people were giving bad reviews for the thickness the most, but as far as why they returned it, it looks like they didn't like the colors.

 

Yi:

They feel like it wasn't accurate, right? I think they mentioned the green didn't look like what it was as advertised. So the product listing images also plays a very important part in this, as well as part of the returns, which is why we always emphasize on coming out with a good listing, as accurate as possible. Give sellers or customers, in fact, even more information to help them make decisions on whether they want this product and help them understand this product, so that you'll reduce possibility of returns. So yeah, in this case, display colors really like a huge issue.

 

Bradley Sutton:

All right, so tons of new stuff here in Product Opportunity Explorer. Now, one thing I kind of referenced was there are some familiar data points with the top clicked and stuff that we might have been used to from years ago in brand analytics, but it is a little bit different brand analytics. So then, how would a seller use Product Opportunity Explorer with Amazon brand analytics?

 

Yi:

Yeah, I would say it's more of how do you use brand analytics together like some initial insights of what you should sell. Then Opportunity Explorer is always a tool for you to look more in-depth into and see how can you further validate the product selection. So I think that I would probably share a few useful cases of how people can use brand analytics in order to shortlist a couple of ideas from there. But just something to note brand analytics is only available for sellers and wrote into brand registry, so, beyond just professional selling account, they need to have an eligible trademark that is enrolled into brand registry to access brand analytics.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Cool, yeah. So Product Opportunity Explorer guys, remember it's available for everybody, but brand analytics is only available to brand registered sellers. So hopefully most of you guys are brand registered and if so, go ahead and click over to brand analytics and there's a whole bunch of new stuff here. Are we going to talk about the CLA? This is the CLA. As soon as I get in brand analytics, it goes directly to the CLA Customer Loyalty Analytics. Oh my goodness, look at all of this new stuff here.

 

Yi:

Yes, yes, this is something that I wanted to introduce, actually, because it's something that's pretty new, also, I think, introduced around in October. So over here, you'll be able to understand what are, like, the demographics of the people that are buying your products. Right Then, from here, actually, what we'll recommend for sellers to do is to tie it up with brand tailored promotions in order to run specific discounts or promotions that will be able to help you to retarget a particular segment that you want to grow further. Yeah, have you tried using brand tailored promotions?

 

Bradley Sutton:

Yes, I have. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yes, like I've done in some of my accounts the abandoned cart and some other different markets here where I was able to get some sales that I probably wouldn't have gotten without that correct. Now this here is looking at one of my. I'm seeing my coffin shelf brand here. I see I have an option of weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly. And wow the hibernating customers what's a hibernating customer?

 

Yi:

Basically people who haven't, I guess, purchased in a long while. So, which is why it's very important for you to look into these analytics before you actually do your brand tailored promotions. Because when brand tailored promotions first launch, sellers always ask us which segment should I target? They don't really know right. But over here, after looking at our analytics, you'll be able to know which segment you have the most customers in, so that you'll be able to re-target them or re-activate that particular segment. For instance, your hibernating customers is 600 plus. Maybe you might want to run a promotion that target sellers or customers that haven't been purchasing your product for a while. Maybe you want to do something special about that.

 

Bradley Sutton:

And there's a button right here that I can do that on the right side. I'm assuming this kind of ties directly to the brand tailored promotions. Right, this create promotion button. Okay, correct.

 

Yi:

In fact, over here, if you go to the top left corner, there is a button where you can click into the segment view. So the thing about customer loyalty analytics ideally it's for sellers that have been selling on Amazon for at least a year, I would say so that there will be sufficient data for you to make decisions on Of course, you need to have enough customers for you to re-target right. In this case, over here under the segment view, you'll be able to see a few metrics, including predictive customer lifetime value, right. So usually, if there's sufficient data, it will roughly tell you what is customer spending this year and what they are predicted to sell, to buy next year as well, for, like your top tier customer. So this is what's very important for you to know, so that maybe you'll be able to Kind of like retarget them, either through promotions or actively through the post that you have, in order to engage with them.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, yeah, see my repeat customers average repeat purchase interval.

 

Yi:

Very interesting stuff if multiple people are like Purchasing from you, if you're selling like commodities, if maybe you can consider doing subscribe and save, for instance. So it really depends on what segment you have so that you'll be able to leverage on, like the different programs or different promotions that you have, in order to retarget this group of customers.

 

Bradley Sutton:

This wasn't even. Was this even in your presentation in Singapore?

 

Yi:

No, it isn't, yeah, because this wasn't even out a couple months ago. Okay, yeah, that's what I thought.

 

Bradley Sutton:

I know my memory is bad, but I didn't know was that bad? Okay, good, I'm glad. I'm glad it's not that I forgot about it. All right, cool, anything more in the CLA.

 

Yi:

Nothing much to highlight additionally here? Yeah, because after all, is still a very new tool. I guess, at a very start for sellers, when you review this dashboard is to see is to understand more about the Demographics of like customers that are purchasing, how valuable they are. If not, is there are some immediate actions that you can take, for instance, using brand tailored promotions in order to actively engage with them first.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, yeah, I haven't done that. In a few weeks I might be. I might need to look at my numbers here and run, run some more.

 

Yi:

Yeah, let me know how it works for you.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Oh, what's the next hour? Gonna switch to Marketplace.

 

Yi:

Amazon brand analytics, but I just I'll be talking about maybe three use cases on the different reports that you'll be able to use in order to shortlist the kind of products that you want to Investigate further or explore further using OX.

 

Bradley Sutton:

All right, so that's it for the customer loyalty analytics. What's next? What should I? What should I click on? Yes, you're, you're, I'm the driver and you're the navigator. You got to tell me where to go next.

 

Yi:

Okay, okay, right now We'll still stay in Amazon brand analytics, but the next thing that you need to click on is the top search terms report. I think it's under the Correct.

 

Bradley Sutton:

I see it's under search analytics and go to top search terms correct. All right excellent.

 

Yi:

So over here.

 

Bradley Sutton:

This is the one that I.

 

Yi:

Often use.

 

Bradley Sutton:

I love like three years ago when this came out. This is the greatest thing in the history of mankind, I think yeah, but this is cool, and now it's like kind of crazy because it's like the oldest thing now. Now Everybody's talking about the OX and SQP, but still I think this has some Definitely has some value, yes, yes.

 

Yi:

So over here, what I think is actually useful is let's say, if you don't really know, you know what kind of products that you want to sell, but then, or maybe you already have like an idea of like the keywords of like that item that you want to sell. Maybe, to put it better, in a better way, let's say if you have a rough idea, yeah, if you have a rough idea of what you want to sell by I'm not sure how to Validate the selection or what niche is it in actually right, so you'll be able to use the top search term report I would say keen the keywords in the search bar over there. I'm gonna put coffin because that's my, that's my main.

 

Bradley Sutton:

My main thing here.

 

Yi:

Correct.

 

Bradley Sutton:

And here we go.

 

Yi:

Okay, so over here, immediately, you'll be able to see what I like, for instance, the top click brand and top a, since over here, so immediately, you'll be able to know what are the similar a, since you can benchmark yourself against right. But how do you work backwards in order to find out what are the niche for this product, in order to do more research? Because, after all, within this analytics report, the Data available is still limited to a certain extent. So what I would advise sellers to do over here Is to copy the ASIN. For instance, we can take the top ASIN. Take this coffin show and copy that we can put it back into opportunity, explorer and search for this product Correct. So over here You'll be able to see your target ASIN. So likewise, like what we have did Previously, you'll be able to see, like customer review insights while like the click counts etc for this ASIN. But I think what's more interesting would be if you can go to the previous page, you can click into niche view, which is beside ASIN view, can you see at the left side You'll be able to see which niche this product is Situated in and in fact, for some ASINs. Sometimes it might be present in multiple niche. So over there you'll be able to work. Go backwards then after that to do your research, for on the niche level, yeah.

 

Bradley Sutton:

I see it right here. All right, so for those just listening, you haven't seen what I was in. I took the ace in, put it back to product opportunity explorer and then looked into the ace in view and also the niche view. Now You've been showing me stuff this whole time. Let me show you something you've never seen but that we just launched in Helium 10. This. This you might think is pretty cool. So we took brand analytics now, because this is available in the API, and now we have this kind of like database here Inside of black box and again, just like with brand analytics, you can only get this. You know, Helium 10 is checking your account if you have brand registry, and if you don't have brand registry, we can't show you this information because we always play by Amazon's rules, and which is a Reasonable rule. So let me show you something I literally found today. This was my first time. I think I actually did a video on this and it was a product that I couldn't believe existed. But what I did, let me see if I can remember. I think I did the same thing where I typed in coffin here and, and then I was like, alright, show me a keyword that has, and now it's easy. The cool thing about this is taking like Helium 10 data At the same time as as Amazon data. So I'm like hey, show me something that has at least I think I said 500 search volume where at least two items had greater than 30% Click.

 

Yi:

Share you see like right, this is something you can't.

 

Bradley Sutton:

I mean, you could download this, of course, in In brand analytics and I'm not doing anything new other than the search form. This is all stuff that anybody can just download, but I'm just doing it right here in this dashboard. And then let me I'm not sure if this is the exact thing I typed. Let's just take a look, I'll know when it comes up and I hit apply, there, it is right here. Look at this Cat tree. And I'm like you've got to be kidding me. What the heck is this 3,200 search volume? I, you know, I thought I knew everything about coffins, right, and then so I actually click this again. I got this from brand analytics and then you I know you guys are a lot of you guys can't see what I'm looking at. This is insane, guys. There is these cat trees, oh, and the one that is out of stock. It's out of stock already. There is one that's a hundred and forty dollars and it's sold like 800 units or something. Here's one that's a 100 and it's a hundred and forty dollars. It's crazy. People are buying cat-shaped trees.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Let me see if, if that product is still here, that was number one. Where is it? This one here? It is right here. This is the number one selling one. This is cool, guys. It doesn't show up in Amazon search anymore. That's why I didn't come up, but because it's in Brand Analytics, which is another good thing about Brand Analytics. By the way, I bet you I could find this right here in what we just did. Let me coffin cat. There. It is right here. So, you see, I would have found this even if I was in Brand Analytics. There it is coffin cat tree. But it takes me right to this number one click one, which is now out of stock because it was being bought too much. People were selling this for ridiculous amount of money and they sold almost 1,000 units of this. But I discovered a completely new niche thanks to Brand Analytics and this new Helium 10 tool that incorporates Brand Analytics. So yeah, guys, brand Analytics is still very valuable. You can get some really cool ideas. Do you have any pets?

 

Yi:

cats or dogs or anything I don't have a dog or cat, but my boyfriend do have a Pomeranian.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, now would he make a coffin shaped bed? Like isn't that kind of morbid? Why would you do that for your pet? Like I don't understand pet owners, but guess what guys? There's 1,000 people a month who want a coffin shaped toy or a bed for their cat to sleep in. I worry about those people, but I'll gladly take their $140. $140 is a really, really good price point. I'm quite sure the person's margin must be great, Considering.

 

Yi:

I mean, there are many other sellers selling at much cheaper price, but people still buy the $140. There must be something great about it right, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's great, it's great, but my boyfriend's dog just lies on the towel. That's all we wanted to buy a bed, but it doesn't want it, that's normal.

 

Bradley Sutton:

see, that's normal. Putting it in a coffin shaped towel, that's not normal.

 

Yi:

Oh yeah, okay, anyways, anyways.

 

Bradley Sutton:

So I was. We were in. Let me go back to where we were. We were looking at the search terms. You were talking about the cool use of this. Anything left on this search term page or should I go somewhere else now?

 

Yi:

Now we'll move on to the next one, which is under the brand analytics as well, is the consumer behavior analytics.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, Okay, do I just click it, or do I click one of these three sub-options here, or you can click into the market but size analysis. Market MBA, so that normally stands for like a master of business something or other, like a degree that I don't have, but here it means market basket analysis. Correct, correct.

 

Yi:

What's useful?

 

Bradley Sutton:

And here's all my products. This is my Project X products. Right here I can see.

 

Yi:

So I think what's useful about this page is, let's say, if you already have an existing product that's already selling, right, you're wondering what kind of product can you extend to sell? What kind of new selections can you introduce? So right over here you'll be able to see what are people commonly buying together with your products and if this is actually something that is relevant, it might be something you want to consider selling as well. Let's say, if you want to brand yourself as, like, a coffin shelf or coffin team seller, maybe you can expand to sell even like those brush holders, et cetera, right?

 

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, my skull shape. For those who can't see this, I just clicked in the very first one and 4% of people are buying it with a skull makeup brush holder.

 

Yi:

It must be like the person that's buying your coffin bookshelf, just like the coffin team, kind of like products. You know there are people who have like their whole house filled with Hello Kitty, so I'm not surprised there's someone who likes everything coffin related. So maybe this is something or like the brand, that brand positioning you want to go into, or like the team you want to get started with, so you do not need to sell, like you know, different kind of shelves. In fact, you can just go stick to coffin team products. Yeah, that's something that you can consider as well. So that's one way. Then the last way that I would like to just quickly introduce would be under the consumer behavior analytics as well, under demographics. So over here you'll be able to know at one glance who are actually purchasing your products, Like you know, the gender, income, education, the age of the people buying your products. So the way that you want to introduce new product, or like the type of product that you want to introduce to like the this customer segment that you have, it can be fully customized.

 

Bradley Sutton:

There are three people who make $250,000 a year. Who is buying the coffin shelves? All right, so it's not just for cheap people. This is for the high class people they have high class kids. Yeah exactly.

 

Yi:

So if you scroll to the left side, for instance, let me take a look at what is the age demographic? Oh, it's quite well spread out throughout, like 20s to 40s.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, that's actually surprising, maybe.

 

Yi:

I'll consider them, maybe the office crowd, so you may want to launch something that is favorable for them. Maybe, you know, it can be like the coffin pen holder, which can also be used for the brushes, right? Maybe you can position it as like a pen holder, something like that. So we need to understand who are actually buying your product so that you'll be able to launch products that suit them, right? So this just roughly gives you an idea to help you. You know, have like initial sparks or something to get started with initially. Yeah, so it's at the idea stage. Yeah, so I think, just for the purpose of like product research, I think these are the three common ones that you can start using first. Then maybe next time I can share more.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, yeah, I mean yeah this is like way more than I have been using lately. I guess you use kind of like the traditional stuff, but now this shows me that I definitely need to be in here a little bit more looking at stuff. All right, so, wow, this was a lot of information. Now, pretty much everything that we went over today is available in those marketplaces and even more, actually, the OX is available in those six, seven marketplaces that she mentioned earlier. You know Europe, USA, Japan Brand Analytics is actually available a lot of the stuff in almost all of the marketplaces. But also, you know, like he works here in the Amazon, Singapore and you do some like you know, if anybody's in your region, you actually have some cool programs. But first of all, let's talk about what is your region? It's not just Singapore. Like, right, like, like what. What countries are you servicing the sellers?

 

Yi:

So we are actually covering Southeast Asian sellers. There are from Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia and Cambodia, so any sellers that are coming from this country. Actually, we do provide free account management support To help them on board and start selling out Amazon.com. So I think many of the sellers May not know that we exist, but I just want to share that we are here beyond just the account management support. We do have many other educational resources available, for instance, seller university Live broadcast webinars so you can watch it anytime. We do have our monthly seller meetup and events yeah, every month, but this is only currently more for Singapore sellers. So if you are a Singapore listener, please drop by for our event and Do let me know. If you want to attend an event or do not know where is the registration page, let me know. We'll let you in. Yeah, so we do have many other pages, like our telegram community groups, as well as Facebook Pages as well, where we do share some practical tips from other existing seller on how to sell better. Yeah, and also we do share updates on like new products or any policy updates, etc. So just stay tuned. We do actually have a lot of different Pages available or have support that we can provide to Southeast Asian seller, so do reach out to us. If you are a new seller within this region, we'll be able to help you and then how can people do that?

 

Bradley Sutton:

How can people reach out like where's what website should they go?

 

Yi:

They can either go to sell.amazon.com.sg to Reach out to us, either through by attending our live webinar or signing up for our seller events. Alternatively, they could also hit us up via our Facebook page, which is the global selling Southeast Asia Facebook group, so they can also Reach out to the marketing team from there. Then they'll reach the seller with account managers like us. Then we'll be able to follow up accordingly to help them launch.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah and, by the way, guys, if anybody has doesn't have Helium 10, actually Amazon Singapore has special discounts that we don't give to anybody else because they help, you know, they help new sellers, you know, come and join. So, like, if you want to discount, like actually you can give you one that's probably better than the discount that I can give. So that's a. So make sure to go through Amazon Singapore, guys. They got the, they've got the hookups. And now I was talking to Anna in In China last week when I was in China and she's arranging the Potential Philippines.

 

Yi:

Amazon conference.

 

Bradley Sutton:

So I'll be hopefully going there and maybe March. There might be a smaller one in February, but I'm gonna probably go to the March. Any chance that you can go, that you can, should I? Should I put in a good word to Anna, like make sure, hey, we need a you over there talking about this?

 

Yi:

kind of stuff, maybe. Maybe if for the March one you might see me there, then I'll bring you around for good food. I do know some nice.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Yes, yes, yes, that's, I am. Um. I've only been to Philippines like four times, but I am half Filipino and I need to. I need to connect more to my roots, but I have a team out there. I'm definitely gonna be trying to go in in the middle of March, whenever this conference is, to look out for more information on there. Well you, thank you so much for joining us, and this has been an amazing year, I think, for Amazon and for brand and little lakes, for search group performance, for product opportunity Explorer. Well, it was great to have you on here. I didn't realize it was gonna last two episodes, but there's just too much good stuff here. So, thank you so much, and then maybe you know, next year or in 2025, we'll definitely want to bring you back, because probably by then there'll be so much new stuff that have been released that will need you to talk to us about it, and then, until then, maybe we'll see you in Philippines, or maybe next year, some in Singapore hope to see you again with to bring you more good stuff so that we can share with all your listeners Next time round.

Helium 10 Buzz 1/11/24: Shipping Price Hikes | Amazon AI Listing Changes | Walmart Ads Update

We’re back with another episode of the Weekly Buzz with Helium 10’s Brand Evangelist, Shivali Patel. 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.

Global shipping rates set to jump as carriers avoid the Red Sea amid Houthi attacks
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/01/10/global-shipping-rates-set-to-surge-as-carriers-avoid-red-sea.html

Walmart Connect now allows brand term targeting for Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and Sponsored Video campaigns to help suppliers and sellers gain new customers and defend and maintain share of voice.
https://gecrm.my.salesforce.com/sfc/p/#61000000ZKTc/a/8Y0000010m2h/7xTFu8gBw7LO5UHgY1DcW.oPCExzSEZqfWAJlat9k_g

Improve your campaign performance on rest of search placements using Sponsored Products rest of search bid adjustment control
https://advertising.amazon.com/en-us/resources/whats-new/improve-campaign-performance/

Sponsored Display is expanded to Amazon Business globally
https://advertising.amazon.com/en-us/resources/whats-new/sponsored-display-amazon-business-globally/

How Amazon Fashion is using AI to help you find the perfect fit
https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/retail/how-amazon-is-using-ai-to-help-customers-shop

Walmart unveils new generative AI-powered capabilities for shoppers and associates
https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2024/01/09/walmart-unveils-new-generative-ai-powered-capabilities-for-shoppers-and-associates/

Alibaba Boosts SMEs With New AI Feature at CES 2024
https://aithority.com/technology/alibaba-boosts-smes-with-new-ai-feature-at-ces-2024/

Sky High Ambitions: Walmart To Make Largest Drone Delivery Expansion of Any U.S. Retailer
https://corporate.walmart.com/news/2024/01/09/sky-high-ambitions-walmart-to-make-largest-drone-delivery-expansion-of-any-us-retailer

Walmart unveils latest technologies at Consumer Electronics Show
https://drugstorenews.com/walmart-unveils-latest-technologies-consumer-electronics-show

Our training tip for this week is how to add Helium 10's Follow-Up tool to your toolkit, gathering customer reviews has never been smoother. So, buckle up because you've got yourself an episode brimming with actionable insights and essential updates for every serious seller out there.

 

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

• 00:45 - Amazon Fees to Hike 300%?!
• 02:42 - Unenroll, Avoid Suspension
• 04:20 - Walmart Brand Term Targeting
• 05:48 - New Placement Bid Adjustments
• 06:20 - Sponsored Display Expansion
• 06:51 - AI Powered Innovations
• 08:20 - CES Announcements
• 10:18 - Comparison Charts Gone!
• 11:22 - Pro Training Tip: Automated Request A Review
• 14:00 - Join And Meet Bradley In These Events

► Instagram: instagram.com/serioussellerspodcast

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

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

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

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

Transcript

Shivali Patel:

Amazon shipping prices to increase by 300%, unenroll an automated AI, changes to your listings and a plethora of new AI-powered integrations. This and more on this week's episode of the Weekly Buzz.

 

Bradley Sutton:

How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think.

 

Shivali Patel:

Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers podcast by Helium 10. I am your host, Shivali Patel, and this is the show that is our Helium 10 Weekly Buzz, where we give you all the latest news in the Amazon, Walmart and e-commerce space and we also provide you with a training tip of the week that will give you insight into serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. Let's see what's buzzing this week. First up, let's jump to shipping and logistics. I'm currently on CNBC and, as you can see, the latest news is global shipping rates are set to experience a steep rise.

 

Shivali Patel:

In order to divert ships from the Red Sea, where there has been a surge of ships being attacked with drones and missile strikes by the Houthi rebels in Yemen, new routes are being taken, extra fees are being imposed and, as a seller, you should expect longer transit times. Analysts are actually warning the chaos could bring about a second wave of inflation, as many container companies are electing to reroute the vessels through routes sailing around Africa's Cape of good hope, making the journey longer than usual. Of course, for sellers everywhere, this differs based on where you're sourcing. This also comes at the expense of time, money and delayed product deliveries, and while we can hope that the global supply chain will eventually return to normal, for the time being it's probably best practice for you to prepare your inventory, turnover and profit margins accordingly. I actually recently had a conversation with Brock from Foursquat and I quote he said that it does affect every line price and departure times and schedules. Majority of these shipping lines have 10 to 15 day delays. If we're talking about a departure from China, that container vessel has to go from China to England, which will then go from England to USA, and every sailing schedule is connected to one another. From China to UK. It's around 7,000, versus two months ago when it was $2,500. The main problem being the total turnaround time. And of course, this has a massive impact because Chinese New Year is also around the corner. Geez, talk about a steep height and a snowball effect. Understandably so, but as a seller myself, I don't love it, though I would prefer my shipments remain intact. Hopefully, as a seller, you are able to make feasible changes that sustain your business needs.

 

Shivali Patel:

Next up, we have this post that Jason made in our serious sellers club Facebook group yesterday. The meat and gravy of this post is actually based in something that we reported on the weekly bus a few weeks ago. At some point, amazon announced they would start potentially optimizing listings using AI. Now we've seen many, many sellers report that their titles, even their bullet points, were getting changed, sometimes without notice, and occasionally those changes end up being products that could get a listing suspended.

 

Shivali Patel:

Thankfully, there is a way that you can unenroll from this and if you are someone who wants to opt out, here's how you do it. So you're going to want to go to your seller central account and once you're there, go ahead and open up that left paneling click inventory, not inventory catalog, click add products. Once you're on this page, then you're going to go to this section down below where it says explore brand selection, click learn more, and by going to the page that this takes you to, you'll see there's an option right here that says you can unenroll from the program at any time. So go ahead and select that and then at the very bottom of this page, you'll see it says no thanks, I do not wish to enroll, and go ahead and select that From there. You are good to go. If, in the case that Amazon has already chained something like they did for David right here, then you will need to create a case for it to be resolved and affirm that you want to be the lead contributor, as you are the brand owner. So there you have it. It is really as simple as that. But you will want to make sure that you're doing this if you want to defend your listings against any changes that you haven't made yourself. With that, let's go ahead and move forward to a different fruitful note, where we have an article from Walmart Connect.

 

Shivali Patel:

Part of being a seller is gaining new customers and retaining loyal ones. So, outside of the clear variables to stay on top of, such as knowing your customer and ensuring your brand and products are relevant to the customers you're targeting, having great keywords, compelling listings, creatives and utilizing brand shop and shelf URLs, setting up a defensive for your brand by bidding on your own and your competitor's branded terms is really beneficial. So the good news with Walmart Connect is they actually allow brand term targeting now for sponsored products, sponsored brands and sponsored video campaigns, so that way, customers can discover your brand and products when you advertise, while simultaneously helping you defend and maintain share of voice, as it says right here. This is really cool because, statistically speaking, Walmart has publicly revealed that 58% of customers surveyed will spend time looking for a discount, while 54% of Walmart consumers are open to switching brands if it means getting a better value for the same products. I know my family is definitely a part of these metrics. So to use it, make sure that you bid on keywords related to your competitor's brands and products, and bear in mind that there are some restrictions. For instance, you cannot bid on Walmart private labels, and this is only applicable for exact match keywords. Now that's Walmart toggling gears.

 

Shivali Patel:

What's happening over at Amazon? Well, a few things. But to start, advertisers can now apply bid adjustment for rest of search placements in their sponsored product campaigns. Looks like they're saying that the new bid adjustment control for rust of search works pretty much the same as the adjustments available for top of search and product page placements. So, if you choose, you can adjust bids up to 900%, just like the other two placements. This is great for helping you balance out campaign performance throughout your placements. Amazon has also expanded their sponsored display to show up on Amazon business globally with placements on the homepage, search and detail pages, be it on desktop and mobile, meaning you can now promote to business shoppers with exclusive pricing, such as quantity discounts, as they tend to purchase in bulk and more frequently than regular customers. This is available in North America, parts of Europe and Asia Pacific.

 

Shivali Patel:

For a continuation of exciting changes, ai has been all the rage since its inception and when reading up on different news pieces, that definitely shines through. Platforms like Amazon and Walmart are tapping in. For instance, amazon fashion here is using AI to help consumers find the perfect fit. Alongside that fit insights tool If you remember, I talked about it the last time I hosted weekly buzz and hopefully for you as a seller, this can translate to less returns overall, while improving the overall experience that you deliver to your consumers. Similarly, in terms of Walmart, most families spend six hours planning household groceries and shopping. Many do it digitally.

 

Shivali Patel:

Now the company is moving towards using a generative, ai powered search function to expand their searches, with the intent of allowing shoppers to look for specific themes, ideas, products across a host of categories. As an example, here on Microsoft's blog, we have a parent who is planning a birthday party for a child that loves unicorns and, as opposed to typing in maybe independent searches or running multiple different things such as napkins and plates, you can now just type in help me plan a unicorn themed party for my daughter and instantaneously you have a goal based search as opposed to scroll searching, and I really liked that identification right here. So it says shifting from scroll searching to goal searching. At the end of the day, both of these news pieces are a testament to a move towards a more customer centric approach. In other news, at CES, which is currently happening, alibabacom also dove into their newly developed smart assistant, which acts as an intuitive personal assistant guide to sourcing, where an AI powered robot can help you with your basic queries regardless of time zones or language barriers. This is an in addition to their September 2023 launch of upgraded image searches and smart requests for quotations to allow business owners to manage data collection and insights from a single touch point, and I'm excited about this. I know something we always consider is how well we are able to communicate with our suppliers, and the language barrier can make it difficult to understand the efficiency of operations. With this, hopefully, it expands the efficiency and ability to work with even more suppliers.

 

Shivali Patel:

Ps, Alibaba debuted a new campaign to celebrate entrepreneurial spirit and innovation and, since we're all a little bit nuts about what we do, it's actually a super fun quiz. We have our own link so you can be eligible for prizes from Alibaba. Just go to H10.me slash nuts that's again h10.me forward slash nuts to see what kind of nuts you are. I think I was a cashier when I took this quiz and Bradley was a chest nut. Okay, more from CES.

 

Shivali Patel:

Walmart's Tuesday keynote expressed they will be expanding their drone delivery to 1.8 million additional households in the Dallas fourth worth metropolitan area. While their drone delivery system isn't exactly new, their expansion signifies demand, efficiency and growth. The company also revealed an in-home replenishment which uses AI to understand consumer shopping habits and then keep them stocked with their favorite groceries after determining a cadence, as well as a beta platform that's called shop with friends, which will allow customers to create outfits visually and then get some feedback from their networks. Lastly, if you haven't seen it yet, inside of the news section, directly inside of your seller central account, amazon has opted to make some changes on what documents are acceptable to standardized product listings, as well as make it easier for your consumers to understand the information that's available about your product.

 

Shivali Patel:

From January 29th 2024, you will not be able to upload or edit the following on your product detail pages. This does include brochure, comparison charts, compatibility guides, FAQ, size charts. There's quite a few things, but in the case that any one of these already exists on your page, then that will stay there until February 26th, at which point they will be able to remove it from your product detail page. And all this is to say that if there is certain information you want to ensure stays on your listing page, make sure you audit your SKUs and then move that information to the appropriate sections or at least respond to that in a supported format, reflect uploaded accordingly. So that concludes our news pieces for the week. With that said, we move forward to the training tip of the week. Having substantial social proof is such an integral part of driving momentum in any business, so I'm going to pass it off to Carrie, where she will share a little bit about Helium 10’s Follow-up tool.

 

Carrie Miller:

Hello everyone, I've been noticing lately that a lot of you have been asking how to get more reviews on your Amazon listings, and I have a very simple, easy and quick way to set up an automation that will help you to get more reviews with no effort, pretty much other than just setting this up. Now you have access to this tool If you're platinum diamond, elite. All the plans should have access to this, so it's a great thing to utilize. If you have not yet utilized it, the first thing that you want to do is you want to obviously log into your helium 10 account, and once you're logged into your helium 10 account, you're going to go up to the top here where it says follow up, and you're going to click on follow up, and then, once you're in the follow up tool, you can obviously set up your own kind of customized automations, but that takes more time and effort. I would recommend just doing what I tell you here, and this is an automation, so email automation is where you're going to go next, and then what you're going to do is you're going to go up to the right hand corner where it says new automation and you're going to click on new automation and then you're going to click here where it says send a message to request a review. Once you click on that, you're going to click on create a new automation and this is where you're going to kind of set up the parameters here. Now, if you wanted to use this for a certain ASIN, like you wanted this automated request to go for a certain ASIN, you're going to put that ASIN right. You can click on this and you can add this filter and you're going to put the ASIN in here. You can also do that by skew as well, but that is how you are going to be able to do the request review and this is an automated email that goes out through Amazon that they already do.

 

Carrie Miller:

The only other thing that you are going to want to edit is this wait time. So this is how long they wait after you had an order placed. I recommend 12 to 25 days. You mean you can really go anywhere in here. So maybe day 20, you can add that action and then you're going to hit save and exit and it's going to basically automatically send these emails to request a review from Amazon. This is a very quick and easy way to get those reviews that you want and if you haven't set this up. Once you've set it up, it'll automatically request those reviews for you. Basically, it goes through Amazon and Amazon requests those reviews, so check it out, if you haven't already. Again, that's the follow up tool and let us know what you think.

 

Shivali Patel:

Incredible. So there you guys have it. Make sure you're making use of our email automation functionality to help you streamline your processes and keep that Amazon flywheel in motion. Before I close out, I just want to briefly touch on some of our upcoming January meetups and conferences. I know Bradley covered these last week, but perhaps between then and now some things have changed and if you have the bandwidth, obviously we would love to see you. Don't forget to let us know in the comment section if you're attending any of these.

 

Shivali Patel:

First up, we have a Dubai meetup on the 12th, which is this Friday. I believe this event is sold out now, but if you are nearby or you already have tickets, you will likely be meeting up with Bradley and Crystal from Amazon Seller Society. It's a casual meetup in the morning, hosted at the Movenpick Hotel apartments in downtown Dubai. Find out more at h10.me forward slash Dubai meetup. And a couple days later, on the 14th, Bradley will be in Lahore at the Pearl Continental for a reality check. If any of you are tuning in from areas close to there, then hey, it might be something you want to consider heading over to. Then we have our Frankfurt event on the 25th. I'll be there. Bradley will be there. It's a Helium 10 Elite event we're hosting in collaboration with Avask that typically only elite members in Avask plus members get to go to. If you are an elite or Avask plus member, you get in for free, but what typically costs elite members in the 600 range, this time, if you're not a member, you can still access this full day event for only 75 euros, because it is the first of its kind in Europe.

 

Shivali Patel:

We have a carefully curated but killer lineup of speakers Matt Altman from ClearAds, Kara Sayer from Snooze Shade Both are flying in from UK, Nick from Boomed Silas, who used to be head of paid and organic search at Lego, and a few others. You don't even need to rent a car or anything, because it'll be at a venue located inside of the Frankfurt airport. Literally just fly in and come through. And the biggest event is in Berlin with AMZ Hackers live conference at h10.me/germany on January the 27th. Again, Bradley and I will both be there, so come, swing by and say hello. Hope you enjoy this week's episode. We will see you next week to see what's buzzing.

 

#525 - Find New Products with the Amazon Product Opportunity Explorer

Imagine unlocking the secrets of Amazon's new cool data tools with the help of an insider. That's precisely what we did in our latest episode as an Amazon Product Opportunity Explorer team member joined us to spill the beans on how sellers can mine Amazon's data for hidden gems. We showed the Black Box tool by Helium 10, marveling at how it works in harmony with Amazon's own treasure trove of information to pinpoint profitable product niches. Our guest Yi Zhen also shared her inspiring climb from intern to account manager at Amazon Singapore.

Amazon sellers, get ready to have your minds blown by the power of Amazon's Marketplace Product Guidance and Category Insights tools. We took a stroll through Seller Central's Category Insights and discussed the 'golden data' at your fingertips, data that can guide you to high-demand product categories ripe for the picking. The episode peeled back the curtain on critical sales and search data metrics, providing listeners with a toolkit for making savvy decisions that could propel their Amazon ventures to new heights.

Wrapping up with a masterclass in product validation, we outlined how to sift through the noise and hone in on opportunities that not only look good on paper but can actually translate into profits. Our conversation illuminated the strategic use of the Product Opportunity Explorer to validate product choices and identify niches with less competition and higher potential earnings. And for those feeling the pinch of low search conversion rates, we shed light on how these metrics can sharpen your advertising strategies, giving you the edge in a fiercely competitive market. But wait, this episode is so good we had to cut it into two parts! So stay tuned for part 2!

In episode 525 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Yi discuss:

• 00:00 - Leveraging Amazon Data for Product Opportunity
• 08:51 - Unmet Customer Demands and Category Insights
• 09:49 - Understanding Category Insights in Seller Central
• 13:48 - Product Analysis and Seller Considerations
• 15:32 - Product Positioning and Discovering New Types
• 17:31 - Exploring Product Opportunities and Niche Selection
• 25:21 - Using Product Opportunity Explorer for Validation
• 28:25 - Product Opportunity Exploration and Validation
• 34:50 - Low Search Conversions and Brand Analytics
• 35:15 - High Conversion Search Term

► Instagram: instagram.com/serioussellerspodcast

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

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

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

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

Transcript

 

Bradley Sutton:

Today we've got somebody from Amazon who works on the Product Opportunity Explorer team to do a deep dive in how sellers can use this Amazon data to find new product opportunity, and there was so much good stuff in this episode that we actually had to split it into two episodes. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Black Box by Helium 10 houses the largest database of Amazon products and keywords in the world. Outside of Amazon itself, we have over 2 billion products and many millions more keywords from different Amazon marketplaces, from USA to Australia to Germany and more. Use our powerful filters to search through this database for pockets of opportunity that you might want to get into with your first or next product to sell on Amazon. For more information, go to h10.me/blackbox. Don't forget you can save 10% off for life on Helium 10 by using our special code SSP10.

 

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 a completely BS free, unscripted and unrehearsed organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world, and we've got somebody who's helping serious sellers from the other side of the world. I've met her a couple times now when I've spoken at Amazon Singapore events, and I really liked her presentation on some unique things. I'm like hey, I want you to come on to the podcast, be the first person from Amazon Singapore on our podcast. So, Yi Zhen, welcome to the show.

 

Yi:

Thanks Bradley for having me here. When Bradley was at the Seller's Meet this year, he literally just asked me like hey, do you want to come on a podcast with me? So I was like really caught off guard because my presentation was before his right. So I was like maybe, and now I'm here.

 

Bradley Sutton:

I don't take, I don't take, maybe I don't take, maybe I only take yes as the answer. Yeah, when I'm in Japan and Korea for my trip.  

 

Yi:

Bradley's like when are we going to have our podcast?

 

Bradley Sutton:

So it's always bothering her on her vacation. Always on my mind. Yep, yep, you know it. You know we're going to talk about that a little bit, but I want to go back. I don't know too much about like your backstory. Were you born and raised in Singapore?

 

Yi:

Yes, born and raised in Singapore like a true blood Singaporean.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Did you go to university also in Singapore?

 

Yi:

Yes, in Singapore, actually, I went to Nan Yang Technological University.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, then and what did you study there? Business so now I'm helping sellers to run their business. Yeah, and was Amazon your first job out of university or do you work doing other things?

 

Yi:

Actually it is, and in fact I was intern here, so I actually got converted to a full-time account manager, living the dream.

 

Bradley Sutton:

University to intern, to full-time employee, one of the top ones in the product opportunity explorer department. Oh, my goodness, what was your favorite part of your trip? I love travel myself, and you went to the same, exact same countries that I just did recently. What did you like the most?

 

Yi:

Wow, I actually love Mount Fuji the most. It's like so magnificent. Every time you just see it in like the pictures and everything, you're like, oh it's just another mountain. But it just hits different when you're there yourself. And I think I was lucky because I could see the full Mount Fuji. A couple of like our colleagues, you know, like even two so she mentioned that she haven't had a chance to see like the full Mount Fuji before, even though she has been there a few times. So I consider myself quite lucky. And of course, the food there is great, thanks to Bradley's suggestions.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Alright, awesome, awesome. You got to go to some of those places. I love it. Yeah, now are you a Korean drama fan?

 

Yi:

Of course Okay, so that's why on the Korean.

 

Bradley Sutton:

When you went to Korea I saw you and your husband were wearing like the school uniforms when you went to the photo shoots and stuff.

 

Yi:

Yeah, so we actually went to have our wedding photo shoot at one of the abandoned team parks where most of the Korean dramas are filmed there.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Nice Real life Korean drama Alright. Well, we're not here. I mean, I could have a whole episode about Korean drama and travel for sure, I could have two episodes about that, probably but we're here to talk about some cool stuff that you know, like, I think, a lot of our listeners. Of course, they use Helium 10, and what but people don't realize is number one. You can use Helium 10 with a lot of the amazing data that Amazon has given and have even more advantage. Or maybe you're not ready for Helium 10 yet. There's stuff that everybody, including people who don't even have brand registry which, by the way, everybody should have brand registry but even if you don't, for whatever reason, there's some cool information that Amazon has available and this is stuff that you know. Like six years ago, seven years ago, when I was first getting into Amazon, I would have never, ever, ever, ever imagined that Amazon would make this kind of data public and and it's kind of, it's kind of crazy, you know. So I want to make sure that people Kind of like know about this stuff, but before we get into it, I Want you to, I want you to quiz me, okay, all of the and people I'm trying to like see if I have my second camera, but my second camera is not, is not showing here. I want to prove to people I'm not going to cheat. I have nothing actually. Actually, I'm gonna show people my screen right now. Hold on, so this is you know. For those watching this on YouTube, this is my screen.

 

Bradley Sutton:

I'm just looking at you know I'm getting ready for what we're gonna talk about product opportunity Explorer. But I'm not cheating at all. My hands are up here. You test me on the acronyms on a bunch of stuff that we're gonna talk about today. You know the. We'll start with like OX. I know what that is. That's easy opportunity Explore. So we're gonna do that. Let's see, like I'm gonna pause before I answer because I want the people listening see if they know what these these Abbreviations stand for. All right, so OX equals opportunity Explorer.

 

Yi:

Give me another one something that Bradley was just clarifying with me earlier on. So what is MPG?

 

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, you see, okay, hold on. I'm glad you mentioned that. You see you're in Singapore. Your cars go by kilometers, right? Yeah, yeah so here in America, mpg we go by miles. That means miles per gallon. Okay, well, like well, how much your gas mileage on the car? So that's why I asked you that today. So this one is kind of cheating, because I already asked about that earlier, because I was like what the heck is MPG? Yeah now you're ready for God? No, no, I got it. Mark marketplace product guidance.

 

Yi:

Yes, exactly You're right, You're right.

 

Bradley Sutton:

All right, got it All right. How many of you guys got it right? All right, give me. Give me another one, hit me. I think they're all easier than that one. That was the hardest one. What's another one?

 

Yi:

Have you heard of this thing called the CLA?

 

Bradley Sutton:

Is it not a Mercedes? No, like a kind of Mercedes.

 

Yi:

Nope, I can give you a CLA. It's actually something new under Amazon brand analytics which is an acronym in itself.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah that's a B, a right.

 

Yi:

Yeah, so something new yeah.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Consumer doesn't start with consumer.

 

Yi:

Customer.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Nope, I give up. What is it?

 

Yi:

It's customer loyalty analytics. Yes, that's the new dashboard.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Yes, customer loyalty analytics. All right, what's another one? So now we've done three. We've done OX, we've got a, b, a, we've got CLA. We don't know we've done, for we got MPG.

 

Yi:

What else is out there? Do you know what is SQP?

 

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, that's an easy one. I had that team from Amazon USA on. Anybody else know who's listening. All right, search query performance. I think that's the one that everybody got. Everybody got right.

 

Yi:

Yeah, I watched the episode.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Oh, you watch that episode. Do you know those people I had on the show?

 

Yi:

To be honest, I haven't really heard of them. Amazon is pretty big, but I know they are the growth consultants right Based in a yes, yes, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

 

Bradley Sutton:

All right, I think that's most, that's most of them, but we'll see if we go over some, some other ones today. So, um, you know I wanted to. I wanted to get into some of these things because, again, you know, even even for me, like I have not done too much the customer, the customer loyalty dashboard, but what I wanted to start talking to you about today was the something else about? I'm not sure if this is the same dashboard, but before we get into it, you know, the first thing we mentioned was OX. You know, which is opportunity Explorer. So what is just the, the, the kind of like elevator pitch. Like us, you have like 30 seconds to a minute to explain to somebody in the elevator what is opportunity Explorer? What would you? How would you describe it?

 

Yi:

Basically, you are able to find out what are the unmet demands of US customers that are buying or searching on Amazon.com and, basically, based on the data that you have, you find new products to introduce and sell on Amazon.com.

 

Bradley Sutton:

All right. Now you say Amazon.com it. I know it's in Amazon.com, that that's the one that I sell and that's where you I use it. How many other marketplaces is it available in outside of Amazon.com?

 

Yi:

They are actually six more. So it's in the five European store, namely United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Japan, and they are trying to roll out to other European stores in your future as well. So just keep a lookout, yeah.

 

Bradley Sutton:

And pretty much any seller with a professional account can access it without Brad, even without brand registry right.

 

Yi:

Yes, exactly, you just need to have a professional selling plan and you can access, like this, golden data From Amazon.

 

Bradley Sutton:

All right, let's talk about the, the one I didn't know too much, which was the category insights. First of all, where in seller central? Which menu is that? Even in?

 

Yi:

I'm trying to find myself actually under growth, then you can hit over.

 

Bradley Sutton:

I'm gonna share my screen for those watching here on YouTube. So I go to growth.

 

Yi:

Then marketplace product guidance.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Marketplace. There's that mpg. All right, there we go. That's the mpg.

 

Yi:

So, in fact, under mpg itself, there are a couple of tools which I think we can talk about it later on, but category insights is just one of it. So I see right here it's at the very top there's a there's a button looks like I have got 30 of them. Okay.

 

Bradley Sutton:

So this is based on Whatever account I'm in, the kind of things that the categories that I'm in, or the order, or I have access to all you have access to all category on a browse note level.

 

Yi:

So in fact you can see already over there you can choose the marketplace available. So in fact it's available. This insights is available for the US, UK, Germany, Japan store, so you can toggle to the other marketplace to view category based insights as well.

 

Bradley Sutton:

What, what it like? What's the benefit of this? What should I be looking at here?

 

Yi:

Yeah, I mean the benefits over here is, let's say you don't really know what kind of category you want to start selling in. You roughly want to shortlist and See what is the demand for the specific browse note as well. You can use that to do your preliminary research. So I would say product research right. So there are a couple of ways you can get started into it. So firstly, let's say if you roughly know, you know what kind of keyword, what kind of product you roughly want to sell. There's a search bar at the top of the item type, keyword Module. You can actually put in your keyword over there. Alternatively, let's say you are a blank piece of paper. You completely do not know where to start, but you just want to see what is like the hottest category in that particular marketplace. We do have a bar that you can see right over there, so that bar length actually signifies the demand in that particular marketplace. So that's how maybe also.

 

Bradley Sutton:

That means in home and kitchen. Curtain is a very popular product type right now.

 

Yi:

Exactly.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Yes.

 

Yi:

So you can narrow down to curtain and it seems like window curtain panels. It's one of, like, the hottest product under this product type. Yes, that's how you can roughly get an idea of when to start with. Then, of course, you can scroll down all the way to the bottom to see many other selection matrix that help you to determine whether this is something that you want to get into before you do additional research, using opportunity explorer.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah and so this is like you know, this. This kind of popularity index is this. Is this based on what people are searching for, or what people are buying, or just in, you know, a combination of both? Or how should I view this? The this list like scale here.

 

Yi:

Yeah, this is like, I guess it's like a combination. So in fact, actually when you scroll down, it will exactly tell you Roughly what it's like the unit. So what is the net sales for this particular item type, keyword that you have narrowed down Across, like the different window periods that you want to see? So there, can be like seven days, thirty days, ninety days, twelve months, yeah oh, wow, man, window yeah, window yeah.

 

Bradley Sutton:

window curtain panels are flying off the shelves at Amazon, exactly who would have thought that that's.

 

Yi:

Lands views.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Let's see what does it say? It says some of glance views received across these. What it what's a what's a glance view?

 

Yi:

that means who are basically viewing a sins? How many Ascends within this item type keyword are being viewed in the United States? Which ever month that you have filtered by? Yeah?

 

Bradley Sutton:

Interesting. So what I mean, like all I mean, I'm still scrolling here and you know I know peace. A lot of people are just listening. They can't see what I'm seeing on my screen, but we've got here. Search to purchase ratio Return ratio. The reasons for returns yes. Number of new ASINs number 26 million ASINs in this. Oh, that must mean.

 

Yi:

That's why the bar length is extremely long for this particular item.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Wow, yeah, so doesn't mean that it's a longer, it's longer.

 

Yi:

It's something that you want to go into, so, but it's just another consideration for you, yeah.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, yeah, and the FAQ down here it says what is demand. We identified demand Considering 300 demand factors. Obviously we're not going to go into the 300. There's a lot of stuff that is going in here. Um, is there anything else that? Or is there anything here that you think really Kind of like sticks out, like hey, if I'm a seller, this and I'm looking for a new product, this is something that I should be looking at.

 

Yi:

Actually, for me it'll just be like three key things that usually I like to highlight to my sellers. So number one is actually the search to purchase ratio. So they want to see roughly what is the demand like, how many people will convert. Let's say, if I run advertising, what would be the ROI like? So that will give them a gauge right when they do their own calculations. Number two is the return ratio. We know how well the return that exchanges policy Amazon is.

 

Yi:

So this is something that you probably want to factor in when you do your profit and loss analysis at the very start. Maybe it's something that you want to bake in as part of your expenditure, right, because not all returns will Will allow you to get, like a food reimbursement. So usually our advice, seller, to consider that as an expense from the very get. Go for this particular product. Then the other one that I typically like to highlight, actually the features, right.

 

Yi:

If you scroll all the way to the bottom, it shows you a couple of matrixes like price Pattern, color, room type, etc. So it essentially already tells you what are the products typically purchased at like, which price range, and maybe in this case people like to buy solid curtains. There are blue in color and they like to place it in their bedroom. So maybe, when you want to sell window curtain panels, maybe you want to sell specifically Baked room curtain panels and, in fact, within your listing, this is something that you might want to highlight specifically is for bedroom use. So, yeah, this are some of the ways that you can, in a sense, give you a overall or initial understanding of how you should position your products. Yeah, we didn't this category.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Interesting. I'm looking here. There's patterns. I don't even know what it means. Oh, ombré, like what? The heck is a ombré? Do you know what?

 

Yi:

that means Different color, then it's like a bit fader, then okay, you do know what I mean. I don't okay.

 

Bradley Sutton:

There's interesting. I discovered a product type I didn't even realize existed. All right, so this is I think this one is one of the newer kids on the block that not a lot of sellers have been using. So, guys, this is good. If you're selling right now, you want to look into some numbers for your category or you just want to explore some new ideas. Now let's hop into the one that's been around a little bit longer, but it has been seems like it's been constantly updated over the last year or so. A lot of new features, and that's the opportunity explore. So Let me I'm sharing my screen again. It says here I can search by keyword or ASIN. So let's go over a use case. So what use case are you going to give? What pretend situation are you going to give me right now and we can walk people through it?

 

Yi:

Yeah, yeah, In fact right, maybe I can just introduce to you how you can roughly use Opportunity Explorer even without searching for keywords or ASINs. So recently, if you see, the dashboard has been updated where there are many more recommendations within it, such as recently review niche similar niche from the category that you're selling in. So let's say, if you're already an existing seller, they'll recommend you potential products that you can sell. What are the increasing searches? Decreasing searches and many more recommendations. So sometimes, if you completely do not know what to sell, you just want a second opinion. Do check out the dashboard over there.

 

Bradley Sutton:

There's a product that looks pretty cool. I'm seeing right now a book nook reading valet. Never in my life have I seen this product, but it seems to be getting popular. Okay, so, without even clicking anything or typing anything in, you can get some product ideas here. All right, what else?

 

Yi:

exactly. On top of that, I think we can just move on to quickly just showing an example of how we can shortlist or decide how to narrow down on what niche we should sell, because if you have been using Opportunity Explorer for a while now, you'll know that, let's say, when you type in a particular keyword within the search bar, sometimes it'll show you multiple customer needs. Maybe what I can share over here within this podcast is how can you shortlist the customer needs or like the niche shall be offered so that you'll be able to do further research based on that. So mainly is to see how we can narrow down your searches. Okay yeah, maybe for a start we could just key in shower curtain sets in the search bar.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Shower curtain set got it yeah.

 

Yi:

So I think, in general, I would just like to introduce like four different use cases where people can best filter or shortlist products when you arrive at this page over here, depending, of course, depending on your business objective and your goals, what you're trying to achieve out of here, and these four use cases are actually built together with sellers. So I'm sure it will be relevant to some of the people who are viewing this podcast here. Okay, so the first one would be how can you identify, you know, ASINs or, in fact, niche that are high in search volume and has fewer offers from other sellers? So, over here, I would just like to highlight that, if you want to review that filter by the search volume column as well as the top click products, oh, actually, you'll be able to see it within the niche page already. Okay, so you can just filter accordingly into the total the total search volume sorted by that. You can sort by that. Okay, got it, yeah. So, by the way, everybody listening.

 

Bradley Sutton:

If you guys are a bit, if you guys are on your computer, I want everybody to do this, like literally every seller can be doing this together with us. If you're driving your car, riding your bicycle, please don't try and do anything and get in the accident. But if you're in front of your computer, what we did was I went to the seller central menu bar, I hit growth and I hit product opportunity explorer. And now I'm right here in the product opportunity explorer. I entered in shower curtain set where it says search by keyword. And now I'm on the very page and everybody probably, you know, depending on you know, when you're looking at this. It might, you know, look a little different if you're listening to this, like two months later, but it's basically gonna be the same thing as what I'm looking at. And I just hit the under the search volume column. I sorted it by the total search volume over the last three 60 days and now it's in descending order. And now what should I do?

 

Yi:

Yeah. So another thing that we should focus on is also how many top click products are there, right? So you'll be able to know how many selections are available. Is it too crowded or is there still opportunity, right? So usually let's say if you do like keyword search, sometimes they will offer you many results. In this case I think there are about 39. So sometimes you need to click into the second page to view more results. So in this case, sometimes I'll recommend sellers to click the download button at the top right corner so that they will be able to transfer the results into Excel sheet to further shortlist. But in this case maybe we can just take a look at the screen that Bradley have shown, so at one glance you'll be able to see, for instance, we do have like shower curtains, that's like, where the search volume for the past 360 days is like 53 million and the number of top click products available is 61, which is, it seems, decent compared to many other customer needs which are above 100 or 285.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, I see one that's 300 almost, and now again. This means, if I'm not mistaken, the last time I was studying this, I mean actually it did change before this number of top click products meant how many products it takes to get 80% of all the clicks in this niche, but now isn't it like 90% or something like that?

 

Yi:

90% now. So 90% of the search and purchase products, yeah, Got it Correct.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, and so yeah, that that is a big difference, like a 61 and then two. Down here there's Christmas bathroom decor 3 million search volume only, but 300 top click products that means it's like a wide open, too many going into it. Yeah, yeah.

 

Yi:

Yeah, yeah, okay, and I mean seasonality also plays a fact right, the one that you saw is actually Christmas bathroom decor. It might be because everybody just want to jump on the bandwagon and just sell Christmasy stuff. So, even though the growth is like 2000 plus percent, it may not be something that you want to go into right, especially if you haven't really launched Okay. So that's just two matrix down to highlight. First, let's say, if you would just want to explore, you know, products that have high search volume and have like decent selections available that slice you opportunities to go into. So these two matrix you can look at that.

 

Yi:

Then, another one that I wanted to highlight is actually the search volume growth, which I briefly talk about it earlier, so doesn't mean that you know the growth is 2934%, like you see, for the Christmas bathroom decor is definitely something that you go into. Consider, like the seasonality, is it appropriate for you to go into it right now? Right, of course. At the same time, you need to take a look at the search volume. There are instances whereby maybe the search volume is only 60,000, but then the growth is like 7,000. So even if it grows by 7,000, it doesn't mean much because the search volume is too small. So it's important for you to find like a healthy balance between like the search volume that you want to see, as well as the growth percentage you are looking at to find like 20 products.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Now it says here growth past 180 days. So is that mean it's taking Like what Like just the day search volume compared to 180 days ago, or like this month's compared to six months ago, or what is this percentage representing?

 

Yi:

So this is like past 180 days, like based on, like the day, because we refresh the opportunity dashboard, like on the weekly cadence right, so it's constantly being refreshed.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, and most of these I'm seeing are like kind of seasonal. You know I see Thanksgiving bathroom set and then I see Halloween and Grinch. You know it's kind of like a Christmasy thing. Aha, here's one that's not necessarily gothic. You know I'm in that niche because of my coffin shelf right. Gothic shower curtain that could be a possible. Well, here's something my daughter would love. Hello Kitty bathroom set is growing 27%. Dallas Cowboys I don't know who likes Dallas Cowboys anymore, but our orange shower curtain is getting up. Alright, this is interesting stuff.

 

Yi:

Actually there are another two which I think it's also quite important that I would like to share also. So the third one will actually be looking at the average price of the product that you want to sell, because sometimes you know when you want to sell a particular product, you want to earn a certain amount of margin, right? If the cost of the product is really, let's say, example, $10, including all the different fees, ideally maybe you want to sell something that is maybe in the $30 range, so that you'll be able to earn a healthy margin, so that you'll be able to factor in the promotional discounts that you'll give and advertisement spend that you'll be able to make, right? So in this case, what I recommend you to do is to hit on the filter results button which is on the left-hand side, and you can actually filter the average price to. Maybe you can put $30. Minimum $30.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. Minimum $30, okay, and let's take a look at what's in the box and then submit yes.

 

Yi:

Oh, there's only one.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Only the Dallas Cowboys. People are paying lots of money for this. Yeah, yeah, stick in Dallas Cowboys. Yeah, yeah, yeah, alright, so that can be something that you can filter by.

 

Yi:

If, let's say, you have a target margin that you want to work with, especially if you already got a quotation from, like, your manufacturer, this is something that you can work backwards on to see whether this is feasible for you to get started on. Okay, correct. Then the next one is pretty similar to this, but what it actually tells you would be the annualized niche. That means your annualized opportunity. Sometimes sellers will tell me, for instance, I want to earn $30,000 in a year. I know it's quite little, but for new sellers maybe it's a good stretch. Sometimes they'll tell me I want to sell $30,000 for this particular category, but after we searched on Opportunity Explorer, we found that there's insufficient demand within this category. They want to sell in in order to hit the $30,000. Right, if the average unit. So it's not enough. On average, you won't be able to hit your goal. So you may need to have another strategy. Either you launch multiple selections in order to hit your goal, or you pivot to sell in another category. So how are you able to find out your annualized opportunity? You can do it through filtering the results as well. Maybe you can click on filter results again. Okay, maybe let's set the average price to $15.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Average price $15. All right.

 

Yi:

Then let me calculate, assuming let's say I want to earn $20,000. Okay, just put 1,500 units.

 

Bradley Sutton:

So average unit sold put $15,000, $1,500. Got it and then we've got shower, just regular shower curtain. Customer need of the niche yeah correct.

 

Yi:

So maybe you need to explore selling something within this niche, that something that you'll be able to meet the customers. Later we'll talk about how we innovate products looking at the niche page, but basically this is like the opportunity you need to start with. Let's say, if you want to keep that certain, you need so as well as the price that you want to sell. So you need to work backwards based on your goal.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Cool, all right. So you know like, let's say, I go through a whole bunch of these keywords and I come out with a few or something. You know like whether I'm doing this or I'm doing Helium 10, the next step is usually like a validation. You know like, all right, here's what looks cool. But then I can't just up, it's time to go to Alibaba and source it and like there's some more steps. So how can product opportunity explore help with validating my ideas?

 

Yi:

Correct. So I think maybe you can click into a niche, maybe the shower curtains one, since you're at that page already. So within the niche page itself, you'll find that there are multiple tabs that give you further insights on a particular niche detail that you are at, like product insights, search term insights, trends, and there's something I'm seeing brand new things here.

 

Bradley Sutton:

I've never seen before. Something that I want to purchase drivers and returns. Look at that, correct, correct.

 

Yi:

So, yeah, these are like a few other things you can take note off in order to validate your product and also to see how you can innovate your product. So maybe I can go through like the different tabs quickly to see what are the key matrix that you should take note off. Okay, so the very first one would be like the product steps. So over here you'll be able to see what are like the top purchase product right. Whenever people key in the search term shower curtains, for instance, so over here you'll be able to view basically the similar ASINs. You'll be able to see what they are selling at, who is actually having the most key share and what's useful about this. You'll be able to click into the specific product title in order to find out more information about this popular product Right.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Oh wow, Correct.

 

Yi:

So over here if you scroll all the way down, because, like some of the product matrix available at the top, you'll be able to see it from revenue calculator. But what's useful is, if you look at the bottom, there's this section called the niche. Product appears in, so that means this product is popular, not just in shower curtains, but this few other niche as well. Right, so this is just something for you to take note of. Maybe when you want to sell something similar to this, you can also cross, do kind of like across analysis, across the other similar niche listed over here as well, or maybe take a look at the top search there as well.

 

Bradley Sutton:

And this is kind of like I would imagine like for some people might view this as a good sign that it's in multiple niches. It's not just only getting sales in this shower curtain niche, but it's got one for non-toxic shower curtain liner Green. I mean green bathroom decor. That's a very broad keyword, so interesting Okay.

 

Yi:

Cool yeah. So the other one is actually the customer review insights. That is specific for this ASIN. Previously I've always heard from my seller they're still doing it the manual way. They'll go to like a similar ASIN. They'll comb through manually, like all the customer reviews, but you actually don't have to do it. Everything is all summarized within opportunity explorer, so at one glance you'll be able to know what's good about this product and what's bad. And what's bad about this product is an opportunity for you to innovate your product, to make it even better, and maybe you might even open up like a unique, like market demand for this kind of product that you are offering in the future. For instance, over here I think one of the negative review actually mentioned that the color is not what they wanted. So maybe the photos that you take in the future maybe you have to cross track with real life images to make sure that they match to a certain extent as much as possible, so that customers won't will be more assured of the product they'll be getting. They won't leave negative reviews. Maybe another one would be, for instance, water resistant. They mentioned that this shower curtain is not water resistant at all, which is very strange. I mean shower curtains is supposed to be water resistant, so this is something maybe you need to work on with your manufacturer to ensure that it's indeed water resistant.

 

Bradley Sutton:

This umbrella is not water resistant.

 

Yi:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, oh, is that like yeah, yeah, quite funny.

 

Bradley Sutton:

No problem.

 

Yi:

Yes, yes. So these are just some of the things you can take note from here. Then maybe we can go back to the other tabs quickly. Okay, so maybe I can just go through the search term tab, okay, okay, so over here you'll be able to. Again, it gives you different matrix, such as the search volume, growth count, the demand in terms of conversion and click share for all the different search terms. So over here you'll be able to sort, for instance, by the different matrix you want to see. It can be search conversion, because you want to see which search term is giving like much more conversion for like the product that you want to sell shower curtains, buff roof curtains. Sometimes the search term over here can even give you insights on how you can develop your product to make it even better. So, for instance, I see over here, when I filter by search conversion, one of the top search term is actually cloth shower curtain. So I mean it's not water resistant. Maybe because there are people who like cloth shower curtain. So maybe that's why this product is still selling well, even though it's not water resistant. Maybe this is something that you can think of and because, in fact, it's one of the search term that leads to highest search conversion.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but this, like the search volume and conversion, is this basically the same as search query performance, but not the same as brand analytics? Currently right, like brand analytics, I believe, like for top three click might be something different or it has to be something different probably because this is not even a week. You know like this is showing 360 days, right?

 

Yi:

Yeah, yeah, correct. Yeah, yeah, Okay. So the explorers should match with the search query performance.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Search query performance Okay.

 

Yi:

Yeah.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Cool Interesting.

 

Yi:

Yeah.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, these are some pretty low search conversions here, like some of these are 0.05.

 

Yi:

Oh, my God Like nobody Not as great Like 0.05.

 

Bradley Sutton:

That's like one out of every 1000. Yeah it's quite so, something crazy. Yeah, like less than less than yeah. One percent is one out of every 100. One tenth of percent is one. No, that's like one out of every 5000. Oh, my goodness gracious, it's quite bad, basically, the conversion is quite bad.

 

Yi:

It means that it might be quite, you know, competitive, I would say, because there are like a range of selections available, which is why maybe, let's say, if you even want to run advertising, it might be more costly to win the bid, right? So this might be a consideration, maybe it's it might be a little too tough for you to get into, right? It's just a signal for you to know.

 

Bradley Sutton:

All right, guys, we're going to have to cut the episode here because there's just too much good stuff, so make sure to come back. In the next episode we're going to go more into brand analytics, the new customer loyalty dashboard and a whole bunch of things more. We'll see you in the next episode.

#524 - How To Source Amazon Products on Alibaba & In Person

Discover the best practices for Amazon product sourcing excellence as we welcome back Kian Golzari, the Amazon product sourcing sage, for his fifth appearance to impart his vast knowledge on mastering the Chinese manufacturing labyrinth. Kian's guidance takes you through the crucial steps from selecting the right manufacturers on Alibaba to conducting effective factory visits, ensuring you return home with more than just souvenirs – but strategies to boost your product quality and cost-efficiency.

Venture with us into his secrets of product differentiation and learn how to stand out in a saturated market by uniquely combining various components and embracing innovative packaging solutions. We dissect the art of transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary, from deluxe packaging to strategic bundling. Furthermore, Kian reveals the underestimated power of packaging in offline sales, sharing insights on making a product pop on the Amazon website and attracting crucial impulse buys.

To wrap up, we get into the strategic intricacies of forging long-lasting relationships with suppliers and the nuances of communication that can make or break a deal. We dissect how to scrutinize supplier profiles and the vital role that understanding your supplier's capabilities plays in aligning with your business goals. Kian and Bradley also uncover the best practices for sample evaluation, navigating the norms of sample payments, and why investing time in personalizing your interactions with suppliers can pay dividends in the long run. This episode isn't just about finding the right supplier; it's about creating partnerships that will sustain your Amazon business growth and success.

 

In episode 524 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Kian discuss:

• 00:00 - Guide to Factory Sourcing and Visiting 
• 02:52 - Insights From Visiting a Factory 
• 11:40 - Sourcing and Differentiating Products in Manufacturing
• 13:22 - Revamping Coffin Shelf Market Strategy
• 16:29 - Importance of Packaging in Offline Sales 
• 18:20 - Clarity and Importance of Product Filters 
• 18:44 - Finding & Evaluating Manufacturers on Alibaba
• 21:53 - Filtering for Top Factory Products
• 25:48 - Importance of Trade Background and Markets
• 28:31 - Selecting Suppliers and Communicating Effectively
• 31:40 - Price and Quality Selection Process 
• 33:48 - Strategies for Sourcing and Product Defensibility
• 36:38 - Benefits of Attending the Canton Fair

► 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 the world's foremost expert on sourcing, Kian, back on the show and he's going to give us step-by-step guides on how to source on Alibaba.com and an SOP for visiting factories in China. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Are you afraid of running out of inventory before your next shipment comes in? Or maybe you're on the other side and you worry about having too much inventory, which could cap you out at the Amazon warehouses or even cost you storage fees? Stay on top of your inventory by using our robust inventory management tool. You can take advantage of our advanced forecasting algorithms, manage your 3PL inventory, create PO's for your suppliers, create replenishment shipments and more all from inside inventory management by Helium 10. For more information, go to h10.me forward slash inventory management. And don't forget you can sign up for a free Helium 10 account from there, or you can get 10% off for life by using our special podcast code, SSP10.

 

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's a completely BS-free, unscripted and unrehearsed organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. We're going to the other side of the world to Dubai right now for a record breaking fifth time. That's how long this this, this show, has been out there. Guys, like we only have people on there, if they're really good, we'll invite them back. And if they are really good and we invite them back, it's only one time per year. The very first time ever in the history of Serious Sellers podcast, somebody's on the fifth time is the one and only Kian. Kian. How's it going? Welcome back.

 

Kian:

Oh man, thanks so much. It's a great intro man. It's an honor to be the only speaker to be on here five times and wow, I mean that must mean you've done a lot of episodes as well. So congrats to you to be plugging away. Like, how many episodes have you put out now?

 

Bradley Sutton:

We're like in the mid-500, like we're about 520 now, like we're in the mid the the five teens around there, yeah amazing, yeah, incredible man. Yeah great to be back and, yeah, really looking forward to sort of diving in and we're going to talk a lot about Alibaba, but before we get into that, I'm actually visiting, for the first time, Chinese factories. Like it's been years since I've even been to China and I've never visited the factories where we make the Project X, project 5K products. So what's some advice you can give me? You know like, hey, should I bring some gifts? You know like maybe some chocolates or something to the factory owners? Should I negotiate? Should I just, you know, talk away, ask about their family, like I usually deal with a sourcing agent? Yeah, and she's going to come with me, my sourcing agent who found these factories, and translate a little bit. But what should I do.

 

Kian:

Yeah, I mean, first of all, I think your mind is going to be blown Like I think everyone experiences this like the first time you go into a factory and actually see how your goods are made, because you have this idea and you have this perception in your head of, like how you think goods are made. But once you go in and you see the production line and like you know, let's say this is for the, for the coffin items, right? So like you'll see, like the wood, like arriving, you'll see the wood getting dried. You'll see, like the woods, like the bad pieces getting rejected. You'll see it getting sanded and filed down. You'll see it getting sprayed and painted. You'll see it getting cut to size and you'll see it getting assembled. You'll see it getting screwed, like you'll just see in some of the different compartments, and then your head will be like, wow, here's like 20 different processes and steps that this product went through to get made, whereas when I just see it in a store, I just see it like in a shelf or, like you know, online. I didn't think about it in this way. But why that really helps you is that, like you know, if you've got cost challenges and you're like right, I've got this like $8 product and I need to get it down to 6.5, you've got like 20 different places you can go to in your head because you've seen it on the production line, right?

 

Kian:

You're like well, was that spring really necessary? Are we cutting it in the most efficient way? Can we just do straight edges rather than these curved edges? Was it necessary to have that coating? Like? There's so many different things you can now think about. And then, on the reverse, if you want to improve the quality, you're like here's things that we could do better, based on what I saw and how this product is actually assembled. But you're going there for the first time, right? So, in terms of gifts, I would say it's nice. They'll probably provide a gift for you. If you've been doing business together for like a number of years, then by all means, maybe take something nice. I would say something that represents your hometown, so you could take them your favorite team, like a Lakers hat or something like that.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, those are fighting words. All right, guys. The fifth and last time that Keen will ever be on the podcast.

 

Kian:

So you can always and, by the way, Bradley’s the clipper's friend for anyone who didn't catch that but yeah, like you know, anything that represents your hometown where it could be like a hot sauce, it could be like a local tea or whatever like that. Just it doesn't have to be anything expensive. Like for me, I always used to take like a personalized bottle of whiskey because I was coming from Scotland. Suppliers, like really, really appreciated that and just a nice gesture to do. And if you have, like a sales assistant that you've been working with, I would get one for the sales assistant that you talk to and then one for the factory boss as well. Very, very important to get a gift for the factory boss and also to get a photo with the factory boss, because there's always going to be time where you're going to need to ask for a favor, right, and there's going to be a time when, like you know, chinese New Year is coming up and, like you know, your, your goods are getting rushed out and maybe they won't make it shipment before Chinese New Year. And then you say like, hey, please, can you just ask the boss, please can you rush this, please can you push this to the front of the production schedule. Please can you get this out before Chinese New Year? And you're like, who's asking? Again? Bradley's asking which one's? Bradley again, oh, he's the guy that brought you that Lakers jersey. Oh, yeah, I love that jersey. Cool, all right, get the items to the front of the line. So it's always something to like for them to remember you if you get a nice little gift.

 

Kian:

Now, talking about, like, actually arriving at the factory, I think a lot of people, maybe, if you're going to China for the first time, they have this like fear of like well, you know, google Maps doesn't work out there Like how do I get there? Like your factory will arrange everything for you in terms of transport, and like you've got a sourcing agent there. So so they'll definitely help you out, but you don't need to figure out anything by yourself. Like you can just tell your factory hey, I'm arriving at this airport, I'm flying into Hong Kong, I'm flying into Shanghai, I'll be there on the 19th of March. I'm going to come and visit you on the 20th. They'll just say, cool, what's your hotel? We'll come pick you up. Driver will be there outside 10 o'clock and, like, literally, driver comes out with your name, they'll have a Starbucks waiting for you. Like they really, really take care of you, right.

 

Kian:

And if you're like, hey, I need to get a train to where you are, I don't quite know how to get there. Like they'll book the train ticket for you, like they're so hospitable, like if you have any issues of like how to get there, or even like you know, when I go visit a factory, I tend to visit like two or three at the same time, like of a similar competing product, similar competing category, and I say, hey, look after you. After a visit your factory, I'm going to see this other factory, can you help me get there? And they're like, yeah, no problem, give us the address, we'll drop you off. Like, even if it's a competitor, if there's there very, very, very hospitable. So, in terms of getting there nice and easy, in terms of like what you're, what you'll learn, in terms of their product development, it'll blow your mind. But in terms of being prepared for your factory visit, like I always before any China trip, whether I'm going to the Canton Fair, whether I'm going to visit a factory, I always have to have a plan for my visit Right, like what is the main outcome I want to achieve from this?

 

Kian:

Right, do I want to learn how the goods are made? Cool, I'll spend a little bit of time on the production line. Do I need a better price? Because I'm getting price pressure? Well, I'm going to do my research in advance to see. Well, what were other suppliers pricing me? So, like you know, you could get a specification sheet for your product. You could but I'm sure we'll talk about this shortly reach out to the top three, top five suppliers on Alibaba.com, get pricing from them and you can go back to your existing supplier to say hey look, I don't want to move production, but just to let you know this is a pricing I'm getting offered somewhere else. I need you to match it. So, is it better pricing that we need? Are you getting a few too many returns? Or the quality concerns? Is there something? Is there chipping off the wood on the coffin box? Is that something we need to talk about? Then, like, we have the products right there in front of us, like here, let's address these quality concerns. Are you not doing the quality control? Let's check the end of the production line. Let's see who checks it. Let's see who boxes it. Let's see why they aren't picking up on these things.

 

Kian:

So there's many, many different outcomes that you could have. It could also be we want to develop new products for 2024. Please prepare for us some additional new samples and we can review them together or let's discuss together. So I wouldn't necessarily go into a factory without knowing what I wanted to achieve and like no lie. I've been in factories where I've been there for 10 hours sitting opposite the boss and we're just negotiating, because I'm like I'm not leaving until we figure this out and like, literally Some of the factory bosses like to smoke and I remember like the guy went through two packs of cigarettes while we were talking it. Like I'm not saying that's going to be the case right For everyone, but I knew I had an outcome that I wanted to achieve on that trip, right.

 

Kian:

Certain times I was doing production for the Olympics and they required certain certifications for the factory and I went to visit factories and didn't have those certificates. So I was training them. This is what this is. A certificate needs to comply with. This is what we need to fix. We were looking at, you know, lighting, fire extinguishers, dormitories, all that stuff. I was like you're the factory I want to work with. I need you to be compliant of this. I'm not leaving until I know you can do this. So there's so many different outcomes that we can have for visiting a factory and like. Those are just some of the things that we need to be prepared for, but, honestly, it's going to be so much fun for you. Like, I'm actually excited for you and I can't wait to see your stories on Instagram to see what it looks like.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Thank you, thank you Now, right now, let's just say, you know, for that, a lot of people you definitely know suggest, hey, you should go visit the factory. But for a lot of other people you know, they might not have the way to go to China or they might not be able to go to Canton Fair or Iwu or other places, and so obviously the easiest place to to find suppliers would be Alibaba.com. So we're going to try something different today. I didn't 100 percent have this plan, but now I just like thought of it right now I just went to Alibaba, but or I went to Amazon and let's just, we're going to do a pretend thing where I'm which is halfway real, and that is, you know, one of the project X brands we do is not the coffin shell, but we also do egg trays. We have this brand called Geese Chicken Coops.

 

I just like threw in a keyword to Amazon right now egg storage for countertop. This actually used to be one of our main keywords, but now it's not anymore. And then I'm like trying to find something that looks interesting and these like this, this egg basket that has like a ceramic lid. Here let's just pretend that I'm like, hey, I want to have. I want to go source this from China. I want to look. So first step is what? Just go to Alibaba.com and try and figure out what keyword it might be like something similar to this. So you've got a couple of options here.

 

Kian:

Right, because, like you have the traditional egg trays, which could be, you know, wood and plastic, acrylic, whatever, and you could just type in egg tray and you could find it right. But for that particular one, for those who aren't viewing, with like a video, like Bradley, how would you describe this? It's like the shape of a chicken.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, it's really like the bottom part is this wire mesh like a basket looking thing. And then the like it has, this lid that shape like a, like a, like a chicken or rooster or something like that.

 

Kian:

here this is a really good example because, like here's a classic example of if you type in like egg tray or whatever on Alibaba, like this product probably won't come up, like we can have a look, but it probably won't come up the way that we're looking at this one, right, but like for you to have more defensibility in your brand, which is really, really important for 2024, you might need to go to another manufacturer which doesn't make egg trays. So you're looking at eggs right now and we don't see that particular product. Right, there's nothing like that. Yep, we could type in like caged basket for you know, holding fruit or holding vegetables or whatever it may, be right, and we could find the bottom part, but for the top part it was like a toy chicken, like on the top right, which is kind of serving as like the protector or the top of the basket, right, and so for that I would go to a toy supplier to be like different materials, right, it could be silicone, it could be plastic, it could be rubber, like I would say like rubber chicken toy or rubber animal toys, right, and you might be able to find this for, let's just say, 50 cent or 30 cent or 75 cent, and we could buy those separately and we could send it to the egg tray suppliers, or we could send it to the basket suppliers, right, and anyone wanting to copy that product wouldn't necessarily be able to, because they didn't know that they have to go to two different suppliers. Right, they didn't know that you could, just because if they type it in, they won't find it and they're not thinking.

 

Kian:

Right, I'm going to get an egg tray from a toy supplier. So this is something that gives you like, really, really good defensibility. And this is applicable to anyone like, not even people which are looking for egg trays, but, like, whenever I'm looking at a new product, I'm like, well, what other purpose does this product have? Like, for example, right now I'm using a podcast microphone, right With a boom arm or whatever, right, but like, I could also go to a supplier which makes selfie sticks and take the technology of the telescopic pole and use that right, and anyone who's looking to get like a microphone stand or a podcast mic stand is not looking at like telescopic poles. So there's so many different ways that we can look at other manufacturers to fit the purpose of the product that we want to manufacture.

 

Bradley Sutton:

I like that and that's something that's similar to what I'm actually doing. That's what I'm going to be going to the factory and talking to or, you know, checking out one of the first orders. So, like, what happened with the coffin shelf was that it got kind of saturated. You know, like you know, because everybody watched Project X and everybody started launching, you know, coffin shelves and now there's a million coffin shelves and I didn't want to do, I didn't want to play the race to the bottom price wars. You know, like, there's people now I used to sell the coffin shelf for like 32 bucks and now there's people selling it for like 19. I'm not going to try and compete with that price. So I'm like I'm going to go opposite, I'm going to raise the price back. Like I was selling for like 25. Now I'm going to raise it back to 30. But what I'm going to do is two things. Number one I'm going to buy a really fancy box and it's a box shaped like a coffin, like. So somebody would actually gift it to somebody in this coffin shaped box, and the box itself is almost a product. You can use that as a sock storage or something like that, because it's a really high quality. I mean, it's crazy. It's like almost 60% of the cost of the coffin shelf, you know by itself, but we're still only talking like two bucks.

 

Bradley Sutton:

And then I noticed in the customer reviews that a lot of people are putting like these little LED spooky little trinkets and figurines right. And so what I did was I also sourced like a pumpkin shaped LED candle and then a skull, like a, just a mini skull, because these are what people are using to display anyways. And so now I'm relaunching the coffin shelf at a higher price point with this box that's super hard to get custom made and from another, a third factory, these LED stuff. And so, like you know, these people who are just trying to make a quick buck and sell coffin shelves, you know, from China for $19, they're not going to take the time or effort to go and source three different things from three different factories. And so now I'm kind of like building this moat around and trying to dominate, redominate the coffin shelf market.

 

Kian:

I guess you could say that's mega and I'm glad you mentioned that as well because, like so, I was at this show called like global sources, just like last month or wherever, and I was filming a YouTube video, actually just posted it yesterday on like the highlights of that show, and I walked, assembled, into this guy's booth. His name was like Matthew and he had like he was just doing packaging, like really, really deluxe packaging, right. And I go in and I'm like, hey and? But the packaging was like super nice, like it was like magnetic boxes that folded flat, like he was doing it for a Sephora. He was doing like Pokemon boxes, like just high end stuff, right.

 

Kian:

And I was like picking up different bits of packaging and we were talking about like online versus offline and you know different styles of packaging and one color boxes. And then I was like you know how much is this box? And it was like a really small, flimsy one and he was like you know, less than 0.1. I was like, wait, less than 10 cents. He was like, yeah, it's around like 8 cents. I was like no way. And I was like, all right, what about this one? I picked up this like magnetic one. He's like that's around $1. I'm expecting the dude to say like three. He's like wow. I was like I was like these prices seem a little too good to be true. I was like where's your factory? He's like for Shan. I'm like okay, cool, so it's narrow way. I was like what are you doing this weekend? I was like I'm at the factory. I was like I'm going to come visit you this weekend. I was like cool, so rock up. And then I filmed a YouTube video in his factory. I showed the packaging process end to end, start to finish. All the like he had like machines which cost over a million dollars, like everything, like map finishing, gloss finishing, like everything. So the entire process, start to finish. And talking about like 2024 and differentiating and just what you just talked about. That's key. That's so key to being ahead.

 

Kian:

Whether you're selling online or offline, you want to win the click. Online, sometimes you show your packaging in the main image, sometimes you don't. But if you're selling it in retail, it's on a shelf. You have to catch people's attention. So if you're selling offline, you really, really have to catch people's attention. If and that's through the packaging, that's the first touch point and it can be catch for attention by color. It can be by innovative design. So packaging is going to play a super, super important role. So I'll definitely connect you with Matthew.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome, Awesome Thanks, Appreciate it. All right. Going back to our olive oil, let's go to something more traditional, All right, so that's a great way for differentiation. Let's just say I picked something else while you were talking right now, Something that's kind of like all right, this is not something that you necessarily differentiate, Like we always. I think you should always differentiate, but maybe not let's not go to the effect where, like, hey, let's try and get stuff from three or two different factories and let's do fancy packages, Because you know, sometimes when people are just getting started, they want to get their feet wet. You know that might be a little bit too difficult. So then I pick again in the same niche. I hit this keyword egg dispenser on Alibaba, and so you know, for those watching on YouTube, you guys can see this. For those listening on podcast, we'll try and describe it here. But now let's just say that this, this kind of egg dispenser that has this like row, it looks like like a row on the top of eggs and it rolls down to the bottom row. I guess you just pick one and then it rolls down. So let's just say that, for whatever reason, this is the kind of product I'm getting. I just did my very first search on Alibaba. This is definitely the keyword. Next step would be so I start doing using some of these filters and then, if so, what would you suggest?

 

Kian:

Yeah, yeah. So I'm so glad you're showing this visually online as well, right, because you can look at that image. Right, see the second image. This says $2.50. The second one says, yes, 88 cents. It's the same image, right? So, yeah, this is what. This is where we need to get really, really clear on the filters. Right, because it looks like the exact same product. One is well, the one's three X the price of the other one, and you could see that I'm like, oh, okay, well, I'll go for the cheapest one. But you haven't necessarily done the research to know what already different materials or different sizes or different specifications. Does one hold more eggs? Does one have deluxe packaging? So we don't really know that, right? So you went to Alibaba.com and you typed in egg dispenser, and this is the first thing that came up. So the first point right, I would select verified manufacturers. So that's the first point that you see in the list right. Why this is so important, is that, yeah, perfect. This is where we need to be. The purpose of using Alibaba.com correctly is not to find the cheapest price. It's to find the best manufacturers. Once we find the best manufacturers, then we can start to negotiate the price. So the purpose right now we're just looking for the best manufacturers.

 

Kian:

So the first thing you did was you selected verified manufacturers. And what's that for? It means any information that they provide on their listing, whether it be number of years in business, how many staff they have, what certificates they have, what patents they have, what products they have, what does their production line look like, the images of videos in the factory. That's all been verified by a third party, meaning intertech, SGS, tuv. One of these very reputable companies have gone in and verified all the information is true, whereas if we didn't work with verified suppliers, then whatever information they want to put there, we just have to sort of take their word for it. So verified is the most important thing to search for first. Then on the left hand side of the page, you'll see trade assurance right. I would always click that as well, and trade assurance just means that your payment is protected. So if you've ordered an egg dispenser which holds 20 eggs and you do the production and you receive one which only holds 10 eggs, then the trade assurance will protect you and it will refund your order because you've selected that right. That's just a little bit of a safety net, important for, like you know, new sellers, right. And then as you scroll down on the left hand side of the page, you'll see something that says management certification, right. And if you scroll down a little bit more, yeah, so you see like BSEI, and you see sedx, you see ISO. I always like to select BSEI and ISO. So BSEI is your business social compliance initiative and ISO is just a really high quality standard and this just basically means these are factory certificates that they have. So BSEI will go in and they'll check, like you know, how many years have you been in business? Do you have, like, fire extinguishers? Do you have adequate lighting, do you have safety exits? Like we've checked the dormitories, we've checked like the canteen where the workers eat. So it's kind of like gives you confidence that you're working for a very, very good factory, right. So now, if we go back to the top of the list, right, we've now we've searched by manufacturers, we've got verified manufacturers, we've got trade assurance and we've got factories which have you know, bsei and ISO certification.

 

Kian:

So now, as I'm scrolling down the list, like if you zoom in on the company names, like the first word in the company name is always the city or the province in which that factory is located. So sometimes, like the factories like electronics are made in Shenzhen, backpacks are normally made in like Chenzhou. Like furniture, like steel tubing for furniture, chairs is made like Yongkang. So I'm just trying to get familiar Is there an area which specializes in egg dispensers? Maybe not, because it's such a niche product, right, that maybe you could make it anywhere. But as I scroll down, I'm trying to see, like, is there one name that pops up more frequent than others and in that interesting, the area which specializes in that product? But I see Ningbo has probably popped up a few times, right? So yeah, but anyway, doesn't matter. If Ningbo had popped out like eight out of nine times, I would say, right, well, that's the region we need to be ordering from, interesting. Then, as you scroll down as well, I would be like looking at the images as well, to see, like, do I find something similar to what I was looking for, like when we search by products like your first look somebody is specializing in that one crazy basket, one that we looked up earlier, that's crazy.

 

Kian:

But you know what's wild, though, right, I'm not surprised we found it because we had searched, like the highest level certification, so like that product would have required, like you know, some sort of standard. So it like the purpose of this filtering process is to align you with top factories, and top factories make top products right. And as you scroll down as well, I saw the main image. That was the one we were looking for the white one here, yeah, yeah, right here, that particular one, right. So now if you click on like view profile, we can just there's a couple of like boxes I need to tick of the supplier before deciding is this someone I want to work with? Right? So you see first on the left right Well, actually on the right where you were looking right, If you scroll through those like, you'll see videos of the factory. You'll see like images of the production line and you've seen the top left it says verified. So all these photos and videos have been verified. So like if you know that as the actual factory, because the third party has gone in and verified that's a factory, so you can actually see inside the factory and know that's them right. So we know exactly who we're dealing with.

 

Bradley Sutton:

They didn't just pull this, you know, like video or something like from stock video or something like that.

 

Kian:

Yeah exactly Right. So now, like before, without even going to China, I've got eyes and ears inside the factory that I can see what they actually look like. So if on their Alibaba listing they say, oh, we've got 200 workers in our factory, you're like, well, I can see the images that shows you've got 200 workers, right. Or if they said they had 200, but we see a production line with five workers and you're not verified, then we know that you know something isn't right there. So on the left side of that, you see where you have all those blue ticks. So it says, yes, all verified capabilities. So if you click on the bottom where it says, see all verified capabilities, this is everything the factory is verified for. So it says certifications, sedex, bsci. It will say, like you know, material trace. It says like quality traceability, things like that. So if you were like look, I need to know. Like, do these egg dispenser trays come from a sustainable source? We want to use like recycled materials, we want to use eco-friendly materials, then they can tell you yep, cool, we have traceability of our raw materials. We can find that out for you. So just by clicking that, we can find out what are the capabilities which are verified of this factory. And then, as we scroll down, like the main things which are really really important, see that where it says profile right, if you keep scrolling down, right, it's got right. See here so it says established yeah, years in industry 16. That means that they've got like 16 years worth of experience, right, so they've got the. See the audit there under certifications, where it says SMETA. That's part of the SEDEX audit and I know this so well because I was a board member for SEDEX in 2013,. After we did the production for the Olympics, every factory which made Olympic merchandise had to have a SMETA audit, right, and that was like they checked all the smallest details of the factory, right. So that's a really really good sign if they have that right. And then they've got the BSCI certificate. You can see that Now, as you scroll down, we're going to look at their production capabilities.

 

Kian:

See there it says production lines. They've got three production lines and they've got 18 production machines right Now. This is so important. This is so, so important, right, Because you are, let's say, doing this product for the first time. So they have three production lines means they're like relatively small company, right, so that's good for you because that means that they'll probably do a low MOQ. Let's say you wanted to do 500 pieces trial order, but let's say that production line. Let's say it said they had 250 production lines. You're like this company would never want to work for me. Like, why would like? I just want to do a small order, 300 pieces. They've got 250 production lines. We're not a good fit for each other. But on the flip side, if you're a big brand, if you're doing, you know, 10,000 units a month, then you want that factory which has got 250 production lines. So this kind of sizes you up to be like am I aligning with the manufacturer which is fit for purpose, right?

 

Kian:

And then the other really important thing to look at where it says trade background and main markets, it says North America 38%. Western Europe 35%. That is so crucial because 70% of their, more than 70% of their exports are going to the US market and it's going to the European market. And what does that mean? That means they're compliant with the latest FDA regulations in America, compliant with the latest like food standard regulations in Europe. Otherwise we wouldn't be able to sell to those markets if they weren't compliant with those standards. So if you're ordering this product for the first time and you know your factory has already got the certification or compliance needed to sell food products in the US market, because they're already selling in the US market. But if we looked at the trade background and it said, you know, 40% South America, 40% Africa and 20% domestic market, meaning China you're like well, you've never explored this product to America. So how do I know that you're capable of passing for FDA standards? So, but this factory, this is like one of the first ones we clicked on right, it's got everything we need right.

 

Kian:

But it was because of that filtering process. It's because we selected verified, we selected trade assurance, we selected ISO, we selected BSCI, so like it was in touch with the top manufacturer and then, like I'm pretty sure that if you go to the other manufacturers on that list as well, we'll find similar information that is a good fit for us. So that was kind of like the initial research to be like right, let's find a good factory. That's part one, right. Part two is now how do you read, how do you talk to that factory for your first message? Right, Because this is where I feel like a lot of sellers like stumble. They're like right, found a good factory. We followed your process. But, like, right now, what do we say? Like, most sellers go, hey, what's your best price? What's your MLQ? Can? I just heard this podcast? Can I get customized packaging Right? And then, yeah, so, supplier, bear in mind these suppliers are probably getting 50 to 100 inquiries a week, probably more, right, and my purpose with the original message is how do I get my inquiry to jump out at the top? How do I get the supplier reads my message and be like oh, I want to work with this guy, right? So I kind of write my opening message as like a three part.

 

Kian:

Like it first, introduction about myself hey, this is me. I'm passionate about eggs. I've been farming for 10 years and I want to start my own brand. Right, oh, cool, someone who really, really likes eggs. Right, they'll be a good person for this product. And then you can say, hey, we work with the biggest like influencers in the food space. Because I'm a beginner, right, I'm selling this, I'm ordering this product for the first time. So I don't want to say, hey, I'm a beginner. I want to say like, hey, I'm just ordering this, but here's my leverage. Like, I've got connections with the biggest influencers in the home and kitchen space. I've got connections with retailers that I've done business with before. I'm very, very skilled at selling on Amazon. I've exited a previous business before. I want to say something that gets them excited for them to work with me, not just, hey, what's your price, right?

 

Kian:

Second, I want to say why I chose that supplier, because all the things we just looked at, like a number of production lines you know 70% exports going to Europe, right, you having this meta audit. So I would say, look, quality standards are very, very important for our company. It's great to see you have this meta audit. I'm so, so happy that you also place a high importance on quality standards. I see that 38% of your exports go to North America. That's amazing because we'll be selling in America as well, and I'm glad to know you're compliant with the latest certifications. That's just me telling the supplier. I've actually read your company profile and I've selected you based on these reasons. I've not just gone into Alibaba, I've not just typed in egg dispenser and just selected the first 10 companies and copy and pasted the same message. I've actually had to read your company listing and I've actually had to write a customized message to send you this so they'll understand that. And then then you're like okay, this is a product that we're looking at. Here's the picture, here's the specification sheet, this is the materials. What would be your best price for this product?

 

Kian:

Suppliers now thinking I want to work with this customer because they have the ability to sell the product through their experience, through the influencers they have access to. They seem to understand quite a bit about manufacturing because they've told us what they've selected us. This is a customer which I think will go far because previously we've received messages asking for price in MLQ. We supply that and we never hear from those guys again. But this one seems serious. So we've gone through that process and we've found who are the top suppliers and then we've actually crafted a message that makes them want to reply to us. Because suppliers not thinking these are just egg-tracing, these are 80 cent. Maybe you order like a thousand pieces, right, a thousand dollar order. Suppliers not thinking they're going to get rich on this first order. They're thinking how much money am I going to make with this customer over the next three, five, ten years? So as long as you state look, business, partnership long term and this, together we want to grow this big business. You're saying the right things that get them interested to make your trial order first. Even at a break-even, they probably won't make money on the first order because of all the time and effort they have to put into sampling and things like that. They know that and they just want to work for you because you seem like a serious customer which you'll build with over the long term. So those are two really important things finding the best supplier and then communicating correctly with those suppliers as well.

 

Bradley Sutton:

At what point are you submitting like a RFQ request for a quote?

 

Kian:

So that's a really good point, right? So you can also do a request for a quotation. And I'm hesitating before I say this, right, because that process we just went through. We selected two of our best suppliers that we want to work with, right, we filtered out the bad ones. But when we go RFQ, we just submit our information one time and then the suppliers receive that request for a quotation and then they write to us. So now I have to do that filtering process again, but I have to filter the ones that write to us, right? So, because you might get an unverified supplier that writes to you or things like that. So you can also do RFQ because you think it saves you time, but realistically you have to go through all those applications of people which write back to you. And another thing I'd be cautious of as well and I'm not saying don't do it, I would just say that it might imply more work. It looks like it's going to save you time, but now you have to filter through every single manufacturer. But we just filtered through those suppliers really, really quickly.

 

Kian:

But ultimately the main selection criteria that we have to decide is what's the price of the sample and what's the quality of the sample. So once we get that information back, we have to then decide right. Am I happy with the price, does it fit within my target? And am I happy with the quality of sample? Because, as we saw, we might get a price for 80 cent and we might get a price for $3. I have to see the sample right. But by doing this exercise we're going to get a good idea of what is the market price for this product, because we went through that selection process to identify the top manufacturers and now we've got pricing from who we think are the five top manufacturers. So if our pricing is 95 cent, $1.05, 88 cent, like 112, we're like okay, we know it's around that $1 mark. But if I get pricing of like $3.50, $0.62, $4, I'm like this pricing is all over the place.

 

Kian:

Like I haven't. It's my fault I've not told them the specifications of which I require. I wouldn't just click on their image and say what's the price of that. I would send them a specification sheet of here's a picture of the product, here's the dimensions, here's the material, here's any testing that I need. And they like give me your best price. So they've all received the same information. So you're comparing apples with apples and then, once you see the price that you're happy with, you've compared it to the rest of the market. You see someone that you like communicating with. They have the right certification. You get maybe two or three samples from different suppliers. You compare them right. This is the one. Then here we go, let's place the order, let's go for it.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Normally? What's the standard as these days as far as factories and samples Like do you always need to pay for the sample 50% of the time? Do you need to pay for the shipping? 50% of the time? 25% of the time? What's your?

 

Kian:

experience lately? Yeah, so great question. And I would say that it depends on the leverage that you build, right. So, for example, that reach out message like if they think you're sort of wasting time, then they're like right, $100 for a sample, $100 for a freight, paid us $200 invoice and you'll get a sample, right. But if they're like I want to work for this guy, like I think he's capable of building a really, really big business and they'll do all right, cool, we'll just send a sample to you, no problem. Some people might say, right, we'll cover the cost of the sample, you just covered the cost of the freight. So, cool, right, fair. I always say, look, I've got no problem, I'll pay for the sample, but if I place the order, I'm going to deduct the sample cost from the first purchase order. That's always what I go with, right. And they're like fine, because I'm not trying to get free samples, right, that's something suppliers are fearful of. They're like but no one really wants a free sample of an egg tray, right. But if we took an example like a massage gun, you know, when massage guns got popular, everyone wrote to Alibaba manufacturers and said, hey, I want to order 10,000 massage guns, but I need a sample. They send the sample and then they never hear from them again. But that guy just got a free massage gun, right. So that's what they want to avoid. So I always offer to pay.

 

Kian:

I say, look, I'll pay for the sample, but I'm going to deduct the sample and freight costs from the first purchase order. And that is music to their ears. They're happy to hear that because they know that first of all, you're paying for the sample up front and then if the supplier ends up having to pay for it, will they go and order as a result of it, which is what they wanted all along, right. So that's normally the way I go. Sometimes they just send it for free. I'm like cool, very nice of you, and sometimes, if they charge me, I just always have that in writing. That will deduct that from the first purchase order.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Are you doing any like other website price matching or looking at like you know? Like maybe going to 1688 or something you know? That was a you know kind of like always suggested back in the day because there's a lot of price differences there and sometimes the Alibaba people, Alibaba factories, would be like, okay, yeah, we can probably go lower or that's not as much of a technique anymore and to be honest, I've always advised against that because, yes, you can.

 

Kian:

So 1688, for anyone who doesn't know, is like the domestic. It also owned by Alibaba and it's the domestic Chinese website. It's where, like, Chinese businesses buy from Chinese factories, everything's in Chinese. And then I think some people announced that it was a hack, that you could go to 1688 and get cheaper prices. And yes, there are cheaper prices, but that's because those products aren't being exported. So you know the things that we just looked at in terms of like, okay, is this egg tray FDA approved? Well, it doesn't need to be FDA approved because that's not a regulation in China, so they can use it with a different chemical. Therefore, it's a cheaper price. So if you go to 1688 and look for your products, yeah, you probably will find them cheaper, but then if you need them to match regulations of your market, then that's when it's going to make it more expensive.

 

Kian:

So I don't necessarily look at other websites, like I think you know you could go to globalsources.com, you can go to madeinchina.com. There's also sort of different websites as well, but generally enough, like, there's so many good factories on alibabacom and that definitely improved after COVID as well, because I never used to use alibabacom, like I was just used to go to China. I used to live in China. I used to go to the Canton Fair twice a year and that's where I'd find all my factories. And then, because Canton Fair was out for three years, that's when a lot of those factories started going online and Alibaba was like the first place that they would go. So I would suggest you're absolutely fine with alibaba.com. You can also, if you want to find the manufacturers of your competitors, you can look at importyeti.com, and I would say the best thing you can do for your business is really visit China as well. Go to the Canton Fair, and really because, yes, there's a cost in terms of a flight ticket in hotels to go to China, but I always say that cost more than pace for itself, because you are essentially fast tracking your product development.

 

Kian:

You're seeing products there for the first time that you'll see them in real life before you see them online from other brands, and now you have to make your own version. You'll be able to negotiate better prices. You'll be able to get better quality products. You'll be able to build better relationships with your factory. You'll be able to get samples very quickly If you're like Bradley actually. So you're going to the factory. I guarantee you, if you ask for a new product and you wanted that sample, that sample will be ready in two or three days and you can take it home with you right? They'll send it to your hotel by the time you leave. But if you reach out to these guys online, you're like, hey, we're working on this new product, we're going to take them two weeks to make it. We can have to send it. It'll take a month. So you can massively and imagine you've got multiple products across multiple brands. You've got a month edge on anyone in the market just by being there. So I would highly recommend. But you know, canton Faire is only April and October every year, so you can visit China anytime you want, but all year round. I would be visiting websites like alibabacom to get an idea of right, who are the best suppliers and what are the best prices, and are there any new products that we just found as well? And then I'd be going to China as well, on top of that as well.

 

Bradley Sutton:

All right, before we get into your last strategy of the day, how can people reach you if they want to, you know, see your videos or maybe reach out to you for some advice?

 

Kian:

Yeah, sure, so I'm putting a lot of work into the YouTube stuff. So if you just type in Sourcing with Kian on YouTube, you'll see a lot of cool videos there. I started making a bunch of different videos on this China trip. I went into factories, I went into packaging factories, product factories and filmed videos of like. So actually, brad, I'll try and send one to you before you go as well, just so you could get a little bit of an insight. But, yeah, Instagram as well @kian_jg. I've got a Facebook group of the same name Sourcing with Kian and yeah, it's probably the best way to reach out to me. But I've got some cool stuff planned in the coming year in regards to, like, trips to China and stuff. So, yeah, definitely look out for that.

 

Bradley Sutton:

All right, what's your last strategy of the day? Maybe a 60 second strategy or around there for that you can share with the audience.

 

Kian:

I would say like, okay, 2024. Something you want to focus on would be product defensibility, right, Because you know, as you mentioned, with the shelf, like you know, a lot of people copied it. It raised at the bottom in terms of price and we have to innovate on top. So just like sort of three actionable tips. In terms of product defensibility, there's three main things you can focus on An act's getting exclusivity on your product, it's having a particular mold on your product and it's also getting patents on your product right. So exclusivity you can like if we go into a factory and we see a product that we like we didn't innovate it, factory did right, I can still order that product. But I can say, look, I want exclusivity on that. And you can get exclusivity by time. To be like, give me three months, we sell it to me and no one else. You can get exclusivity by region. To say, right, give me exclusivity for Germany or give me exclusivity for USA. Like we can pick a market, not just the whole world, and get exclusivity by that. Or we can also get exclusivity by quantity. To say, I've forecast I will order 10,000 units over the course of the year. If I don't order those 10,000 units, then you can sell it to everyone. So we just got exclusivity on a new product and I did this countless times at Alaska Anton Fair. That's a great form of defensibility.

 

Kian:

Then, like patents, you know you can patent the product. Supplier might have a patent on the product, but the more. And then oh, by the way, this is such a sick hack, right, there was a particular product that we've been selling for a while. Factory has got the patent on it and then a lot of US brands were copying and infringing Chinese factory, trying to go after those US brands. They write to them and they're like hey, yeah, we're this company, we have the patent. The US brands just ignored it. They're like oh, it's a Chinese company, they're never going to sue us. I said to them look, make our company the co-patent, so we have our US brand. I was like make us the co-patent owner and then we'll go after them. Done Like, we now own the patent of that and then us, as a US brand, using US lawyers, are going after those US brands and are getting shut down left, right and center. So if you have a factory which is patented the product, that's a huge key if you can get co-patent on that as well. And then I mentioned molds as well. Like, molds are expensive. If you're developing a mold on a product, definitely get your logos embossed on the mold as well, so that they can't use that for anyone else as well. So, yeah, those are the key things defensibility, exclusivity, patents and molds.

 

Bradley Sutton:

All right. Well, Kian, thank you so much for joining us. I'm sure 2024 will be great for you and hopefully we get to hang out at an event or here locally. I've got to get you on my Helium 10 basketball court here. We've been trying to do that for a while, so, hey, I'm ready, we'll anytime we'll settle at once and for all Lakers versus Clippers. I'll wear my Clippers jersey, you can wear your Lakers and we'll see. We'll see who comes out on top.

 

Kian:

Let's do it, let's do it. Good to see you, bro, and thanks very much for having me and congrats on the 500 plus episodes.

Helium 10 Buzz 1/4/24: TikTok Shop Wants to 10X | New Amazon Sponsored Brand Features

What’s buzzing this week? Listen in as we explore TikTok's bold aspirations to skyrocket its e-commerce revenue, Amazon's innovative theme targeting for sponsored brand ads, and more!

► 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.

TikTok eyes US$17.5 billion shopping business on Amazon’s turf
https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3247219/tiktok-eyes-us175-billion-shopping-business-amazons-turf

Sponsored Brands introduces theme targeting to enhance goal-based campaigns
https://advertising.amazon.com/en-us/resources/whats-new/sponsored-brands-introduces-theme-targeting/

Alexa is now available as a new supply source for Standard display and AAP-mobile app
https://advertising.amazon.com/en-us/resources/whats-new/alexa-available-as-new-supply-source-for-standard-display-and-aap-mobile-app/
Sponsored Brands video introduces video-only creatives on the advertising console and Amazon Ads API
https://advertising.amazon.com/en-us/resources/whats-new/sponsored-brands-video-introduces-video-only-creatives/

And for those looking to network and learn, Bradley extends an invitation to join upcoming events in Dubai, Pakistan, and Germany.

Finally, our conversation leads us to Helium 10 new feature alerts emphasizing the importance of competitor monitoring, emphasizing the convenience and impact of setting up a comprehensive Insights Dashboard. Bradley guides you through automating competitor tracking to save precious time and demonstrates how to assess a niche market - with coffin shelves as our case study - using analytical tools to scrutinize competitor listings and keyword strategies. Additionally, he stresses the advantages of the Listing Analyzer tool, which transforms the arduous task of comparing listing images into a seamless, one-click operation. Stay tuned for next week's episode, where we'll continue to share invaluable insights for sellers looking to thrive in the fast-paced world of e-commerce.

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

• 00:57 - TikTok Shop 10X?
• 03:00 - Amazon Sponsored Brand Update
• 04:57 - Alexa Ads
• 06:18 - Brand Tailored Promotions
• 07:23 - New Video Ads
• 09:05 - Catch Bradley On The Following Events
• 12:18 - New Feature Alerts
• 17:00 - Pro Training: Using Listing Analyzer

#523 - Using Amazon Brand Analytics Data Like You Never Have Before!

Listen in as Bradley Sutton unveils the game-changing Black Box Brand Analytics tool, a groundbreaking resource that blends Amazon’s Brand Analytics with Helium 10's robust capabilities. This episode is a gold mine for Amazon sellers eager to master product research and optimize their keywords to increase Amazon product rankings. Bradley walks you through the ins and outs of using the tool to pinpoint high-traffic keywords, unpack the nuances of search frequency rank, and demonstrate how these insights can drastically improve your click and conversion rates. Using practical examples, such as the comparison between "coffin decor" and "coffin cat tree," he highlights the market saturation and what it means for your marketing strategies and listing optimization.

In the second part of our session, we turn our attention to the strategic application of data filters for laser-focused keyword research. Bradley guides you through advanced techniques to navigate through the data, revealing how to eliminate certain terms and hone in on keywords with substantial search volumes. Moreover, we shed light on how to identify products with low conversion rates and dissect the competition by examining click share and conversion share metrics. We also dive into analyzing Amazon's Best Sellers Rank to identify high-performing products and dissect the success factors driving traffic to top listings. By listening to this episode, you'll gain valuable insights into market gaps and learn how to strategically position your products to stand out in the crowded Amazon marketplace.

 

In episode 523 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley discusses:

• 00:00 - Introducing Black Box and Brand Analytics inside Helium 10
• 05:03 - Click Rates and Sales Dominance Analysis 
• 08:44 - Data Filters for Targeted Keyword Research
• 12:34 - Searching for Dominating ASINs and Keywords 
• 21:41 - Analyzing Top Clicked Keywords for Competitors 
• 25:16 - Newer Home and Kitchen Products
• 30:19 - Keyword Analysis for New Product Launch
• 35:08 - Helium 10 Demo

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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 I'm introducing a brand new, really cool tool to Helium 10. It's called Blackbox Brand Analytics and it allows you to combine Amazon data from Brand Analytics with Helium 10 data in ways that you have never used before. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. I want to know what keywords are driving the most sales. For a list of keywords. To do that, you need to know what highly searched for keywords the product is ranking for maybe at the top of page one. You can actually find that out in seconds by using Helium 10's keyword research tool, cerebro. Now, that's just one of the many, many functions that make this tool my favorite tool in the whole suite, and it's the most powerful keyword research tool ever created for e-commerce sellers. For more information, go to h10.me/cerebro. Don't forget to use the Serious Sellers Podcast discount coupon SSP10.

 

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 is our monthly Ask Me Anything and training session. This is actually something that we do every single week for our Serious Sellers Club and Helium 10 Elite members. I got a cool demo I'm going to be doing today a little mini training on a brand new tool that Helium 10 launched a couple of weeks ago that maybe you haven't had a chance to play with yet. So we're going to be demoing that so that you guys can see how you can get benefit from it. So let me show my screen here. This is brand analytics. All right, so this is not Helium 10. Obviously, this is from Seller Central, but this is something that you guys have been using maybe for years, right, it's? Anybody with brand registry can use it. The way you access it is go to your menu in Seller Central, then you go to Brands and then you go to Brand Analytics and then you want to hit, under Search Analytics, the top search terms.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Now how I've been using this, how sellers have been using this the one, the version that's on Amazon, is you can go to a date range, like weekly, you can go monthly, you can go quarterly, and then let's say, first of all, that you want to see all of the keywords that start with the word coffin. Right, like hey, what keywords have coffin in it that was searched for the most? So here is one use case. All right, so I'm going to hit Refine Results after I put coffin inside the search term and then now all of the keywords that were searched the most on Amazon show up here for this week. Let's start with the word coffin. So we see, here we've got coffin nails tips, a lot of stuff that has to do with nails. Right, search frequency rank is how often it has been searched compared to other keywords. There we go. There's coffin shelf all right, c coffin shelf has been searched for is the 129,000th most search term on Amazon for the week of 1217 to 1214,. All right, you can see other other keywords here that have come up Now. This is great. Obviously, you know it's been out for a little over three years almost four years I think and it gave unprecedented at the time information you know, like, for example, let's take that word coffin shelf. Or let's go into a different one, let's go to coffin decor all right. So now if I see here under coffin decor, I can see the top three clicked. All right. So again, if you guys know this, you know you might be bored right now, don't worry, we're going to get into the new stuff soon, but I want to make sure everybody understands the value of this data.

 

Bradley Sutton:

First of all, what Amazon is telling you is, for whatever keyword, here are the top three clicked out of the after the search of a certain keyword. So if somebody searched coffin decor, the product that was clicked more than any other product in all of Amazon after the search of that keyword is this Gothic wooden makeup organizer. All right, and it makes up 5% of the clicks. Now, of the conversion share, it was 6%. That means of the actual sales of that product it makes up 6%. So, right off the bat, I know that they have a better conversion rate than just the average because, theoretically speaking, if they were converting at the same rate as everybody else on this page, well, their click share, or their conversion share, should be about the same as their click share should be 5%. Right, but it's 6%, okay.

 

Bradley Sutton:

The other thing I can do when I look at this and how I used to use this is I, right off the bat, can tell this is a wide open keyword. Why the top clicked product is only 5%, meaning that the other top clicked, the top three clicked, are less than 5%. What does that mean? That means that more than 85% of all of the sales from this keyword are from products that weren't even the top three clicked. Does that make sense, guys? That means it's wide open. That means people are probably purchasing like 30 different products on that page, and let me just contrast that with this keyword right here. This is actually the keyword that I found the other day using this tool. Look at this keyword here Coffin Cat Tree. Now, coffin Cat Tree. Take a look at the percentage of clicks that the top clicked product has 33%. You guys remember what the other one was 5%, right. The second top clicked product 27%. So, right off the bat, I know that this keyword, coffin Cat Tree the top two clicked products, already make up more than 50% of the clicks out of all the clicks on this keyword. Look at the conversion rate 33% for this top clicked one and 11%. That means that the other products on the page are only making up about 60%. You guys remember what it was on the other one it was more than 90%, all right, so you see the huge difference. So this is being dominated by a certain number of products.

 

Bradley Sutton:

The other thing that you could use brand analytics for is your historical data. Before Helium 10 had the historical cerebro, this was the only way that you could do historical research Like let's say, all right, hey, valentine's Day is coming up, right. What's interesting is I can actually look at what were the top keywords, and maybe I want to put valentines here. So here in brand analytics, I'm going to. What did I say I was going to look at 12th to February 18th. What were the top keywords? That has to do with valentines, all right. And yeah, I think I picked the right date because, look at these, valentine's Day gifts was the eighth most searched term in all of Amazon for the week of February 12th. So obviously this was a hot keyword. But if I were to try and do this right now, you know, if I was using not historical cerebro, it's not going to give me what are the best selling Valentine's products, because nobody's buying Valentine's Gifts in December, right. So this is was one of the ways that people could do Historical keyword research and see what were the products that were doing well, right, all right.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Now that brings us to this announcement of this new tool inside of helium 10,. All right, I want everybody to navigate with me there. It's going to be under tools and then go to black box. All right, black box is a tool you guys know and love to find products, and now this tool Is in black box, and there is a new Tool here called a BA top search terms so I call this black box brand analytics. All right, a BA is just a abbreviation, because that's too long. A BA stands for Amazon brand analytics, so just click that and let me explain how this tool works and why this is going to be beneficial for you.

 

Bradley Sutton:

This is going to be pretty awesome, guys, because this is pulling in all of that data from Amazon, and now it's combining it with the helium 10 data points that you already know and love, and it's giving you just a lot more targeted filtering ability and research capabilities. For example, I could just use it the same way that I was using it right now. Right, like again, hey, let me go in to the week of February 12th to the 18th and let me See what keywords that have the word Valentine in it, and then go ahead and apply the filters, and there those same keywords are coming up here right now. All of a sudden, though, I can see that, hey, what does being the eighth most search term mean? Right, it's not just that, which doesn't give me that much information, but now I can see, oh wow, the search volume was 2 million, because that's a Helium 10 Data point.

 

Bradley Sutton:

All right, I could see the top three ASINs, total conversions, share. I could see pictures of the top products All right, and I could also go to the history of the click share for this product. So I can do already just what current things that you can already do in Brandon Alex. But here's where it starts getting cool. Maybe I I'm like, hey, I want to Not see any keyword that has candy in it. So I'm gonna say exclude phrases containing candy, all right. Now I want to see. Maybe I want to see were there any products or Were there any keywords where the current the click share was wide open, meaning that people were clicking all over page one. There wasn't any dominant products. So I'm gonna say the top three ASIN total click share is a maximum of if I were to add them up together, a maximum of 20%. Let's just say, all right, maybe I want to see I don't want to see this two word Keywords. I want to say, hey, show me any keyword that hits this but that actually had three words. So like Valentine's Day wouldn't come up, but Valentine's Day gifts would come up, all right, what else can I do? Hey, I want to see the keywords that have a search volume of at least 20,000. All right, a search volume of at least 20,000? All right, let's just. Let's just see how that filters it down here.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Now, all of a sudden, those 2,600 keywords Go down to 36. Look at that. I went from 2,600 to 36 and now I can see Instant information, exactly what I was looking for. What are some other things I could search by? Like maybe I want to say, hey, what are all the the keywords where the top three products had bad conversion rate? All right, so let me reset these filters on and I'm gonna go and look at Just this last week. All right, guys, I have not tested any of this, I'm doing this all live right on the fly here. But let's look at December 10th through the 16th. Let's just say, out of any of the top keywords from December 10th to the 16th, if it was a keyword that had, let's just say, at least, let's just, let's just narrow it down. Let's try and find some low-hanging fruit. Let's go 2000 search volume to 6,000 search volume. All right, we're finding, from the week of the 10th through the 16th, a Keyword that had between 2000 and 6000 search volume. It's at least two words long, okay.

 

Bradley Sutton:

And then look at this. I'm gonna go hey, I want a Matt. Let's just say One asin had greater than, hmm, let's just say, 50% of the clicks. So I want to find a keyword where one asin is just dominating. All right, they were just dominate. I'm not sure if, you know, I can actually find something here. I might have to fix this a little bit, but we're one what had more than 50% of the clicks, meaning that you know, maybe they're, they're, they're just completely Dominating the clicks. Everybody's looking for this one product, all right. But if I take, look at this, the top three click asins, the average age is less than, let's just say, 12 months. All right, this is crazy, guys. You can't do this in seller central. Let me see, first of all, if anything comes up. I might have gone too narrow on this. Let's take a look here. And let's go 12 months average age 94 keywords come up. Look at that. All right, let me. Let me make it even more narrow conversion share let's just say we're one asin. Number of asin has greater than 40% of the conversions. That narrows it down to 62 keywords.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Now let's just take a look at it now. Obviously, we've got Lego and stuff like that here, but Is there anything One? So a lot of brand names here? Okay, that that that explains it, right? Which would you expect Products to dominate on a certain keyword like this? Well, obviously, it's going to be brand branded keywords. Mostly, if I'm searching for a Lego, I'm not gonna buy something else, right? Or here here. But look at this bubble face wash, right? Maybe I don't know what bubble face wash is. Well, I just put my mouse over here. I can see the top 10 products. So I'm like what? Why in the world is A Product getting dominated? Well, it does look like bubble is a brand name, which I didn't realize, right? But let's say that. What? Let's pretend that bubble wasn't a brand name? This would be something I would want to look into. Like, wow, there's only one product that's really getting a lot of sales here and a lot of conversion rate, and so that means that if I add another product, it's gonna be that much more likely that I can, I can get in on the action.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Let's take a look at some of the other keywords that come up here to see if we can see any non, any non branded branded ones I might want. I might want to go a little bit. I'm gonna go a little bit wider on this. All right, let's go. One asin had more than 30% and the top three ASIN's total review count is less than 400. All right, again, this is stuff that you cannot do in Seller Essential guys. But what I'm saying is, hey, I wanna see where it has a lot of the clicks. I need to go a little bit wider on this, but if I add up the top three click products, their total review count is less than 400, meaning it's a relatively newer niche. Let's take a look at the keywords that come up here Bassinet, lipliner, and I'm still seeing a lot of branded keywords here. All right, which is what you would expect, but look at these conversion share Top three ASIN's total conversion share 70% for this one Top ASIN click share 73%, 98%, 46%, 30%. So this is just an example of the filters that I'm entering, but you can see the potential here of how you can instantly find keywords that might have opportunity here. I was going and I was looking on the opposite end of the spectrum, where I wanna see where one or two products are dominating. Maybe I wanna see the opposite, where I want to see the top products only have a maximum of 5% click share or conversion share.

 

Bradley Sutton:

The list goes on and on. There's literally a million different combinations of filters that you could enter into here. Let's just go over some of these other filters I could use. I could have an exclude phrases. I can have the top three ASINs have a total click share with a minimum and maximum total conversion share, minimum and maximum search frequency rank. That's from Amazon where it's like which rank of search volume does it have? I could use the helium 10 search volume. I can have the search frequency rank trend. All right, search volume trend. Like, let's say it's, I'm looking at the week list on helium 10. Let's actually do that because I think that's a cool one. Maybe I want to see what are the keywords from week to week from December 10th through December 16th. Are there any keywords with at least 5,000 searches that increased 200% and that had at least three words, meaning that, hey, these keywords had to have like less than 2,000 search volume if it increased? And there's tons of them. Good grief, botox face serum look at that. Botox face serum went up. Let's take a look at the search volume here. Good grief, look at this. Like I'm not saying guys, go and source this product. But would I ever have known that Botox face serum went in one week from 10,000 search volume to 200,000 search volume? That's way more than 200% increase.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Look at this one gag gifts adults, dog beds for large dogs Dog beds for large dogs obviously was a hot Christmas product because it went to 151,000 search volume from 22,000 search volume. All right, let's narrow this down. I don't want to see these humongous ones. Let's go to 5,000 to 15,000 search volume. Anything that increased 200%. Let's take a look. We've got 1,200 keywords. Grippy socks, women all right, grippy socks, women is a keyword that went from and we can take a look here. It went from last month 9,000, now it's up to 14,000 searches. Let's see another one here, mr and Mrs Gifts. All right, 14,000 searches. It is up from 6,000 searches, all right. So, as you can see, guys, here the possibilities are endless as far as what you want to play with. Now, the question is this is just version one of this tool is what do you want to see? How do you want to search brand analytics to find products or to find keywords? Remember, this is not just a product research, but this is also a keyword research. You can enter I didn't show this to you, but you can enter in an ASIN. I probably should show that, because that's an important way of using the tool that we didn't go at all.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Let's just go to Amazon. I'm gonna go to Amazon and let's just say that I am looking for a bat shelf. All right, or I'm thinking of selling in the bat shelf, or I am selling a bat shelf and so I wanna see, hey, who's one of the top players in this niche and I could see that, hey, this product here is definitely a top one, so I can copy his ASIN, all right. Now I'm gonna go into Black Box brand analytics and I can paste that here. Okay, and I don't wanna just do this top one, maybe, I wanna do a lot of the top products. So let's just take a couple more of these bat shelves here, all right. Here's another bat shelf that sold like 100 units. Maybe let's go ahead and copy that. I can actually put up to 99 different ASINs here, all right, let's do another one. Let's copy this ASIN, all right. So here's three ASINs. So basically, what I'm saying is here for the week of December 10th through the December 16th.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Show me any keyword that has over 500 search volume where one of these three bat shelves was one of the top three clicked. All right, so this isn't just hey, they were ranking high, which is what's the rebro, and you know keyword tracker and tools like that tell you. But they were ranking high, but they were also one of the top three clicked and there's actually only three keywords that these came up that had at least 500 search volume. Bat shelf, goth shelf and bath home decor Tells me right now. Maybe I wanna go ahead and take off this search volume. Let's go ahead and apply the filters, see if any lower search volume ones come up. Six keywords come up. All right, emo home decor, bat shelves. Plural, bat room decor. All right, so this tells me now where any of my competitors were one of the top three clicked products in all of Amazon for that keyword. So if I have 20 competitors, I drop them all in there and I would instantly I would instantly see that to see where they were one of the top. All right, let's go ahead and open it up right now.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Do you guys have any questions on how to use this tool and what I can help you with or how to use anything helium-tun related. Guys, this is your time here. David says I would like to see leave out a specific ASIN or choose a competitor. Hmm, the second part, to choose a competitor we have that, so you could put in there your ASIN. I would assume, david, the exclude is because you may. Are you saying that you maybe you want to look specifically at keywords, that you are not one of the top three clicked already? And if that's true, yeah, that would seem like a reasonable, reasonable request right there.

 

Bradley Sutton:

We got another question here from Joanna. Can helium 10 find out what's new sellers who are settling the top 10 and best sellers ranking are doing in order to get their Product the top 10 so fast? Well, yeah, absolutely, you could see on the keyword side, all right, so so I don't, I've never done that, but let's walk through this and let's see if we can do it. All right, let's go ahead, joanna, and let's do this as a nice little case study. So let's, first of all, I'll go to see who is in the top 10 BSR in a certain category and then again that's in black box. So I'm gonna go this time to black box products, all right, and let's go into a, a subcategory All right, let's go in the home and kitchen category and let's go into the Kitchen and dining category and let's go bakeware All right.

 

Bradley Sutton:

So let's go bakeware and let's just see who has been in the top 100, like in the last month in BSR. And I can do that right here using the filters, where I put a minimum one of BSR and Maximum 100, and I'm in the bakeware category, I go ahead and hit search. Let's go a little bit higher. Instead of looking at that category, let's look at what was I in home and kitchen. We can just look in all of home and kitchen. Let's see. They better not be doing maintenance on this. Let me get mad. Nope, the here we got, we got tons of products in the home and kitchen category, all right. So maybe I want to know are there any products that are newer here? All right, and we do that by age, all right. So let's, let's go and put here under age a maximum Of, let's just say, four months. Are there anybody within one to 100 of BSR that have a product that's only four months or less? And we've got a lot of products here that have variations. So that's why there's tons of products coming up here, let's see, that has a lot less reviews. I actually don't want. I actually don't want the variations to come up. So let's just say max variation one, let's see if anything comes up at all. Nothing comes up in the home and kitchen category. So what you were asking nobody in the home and kitchen is less than four months old. That doesn't have variation.

 

Bradley Sutton:

So let's let's check out another, let's check out another category here. Let's go under. Let's look up baby, let's look up beauty, let's look up the Entity of home and kitchen. Here we go. Is there anybody? That's a new product that's up. So right now, Joanna, there's not many products that are newer, that are really hitting your criteria. But let's just, let's just expand this out and just do a make-believe. Let's go to 1000 BSR or 2000 BSR and let's see if anything comes up. Here we go, sorry. So here is a product. Let's just take a look at one of these products strong ahead Hair kit. The heck is this.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Let's take a look at this product on Amazon Strong ahead hair kit. I have no idea what this product is, but it's fairly new. It's less than four months old and it's already got a strong BSR. So if I wanted to see instantly what was some of the keyword ways that this product is getting up here, I could actually just run Xray keywords on this page itself, all right. So if I'm on an Amazon page, I put my mouse over the Helium-10 chrome extension and Select x-ray keywords and then I could see, without even having to go into Cerebro, what were the top searches, and I can see there's tons of branded searches. So for this product, now I know instantly why is it one of the top BSRs and it's a brand new product, and the reason is they have crazy amounts of brand search. Like, look at this Olaplex brand search 232,000 search volume Right.

 

Bradley Sutton:

So this is the process, Joanna. Any product on Amazon that you are seeing is doing really well and it's brand new, maybe doesn't have that many reviews. Just run x-ray keywords on it. If you wanna go a little bit deeper, go into Cerebro and then you'll find out where they are at least getting their organic and sponsored traffic, all right. So this is this doesn't show you the sponsored traffic on x-ray keywords. You'd have to look into Cerebro for that, but that's not going to tell you. Are they running Instagram traffic to it, et cetera, but it'll at least give you a nice overview of where their organic traffic is coming from. That allows them to be one of the top sellers. So thank you for that question. Joanna Danian says how does this match up to competitor software using brand analytics data? Well, there's no competitors to Helium 10 that have this as far as, like all in one suites of tools, we're the only ones to have this in it.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Joanna now has a product, so this is the product that Joanna found. It's not selling that great. This is a top BSR, did you say. Let's take a look at their BSR, if it even says anything. So it is the number 33 in the Garment Steamer category right now. Okay, there we go number 33 in Garment Steamer category. Let's take a look here. What are we going? How old is this listing? Let's take a look at the BSR chart history and I could see that it has only been out for three days. All right, it's only been out for three days, so the odds that we could see words ranking for already is probably slim to none, because there's not enough time if this product has only been out for three days. But let's just give it a try. I don't think anything is going to come out here because this is too brand new Like even brand analytics is more than three days old. So brand analytics I'm not even going to look, because brand analytics is usually one week behind a little bit. So when I would check this, joanna is, I would check this next week, once the data comes out. But let's just see if Helium 10 has any data at all for this keyword, even though it was only launched three days ago. Oh, my goodness man, helium 10 is on it We've got.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Let's take a look at keywords where they're ranking in the top 20 and at least 300 search volume. Might not be too many here because, again, this product was just launched three days ago, but there we go, it's already ranking for 30 keywords in the top half of the page. So right here, look at this Travel steamer for clothes, portable mini. Good grief, that is a long tail keyword if I ever saw one. It already has 10,000 search volume and this product is organic rank 13. And look at their sponsored rank. They were one. So they are going hard and heavy on this brand new keyword and sponsored. So there you go.

 

Bradley Sutton:

I was kind of like selling Helium 10 short, saying that we wouldn't have any data since this product was just launched three days ago. Nope, I'm wrong. Helium 10, one Bradley, zero here. Easy to see where this product is getting sales from, because on a 10,000 search volume they're bidding for top of search and they're already ranking number 13. All right, so there you have it. That's where this product is getting a lot of its sales from that exact keyword, right there. Good question, joanna. I hope that was clear for you guys on how to do that for any product on Amazon. All right, you wanna know where their traffic is coming from, at least their organic search traffic. You just run Cerebra on it or look at it in the brand analytics, if it's been out there for longer than a week, and you're instantly gonna get an idea of the keywords that are driving sales for the product.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Jerov says I'm a new Amazon seller. I look for keywords to rank higher on Amazon, but I am still in 306 rank. So if you're 306, that means that you're not ranking at all, because Amazon only shows 306. I'm assuming that you're looking in Helium 10 keyword tracker and it shows greater than 306. That means that you're not ranked. Actually, how can you help me, because I've yet to make three sales. All right, the first step you need to do, jerov. If you're not ranking for keywords that you know are relevant to you, you need to make sure if you're indexed. Let me show you how you can do that. All right, so let's just take this product right here. This is the steamer that Joanna had found. I need to see if I'm indexed for certain keywords, all right, so let's go here to index checker. All right, what I'm gonna do is you're gonna take your ACI. I'm doing this for this travel steamer. You gotta put your ACI in here and I'm gonna put a keyword I know it's already ranking for, just to show you how this works. And so we already determined that this product is getting sales.

 

Bradley Sutton:

From what was that keyword? Here we go travel steamer for clothes, portable mini All right, so I'm gonna put that here. But what's a keyword that is probably not indexed for? I'm just gonna put a random keyword here sumo wrestling All right, but obviously you're not gonna put these nonsense keywords here. You would put the keywords that you think you should be ranking for, but you're not All right. So this is what you're gonna look for. You're gonna hit check keywords and then you are looking for the right column on index checker if there is a checkmark or not. Forget about all these other columns here. You just wanna see this cumulative and so I can see that travel steamer for clothes, portable mini.

 

Bradley Sutton:

For this product there's a checkmark. That means I am indexed. That means I am even if I'm not ranking. There's a potential for me to rank. But look at this keyword sumo wrestling. Maybe this was a product that I thought was super relevant to me, but you see here how there's a dash instead of a line. That means that I am not indexed. And what does that mean? That means I can't run PPC on this keyword. That means it's literally impossible for me to rank for that keyword. So the first thing you need to do, jerov, is make sure that on your keywords that you're trying to rank for that you even can. And if there's a dash there, the simplest reason could be you don't even have that keyword maybe in your listing. That means you're not indexed for it. If it does have a checkmark but you're not ranked, it's just. You know there's hundreds and hundreds of products that are indexed for certain keywords To be one of the top 306, it takes some doing. You probably gotta start running some sponsored ads to there. So, for any keyword that you are not ranking but that you are indexed for and you wanna get ranked, the path to doing that is running sponsored ads at the top of the search and hopefully people will see your product, click on it, buy it and that's what's going to move up your organic rank.

 

Bradley Sutton:

David says can you show us how Helium 10 works for Walmart sellers Interested in seeing its abilities for keyword ranking and finding arbitrage opportunities? All right. So, david, pretty much almost everything I've shown other than Blackbox. It works the same way for Walmart. So, for example, so let's look at walmartcom, all right, and let's go. I don't know, let's look up this product here Steamer iron for clothes. Let's do a search for that on Walmart. So let's just type in steamer iron for clothes. Okay, so this is not really for arbitrage, but this is more for ranking.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Like, hey, I wanna have, I'm gonna come out with you know some steamer, you know my own travel steamer and I wanna see the products that are selling a lot on Walmart in this niche. Where are they getting their sales from? All right, so let's just take, let's just go to this product right here. This is like the organic rank product. I'm gonna copy the item number, which I believe is this item number here at the very top of Walmart. Let's go into Cerebro and now I change this left hand marketplace chooser to the Walmart marketplace, all right, and let's type in that product ID. I'll know in a couple seconds if this is the right product ID or not.

 

Bradley Sutton:

And you just press get keywords and now this is going to find all of the keywords that this product is ranking for. And there it is. Look at that, let's find. Let's go search under the Walmart search volume anything over 1000 search volume, and now instantly I can see the top keywords where this product is one of the top 10 organic ranked. And now I know where this product is getting sales from. And these are the keywords I'm gonna have to put in my Walmart listing and I would also add this to keyword tracker for Walmart. If I'm already selling this product, I'm not ranking very high. I'm gonna put it in keyword tracker and track my organic and sponsored rank for these keywords Right off the bat too.

 

Bradley Sutton:

For this Hamilton Beach product, I can see that they are not running sponsored ads, so there's an advantage right there where I know, hey, Hamilton Beach is not running Walmart sponsored ads for this product, because Helium 10 doesn't show any sponsored ranks, so there's an instant advantage. I know that I can get as far as arbitrage goes. You just have to kind of like search for the products that have a high amount of sales, and we don't have as many sales estimates for Walmart products as we do for Amazon, because Walmart doesn't have what Amazon does, which is BSR, which allows us to make an algorithm, but we do have some sales estimates for Walmart products, and so that's another way that you could use the tool for Walmart selling. I'm about to actually start doing some arbitrage and some wholesale on Walmart myself. I was just talking to one of my team who I used to use a few years ago. We're gonna relaunch my Walmart business, so I'll have a lot more Walmart information for you guys soon.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Thank you guys for joining us. If you're an Elite member or a Serious Sellers Club, we'll be back next not next Monday, but next Tuesday, I believe, because Monday's a holiday. If you are just watching this on YouTube or another platform, make sure to come back. At the end of January. We'll go ahead and have this available as well. But thank you guys for joining us, appreciate it. Make sure to use that tool and we'll see you later. Have a good one, bye, bye now. I'll see you guys next time.