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

Helium 10 Buzz 11/30/23: Amazon 3D Images Released | Black Friday Results | Helium 10 New AI Image Tool

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 Hosted Record-Breaking Black Friday and Cyber Monday Holiday Shopping Event, and Announces Millions More Holiday Deals to Come
https://press.aboutamazon.com/2023/11/amazon-hosted-record-breaking-black-friday-and-cyber-monday-holiday-shopping-event-and-announces-millions-more-holiday-deals-to-come

They did it again! Shopify merchants break Black Friday record with $4.1 billion in sales
https://news.shopify.com/they-did-it-again-shopify-merchants-break-black-friday-record-with-41-billion-in-sales

Save the date for Amazon #unBoxed2024 in Austin, Texas.
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7135687573812768768/

Focus: Walmart shifts to India, cuts China imports
https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/walmart-shifts-india-china-cheaper-imports-2023-11-29/

Stay tuned as we explore Helium 10's newest features, including an exclusive AI-powered image generator for Amazon Sponsored Brand ads and the ability to generate custom images for Amazon ads and  Amazon Posts. We'll be sharing hands-on demonstrations on how to use these features and their potential benefits for third-party sellers. Plus, we have news on a monthly networking call in Spanish, designed to help Spanish-speaking sellers connect and share strategies. Join us for all this and more as we continue to provide you with innovative tools and updates that are transforming the Amazon and E-commerce landscape.

 

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

• 00:52 - Amazon 3D Images
• 02:32 - Amazon Black Friday
• 04:31 - Shopify Black Friday
• 05:17 - Amazon Unboxed
• 06:02 - Amazon Transparency
• 07:01 - Made In India
• 08:45 - Spanish Networking Call 
• 09:50 - Helium 10 New Feature Alerts
• 16:54 - Pro Training: How To Instantly The Most Searched Word On Amazon

 

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

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

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

 

Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

Soon, you can upload 3D images for your products on Amazon. Results from Black Friday. Amazon Unbox Conference date and new location announced. Amazon transparency update these stories and more on today's episode of the Weekly Buzz. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the series sellers podcast by Helium 10. I am your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that is our Helium 10 Weekly Buzz, where we give you a rundown of all the news stories that are going on in the Amazon Walmart e-commerce world. We also let you know on the brand new tools and feature updates that Helium 10 has, as well as a training tip of the week that'll give you serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. Let's see what's buzzing this week. All right, let's go ahead and hop right into the different news articles Now. The first one was an announcement this week from Seller Central itself, so you can see this in your dashboard, and it's entitled 3D models to replace 360 degree images starting December 14th. All right now. This is going to be for US, UK, Germany, Spain, France and Italy. All right now.

 

Bradley Sutton:

In the past, you could supposedly it says here you could put 360 degree images. Now, project X products had it, project 5K products had it. We never requested it. It was like Amazon just choosing to do on your own. I never actually heard of many people, if any, who were able to request the 360 degree images where you can kind of like put your finger in the app and like drag it around and see the whole thing. I've never actually known somebody who outside of like vendor central who could request that. But regardless, 360 degree images are going to be a thing of the past. And what is replacing it are these view in 3D, different kind of like experiences, view in your room, virtual try-on and showroom? So this was announced a while back at, I believe it was Amazon Accelerate. There was some talk about this. Now, what Amazon is going to come out with, what they said is, hey, to make it easier if you do create 3D models. It's not like we have like imaging software, right, they're working on a tool that'll allow you to use your phone in order to scan your product and create a 3D model. So more news on that coming soon, they say. But that is a change that is pretty imminent, because it says, hey, this is going to happen in December 14th.

 

Bradley Sutton:

All right, so next article is going to be also from Amazon. It was a press release that they did, and this is about Black Friday results, right? This article says Amazon hosted record breaking Black Friday and Cyber Monday holiday shopping event and announces millions more holiday deals to come. All right, now I don't know how they calculated this, but they said customer save 70% more on Amazon during its 11 days from November 17th through Cyber Monday compared to the same period last year. Now it also cited a recent independent study from Profitero and it said that Amazon had the lowest online prices entering the holiday season, by an average of 16% across 15 different categories, compared to other leading retailers in the US, and they're on pace to deliver fastest delivery speeds for Prime members in the company's 29 year history 29 year history I didn't even know Amazon's been around for 29 years. That's crazy. Anyways, just some random stats here that Amazon talked about says customers ordered more than 500 million items from third party sellers. All right, and so that's a lot. This is just again. During 11 day period, and also some new programs started getting the limelight with their first kind of Black Friday. It says for the first time, prime members purchased great deals directly from Buy With Prime merchants during the Black Friday and Cyber Monday holiday event. And it said merchants who participated in promotional activities experienced an aggregate more than a 300% increase in units purchased through Buy With Prime versus their daily average for the month of October.

 

Bradley Sutton:

So let me know out there, what about you guys? Anybody have some good numbers to report? I heard some people say hey, you know, cyber Monday actually worked out better than Black Friday, but how is your whole Cyber Five altogether? You know how was it from Thursday all the way through Monday? Let me know in the comments below, speaking of Black Friday, how many of you guys have Shopify websites? An article from Shopify, similar press release, says they did it again. Shopify merchants break Black Friday record with $4.1 billion in sales. So it says hey, from the crack of dawn in New Zealand, which is where you know, it becomes Black Friday first through the final minutes in California. Well, that's not right. The final minutes of Black Friday is in Hawaii. It says our merchants drove a 22% increase in sales over last year Shopping peak, when collective sales reached 4.2 million dollars per minute At 12 pm Eastern on Friday. Uh, what about you guys out there who've got Shopify websites. How is your Shopify Black Friday and Cyber Monday? Uh?

 

Bradley Sutton:

Going back to amazon now there's an announcement on amazon ads linked in Uh for amazon unboxed. You might remember amazon unboxed just a few weeks ago in New York, where it's been the last couple of years, you know, we did a podcast live there. They announced all kinds of cool stuff like sponsored tv and things like that. Well, uh, is amazon unboxed going to be in New York? Uh, in October next year? Well, it is going to still be in October, but guess what, guys? Uh, it is now moving to drumroll, please, Austin Texas. All right, so save the date, guys. If you miss this year's unboxed Uh marketing your calendars. Amazon unboxed 2024 for the first time Austin Texas, October 14th through 16th.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Next article, going back to amazon seller central Uh, we announced this update a while back, where they kind of teased that this was coming, and now it's uh going to be in effect, and this is about amazon transparency. Amazon transparencies, a way to to help kind of uh dissuade counterfeit sales of your product. And they now announced amazon being that you can now have use your own serial numbers for transparency. All right, this is new, you know, you don't have to use theirs. You can use your own Uh serial numbers. And, again, you know, if you are uh active with your products in transparency, it means that they can't be listed or shipped to customers without valid codes. So if you have trouble, like with hijackers and things, basically this means that people you know, other sellers trying to like, list your or you know, add their uh the skew to your ASIN, it's not going to get accepted or shipped if it doesn't have these transparency uh codes. So for more information on that, check your uh dashboard.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Now interesting article. This one is coming from Reuters and it was entitled Walmart Shifts to India Cuts China Imports. Now, this is interesting because, uh, it basically said that they're moving more for the Walmart products that they produce themselves. They're moving the production more and more to India. All right, the world's largest retailer, Walmart, this article says, shipped one quarter Of its us imports from India between January and august this year. All right, that compared with in 2018 2018, guess how much? 2% it went from 2% to 25% being produced in India in just the last five years. The data, according to those articles, shows that it only 60% of its shipment only quote, unquote, only came from China. Now, the reason why it's only 60% is because in 2018, it was 80% of all of Walmart’s products were made in China. But China is obviously still Walmart’s biggest country, but it talks about, you know, hey, there's a shift happening at Walmart, you know.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Guess what guys? Project x, all of our products have been made in China. Until Two months ago, we produced our very first product in where? India? All right, so that is going to be coming. You're going to see a feature podcast where we talk about the development Of that product, and we'll have Meghla on here. She helped us source it.

 

Bradley Sutton:

But big companies like Walmart, amazon, third-party sellers more and more are moving production outside of China. What about you? Are you still producing everything in China? Are you producing in India? You producing in Pakistan or other countries? Let me know in the comments below, all right, uh, one more thing before we get into some really cool feature announcements. We're not gonna some moss. I'll let spaniel.

 

Bradley Sutton:

So one more thing Do you speak Spanish? We have our very first monthly networking call in the Spanish language starting next week. All right, this is going to be something that will be hosted by our Serious Sellers Podcast en Español host, Adriana Rangel, and this first one is going to be on December the 6th All right market calendars, December the 6th, at 4 pm Pacific time. And then, for those who speak Spanish, for everybody who speaks Spanish go to h10.me/llamadaconadriana. h10.me/llamadaconadriana. Go to that website and you'll be able to register for the zoom. So again, if you guys want a network with other Spanish speaking sellers, whether you're here in the States, in Latin America, in Europe, in Spain, wherever you are in the world, go ahead and sign up. This will be a monthly Networking call where you can, you know, talk about what's working, what's not working in your business, get some help and I might, you know, pop in there every now and then as well.

 

Bradley Sutton:

All right, let's get into the helium 10 new feature alerts, and we've got some doozies today, guys. Whoo, the Helium 10 product team is been cooking with fire for sure. All right, the very first one is guess what, guys? Helium 10 kind of low-key now has an AI generating or an AI Powered image generator. All right, now, this is actually the Amazon Sponsored a brand ad image generator. But I'm gonna show you, guys, how you can use it for Amazon post. You can use it for you know, potentially lifestyle images or infographics, or getting you know other ideas for your, for your images. It's not perfect right now, but this is cool. The only place Outside of Amazon that you can get this tool is in helium 10. Why, cuz? Amazon chose helium 10 to be its exclusive partner, namely in atomic? Amazon chose helium 10 atomic to be the exclusive software for now. It'll open it up later to others, but we are the only ones that you can get this in. Let me show you how it works, all right.

 

Bradley Sutton:

So basically, you go to your atomic and then you hit a new campaign. Once you get into your campaign builder, you're gonna want to hit single campaign. Once you get there, you're going to want to hit sponsored brand, the middle one. Once you hit sponsored brand, you're gonna hit next and then here you are going to go ahead and Put enter a couple of your products from the brand that you are trying to do. You know an image for, so I'm gonna go ahead and choose what up right here on my screen the helium 10, a coffin bookshelf and Coffin coffin egg tray here and then scroll down. Make sure under sponsor brand campaign, you select the actual brand that you're trying to do this actually kind of doesn't matter, because you're gonna be able to enter your own images yourself. But since I'm actually gonna do one for the coffin shelf, the coffin bookshelf, I'm gonna go ahead and choose Manny's mysterious oddities. Now, once you select that, you scroll down here to this new section called Creative.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Now, the whole purpose of this is actually to create sponsored brand, so you can actually create the, the custom sponsored brand image right here. But I'm gonna show, I'm showing you guys, how to just create any image you want right now. The first thing I'm gonna do is I'm actually gonna first just do this coffin bookshelf and I'm gonna put a different background, all right. So right here, under custom image, you're going to hit AI generated image, all right. Now I'm gonna go ahead and since, like I said, I'm gonna use the coffin bookshelf, so I'm gonna go ahead and choose that again here.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Now what I'm going to do is, in this prompt, I'm gonna say what I want I it to be like in the room. So I'm going to say put this coffin bookshelf hanging on a light colored wall and there are other bat themed decor items hanging on the wall, all right. So I mean that that's just a super, a super simple thing right here. I can actually choose theme here, so I'm not going to. I'm not going to choose a theme for this. Let's just see what happens. This usually takes about a minute to do, so I'll come back as soon as it generates and here we go.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Now, you know, sometimes you're going to get some crazy stuff, like here it actually changed our coffin bookshelf a little bit, but take a look, you know, here it put. It did exactly what I said. I said, hey, put it on a light colored wall and you could see, here's the coffin bookshelf hanging on a wall and there's some like bat shape, like little decor items on the wall. Now I will. I did not give it a good prompt. You know, I only wrote about 121 characters. I can write up to 300. I didn't even include a theme, but you, you know you can get pretty specific.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Now, is this AI going to be perfect? No, this is coming directly from Amazon, you know so. Helium 10 doesn't have control over this. So you know, like, if you're not getting good output, it's it's. You know that's because Amazon's AI is not great yet. But again, this is using connecting directly to the API, to the Amazon's AI generation, and what I can do here is I can actually, you know, choose some of these. I can zoom in and then I can actually save these. I can select them and save them right here, download it. I can save it to my creative assets. So it's kind of like a cool way to, you know, generate Amazon post images without ever even leaving helium 10. So that's the first thing that I wanted to talk about today. The second thing is also super, super cool, requested by a lot of our users, and this is wherever you see keywords in your insights dashboard and cerebro, in magnet.

 

Bradley Sutton:

You know, sometimes you see a whole bunch of keywords and you know you can see the, the score there for how important the keyword is, you know, based on maybe it's search volume or or competitor performance score. But sometimes you're not quite sure how maybe what I call real world relevant the keyword is like, for example, you know, coffin shelf. I think you could understand that probably all the results are coffin shelf. That's the top 10 on page one. But what about other keywords like coffin decor? Maybe it's not coffin shelves, but just random coffin products, and so what, what have you always had to do before.

 

Bradley Sutton:

If you just want to kind of take a quicker or a quick look at the results of, you know, keywords in cerebral magnet, well, you would click one by one on those keywords and take a look at them on Amazon. Well, now you know you're not going to have to do that anymore. Let me show you exactly what you can do. Anywhere where you have cerebral magnet, any keywords, you just have to put your mouse over it, like so, for example, if I want to say what is in coffin shelf, I just put my mouse over and I can see they're mostly coffin shelves here. But then maybe I'm like, all right, well, what about goth gifts? Are there any goth gifts that are showing up here in, you know, for coffin shelves? And I can just all I do, I'm not clicking on anything. I just put my mouse over here and I can see there's some Spooky looking slippers or some skulls, and I'm not actually seeing any coffin shelves in the top 10. So now I know you know what this, this keyword you know, probably might not be too too relevant here. I can look at a coffin box. I'm like, hey, what kind of things are coming up for coffin box? Okay, there is one coffin shelf, but the rest of these are just like maybe some jewelry boxes. So again, I am not clicking on anything, but now anywhere where there's a key where I can put my mouse over. So we're get an idea about the last time healing.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Then 10 check the top 10 results Little thumbnails that show what products were ranking for these keywords. I could see their price, how many variations they have, how many reviews they have. You know, that can be cool, like instantly I might see a keyword was like wow, look at this. Out of the top 10, most everybody only had, like you know, 10 reviews or 20 reviews. So like it's a great way to do product research as well. So I hope you guys can enjoy these two new feature updates from helium 10. Make sure you use it and let me know what you think.

 

Bradley Sutton:

All right, last up, today we have our training tip of the week, and this one is going to be courtesy of Carrie, and this is another keyword based strategy where, in seconds, if you want to find the Keywords that have the most search volume, that start with a word or two words or three words, within seconds. Again, this is one of those no click strategies like. This last one I gave you was a no click strategy. This strategy has zero clicks. How can you see what are the top searched keywords that start with any word or phrase? Carrie, take it away.

 

Carrie:

I'm going to show you how to instantly find the most search terms that start with a specific Keyword. It's very easy and it's something that you can do for Low-key keyword research. If you're just kind of curious about something, maybe you found a product that you want to kind of look a little bit more into. You can see what the top phrases are that start with that particular keyword, and I'm going to show you how to do it. Right now. All you have to do is you just need to go to magnet and it's very, very simple. The next thing you're going to do is you're just going to start typing so we sell a coffin shell. So I'm just going to type in the word coffin and with this it's going to basically show me all the keywords that start with coffin. That in the order of the most searched to the least search. So we've got coffin nail tips. That is the most searched, and the next is coffin, and then the next coffin press on nails. So we can take it even further. We want to say I want to see all the keywords that start with coffin shelf from the most, you know, search to the least. So we've got coffin shelf, coffin shelf, large. So all these great keywords.

 

Carrie:

Another thing you can maybe try like the most popular search term or search product is garlic press, so maybe we can look at garlic Okay, so we've got garlic, garlic press, garlic powder, so we can say garlic press here and see if there's any other keywords. It looks like garlic press stainless steel is the next most searched Garlic press. Oh, so, as you can see, this is a great way to find. You know, kind of do some low key keyword research and you can see all the keywords that start that exact keyword that you want to find, and In the order of the highest search volume to lowest. So I hope you check it out. It's very, very easy and really interesting to take a look at.

 

Bradley Sutton:

All right, thank you very much, Carrie, and thank you guys all for tuning in this week. I will see you next week to see what's buzzing.

#513 - Walmart Beta Programs, Google Ads, & AMA

Get ready to take your Walmart selling game to the next level! Our brilliant guest, Michal Chapnick, a Walmart expert, talks about Walmart's ad certification, the unveiling of innovative beta programs, and the integration of Google ads into promoting your Walmart products. She'll also shed light on Walmart’s commitment to third-party sellers through initiatives like fee discounts and personalized product suggestions. This is the inside scoop you need to unlock the potential of Walmart's marketplace and see your sales soar.

Discover the power of Google ads in driving traffic to Walmart and how it can work wonders for your brand exposure. Dive into the advantages of Walmart's SEM program and learn why it may be more beneficial than directly sending Google ads to Walmart. Michal reveals the abundant opportunities awaiting sellers at Walmart Canada and uncovers the potential impact of beta programs, such as brand stores, on your sales figures. This Walmart Wednesday episode is packed with insights and advice for those seeking to extend their business reach on Walmart.

As we approach Q4, the busiest time for e-commerce, Michal shares her expertise on maximizing your sales during this hectic period. From planning and implementing promotions to optimizing your listings and enhancing customer service, we’ve got you covered. Uncover the impact of the beta version of coupon codes and the power of video ads in holding customer attention. We wrap up our episode by acknowledging all the diligent sellers out there and remind you to make the most of the opportunities available on Walmart's platform, particularly during the holiday season. Buckle up for a wealth of knowledge, and best wishes for a profitable Q4!

 

In episode 513 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Carrie and Michal discuss:

• 00:00 - Selling on Walmart Updates and Opportunities
• 03:13 - BIS Mentor and Customized Suggestions
• 06:07 - The Growth and Opportunities With Walmart
• 12:35 - Walmart's Influence on Black Friday Sales
• 15:23 - Running Ads for Walmart Benefits
• 19:17 - Opportunities for Selling in Walmart Canada 
• 23:53 - Promoting Walmart Sales With Coupons and Videos
• 31:56 - Optimizing Keywords With Helium 10
• 33:24 - Q4 Selling Tactics and Appreciation

► 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:

On today's episode we have Walmart expert Michal Chapnick. She's going to be talking about Walmart ad certification, new beta programs for Walmart, as well as Google ads for Walmart. So this and so much more on today's episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast.

 

Bradley Sutton:

How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think.

 

Carrie Miller:

Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. My name is Carrie and I'm your host today, and this is our winning with Walmart Wednesday, where we talk about all things Walmart. We answer all of your questions and I'm very, very excited today because I have an amazing guest. We have Michal Chapnick, who is going to be joining me. I'm going to be asking her lots of questions because she's a Walmart expert. She has a Walmart agency and she's had a lot of success on Walmart. I know a lot of you are familiar with her. Hey, Michal, how's it going?

 

Michal:

Hello, I'm good and good. How are you doing?

 

Carrie Miller:

Very good. Thank you, nice to see you, and thanks so much for coming on. I'm really excited to have you because you're one of the you know Walmart gurus one of the few Walmart gurus. I would say, probably one of the top in the industry here for Walmart. So thank you. Yeah, so I'm really excited because I know that you have a lot of kind of cool updates to share with us. Okay, so I'm going to get into it. I'm going to get into some of the first things. I'm going to ask you just what kind of updates are there that you would like to share with us about Walmart? Do you want to share any updates of anything new for Walmart or what's new?

 

Michal:

basically, I think there are so many Recently. You know, every week we do Walmart updates and we have, like you know, 10, 15 slides every week because they're really on top of it, they're working really hard and a lot of them are really exciting because and I'm telling that all the time Walmart really wants you. They want you on Walmart, they want the brand, they want you to sell and a lot of people you know sometimes having a hard time to enter Walmart or when they're on Walmart they're having a hard time to sell. But Walmart really wants you there and they're doing everything they can from their side to help you and, you know, give you help to set up, give you help with fees. There's always some kind of promotion there is doing for sellers that are already on Walmart or new sellers. So right now they're doing a lot of like. They're cutting off fees in different ways.

 

Michal:

So either if you have the Pro Seller badge and you can get deep discounts on fees and you can get credit that you can use it for run ads or to use it for the review accelerator program, so you get this credit back. The only thing you need to do is go to your BIS mentor. It's in every account. It's on the, I think, top left and Walmart is giving you customized suggestions so it just specifically for you.

 

Michal:

So from things like items that they think you have an opportunity to get more sales if you lower your price and they're willing to cut your sell off fees, so they will cut your sell off fees so you'll be able to take your price lower to sell more. So this is just one example of the second thing they will give you like a customized list of products that they think you should add to your account. So they're basing that, based on the category you're selling or the brand you're selling. So if you're a resale, of wholesale, you will see a lot of opportunities and I know that some of my sellers that I'm working with they're taking really good advantage of those and they're they managed to get a lot of sales because usually Walmart will tell you something that is out of stock or something that the other sellers are not using WFS.

 

Carrie Miller:

So once you got this inventory and it's already selling very well and you're the only one selling it or the only one WFS, imagine that is like so much self I actually talked to them about this and they said that they anything in the assortment growth tab, that those are really the best opportunities because they kind of compliment what they already have on Walmart. So they're looking for complimentary products. So I think that's why is they're really going to. If you take those suggestions, they're going to boost you and then you're going to get a lot of exposure and sales. Like I know, I was talking to an account manager and she said that somebody in the toys category had a bunch of assortment growth suggestions for toys and they started manufacturing them and basically have been killing it on Walmart, just making tons and tons of sales. So that's a that's something that is really interesting right now for opportunity for selling products.

 

Michal:

It is working. I know that one of our clients that he have an account manager. You know in the past you know they were doing it personally, they know exactly the opportunity so they can do it all and you know he's selling in the category of backpacks. They told him you know what styles right now there is like a lot of demand, for example, clear backpacks and things like that, and the same thing is killing they're. They're making six figures a month.

 

Michal:

They're just amazing. So Walmart is there to help you. I think, if you, I don't know I was selling on Amazon for 12 years, but I remember the 10 years ago. I used to get emails from Amazon every day with items to sell. They were like telling me hey, you know these these, you know those items right, and I don't know if they still do that. I have no idea, but I haven't gotten any recently. And but with Walmart is the same thing. They want to know.

 

Michal:

For them to get to the same or as close as Amazon sells, their catalog have to grow and that's their focus. They're focused in growing their catalog and they're using the sellers, the third-party sellers, to leverage the catalog. There's still far away in a couple of hundreds of millions of products from Amazon. There is so much place for new sellers and even people that come into Walmart and they're new and they don't know what to sell. I can show them so quickly. So much opportunities. There's endless opportunities. One of the coolest things with the mentor base even if you're a private label, walmart know you're selling, for example, in the toy category or kitchen, and they know exactly what product, have a lot of demand and they will tell you. And then you need to go and manufacture that or source that or there's so many ways you can get your hands on these items. This is one of the things that I really like, that they're really encouraging you and we just talked about it.

 

Michal:

Right now they have an update for the category of automotive. They will tell you all the products they're looking for in automotive and they tell you please bring those products, list them. We want you to create the listing. They do not want you to sell something. Yeah, of course you can sell. Something is already on Walmart but what they're trying to do is to get you to create new listings. They want you to not just to create new listing. They also expect to need to create good listings, because when they're good listing, they can be in front of customers. Customer can find them. When customer find it, the content is good, so he will buy it.

 

Michal:

Right now they give you the option to upload videos to your listing. Everybody can do that right now. It doesn't cost you anything. You can just go ahead and there's a when you go and open the case. There is one of the section it says upload rich media, upload video, and they will give you an instructions and a file to upload your video. So they're really doing a lot for the sellers and going a little bit back. The most important things that you need to remember is that you have to follow the guidelines, because you're going to have so much benefits coming after that, Getting the processor batch, for example. Now they're offering the SEM, that's the searching agent marketing, and what is that? So let's talk about that for a second, because that's I think this is one of the most exciting updates the last couple of months.

 

Carrie Miller:

Yeah, I saw it pop in my account and I took a look at it. I think my biggest question is because this is basically advertising through Google Shopping, through the portal, and they basically do it for you. As long as you're really well optimized, you'll show for the best keywords. But is this now the paid version of what was free? Because I remember my product used to show up a ton on Google Shopping just for free and I hadn't been advertising on Google for Walmart but it would say available on Walmart.com. Is it now kind of paid and not free, or do you see both?

 

Michal:

No, it's definitely both. So here's the secret. Walmart is spending millions Even I wish I could see their budget for Google Ads. It's insane, it's really crazy. They know the power of Google Ads. We saw in many, many clients a lot of time when we went deep into the sales and trying to understand where those sales are coming from. Between 30% to 40% of a lot of item sales coming from Google Ads. So Walmart is pushing all the listing to Google Ads.

 

Michal:

But there's a couple of criterias, like your listing have to be following the guidelines, you have to have good images, so you have to have not too long title and all the things that are very important, and you can see it in your listing score. There is a tool that show you exactly the score for every little part of your listing and if your score is high, there is no reason why you shouldn't be eligible to show up on Google Ads. So Walmart is not going to put you on Google Ads if you don't have enough images, because then the pain for your item to show up on Google a customer is going to click on that is going to come to Walmart and he's not going to end up buying because there's no information or there's no images. So again, they have to make sure your listing is going to have the chance to convert before they will do that. So the only thing you need to do is make sure your listing is following the guidelines. And so now Walmart is telling you we're giving you the option. We know how powerful is Google, we know how powerful the ads are coming. We are spending a lot of money, but if you want to do some extra, you want to spend more money, you want to put more product. We're giving you the option to start doing campaigns on Google, and I think that's huge and I think whoever is going to take advantage of that is going to see amazing results in their conversion rates.

 

Michal:

Because Still, 40 percent of people will start their search on Google. I think 35 percent going to go directly to Amazon, 40 percent on Search and Agent, and then the rest is spread on different things. Some people will go through Pinterest or even social media. They're going to look and stuff in there. Another thing that why you want to be optimized is the same thing as more you optimize and you listen to high quality. Walmart is not just advertising on Google or Bing or Ad. They're advertising with a lot of social media advertising, with a lot of bills website. They're advertising with a lot of really big influencers that they're paying them a lot of money. As more as you're listening is good. They will expose your items to all those channels they're advertising at.

 

Carrie Miller:

That's possible. Yeah, I know that.

 

Michal:

Yeah, I was talking with one of the account manager and they have the option to pick items and put them on this bucket, this list, and then website deals website like a silk deals, and there's all websites like that or influencers have the option to look at that list and pick the items they want to promote this week because they're getting paid and they get also getting paid affiliates. Yeah, there's things like that. Sometimes, if you follow influencers on Walmart on Instagram, they're doing a lot of Walmart. You can see they're pushing a lot of passion. Yeah, kitchen items. And right now it's crazy because people are waiting for influencers to show them what's the deals on Walmart, because everybody know that Walmart have the best Black Friday deals.

 

Michal:

Yeah, we always have the biggest selection, the biggest selection of deals in each category. Because other stores can be just electronics, best buy with Walmart. The Black Friday deals are on home, on outdoor, on Christmas decoration, toys, clothing, jewelry, everything. Walmart is very known in Black Friday.

 

Carrie Miller:

We did have a question about SEM. It says do you do Walmart SEM and your own Google ads at the same time? That's a really good question Because if you don't want to cannibalize your own Google ads while doing the SEM Google ads, that is a really good question.

 

Michal:

Usually, when you do your own Google ads, you choose where the traffic is going to go. You can run Google ads for your website. It's good because many times I remember I had items that I used to sell in the past. There were not all of people were selling them In the category. I would say it was a kind of a shoes, a specific shoes for kids. When I used to go to Google and I used to write that specific keyword. I get Google ads and I sell my shoes on Walmart. Next to it I saw my shoes on my website and next to it on Amazon. I used to get all the Google ads I could. Now, most likely, the customer will buy my shoes. It doesn't matter where, but he will buy them. Again, you're creating brand awareness. It's more ads you can create. It's more exposure. You can put your brand in a product. It's better for you because the customer remembered that.

 

Carrie Miller:

I think that they clarified it. I mean sending Google traffic to Walmart. Maybe not do your own Google ads to Walmart if you're doing SEM, potentially.

 

Michal:

Yeah, that's what it's going to do. That's exactly what it's going to drive traffic from Google to your Walmart. So I say you know, try, try, you can put a budget. It's not too complicated to run those campaigns. So I would say, give it a try. And before you do that, also go and search for your item on Google and see if it's really coming up, if Walmart is already promoting your items. And again, the most important thing, make sure your listing is following the guideline.

 

Carrie Miller:

Yeah, for my own Google ads. I did do an experiment where I was trying to see if it would help with ranking if I sent outside ads, like from Google, like at U-Kan on Amazon, and I noticed that it did not make a difference when I sent my own Google ads to Walmart. And so I think that probably, if there is going to be a benefit, it's probably going to be through the SEM program doing ads to Walmart. So if if I were to choose between the two, I would probably do the Walmart SEM over Google to my own Google ads to Walmart, whereas I would still obviously do Google ads because I have Google ads to my own sites as well. But that's what I would think because I know that they are kind of looking at their own metrics and the more you convert on their side, I think that the better it is. But that could be just a guess, but I do know for a test that it did not help my rank. So there is that, because I know a lot of us do that for Amazon. We send Google traffic and it does help with rank, but it didn't on Walmart.

 

Michal:

Yeah, one more thing I'm thinking of is that it's probably going to be much better because they have better pricing, so it might be going to end up being much cheaper than you spend it yourself.

 

Carrie Miller:

Yes, it's Walmart.

 

Michal:

It's going for Walmart account. It's not your Google account, it's Walmart account having their own pricing. So you will get that. And the second thing it's known because I can see it. Every time I go to Google I can see Google love Walmart. Google will always place Walmart ads in first five. So this is another thing you will get better exposure and you have better chance to shop in a better ad in a better location Because, again, it's through Walmart. So just that it's worth it.

 

Carrie Miller:

We have another question. Actually Bradley asked this one and it says is Walmart Canada worth it yet?

 

Michal:

I absolutely think so, absolutely. It is very like with Walmart.com, the same thing with Walmart Canada. Not every product will be a huge success because those marketplaces are still building their customer base, but I think Walmart.com is doing very good. Now for Canada, from a lot of people that I have a lot of friends that live in Canada people online. When they go online they usually will go either to Amazon Canada or Walmart Canada. There is not too many options. Some items people can go to the store and have some problems to find Like there is not always big selection of things. So if you know to find those items that people having a hard time to find in the store or next to their house, you will know that Canada will be very, very good.

 

Michal:

So actually, going back to the time when I used to sell kitchens, we had exact same styles on that farm in Canada and actually it was a period of time that we met sales on Canada. Because I guess you know people need, you know everybody needs shoes for their. Yeah, you don't need to do much, it's going to sell. If you have nice shoes with quality, it will sell. And I think the thing is that, again, people when they go online, they don't. There's not too many brands that are selling on Walmart.com or Canada. So again, if you find those opportunities and there is tons of opportunities on Walmart Canada and also in Canada people, the Canadian, are paying high prices on stuff, so you don't have to sell nothing to cheap, you can sell it in your price or even higher and customers are paying and they're also paying shipping as well, so I think the profit is also very nice on Canada.

 

Carrie Miller:

All right, let's go into some other things I know. Can you give us some insights to you know, like I think, some beta programs I think coupons, brand stores, any other kind of beta programs that you've seen, and have you been able to use them and what's your experience been with those?

 

Michal:

Yeah, so brand stores are available for very selected amount of sellers. Right now it's mostly they started with a lot of sellers that do it fashion, so we do have a couple of our clients that they have the option to do brand stores and right now it looks great. I cannot wait for it to be available to everyone because we need that. You know you want to click on the brand and go to a nice storefront that you can display your. You know what are you selling. I think it's going to help a brand grow really nicely on Walmart and I think the best part is, again we see the people that selling on Walmart. There's not a lot of brands that take Walmart really seriously and doing those extra steps, but the one they do, those that want to see really success on Walmart. So I'm excited to you know, to see some of the brands we're working with, you know, using that feature and growing. The second thing is coupon codes. So coupon codes again are in beta right now. Yes, and it's available from whatever.

 

Michal:

Only like 50 sellers got that, yeah, maybe now a little bit more, but I cannot wait for that because, again, this is huge for doing social media marketing, because people love those videos and those ads and everything that you give them. Coupon code is, like, so popular right now with Amazon, and I think it's going to help get so much more traffic and sales to Walmart when you can, you know, and display your items with the coupon code. I think so.

 

Carrie Miller:

I think that it's a bummer we don't have it right now because my sales when we started doing a coupon on Amazon have done really, really well, because I just think people are always looking for a deal. So, seeing that coupon, they're like, oh, I might as well just get this item too in here because it's on sale or there's a coupon, whereas you know we don't have it on Walmart yet. I'm kind of antsy to get coupons on Walmart. It would be really cool if they just decided next week to release those, because I'm desperately waiting for those because they work really well on Amazon. We see that they work because people are already shopping on there and they're like, oh, I'm looking, they're looking for deals, right? So the more access we have to give deals, I think, the more sales we're going to make on Walmart.

 

Michal:

So, yeah, in beta anymore. It's available to everyone. If you're a brand, you have to be brand and register, but is the video ads. Yes is the most exciting thing I think happened recently for brands is that you can create a video ad and you get your customer attention so fast because you know the minute they search for something, your video is and it's big, it's really big. You saw on Walmart, it's not like tiny. It's like yes, really like the page. It's really nice big deal, and I'm still amazed that so many brands are not using that. There are so many people and sellers that are not using the video ads or even just to upload the video to the listing. So many people are not doing that. So and so, yeah, this is I think the key to this with Walmart is paying attention and doing all this stuff. I agree.

 

Carrie Miller:

I think I've talked to some people and because the minimum is a dollar for the video ads, they haven't been utilizing them. Have you started doing video ads and have you seen some good conversion on those, like just better conversion overall? Or what do you see with the video ads Currently?

 

Michal:

yeah, we do have one of our clients that is running video ads and their sales are are really going high, Like we're talking about 30% more than before, so that's really nice. They're very happy with that, and so this is one of the things that you know with advertisement usually you should see growth and you know with sales.

 

Carrie Miller:

Mm, hmm, that would be. Yeah, that's amazing. Okay, so let's see, there was something else that you mentioned, and it was ad certification. Do you want to talk a little bit about Walmart ad certification? I think this is a completely new program, so yeah, that's a new program that Walmart is.

 

Michal:

see that people struggling with ads Like they're trying to run ads and they don't know, they have no clue what they're doing. So they're saying, hey, let's give you a certificate. So I think it's just to make people feel like, oh, if they're going to go through a course, they're going to be certified and they know what they're doing. So this is what they're trying to do. Or they're even offering that to your team. It doesn't have to be you, it's going to be somebody from your team. So if you have a VA, or because Walmart advertisement is not difficult, but you have to take the time and and learn how to create your campaigns correctly, how to optimize them, how to find the right keywords, a check your competition.

 

Michal:

If you're running ads and you don't spy on your only competitors to see what they're doing, you're missing out. Because this can be. I always find. When I do, you know, when I look at competitors, when we run ads for customers, we can always see that there is, we have a list of all the relevant keywords and then we look at the competitors and sometimes they're missing one or two, or sometimes even more. And that's your opportunity. So I think it's just to make sure that you're not missing out, and so we can always see that there is.

 

Michal:

We have a list of all the relevant keywords and then we look at the competitors and sometimes they're missing one or two or sometimes even more. And that's your opportunity, because nobody's paying for that keywords and you can pay for it and get all the traffic. Or Another thing that I see all the time with the competitors is that they're paying for a lot of phrases but they're not coming out as relevant because they don't have that phrase in the listing. So the ad algorithm is very smart, so he will sometimes place them for these keywords, but only because they don't have somebody that looks more relevant. Once you come and you're more relevant, you're not really competing with him because you will always get the first spot in the first page because the algorithm know you're relevant. So it's easy. Even if somebody in your confederate is advertising sometimes they're not doing such a good job you can always come and find those little holes where you can take advantage of something that your competitor is not doing.

 

Carrie Miller:

Very good, very interesting. Well, I think we're pretty much at our time limit, but I was wondering if there's anything else that we didn't talk about that you might want to give advice on or share with the audience. Any final thoughts?

 

Michal:

Yes, I think through the end of the year. Right now it's a really good timing for a lot, especially of the new seller, to see the potential of Walmart because a lot of them will be surprised right now with the sales. So I really want a lot of you to catch the momentum of the end of the year. Right now it's the best timing to add new product because there's a lot of traffic. So take the time and add new product. If you have a product they're doing very well, sometimes you can even just create another offer. It can be two-pack, three-pack, it can be a bundle. Again, it's more items you add, more customer can find you, you create more brand awareness. So add as many skills, as I always think is a good strategy to build your brand and stay in stock, even though pay attention, because a lot of people what happened right now? They're getting out of stock because they didn't thought they're going to sell so many, so much on Walmart and they're getting out of stock quickly. So try to stay in stock so you keep your momentum and your ranking. So add, advertise. Now is the best time.

 

Michal:

Advertise, pay attention to your budget. Make sure you're running ads during those peak days and peak hours. You don't run out of your budget too early of the day, so take advantage of the Google advertisement promo code. One thing that I wanted to say it's going to be super cool when you run ads. So your item is showing up like write the first thing the customer seat and then you use a promo. Like promo it's mean you're doing something like reduce price. So your item right now instead of $29.99 is $24.99. So you already catching the customer eye because you can see this item is on sale and then they click on your product and then they see there is coupon code. Right, it's going to be like. I think it's going to create a lot of conversion.

 

Carrie Miller:

I think so too.

 

Michal:

Together, and so I cannot wait for the coupon code to come. But right now you can run ads, you can do promo and that's going to catch some eyes. You will get a lot of sales just by doing that, as well as running ads going to help you get ranked. So this is a really good timing to not just sit back and say, oh, it's too late. No, it's not too late, you have enough time. Continue optimizing. Even right now. I'm telling all our customers please run a new keyword report.

 

Michal:

One of the things that people don't do is everybody that listen right now. When the last time you optimize your listening maybe you upload a year ago did you optimize it since then? Keywords is something that change all the time, especially in Q4. Because in Q4 there's a lot of new phrases. So if you sell toy for girls and right now you can add something to one of your key features, it says that toy make a great Christmas gift for girls. Christmas gift for girls is a very high search term at this time of the year and if you don't use it, you're missing out thousands of thousands of customers that potentially can come to your listening because that phrase is in your listening. So it's the perfect time right now, today, or even if you're on vacation or something next week, whenever you listen to that at any time.

 

Michal:

Go to Helium 10, run keyword refresh, keyword report to your product and do a couple of adjustments. Go and add those keywords to your description, to your title, even to your key features. Even your attributes can use some refreshment. Go to your listing tool score and see your score and see what you can improve in there. So just by doing that and you know what I love about it, that if you do that, you will see that in the next week or two you will get more traffic. It's working, guys. I think this tip is always working.

 

Carrie Miller:

One more question on that Do you use Helium 10, Cerebro and Magnet to find those keywords, or where are you finding those keywords? Is that kind of the best option?

 

Michal:

I'm using both. So Magnet, we're always doing searches just to see what's coming up, and I always like to use Cerebro because I will go to my competing items. At least two or three of them will take their item number, go to Cerebro to see what they're ranking for, which keywords, and almost always I will find the phrase that I never got in the other search. So always do both.

 

Carrie Miller:

Yeah, we're updating those keywords every week, so you should be able to find new keywords on Helium 10, Cerebro and Magnet. So thank you everyone for listening. Thank you so much, Michal, for coming on. I always love having you on because you are definitely one of the top in the industry, so I appreciate you taking the time and answering questions and giving advice. So good luck to everyone who's selling this Q4. I think we've gotten a lot of really great tactics here from Michal on what to do, from you know, for Q4. So we will see you all next time on Walmart Wednesday. So thank you.

 

Michal:

Bye Carrie. Thank you so much.

 

Carrie Miller:

Bye.

 

#512 - Amazon KDP & Product Differentiation Guide

Imagine navigating the exciting landscape of launching an Amazon KDP business and entering the glitzy Miss Universe spectacle at the same time. That's precisely what our incredible guest, Shivali, has managed to do. In this episode of SSP, Shivali takes us on a fascinating journey that begins with the debut of her original beauty and personal care product in the electronics section of Amazon and ends with her unforgettable time competing in beauty pageants. Gain insights into the tactical maneuvers she employed to overcome the hurdles in the fiercely competitive Amazon landscape and enjoy the open discussion of her unique approach to launching an Amazon product.

In the second half of our talk, we change topics and focus on the colorful realm of cosmetics and beauty, emphasizing the need to create styles that accentuate unique qualities. With her unique take on the process of creating digital products, Shivali shares the details of her next cosmetics training initiative. She also discusses her amazing book writing and publishing endeavors, as well as her first experience publishing KDP books on Amazon. In order to bring your private label endeavors to new heights, we conclude the episode by getting into the specifics of Amazon's KDP platform and providing insightful advice about quality control, marketing techniques, and pricing strategies. So, listen to this episode and take away some wisdom from Shivali’s inspiring story.

In episode 512 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Shivali discuss:

• 00:00 - Starting a KDP Business
• 05:19 - Passion and Celebrity in Product Success
• 11:07 - Versatile Looks and Digital Product Creation
• 16:43 - Promoting KDP Books on Tick Tock
• 21:52 - Effective Usage of AI Writing Tools
• 23:53 - KDP Book Publishing and Marketing Tactics
• 27:52 - Understanding Amazon Royalties and Profits
• 34:11 - Being Proactive in the KDP Market

► 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're sending Shivali to the other side of the microphone and she's going to talk about her advice for those wanting to start a KDP business, her super unique Amazon product launch that she's doing that would be impossible to copy, and much more. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Want to check estimated sales for products you see on Amazon? Or maybe you want to instantly see how many listings on page one of a search term result have the actual search keyword in the title? You can find all of these things out and more with the Helium 10 Chrome Extension tool, X-Ray. More than 1 million people have used this tool. Find out what it can do for you by downloading it for free at h10.me/xray. 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. I'm not going too far away in the world. We're going to North Carolina right now. Shivali in the house. Welcome back to the show. How's it going?

Shivali Patel:

It's going good. How are you?

Bradley Sutton:

I'm doing all right. We're going to talk about KDP how Amazon sellers can do it. I'm going to talk about I know you're just going to be launching another Amazon product soon. We've got a lot of a business thing to talk about Before there. We were talking earlier that there was just recently Miss Universe. You said a couple of people that were in this Miss Universe pageant you were actually in the same pageant with them last year, the year before, right.

Shivali Patel:

Yes, correct. Miss Universe Thailand this year was actually our reigning international girl when I competed at Miss Super National in 2021. Then Miss Universe, Puerto Rico Carla, who also made top five at Miss Universe Miss Thailand, actually took first runner up. Carla was also, I believe she made top five. Yeah, really really strong group of girls. They're both wonderful. It definitely gives me the pageant itch as well.

Bradley Sutton:

Yes, I've joked with you before that, hey, I'll approve time off, but there's got to be like some. I put a Helium 10 logo on my basketball court. I think that on your gowns or your evening wear or talent competition, there's got to be like Helium 10 logos displayed somewhere. Then I'll go ahead and approve that time off if you go back to pageant life.

Shivali Patel:

Yeah, that would be a wild gown.

Bradley Sutton:

Yes, but hey, it will bring us lots of impressions to Helium 10 and then all of a sudden our site traffic will spike and then we can attribute it. We've got this metric that we go evangelism reach and that'll definitely help the evangelism reach. Anyways, here let's go to business. First of all, the last time we talked was a while back. I mean, you're definitely no stranger to show, you even host a few podcasts yourself or a few episodes yourself with the weekly buzz and tacos Tuesday and things like that. But as a guest you haven't been on here in about a year and I remember at the time you were looking for a new product to sell on Amazon, and now, as of today, you've got it all in Amazon. But you were having like, didn't they like? Put them all on reserve status or suspended or suppressed, or what was going on there?

Shivali Patel:

Yeah, so my product is actually. It's in the beauty and personal care category, but it was also an electronics item, which is very interesting because when I was getting started a few years ago, I remember telling myself you know what? I'm not going to touch electronic items with a stick. It's not for me. I don't know all the regulations.

Bradley Sutton:

And then I think you have a death with electronics.

Shivali Patel:

Yeah, that too. Let's forgot about that part too. But yeah, that was one additional reason that I didn't want to touch the electronics category. But I think the more time that I've spent in this space, it changes your mindset a lot, because then it becomes about well, which barriers are you willing to cross? Because problems are such an integral part to running any business system and it just comes down to what or how you're willing to overcome it. And so when I found this product, I was really, really interested in launching into it because I felt like I could deliver value into it. You're always thinking creatively well, what can I add to this product so that way it will sustain competitors regardless of when they're coming in? And with my first product, I had about nine months before I actually got that product to market because of some backend issues, and this for this particular product. You carry all those lessons that you learned through time with you, and so I really wanted to ensure that, regardless of when the product goes out, it actually sells. And it really came down to okay, yes, it's an electronics item, but I can learn it's a higher barrier to entry for my competitors. And then I did feel like I could add value to the space. So, yeah, that's really my mindset of going in.

Bradley Sutton:

But along those lines it ties in with what we were talking about with pageant, life and stuff. But people, I've always suggested to people, hey, you can't always go with what your passion is, because if there's no opportunity there you're not going to have success. But in a perfect world, if you can do a product that you're passionate about or leverage some kind of like off Amazon, you know, following, then I think you know people absolutely have to do that. Like you know, I always thought before like if I was still like really big in the Zumba world, like I was in the old days, that you know, like I could have had a lot easier way to launch some kind of Zumba fitness related product or something. So then you kind of, you know you said it's kind of like a beauty product, but then you're kind of taking your quote unquote celebrity status a little bit and offering like coaching or some kind of like digital service along with your product.

Shivali Patel:

Right, that is correct. So I wasn't entirely sure if I wanted to do this, but pretty much anybody I talked to, yourself included, said it was a good idea, and so, yes, I have chosen to represent myself as Miss Supernational USA 2021. And I, whenever somebody buys the product which it's actually I'm fine with sharing it. It's a makeup bag with LED mirror and three settings, but it comes with makeup lessons as well, and it's not just live group coaching calls, it's like a full blown course, because I wanted people to not just walk away with a product, but walk away with an experience where they can buy this one bag and learn how to use all of the tools that they'll be putting inside of that bag, where they can now go into their everyday life and actually carry themselves with confidence because they now know or have a skill, sets and techniques on how to use those products. So it really was a long game for me and that's how I approached it.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, but yeah, the reason why this is, I mean, nothing is guaranteed success. Guys in Amazon. You know like maybe something weird might happen and she has to like lower her price or something. But I know you're starting at a very high price and you actually have a chance of success. Like if I were to come in with an LED makeup bag and like, let's say, all of them were like 60 bucks and I'm trying to sell it for 120, I mean it's not. Not only is there not a guarantee of success, it's almost a guaranteed failure. Because why, you know, why would anybody pay 120 dollars? But with the fact that you're bundling this, this is now all of a sudden you actually have this ceiling, like it actually is possible for you to have success at that price, price point. Also, this is something that nobody can duplicate. Nobody can copy like any. You have some like super fancy water bottle, you know, that has like this really crazy design spout or whatever. So somebody can copy that. Eventually, can a can a you know Chinese factory or a factory from India just go and say, hey, let me get another country's miss super national or miss universe or whatever and offer coaching classes. You know that's like not going to happen.

Bradley Sutton:

So, again, this is not a guarantee for success, but this is the kind of thing guys those of you are selling on Amazon look for these kind of things that are hard to duplicate, whether it's on the product side, like something you have a patent for, or or it's on the you know the personal side, you know where you're offering digital courses or something like that with it, and then that just sets you apart. So that that was why I really liked that, that idea, and I think that other other people should think about. Not, not everybody has something you know, but, but sometimes we sell ourselves short A lot of people. We might have something that we don't even know. Maybe it's one of our relatives or something that we can offer as as part of a bundle. So how are you delivering? Like, is this course live? Is it like something you recorded and they get access to it once they opt in? Like, how does that work?

Shivali Patel:

I was actually listening to Alex Hermosi I'm not sure if I pronounced this last name correctly, but he talks a lot about the $100 million offer right, and something that is very principal to that is providing an offer. That is a no brainer, and when I was thinking about what I wanted to offer in terms of an experience and what would be most impactful, you want leveraged impact right. You want somebody to purchase this bag, transform their lives, and then they go and tell their friends and say, hey, oh my gosh, like I learned this incredible thing. I feel so much more confident, and I think that's a mixture of prerecorded lessons, but it's also live coaching, where people do have access to you. They do have the ability to ask you questions.

Shivali Patel:

Now, I would not consider myself a makeup guru by any, by any milestone, but I think you really only need to be a few steps ahead of somebody to be able to offer help, and with makeup, I have spent a considerable amount of years in the fashion and the beauty industry. I started very young and I grew up in that field, and so I do feel like I can say something to someone and help them with their confidence in applying makeup or even just in presentation, right. I think it takes a certain level of courage, or even foregoing some of the expectations other people might hold of you, to compete in something like a beauty pageant. And so I can take those and transfer them over to somebody else and hopefully that will allow them to be equipped with skills they can put into their day to day life, and so it's actually a mixture I'm sending them over into a funnel, right, and that funnel will set up the drip email campaign, which then leads them into this whole course. So it's a four module course as of right now. I plan to add to it. I want to update it consistently as new trends come out.

Shivali Patel:

As you know, there's so many versatile looks you could do. You could do a day look a glam look. Maybe you are somebody who's going day into glam, that sort of thing as well as just expression. So it talks a little bit about color psychology. We have what else? We have undertones, we have foundation matching just a lot of different broad ideas that are important when you are trying to figure out what's going to work on your face, because everybody's face is different. I can't actually go and give you the exact same things that I do, and it's not necessarily going to work for you, because you know you might have almond shaped eyes.

Bradley Sutton:

I think my beauty is a little bit different than yours, yeah.

Shivali Patel:

Exactly, Exactly. But for those of you that are listening, you know you might end up if you're a woman and your are planning to use the same exact makeup techniques that I am, well, it might not work, because you might have hooded eyes and I have almond eyes, that sort of thing. So we do have the four modules plus bonus lessons, where I'll have some of my pageant friends come on, some of the you know influencers that I can get on and they'll do lessons as well, and then I also have a group and they'll be promoting this product, like once you know, now that you see there goes again, guys, there's, it's not.

Bradley Sutton:

She's not just going off of what you know she has, but what you have is your network too, and so if you have people who are influential, you know, and who are down to down to promote, that's another great advantage. Like, like, I'm doing something different on the coffin shelf, you know, like I'm not making a community or anything but the coffin shelf market is very saturated. All of a sudden, you know, people come in low balling and I'm going to go a little bit more in depth in a future episode, but what I'm doing is I'm just experiencing again, again. I might fail at this, but I'll never know if I don't try. I'm actually raising my price and not going lower, like everybody's 20% lower than me. I'm going to go not only not lower, but I'm going to go 20% higher and I'm adding Products that almost double my cost of manufacturing. I'm giving, like, a coffin shaped box, like the box that it's gonna come in is literally coffin shaped and it can be reused as something else, like you know, a sock box or something like that, and I'm offering some other stuff.

Bradley Sutton:

So for me, that's what I think is gonna differentiate, because there's no way that any of these other cheap Coffin shelf makers are gonna go and spend two dollars and fifty cents like is what it's costing me to make this custom box for Shivali. There is no way any of her competitors are gonna go and have multiple pageant beauty queens From countries like you know offering courses. So, guys, again, the moral this part of the story is is do what you know, use your advantages, that you have to be unique and offer something that is that is not duplicatable and and that's kind of like along the lines of it doesn't always have to be a physical product. Mine, mine, is a physical product. I'm doing a box right and along those lines is a perfect segue. Your first entry into Amazon wasn't even in the physical product, wasn't didn't. Before you make physical products, you were doing digital products, namely KDP books correct.

Shivali Patel:

I got started by selling on KDP and I wrote books fairly fast. I had some ghosts written, but I also wrote some of my own and I knew that if I spent too much time on Writing them that I most likely would be disappointed in the results. Not trying to be a pessimist, just a realist, where if I spent, let's say, months preparing a book and I put it out into the world and people don't receive it well, or maybe it the field is changed by then, right, I would be so disappointed and so I worked on. I Just focused on putting it out there as opposed to perfection, just progress, not perfection sort of ideal.

Shivali Patel:

And yeah, it went okay. I wouldn't say it was. I became like a best-selling author or anything, but I sold copies and I continue to sell those copies actually from the books I wrote when I was I think I was 23 at the time- so those books you made years ago You're saying you're still getting, like you know, per like it's not, it's not free, you have to pay for it or you're free, so people are literally are still paying you for this book you wrote years ago.

Shivali Patel:

Yes, yeah, I mean, granted, my books are very, very cheap, because again I was like, okay, I wrote this in 24 hours. I think it was like 24 to 36 hours max, but I went through, wrote it pretty fast. One was on positive self-talk, the other one was on engineering powerful habits successfully. I've actually published way more than that. I just only tied those first two to my name and so those actually that are under my name, they're tagged to my socials and so I actually do end up going in and still seeing sales from those even today, and that's cool, because I don't actually actively promote them or anything.

Shivali Patel:

They just end up selling, and so I really, really love digital products because digital products cost you little to no money To actually set up right. You can go into Canva today and create something. In fact, last month I wrote four books and I need to actually get them published this month, hopefully this month. Hardcover paperback would be great. I wrote one on AI. I wrote one on what was my other one, even on, can you believe I like I struggle sometimes even in float Instagram, because I had done a case study with Instagram at some point where I quickly grew it from Zero to 10k followers in the span of like three to four weeks.

Shivali Patel:

Now, of course, that case study is a little bit old, but I learned a lot through it and I can still sell that information, and so it's really easy to go into Canva, build out a full fledged book and then it takes you maybe five minutes to upload into KDP. And KDP isn't even the only avenue you can use. There's many other platforms that allow you to do that. Now I specifically focus on KDP and I Was talking to Bradley not too long ago about potentially doing a case study about that for helium 10 content, which hopefully, if you guys stay tuned, you'll be able to see that. And that is just experimenting with tick tock, because tick tock is also growing. Tick tock shop just became a thing and.

Shivali Patel:

I'm really interested in seeing how you can kind of combine both of those landscapes into one Right now you can't actually add links, I believe, into the captions to promote your Amazon KDP books, but you can Send traffic using a link in bio to a funnel page or a landing page or even into those books via that route so you can attach your KDP link. I think as long as you have the link in bio. You can't actually do it inside of the Video that you're uploading, like the post that you're uploading.

Shivali Patel:

Okay and so there's so many things you can do there too, right, you can go in and do like a reading what is it? You read like an excerpt of your book and that's a reading. You could do Q&A. You could add Just some knowledge to the space. If you have something that is non fictional, you could do so many other promotional videos that can lend itself to traffic for your pages.

Bradley Sutton:

All right, so let me give you a couple scenarios. Scenario number one I am listening to this podcast and I'm not selling on Amazon yet, and the reason why I'm not is because, you know, I don't have $3,000 or maybe my product is like super expensive, it's $10,000 what I would need to invest. You know, $5,000, what have you? And I'm just like, hey, I'm not on any kind of like strict timeline. You know, I got a few months like I can build, you know, save for my day job, but I want to kind of like X, you know, start making some more money on the side Without investing. How, what would I? Where do I start? Like, like, what's my research? Like you know, maybe I don't have the time to do an Instagram Case, that you know you know. Whatever, whatever you do like, do I need to pick a topic that I know or you know? Do I do like product research and in helium 10 and find some kind of Subject that way that there are searches on like, like what's my step one, two and three?

Shivali Patel:

I think that's an excellent question, and it's when I can get very excited about sharing information on because you absolutely want to do product research. There's no point in you building a book and then set trying to sell it in a market that's super saturated, or maybe you don't know how to market and so use the helium 10 chrome extension. That's what I recommend is make sure you download it. You can go to helium 10 comm forward slash extension and once you add that to chrome, you can actually use x-ray to see a lot of back-end data. Go inside of Kindle, the Kindle store, go into categories, subcategories, use x-ray to see how people are doing and then from that, maybe, if you find a book that you Are interested in creating a book on, you feel like you could do something better, you can optimize that listing better. Then what I actually recommend that you do is open up Canva, open up ChatGPT and Open up quill bot. Okay, and what you can do is, first of all, use review insights which is also a part of our helium 10 chrome extension on your competitors inside of that niche. Figure out what's good, what are people talking about, what do they like about that book, what are the topics that you want to focus your book on and then go into chat GPT, provide a title, come up with a title. If you don't want to go directly into that, you really want to get granular. Go into Cerebro before you go into chat GPT, go and see what people are typing in and then from that Make a list of all the chapters you want to have for that book, all the keywords you want to rank for, and then you can use those keywords as chapter titles. Then you go to ChatGPT, you feed it inquiries and if you put in garbage if you put in garbage you're gonna get garbage out. So make sure you're very, very hyper specific about what you're inputting in.

Shivali Patel:

When you do that, you can start with an outline. You can say, hey, I'm writing a book for this, this is how long I want it to be. I'm going to, over time, over the next few prompts, feed you a set of Subject or chapter titles, chapter topics, and I'd like you to Draft a written response in the tone of XYZ. Maybe you have a favorite author, a favorite artist. Whatever the case may be, get very, very specific and, as you go through first, still provide you with the outline. So I would recommend really starting with the outline. Once you have the outline, the outline will present you with maybe two or three different markers for inside of each chapter. So even if you don't know the first thing about that niche, that is okay. You don't need to do a case study like I did. I've written plenty of books that are on topics I don't know anything about, and that is okay for you too. So go in to chat GPT, go into the outlines and then actually take each chapter Section, so maybe just the two or three. Copy and paste that and then you'll see I'll draft an entire thing for you.

Shivali Patel:

Now, the only thing that I don't love about ChatGPT is, yes, it has limits, but it also is quite redundant sometimes in its language. So you'll see some words pop up over and over again. You'll see vast, you'll see realm, you'll see Ecommerce landscape if I'm talking about something in E come and so you might want to go in and be specific, say, hey, don't use any sequential words or don't use these specific words, include these keywords, and it will actually go through and refine what you've written. The point, or the best way, rather, to use chat GPT is Start broad and get more and more granular, refining your results every single time, and so pretty soon actually even in the span of 30 minutes you can have a full book that you can then put into quill bot, which is a paraphrasing tool, and Actually change out those words. So now you have a Section of your book that is AI generated but it looks more human because you've gone in and actually changed out some of those words.

Shivali Patel:

Of course you want to add a little bit of personal touch, but can you imagine how hard it must have been to write books that are 500 600 pages back in the day, not to say you need to write 500 600 pages. Most of my books are somewhere between some are as low as 20 pages and others are I think my highest might be about no, actually 120 pages, I think is my highest. But you can go in and go as little or as Long as you really want to keep in mind that if you go and upload this to KDP, you will need to do some formatting beforehand, as well, as if you are making that book a paperback or hardcover book, you're gonna have certain associated printing costs because this is print-on-demand if you're using KDP. Anyways, I've gone completely into a whole splurge based off of this initial question of what the heck do you do if you're just getting started right, and so that was really to start with product research. Do the keyword research.

Shivali Patel:

If you want to figure out which chapters to create, use ChatGPT with Canva and I say Canva because you can actually transfer over, not transfer over with Canva. You can make the book title, book cover, page, and so you're. You now have a free book cover that you've created. You can create a really nice manuscript inside of honestly like word. I've done word before. I've done this inside of Google Docs before. I've also done this inside of canva before, where you can really make it nice with different fonts, and then you will want to throw it into KDP after that and make sure that the manuscript looks okay.

Shivali Patel:

That's really, really important because people who are Kindle readers read this on a handful of different Devices and you will want to make sure that they can actually read what you're writing, because the they want to consume the content. They don't want to be distracted by mistakes. When I was 23 and I published them on my first books, some of the feedback I got, I thought, okay, I'll just get feedback and refine it afterwards. Well, I did get some things that in in the reviews and oh, like the grammar was a little bit, you know, off for one of my fictional books and I was like, okay, it's fine. Whatever, you know, this was ghost written, I don't really care about it, I'm not gonna go in. I refined it as much as I could and I feel like the story still got across just fine.

Shivali Patel:

So once you have your book built, your book cover built inside a Canva, you've saved it, you're uploading to KDP. Create a KDP account, go in, upload all of it. It's pretty simple to follow. If not, we do have blogs on KDP. So I suggest that you go and you check out our blog section on Helium 10 to to figure out how to actually upload it, if you need some help, and then, from there, focus on marketing. I honestly, through mistakes, have learned that it's not enough just to build a high quality product. You will need to do the marketing side of things as well, and KDP is no different. If you want to stay low on costs let's say you really want to save for private label then go into existing blog forums, go into Facebook groups, create that TikTok account and do what we talked about earlier, where you're creating promotional videos, maybe you're doing reads Q and A's, you are getting on live, maybe, and talking about the book. I have seen some lives that are ridiculous. Bradley, do you remember the Chinese seller who made $18.7 million just by promoting products?

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, like three seconds per product. It's kind of ridiculous.

Shivali Patel:

It's absurd and people still sell based off of those three seconds. You also have people who are doing the whole NPC trend, if you've seen it, and they make money on that. If they can make money on that, can you make money on a book that sells content? Absolutely, but will you have to put in the work to actually make the promotional videos? Yes, so you can go in and do stuff. The trade off is really going to be the time investment, so you will need to spend some time inside of Facebook groups. I've done this before. You find niches that are related to your book, go in, actually post that. Hey, you know what? Like I just released this book. I would love to get some feedback. I'd love if you guys could show some support and you're not telling anyone to buy, really, but they can go in and select or or, you know, purchase that product if they feel like it's up their alley and hopefully leave you an honest review, as long as you were very, very forthcoming with what you were hoping for in the beginning.

Shivali Patel:

Outside of that, I've also used blogging sites so you can go in, find niches where there's tons of readers subscribed to an email list and those email lists are really, really helpful too, because I've used those to launch books before, where you can go in and essentially maybe some of these sites are free, some are not. Some are like 20, $25 book beam there's. There's other ones that cost a lot more and they have millions of readers who are waiting for books to be published. So you can also tap into Kindle Unlimited. You can go in and actually end up promoting, let's say, even the book for free while they're doing these promos, so a lot of people can read them, you can garner those reviews and then hopefully start your PPC campaigns to sell really well.

Bradley Sutton:

All right, so that's, let's say, I do all that. I make a book about 60, 70 pages. What's about the target price? And then, at that price, what am I taking home? You know, based on you know what, what Amazon is charging me.

Shivali Patel:

So you can select from two different royalty options. With KDP, you can do 35% or 70% of royalty from your list price, and that's if you're based in I think it's UK. No, if it's based in Europe, then that's without the VAT tax. So it's just taking a look at your list price 35% or 70% and it really comes down to you on what you want to market at.

Shivali Patel:

You'll see books that are $40. You'll see books that are $2, which is what my book started with way in the beginning and so you can go in and choose and then base off of the royalty price that you select, you'll be able to figure out what sort of profits you're making. Then, of course, if you are saving for private label, you know maybe you'll want to focus on building really quality books, not not making too many, and then just work on marketing them. Or you could go wide right. You can make many, many books that are really really cheap and just focus on the launch side of things to garner that initial revenue or not revenue. Revenue, yes, but also the initial capital you need to get started with private label.

Bradley Sutton:

All right. Now, you know, that was a scenario that I gave, where it's like, all right, I'm just trying to get some extra revenue. Theoretically speaking, I could be already selling on Amazon and that's still you know, like I want to. You know, get more revenue so I can do that exact process. If I'm an existing Amazon seller, we would have nothing to do with my current Amazon business. It would just be, you know, me doing product research for something. But let's just you know. The other scenario, number two that was kind of like scenario one B, but you know. Now two is like all right, I sell coffin shelves and egg trays or what have you, and I want to leverage KDP in a different way. I'm not really necessarily making a revenue play, but maybe it's. It's something like I'm giving a free, you know, yeah, lead Magnet or add on what is a scenario? That I'm not necessarily making a revenue play, but as an existing Amazon seller, I could potentially leverage KDP and it'll benefit me.

Shivali Patel:

So I think a really good play for that is the leads generator, and that's just. You already have your product set. Maybe you want to tap into these Kindle users, because these are people that are already reading books. They're interested in that topic. Well, maybe they might be interested in a product in that setting, and so you can go in create a book using the process we just talked about right. Go into ChatGPT, go into Canva, into quill bot, and you can transfer those skills over and end up leading, putting in pages into your eBook that are for a leads generator. You tag that you can use portals inside of helium 10 to create a landing page and then actually end up taking that link and put it into your eBook, put it on KDP and then work on also ranking that book, so that way those readers end up hopefully navigating into your product and you end up capturing those emails as well through KDP.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, so that's KDP. Now you know, one of your other specialties here at helium 10 is you work with our market tracker 360 program, something that I don't know too much about. It it's mainly for those who reach, like the eight, nine figure level. What's some new things that you can tell us about for those like, hey, I'm high, seven figure, eight figure seller, some new things that I can get excited about if I'm using market tracker 360.

Shivali Patel:

So the beauty about market tracker 360 is you can go as broad or as granular as you want, something we have been talking about today with this podcast. But what's really cool is now you can divvy out into how you want to build your market. So if you want to build your market, let's say, at a brand level, you can input up to 100 brands and focus on it simply at the brand level. If you want to put in keywords and asins, you can still do that, but you can go in and refine it based off of categories, subcategories as well, as something that is newer is being able to create markets based off of those subcategories too. So it takes a little bit of time to set up that market, but once you have it set up, you can always go in with filter presets and get an understanding for how your market is moving, not only from a year over your comparison standpoint, or a month over month or week over week. You can also just look at it from a competitor level, check out your market share, check out how your other competitors are doing year over year the historical comparison of your products versus their products, whether it be at a brand level or at a product level. You can also dive deep into your keywords, into their keywords, check out what strategies they're using and then how they're rising and falling in terms of a keyword heat map. And so it's really nice being able to not only set up the market as you want, you can go in at the.

Shivali Patel:

I've heard so many you know six, seven, eight, nine figure sellers talk about how important it is for them to be able to see their category or subcategory just at that level, and we're actually coming out with that. Now is before you could go in and get granular, do it as a filter preset. Now you can actually create the market based off of that. So that's something exciting that you guys can look forward to, and if you are on the diamond plan, I believe you have access to a market. So I highly encourage you to go in and make use of that single market you have. Okay, cool.

Bradley Sutton:

So I always forget about that. You know, like I even said right now, market tracker 360 is like, mainly on our supercharged plan, but if you're a diamond, you can actually, you know, go ahead and get one started. So, even if you're not a eight figure seller yet, go ahead and, you know, take advantage of that free one If you've got a diamond account, all right. So now we're at the end of this episode. Do you have our, our 60 second tip or 60 second strategy of the day you can share with the audience?

Shivali Patel:

I think my 60 second tip is going to be be proactive because, first of all, we are very close to new years and we talked a lot about KDP today, but you can absolutely tap into that market now because there are going to be so many people that are out there looking for goal setting things, for habit planners, and it's a really easy way for you to start with a no content to low content book. Maybe you don't need to do the whole ChatGPT thing just now. You can go in create something inside of Canva that is maybe template base, that you can go in, switch out the formatting, the colors and try to start working with the marketing side of things to get a feel for what it would be like if you posted a medium to high content book inside of KDP. So you can start really, really easy with low efforts and then also be proactive in terms of maybe you want to go out, maybe you want to check out some trade shows. You want to find a really good product for your FBA business. I know we didn't fully talk about product research for a FBA business, while I might have shared a little bit about my mindset about finding my latest product that I'm going to be selling. You absolutely can go in into trade shows, into stores even, and start thinking outside of box. What value could you bring to that niche with that? I hope you implement and you don't just listen to the podcast.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome. All right Again. You're no stranger to the podcast. You'll be hosting some upcoming episodes of Weekly Buzz. And then also, you were definitely instrumental and part of our relaunch of Project X and you were handling one of these products that was actually sourced in India and so definitely have you back soon to talk with you and Meghla, who helped out with that project, to kind of see how it was. We've never had a Project X product sourced from India, so that one is going to be launched soon. So as soon as that launches we'll definitely have you back. But thank you for sharing your knowledge and we'll be seeing you soon.

Shivali Patel:

Sounds good. Thank you so much.

Helium 10 Buzz 11/23/23: Amazon Review Police | Amazon Posts Videos | Black Friday

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.

How Amazon is using AI to ensure authentic customer reviews
https://www.aboutamazon.eu/news/policy/how-amazon-is-using-ai-to-ensure-authentic-customer-reviews

Temu, Shein far lag Amazon as online holiday shopping ramps up
https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/temu-shein-far-lag-amazon-online-holiday-shopping-ramps-up-2023-11-22/

Amazon to Launch Live Shopping Deals During Black Friday Football Game on Prime Video
https://variety.com/2023/shopping/news/amazon-black-friday-football-game-prime-deals-1235805778/

Hyundai to Sell Vehicles on Amazon Starting in 2024
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a45896102/hyundai-amazon-car-sales-2024/

Stay tuned as we discuss the latest new features from Helium 10 and share some valuable newsletters to keep you in the loop. Later on, we share some game-changing strategies with Mina Elias for auditing your Amazon PPC campaigns. You'll learn how to manage campaigns effectively and monitor and improve campaign performance. Join us for this exciting episode!

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

• 01:02 - AI Review Police
• 03:20 - Temu, Shein Lagging
• 04:53 - Black Friday Football
• 06:45 - Amazon Posts Videos
• 08:15 - Hyundai Buy Box
• 10:00 - Billion Dollar Seller Newsletter
• 11:00 - Commerce Accelerated
• 11:35 - Weekly Buzz
• 12:19 - Helium 10 New Feature Alerts
• 16:20 - ProTraining Tip: How To Audit Your PPC Campaigns with Mina Elias

► 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 is employing AI to police fraudulent reviews. Timo and Sheen are lagging in holiday sales. This week is the first ever Amazon Black Friday football game. You soon can have videos for Amazon Post. These and much more stories on today's weekly buzz. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Hello, everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers podcast by Helium 10. I am your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that is our Helium 10 Weekly Buzz, where we give you a rundown of all the goings on as far as news goes in the Amazon, Walmart, e-commerce world. We give you all the latest new Helium 10 features that have been released this week and we give you training tips 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. All right, today is Thursday. Yes, I'm recording this on Thursday. Yes, it's an American holiday, but we at the weekly buzz do not take any time off, guys. We want to make sure you guys know what's going on out there, so let's go ahead and hop right into the news.

 

Bradley Sutton:

The first article of the day is actually a was a press release by Amazon, and it's entitled how Amazon is Using AI to Ensure Authentic Customer Reviews. All right, you know a lot of us worry, sometimes complaining about, you know, a lot of competitors doing some black hat strategies in reviews, right, and so this article goes in to talk about how advanced AI helps publish authentic reviews and weed out the fake ones. You know it mentions how the vast majority of reviews pass this Amazon bar of authenticity and they get posted right away, but that they're using AI to kind of look or try and detect if there's potential review abuse and if that happens, they either delete the review, they take action against the reviewer A lot of interesting things this article talks about. Now, the thing that almost kind of like worried me was that I still see, in 2023, a lot of obviously fraudulent reviews. You know where it's reviews that have to do with, you know products that you know are not even part of. You know the listing and a whole bunch of other things. This article was talking about how, in 2022, amazon observed and blocked more than 200 million fake reviews. So it's like that's kind of crazy if you think about it. Like that's last year and this year I'm still seeing reviews like man. That's a lot of reviews and a lot of you know, fake reviews and bad reviews. So it's funny because you know, we've been talking about that FTC lawsuit and I I've always mentioned how there is like so many other things I think that Amazon sellers are worried about. Uh, as far as Amazon goes, that the things that that FTC thing is and I would say the like, the fake reviews is one of them where all of a sudden, some new competitor comes in and within like three days, there's like a thousand reviews or or all of us, and they, they merge a whole bunch of listings and or resurrect some dead listing, those reviews for a phone case, but you know it's really for a coffin shelf or something. I mean, these are the things that, uh, you know I think a lot of Amazon sellers hope that you know Amazon would crack down more on. Hey, this article might be a move in the right direction If it's utilizing more advanced AI. Obviously, ai in 2023 and 2024 is not what it was in 2022. So maybe there is uh kind of like light at the end of this tunnel.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Next article is from Reuters and it's entitled T moon Shane lag far behind as online holiday shopping uh ramps up. So you know, like I've been talking about this cause it comes up in the news a lot, how you know they're making a lot of waves, so many people are going to their websites and stuff. But I'm not. I never really was worried, uh, about you know, t moon she like biting into Amazon sales. Even Amazon's not worried. We talked about in the weekly buzz before how Amazon is not even doing price matching on these websites Cause it doesn't even really consider it like on the same level. Now, uh, similar web in this article said that hey, nine out of 10 visitors to T moon and sheen and when I say a lot, you know visitors there's millions of uh, uh visitors coming this holiday season. This article says nine out of 10 are window shoppers, not buyers. All right, sheen's website drew 28.6 million unique visitors in October, which is up from a year before, but visits that resulted in actual transactions, you know, a visit to the website that ended up in a sale went down to 4.1%. How does Amazon compare? 56% of Amazon's 268 million monthly visits in October resulted in sale. So, again, like I don't think Amazon is is scared or we as Amazon sellers need to worry about all this traffic that's going to, like T moon and sheen, people are not really buying on there right now. You know things could, of course, change, but as of now you can. You could see that. You know, buyer intent is really lacking on those other websites.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Uh, speaking of Amazon, uh, this next article is from Variety. The title is Amazon to launch live shopping deals during black Friday football game on prime video. All right, so the very first ever black Friday football game is happening. Usually, you know, thursday, thanksgiving, Thursday, football is kind of a big thing. Now, the first ever Amazon black Friday game and it's going to be broadcast on Amazon and says deals are going to go live during pre game, half time and post game sales. All right, and there will also be one big limited time deal per quarter.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Now there's rumors about what these might be. You know some say it's like. You know, might be some big uh from beats by Dre and Lego and different things. Now you might think, well, you know that it doesn't. That's not me, you know I don't have my deals on there. But again, we've been talking about kind of like a move by Amazon to start having more deals with their prime video and their video assets, and even though this might not have regular third party sellers.

 

Bradley Sutton:

You know we're not going to afford uh, you know, a spot in this once a year. You know, you know football game. But imagine, you know if millions of people are watching football and you know a certain percentage of them are going to go to buy these beats by Dre, or these legals or these other things. Now, all of a sudden guess what? It's a you know, commercial time, or it's a break, it's halftime, they're on the Amazon app and they're buying something else, but now that they might go ahead and browse other other things, you know. So this is good for for Amazon sellers. Even though you might not be taking advantage of this exact kind of advertising, you are advantaged by it because Amazon is sending all of this new traffic directly to Amazon and hopefully you know that they can find their way to one of your listings if they start browsing, you know, while they're waiting for the second half to start, or something like that.

 

Bradley Sutton:

So, interesting, interesting things, how you know, the world of advertising for, for Amazon and the world of sports and entertainment is coming a little bit more together. Next, one article is actually just from you know, from my buddy, jeff Cohen's LinkedIn. I've been seeing this. You know multiple people post about this. I don't have access to this in my account but I wanted to, you know, show Jeff's post here because he was the first one that I saw talk about it. But on LinkedIn he says that Amazon post is going to soon support video. So Amazon post, you know, hopefully you guys are utilizing that. We've talked about how you can use the Amazon AI and the helium 10. I had to create images and captions completely automatically with Amazon or for for Amazon posts, but soon you're now going to be able to upload video. You know I personally have been seeing Amazon posts come up more in search results than in the past. Perhaps you've seen that before. So imagine if now in the search results you can see Amazon posts that have video. All right, so it's going to be pretty cool. Jeff talks about here in his his LinkedIn posts that he says that, hey, shoppers who interact with a post end up performing 45% more branded searches, and brands with 10 plus post have, on average, compared to brands with fewer than 10 posts, two and a half more time store visits and almost four times more followers. And so you know, the thought being that, hey, that's just with static images. How much more could, potentially, having video now increase your branded search and some of your traffic? So if you don't have it in your Amazon post section yet, you know, like me, it's probably going to come in the next few days for you. All right.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Next article is actually from car and driver First time we're quoting car and driver here in the weekly buzz and it's entitled Hyundai to sell vehicles on Amazon starting in 2024. All right, says looking for a 2024 Hyundai, look no further than your Amazon Prime account. Now, again, does this affect third party sellers? You know, maybe, maybe not. I just thought this was an interesting kind of like article here, because that's just kind of crazy If you think about where things are going now. Basically, this article is saying that, hey, you're going to be able to like, pick your color and everything. You're going to use the buy box. There's going to be different dealers that maybe have different offerings. Different dealerships are now playing the game of fighting for the buy box like arbitrage sellers. There's no, there's no haggling here, and I just think it's like kind of like fascinating where the world of online commerce is going to. You know, buying brand new cars online is not new, but Amazon obviously is going to be the biggest website ever to sell new cars. And who knows, you know, maybe I'm just waiting for the first dealership to make a mistake on their coupon and they don't realize there's some coupons or deal of the day stacking and I'll be able to get a new Hyundai Santa Fe for like 50% off or something. My very first ever new car was a 1999 Hyundai Elantra. So yeah, I kind of only drive like he is and things now, but I still love my Korean car. So, who knows, maybe I might be one of the ones to be one of the first ones to buy a brand new car on Amazon.

 

Bradley Sutton:

All right, that's it for the news articles this week. Actually, not that much going on Now. Before we get into the helium 10 new feature alerts, I wanted to call attention to a couple of newsletters. I've never really been one to promote newsletters, never even had my own until a couple of weeks ago, but there's only three newsletters that I subscribe to, or that I actually read out of all the ones out there, and so the first one is actually the billion dollar sellers newsletter. All right, so that's made by, obviously, kevin King from the helium 10 elite program and the AMPM podcast. It's very, very valuable. All right, there's not BS in here. There's actionable strategies. There's not a whole bunch of fluff. A lot of humor in there, though. So if you guys want to get strategies that you can use right away and some no BS newsletter, go ahead and go to h10.me forward slash BDSN. H10.me forward slash BDSN. Completely free to subscribe to that newsletter and a lot of great stuff. That's the first kind of like outside newsletter I ever read in my life, just because it's the only one worth it to me.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Another one that I've been subscribing to for a little while is made by Pacvue’s own Melissa. All right, so this is on LinkedIn and this is called commerce accelerated. So if you guys want to subscribe to it, go to h10.m/melissa. Another great newsletter. A lot of advertising in there and a lot of, you know, high level strategies as well as stuff that affects, you know, third party sellers. The last article was a recap on Amazon unboxed that Melissa was at, and so I highly recommend subscribing to that newsletter. And then, of course, you know shameless plug. The last newsletter is the new weekly buzz newsletter that I'm doing. It's not just like a transcript of this weekly buzz. I go break down all of the news articles and have some video on there and some other. You know strategies as well. So if you guys want to subscribe on LinkedIn to my Helium 10 weekly buzz newsletter, just go to h10.me/newsletter. h10.me/newsletter. All right, now let's get into the Helium 10 new feature alerts. Every week, we are launching new tools, new features, new functionality. A lot of it comes from you, the users. So what do we have cooking for this week? Even though it's a short week, we still launching things. The very first one I want to talk about is for Cerebro and Magna, and these are custom filters.

 

Bradley Sutton:

This has been asked for by a lot of you out there and you know you guys all have maybe your own strategy of how you run Cerebro as part of your process, like right, like maybe. Hey, I'm going to analyze, you know, 15 different niches and for everyone, one of my criteria. For example, what do I have? Here I'm showing a search volume of a minimum 400. And then a minimum number of one competitor. Maximum two are ranking between one and 20. And these keywords have a title density of three, like, like. There's like six filters that I'm using right there. Now, if you're having to do this search 10 times a day, right, because you know you're just doing some bulk research, it's probably a hassle for you to have to, one by one, re-enter all of these filters in. So now what we have is, once you enter some filters, at the very bottom of Cerebro, you are going to want to go ahead and hit this button called save as filter preset, right. And once you hit that button, another window will come up allowing you to go ahead and put a preset name and you can say, hey, this is my, you know, keyword research version one or whatever. And now this is going to show up as a one click filter at the very top of Cerebro, so that when you get into Cerebro, you enter the ASINs, you can just hit one button and it automatically populates your filters. Same thing for magnet. All right, let's say I have this process where I'm like hey, I out of all these keywords from what came out from, you know, these thousands of keywords that came out inside of my magnet search show me everything that has 500 search volume, that's at least three words, and that there's only 300 competing products for this keyword. Right, again, it might take a little bit of time to enter all these filters in. Once you do that again, just hit the save as filter preset and what's going to happen is you can just name this filter and then now, when you enter in, go into a magnet search, you are going to be able to just, you know, hit that button and your exact filters are going to come out.

 

Bradley Sutton:

The next and the only other update for the days is for those of you who are on the Helium 10 supercharge. You know, plan our supercharge plans for like eight, nine figure sellers. You guys have some pretty crazy graphs that you're going to be able to do, all right. So on your insights dashboard you're at the very bottom there's a, there's a button that says add a chart, right, you know everybody else has access to this too, but you got supercharged members have access to kind of like a crazy, crazy next level charting system. All right, and this is just the beginning.

 

Bradley Sutton:

So it takes you to a new page and then basically, what you're going to want to see is you can choose any two metrics that you want to compare, like, hey, I'm going to compare my ad click through rate with my unit soul. I want to compare RoAS, ACoS, ad spend and net profit. You know, all in the same chart. I want you know the dates to be preset. At this. I mean, like, pretty much, you're going to be able to now take anything that is in your, you know, helium 10 account, which comes from seller central, obviously all of your data, and then start putting it on graphs and tables and compare different things that you normally wouldn't be able to compare, because a lot of again, why do we have this? A lot of people were saying, hey, I love the data that's in Helium 10, but I end up having to, like, download it into Excel files and make my own power points and reports. No longer you can just compare anything you want, download the graphs and, and you know, make tables, et cetera. So that is for supercharged members. All right, that's it for the Helium 10 new feature alerts for this week.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Last up, we have our training tip of the week and it's actually a PPC training tip, and it's with a guest speaker, mina Elias, who you guys all know and love, and this one is going to be about how you can audit your account. Like, maybe you haven't been paying enough attention to your PPC, well, how can you go in there and give it an audit, mina, let us know how. Mina question that we've gotten from our audience is hey, you know, I've been running PPC for a while. I'm running it on my own for now. How can I run like an audit to know if I'm doing well or not? What are the things that you look at so that somebody can really understand like, hey, I'm doing excellent. Or you know what? I need some improvement here and there?

 

Mina:

Yeah, so I'll walk you through our audits and basically how I do an audit like step by step. Step number one I'm looking at portfolios. Are you organizing your products into portfolios, you know? Do you have like multiple child ASINs that are that have different campaigns, or are you lumping all of your, your child ASINs into the same campaigns? So then I would create the portfolios.

 

Mina:

Next is my campaign naming convention. So are the campaigns named? Easily? For us it's like product code space dash space. You know the type of the ad, like close match, loose match, complements or substitutes, if it's auto, broad phraser, exact, product targeting, expanded ASIN, so what's the type of the ad? Space dash space. And then it's like the purpose of the ad. So if it has a purpose like ranking or you know branded, something like that, if it's like brand, brand name, and then you know space dash space, the source of the keywords, and so that's like if it came from helium 10 or if it came from the search term report or if it's like a main keyword or something like that. And that allows me to sort through campaigns pretty quickly, because whenever I'm looking at like show me all of the performance of my, like exact, you know keyword campaigns, then I can just type in exact in the search and it pops up.

 

Mina:

Next I'm looking at the budgets of the campaigns, especially for campaigns that are either running out of budget or have a good row as. So if your campaign has a low a cost or a good row as, there's no reason that the budget should be low, even if you feel like, okay, my budget's $50 and I'm only spending $25 a day, it doesn't matter. Because what I've noticed is if I go from 50 to 250, I'll go from spending $25 a day to $80 a day, and if the ACOS is good, then you're just going to make more sales with the good ACOS it's definitely worth trying. And then if you're running out of budget, obviously that's also red flag. You should always control your spending based on a bid level. So lower the bids to spend less, as opposed to capping, you know, your spend on a budget level, because that I've seen just kind of effects performance negatively.

 

Mina:

Then from there I'm going to click into the campaigns and I'm going to make sure that each of them have only one ad group. What I've noticed is multiple ad groups cause like, let's say, you have $100 budget, it could be $80 to one ad group and 20 to another ad group Again doesn't make any sense. I don't know why it happens, but it's something I want to avoid, because it could be that the $20 ad group is the one that has the better row, as but Amazon is. Primary objective is to make you sell more. And then, once I'm in the ad groups, the next thing I'm looking for is how many keywords do you have in there? If you have, you know, more than five keywords, I start suspecting that you might have keywords at the bottom not getting enough like budget. So I'll just sort by sales or sort by spend and then I'll see. Okay, you know keyword number one, two, three, four, five, they all have sales. But like six, seven, eight, they have like one sale in the last 30 to 60 days. And then keyword number nine onwards, they don't have any sales. So those keywords are all areas of opportunity. If I pause those keywords in that campaign, move them to, you know, create a new campaign with those keywords, give them another, another chance. With a good budget they could end up spending a lot more money on making sales. So that's the next thing that I look for.

 

Mina:

Then I go into the placements tab. So, you know, do I find any placements like top of search or product pages where the ROAS and the click through rates are significantly better than they are in the rest of search? So, for example, if I look at, you know, in a campaign, I look at the placement tab and I see the top of search has like a 8% click through rate instead of like a 0.4 in rest of search and it has like a 7x ROAS instead of a 3x ROAS. What I'm going to do is I'm going to increase the bid by placement, you know, by 25% or something like that, just a small number, to what I'm telling Amazon is, if my bid is a dollar, I'm allowing you to spend up to a dollar and 25 cents. If it means that I'm going to show up on the top of page one, because, you know, I've seen, based on the data I'm converting, well, there, then I'm going to go into the targeting tab or the bulk sheet. You know, if you don't know how to use the bulk sheet, just stick to the targeting tab.

 

Mina:

In the targeting tab I'm sorting for keywords that are not profitable, so only exact and product targeting. I'm going to, you know, just do either two types of keywords. One where I'm like orders equals zero and spend is greater than a certain number. So orders equals zero means it didn't make me any sales and I spent money. Let's say I spent more than $15, or like half of my product costs, with no sales.

 

Mina:

I'll tell you how to handle them in a second. So those ones, I'm going to lower the bids or eat or pause them. You know, if it's spent $30 in the last 90 days and it didn't make any sales, just at this point it's not going to make any more sales. It could in the future, once you conversion rate significantly higher, but not right now.

 

Mina:

So, and then the other thing is okay, I'm going to just sort by a cost. So show me everything that's greater than 75% echoes and again all of those. And warning guys, you know, for anything that's greater than 75% echoes, do not touch things that have a really good, like a really high number of sales, because the ACoS could be bad but in reality it could be driving a lot of sales, even on the organic side that it's just not being attributed. So again, ACoS is high. I'm going to lower the bids and then vice versa, I'm going to sort by anything that has like a row as greater than, let's say, 5x, for example, and then I'm going to increase the bids of all of those keywords, meaning I'm willing to show up higher in the search. And you can always do like a cross check with you know cerebral and see where you're ranking organically for those keywords. If you're ranking organically and sponsored high, you don't need to increase the bids, but if your organic and sponsored rank is low and your row as is good, it's worth trying to increase the bids, get more visibility, more clicks and more sales. Then I'm going to go into the search term report. That's the final piece. And in the search term report, again two directions.

 

Mina:

Number one keywords that are not working. This is for auto broad phrase and expanded ASIN. The reason is for a broad keyword, it could be 30 different keywords that are being triggered in the search terms that are, you know, resulting in bad performance. So maybe five of them, 10 of them are bad, like low row as or spending, no sales, and then five or 10 are very good. So you want to keep the good ones and then negative the bad ones. So, again, a filter sales equals zero, spend greater than $15.

 

Mina:

Take all of those keywords and go into the campaigns and add them as negatives, negative, exact, and then you know a cost greater than 85%. Again, be careful for keywords that are generating a lot of sales. But I can take all of those keywords, add them as negatives in the campaigns and then vice versa, I can identify any keywords with like greater than five RoAS. Take all of those keywords, find which match types they're not currently being targeted in. So maybe they're in broad, they got discovered in broad but I'm not actually targeting them in an exact campaign or a broad campaign or whatever. And then I take those keywords and start launching them in new campaigns so I can get more visibility on those keywords. But that's essentially what I'm doing, that, step by step, awesome.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome, all right guys. So if you want to get more tips from Mina about how to you know run PPC, make sure to check out his company and hubhealium10.com. You can look for Trivium. Or if you have a platinum account or higher, make sure to check out PPC Academy. It's in your learning hub on your Helium 10 dashboard. He's got tons of great modules there. Mina, thanks a lot for joining us.

 

Mina:

Thanks for having me All right.

 

Bradley Sutton:

Thanks very much, Mina, for that, and thanks to all of you guys for tuning in. Hope you guys enjoyed this edition and we'll see you next week to see what's buzzing.

#511 - Managing Q4 Amazon PPC Campaigns

Are you ready to skyrocket your knowledge of Amazon PPC? In this TACoS Tuesday episode, prepare to be amazed as we bring you the secrets of the trade from none other than Elizabeth Greene, the co-founder of Amazon ads agency Junglr. Dive into the world of data analytics and learn why understanding the numbers behind the numbers is crucial. Whether you're a beginner or a seasoned seller, we've got insights that are bound to give your Amazon PPC game a boost.

We talk about the core strategies for launching new products, from using supplementary keywords to strategic ad placements. We uncover the importance of context when branching into new markets and how to leverage different keyword match types to target specific search terms. Learn about optimizing strategies for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and how to manage your budget effectively during these peak seasons.

Lastly, ignite your understanding of advertising for branded products on Amazon. We debate the significance of tracking the share of search and using Search Query Performance reports, and reveal our strategies for advertising for products with only a few relevant keywords. Tune in and take away valuable strategies and insights that will elevate your Amazon advertising game to new heights.

 

In episode 511 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Shivali and Elizabeth talk about:

• 00:00 - It's Time For Another TACoS Tuesday Episode!
• 05:34 - Evaluating and Auditing PPC Strategy 
• 08:10 - Analyzing Ad Spend Efficiency and Impact
• 12:34 - Advertising Strategy and Keyword Targeting
• 17:45 - Advertising Strategy for New Product Launch
• 25:32 - Keyword Research Using Helium 10
• 30:51 - Using Keywords and Sales Volume
• 36:31 - Optimizing Bids for Better Ad Performance
• 42:22 - Control Ad Spend, Gain Campaign Impressions

► 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:

Today, on TACoS Tuesday, we answer all of your PPC questions live, as well as discuss what you could be doing in terms of launching and auditing your PPC campaigns during the Q4 season.

Bradley Sutton:

How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Want to enter in an Amazon keyword and then within seconds, get up to thousands of potentially related keywords that you could research. Then you need Magnet by Helium 10. For more information, go to h10.me/magnet. Magnet works in most Amazon marketplaces, including USA, Mexico, Australia, Germany, UK, India and much more.

Shivali Patel:

All right, hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Series Dollars podcast by Helium 10. I'm your host, Shivali Patel, and this is the show that is our monthly TACoS Tuesday presentation, where we talk anything and everything Amazon ads. So today we have a special guest with us, and that is Elizabeth Greene, who is the co-founder of an Amazon ads agency called Junglr. So with that, let's go ahead and bring her up. Hi, Elizabeth, how are you? I'm doing well, how are you?

Elizabeth:

Very good.

Shivali Patel:

So, nice to have you on. Thank you for joining us.

Elizabeth:

Yeah, thanks for having me. These are always, always fun.

Shivali Patel:

And what an exciting time to be talking about Amazon ads to a fat. It's cute for you. Oh my goodness, you must be slammed.

Elizabeth:

Life is a little bit crazy right now, but you know it comes with the territory.

Shivali Patel:

So it does. It is peak season I see we have someone coming, so it's a very exciting time to be in business and I'm looking forward to reading your questions and hopefully having Elizabeth answer them Now. The first question here says what can you suggest for a beginner like me, who is just starting out, and what and where can I learn to grow as much as possible?

Elizabeth:

I would actually say there's two skills that one, in the beginning, none of us have, and they are skills and they can be learned, even though they're considered more quote, soft skills. Data analytics made it not as much.

Shivali Patel:

My two things are going to be.

Elizabeth:

Data analytics and communication skills Community Asian sales are, you're going to find, are quite important when it comes to management of accounts management of accounts that are not your own. So if you are, even if you're a brand manager in a company or, you know, obviously, at an agency seller and a sourcing person, okay then I'm going to go with data analytics. Data analytics are going to be your friend. The things that I've kind of discovered have been, like you know, sort of mind blowing. For me are the numbers behind, the numbers Meaning. So when you're trying to evaluate ACoS, right, a lot of people are like, oh, it costs one up, it costs with down. Great, I know this, I can look at the account. What the heck am I going to do about it? Data analytics really good data analytics not only tell you the what, but the why and then the what next. So you're, if you can get really really good at the why and the what next, that's going to really set you apart and the way that I kind of have come to it. This is my own personal journey. Maybe there's other people who are way smarter than me, have way better journeys, but for me it has been, again understanding the numbers behind the numbers to have, for example, right, you start in a little bit of a way, it's kind of like the matrix.

Elizabeth:

So when you're breaking down, say ACoS, right, you go, okay, ACoS one up, big, else one down. Why right, what the heck happened? You're like, oh, wait, I can calculate ACoS by ad spend divided by ad sales. Okay, so it's either that ad spend went up and sales remain consistent or went down, or ad sales went down and spend remain consistent. She like, oh, okay, there's those two variables. Okay, now I can say, okay, ad spend increased. And then I can go, okay, ad spend increased. Great, I know that why. And then you're like, okay, so I can calculate my ad spend by my cost per click, by my number of clicks.

Elizabeth:

So either my cost per click went up or the number of clicks happening in my account went up. And then you can look at those two variables and go, oh, okay, it's the number of clicks. Why? Oh, I just launched a whole bunch of new stuff. Okay, that's why. Or my cost per click went up exponentially. Why? Maybe you know, it's just a natural market change thing. Talking about prime time, peak season, now you're probably going to see cost per clicks going up. It's a market thing. Versus other times you might have aggressively increased a whole bunch of bits in your account and so then you go check back. So data analytics that's the way I view it. I am not classically trained on data analytics, I just have looked at it for over five years now and tried to figure out the what the heck is going on a question and the what to do about it questions, and so those. That's my way of sort of. I've learned to sort of peer into the matrix. So if you can get really good at understanding not just what the data is but what it's telling you, that's really going to get you to the next level.

Shivali Patel:

Definitely, and I think a lot of people have very different strategies. I think Elizabeth's strategy, you know, is definitely one you should take into consideration. But also, the best way to learn is going to be trial and error and until you're really sifting through your own data, I think it's going to be hard to you know gauge sort of what's happening. I think a lot of things in business are just as they come. Now I want to kind of take the other side of that and go into, let's say, somebody's not a beginner, right, somebody's been selling for a while. They're more established. What do you recommend to somebody who might be evaluating or trying to audit their own PPC strategy?

Elizabeth:

Next level is going to be evaluating things on a per product level. And let me clarify when I say per product, I mean per listing. The reason why is the data gets kind of funky when you pull it down to a skew level. You definitely can, but there's some nuances that you really want to be aware of that can kind of lead you in the wrong direction if you're looking at a per skewer, per child days and level. But if you can start looking at your ad strategy, your sales growth, everything through the lens of listings, that's really going to take you to the next level.

Shivali Patel:

So when you see listings, are you talking about maybe like the conversion metrics? Are you looking at the keywords that you're using, sort of what is like the underlying factors? I guess all the above.

Elizabeth:

Honestly, but to make sense of it all. Because, to your point, like force for the trees, if you look at like everything, then do you walk away being like I have no idea what in the world I'm supposed to focus on? So the way that we've begun looking at it and the reason why we started looking at it like this is because we managed several clothing accounts. Talk about complexity, talk about force for the trees. You're like where in the world do I start? And you want to make impact on these accounts. Right, you can't just like all right, I did my bit, adjustments and call it good. Like you really want to get at our hands dirty and like really start improving the accounts. But you're like where in the world do I focus? So what we've started doing is percentage of total have been a little bit of a game changer. They're not, it's not the newest thing on the block. A lot of people use this percentage of total, but the two things that we look at is the percentage of total sales of each. Again, we're talking about a listing level. Again, reason clothing you have up to hundreds of different SKUs on a per listing level. Like how the heck do you make sense of it. So how do we make sense of it is rolling it up to the parent listing level and then looking at the percentage of total ad spend, again on a per listing.

Elizabeth:

So this gives you a lot of clarity into what products are driving the most sales for the brand. And then, what products are we spending, are we investing the most ad spend on? And when you look at it this way, it's very common to have these things happen in the account. If you haven't been paying attention to them, you oftentimes will see like oh wow, this product's driving 2% of my total sales volume and I'm spending 10% of my total ad spend here. Like that's probably a discrepancy. Maybe I should go and adjust those ads. So that gives you a lot of clarity. And then to court of gauge because again we're an ad agency, so ads are the thing that we focus on the most to help and drive improvements for the brands is we will look at the impact of the total spend on that per product. So again, percentage of total ad spend, and then we'll look at what we call like quote ad spend efficiencies, meaning ACoS, Total ACoS, ad sale percentage, also the delta between your ad conversion rate and your total conversion rate. Our unit session percentage is actually really helpful gauge. And so we're like, okay, we're investing most of our dollars here. How is our efficiency on that large investment?

Elizabeth:

And then you can sort of pinpoint like, oh, wow, I'm investing most of my ad spend into this product, to the point of like 5% of total brand sales, 13% of total ad spend investments. And wow, the ad spend investments are really unprofitable. Now, if you're in a launch phase, there might I mean there's context that you need to add to the numbers, to the point of like telling the story with data. And if you're managing the brand, you probably know the context. But at least it goes as okay. So here's two products we should dig into more. Here's two products we need to probably invest more of our ad spend on. And it really starts to clarify things when you really kind of understand how to see the picture in that way.

Shivali Patel:

To kind of follow up on that how do you really end up deciding which keywords to go after, as well as, maybe, how to really structure them into campaigns in accordance with your budget, because I know that's different for everyone?

Elizabeth:

Yes, it definitely is. We will always focus on relevancy first in the beginning. Now there are certain times if you're doing like a brand awareness play or you're like, wow, I've really targeted my market and I need to branch out, like what's the next hill? Absolutely go after categories, you know like, go after those brand awareness plays. But if you're in the beginning and you're in a launch, the nuance of Amazon advertising is you're not building, you don't build the audience. Amazon has built the audience for you.

Elizabeth:

All we're looking to do is use specific keywords or search terms to get in front of the audience that is already existing and that's where relevancy comes in. So you're saying where is my specific shopper? What are they using to search for products like mine? And I need to make sure I'm showing up there. So we're always going to prioritize that. That typically is going to get you better conversions, you know, better clicks, more interactions with your brand and which leads to more sales. And then also on the flip side, and if you're doing this on launch, it is a really good product sort of evaluation, because if you're showing up exactly in front of your target shoppers and your click rate is terrible and your conversion rate is terrible and like nobody's buying, there's probably a signal that maybe there's things to adjust with the listing or other factors that you should look into.

Shivali Patel:

Do you ever go into, like branch into, I guess, supplementary keywords where maybe it's not exactly for the product but it's maybe like a related product, and where do you really place those sort of ads?

Elizabeth:

Yeah, so when we'll do it is really dependent on the overall performance and the ads spend or profit goals, right? I mean, it seems so stupid, simple, but if you are advertising more, you're going to be spending more, and if you're struggling to bring down Total ACoS or ACoS again, ad spend divided by ad sales, the one thing you can control with ads is ad spend. So in those cases when we're looking to bring down Total ACoS, we're typically looking at pulling back on ad spend. So if a product or brand is in that phase, I'm not going to be like let's launch all these broad things and we're not quite sure how they're going to convert, right? So context is really key here, but when it comes to branching out, it really is dependent.

Elizabeth:

You will find certain products on launch where, like, for some reason, it's really difficult to convert on the highly relevant terms but, like adjacent markets or, to your point, like somewhat related keywords or related products, actually work really well. So we're always going to prioritize what's working. So if we're like finding all of these search terms that are popping up through, like, say, broad match or autos or something, wow, we weren't aware that this is actually a really great market for us. But it's very obvious, looking at the data, that's something that we should, that's a direction we should go in. Then obviously we'll push towards that direction. But depending on if we're going to like decide to branch out on our own, it probably is highly dependent on the ad spend and then also sort of the phase of the product, meaning like how we kind of conquered everything and what's our next play.

Shivali Patel:

And in terms of when you are launching, yes, we're going for the most relevant keywords, right, that are where you can find your target audience. But what about in terms of exact match, like yes, are you going directly into exact match and auto and broad all at the same time? Are you just kind of doing exact first and then branching into auto?

Elizabeth:

Yeah, so we do like exact first. I'm still a huge fan of like all the above, exact phrase and broad. The one thing that we have found is like within your exact match, you can just be more specific on what search pages you're spending your ad dollars on. So if you, especially if you have limited budgets in the beginning and you're like, hey, I really want to make sure that I hyper target these keywords, exact match makes a lot of sense. Now, if you're talking about you like branching out, we're still going to prioritize putting a higher bids on our exact match keyword. So we're still going to try and have most of.

Elizabeth:

Let me say this if you're going to be aggressively spending on a specific search page, you're like I've identified this keyword, this is my ranking keyword, I'm going to put a lot of budget behind it. Exact match all the way. Now I don't want anyone to say that clip and be like wow, she hates broad and freight. Like, no, I love all the above. Like we run autos, run multiple autos, category targeting, like all the above, do it. But if you're trying to get really aggressive with something, it's just it's the nature of how the match type works more than like it's quote best, because they don't really think it is.

Shivali Patel:

Now I do see that we have some new questions, so let me go ahead and pop them up. We have can you give a refresher on how people can do modifiers, since nowadays exact sometimes performs as phrase match and phrase sometimes is like broad. So if someone wants to make sure that an exact is that exact two word phrase is adding plus in the middle self that.

Elizabeth:

Yes, it does, but caveat, it only officially does in sponsor brand ads. If you look at the document, I mean I gotta go check it because they're like they keep updating the documentation on the slide and like not notifying us. But from my understanding and from the reps I've talked to, and also the search storm reports, I've seen modified broad match I don't believe a hundred percent works all the time in sponsored product ads, which is super annoying. So for those of you listening who are unaware of what a modified broad match is or modified search terms, modified broad match is a thing in sponsor brand ads. So the way that broad match keywords work in sponsored brand ads and they have sense care that over to sponsor product ads is that it cannot only target. You know we do classic broad match, right, you can put keywords in the middle, you can swap stuff around. But like if I had the keyword running shoe, right, both the word running and the word shoe must be present in the search term for your kind of traditional sponsor product broad match. It's not the case anymore.

Elizabeth:

You can target what's called related keywords. So for example, one would be like sneaker, right, it's kind of related to running shoe. And if you wanna say. I stuck a screenshot out on LinkedIn not that long ago and I was like, how is this relevant? Like one of them, it was like targeting like a bread knife and the search term that it triggered was like ballerina farm, go figure, I don't know, but like, so you can get like this really weird, funky stuff. So what we do to kind of combat that one, just keep up on your negatives these days, like, keep a sharp eye on your search and reports and add those negatives.

Elizabeth:

But the one thing that you can do is just sort of like to Bradley's point make each those individual words have to show up is if, in front of each of those words that you want to make sure are present in the search term, you can add a little plus symbol. So in the example of like, say running shoes, I would say plus shoes, plus what is our running whatever? Plus running, plus shoes, right, and then that would trigger to the algorithm. Okay, you have to use these things inside of your searches, which again is a factor in sponsored brand ads. If you look at the documentation, they do say that modified broad match is a thing and it's been a thing for a while. I just hasn't been super popular. But I haven't read documentation that they've rolled that over into sponsored product ads. I don't think it's a bad idea to get in the practice of using modified broad match and sponsored product ads though.

Shivali Patel:

Okay, thank you for answering that question. We also have another one that says I'm going to be launching a brand new store for FBA and Shopify for my own manufactured product. What will you suggest that I do for the first few months?

Elizabeth:

Well, I'm gonna assume that the question is saying, with ads because that's my area of expertise like new product launches, there's a lot. So definitely follow @HumanTank because they way more than just add advice to offer you. But as far as the advertising, I would prioritize keyword research for the product launches. That actually would be really helpful when you're trying to vet even the space for your particular products. And then I would again, I would hyper focus on relevancy in the beginning. I would run that in exact match, probably high bids.

Elizabeth:

In the beginning you're looking for two things. You're looking to get eyeballs on your product, ideally those eyeballs conferring to sales that is remain to be seen, based on how appealing your product is to the market and how good your search pages et cetera. But you want to get eyeballs in the product and then you want to use those eyeballs to sort of vet again how much these shoppers like your particular product for purchase. So that's what I do. I would focus on those again for like the first couple weeks is typically what we do, and then you might sort of branch out into phrase match run, auto campaigns et cetera. Now here's a trick is how many keywords you choose in the beginning to launch is actually going to be determined by your budgets. So I have seen so many sellers in the groups like they'll be like oh my gosh, I just launched and launched my ads and I'm spending like $1,000 a day and I can't afford it and I don't know what's going on. Again, it's simple, kind of seems like stupid logic but the more keywords you're advertising on, the more clicks you're gonna get, the more cost per clicks you're gonna pay, the higher ads spent. So you actually want to factor in what you're doing for your launch strategy with your budgets.

Elizabeth:

Like I just got off a client call and we're like all right, we have these new product launches. Yeah, it's a really competitive space. It's like skincare. We're not gonna have reviews in the beginning. You know what? In the beginning we're gonna keep ad budgets really lean and we have a really good brand recognition. We're just gonna leverage brand recognition because we know the conversion rates are gonna be there. It's gonna help us get the initial products. But we also are understanding that if that's the strategy we're running again a little bit more limited, just leveraging brand lower budgets we're not expecting the sales to be exponential in the beginning. So it's like setting expectations and then kind of understanding what makes sense for you at this stage.

Shivali Patel:

Okay, and, keeping that in mind, the review portion that you're mentioning, right, yeah, you end up like, let's say, for example I'm not sure if I'll pronounce it right, but in Sweat's example right, his question when he's launching, do you end up waiting for the reviews to file in before you are running those ads or do you end up just kind of going in? And of course, there's many moving components, yeah, there's a lot of moving parts.

Elizabeth:

It depends on what the brand's wants to do. Typically we will start running stuff out of the gate Again. We just kind of set expectations. The reason why ACoS is so high in the beginning is for two reasons. One, your conversion rate tends to be a little bit lower and then, two, your cost per clicks tend to be a little bit higher because you really are trying to get aggressive to be able to get that visibility on the product and then over time, ideally, conversion rates improve because you get more reviews and then cost per clicks hopefully go down as you optimize. So between those two things, that helps it get better. So we just set expectations with like hey, because conversion rates are low means it takes more clicks to convert, which means ACoS is gonna be a little bit higher and we expect potentially sales not to be still or out of the gate. Sometimes it'll be surprised. Sometimes you launch a product and you're like, wow, this is amazing, this thing just absolutely took off and I hope for all of you listening, that is the case for you and your new products, but it's not always the case. So it's really more setting expectations and then just deciding what makes sense for you.

Shivali Patel:

Why would someone create like a branded campaign If they've already have their standard stuff? Do you maybe want to talk a little bit about branded campaigns?

Elizabeth:

Yeah, there's two kinds of branded campaigns. One is considered branded, or maybe brand defense is what you might call it. One of them is you have a whole bunch of products. Which you might do is you would advertise your own products on your other listings. The goal of that is you'd be like, hey, if somebody is going to click off, they might as well click onto my own product. Again, it's called a defensive strategy because you're plugging people off and refer to it. It's like plugging the ad spots. My competition can't get this ad spot on my listing. The other thing that you might do is if you have any branded searches happening so people searching your brand on Amazon then what you can do is you can again advertise your own products.

Elizabeth:

There's a lot of debate out there. They're like, oh, if I already have people searching for my brand, why in the world would I be spending on it? Because they're going to convert for my brand anyways. Yeah, there's arguments to be made. The things that you can do is you actually track your share of search in using search query performance reports to look at your own branded traffic and be like am I losing out on sales through my branded traffic? That's something you can do if you want to be like, is it worth it for me to run? But the second thing and the one I was referring to when I was talking about that more specific launch that we're doing is if you have great brand recognition meaning there's a lot of people searching for your brand you've already built up a lot of traffic to your current listings and you have a new product that fits very well into that brand.

Elizabeth:

So example I just gave was we have a brand that has a skincare line. Right, they have their launching complimentary products. They have really good repeat purchase rates. What we can do is for people searching their brand, we can make sure that the new products are then advertised and show up high on their branded search, where they might show up lower before if we weren't leveraging ads for that. And then what happens is someone's typing in the brand like oh, wow, there's a new product from this brand. Awesome, and most likely not always, but of course you know you read the data, but most likely you're going to get people purchasing very similar. You know you can use ads to be able to get visibility again on your own products, but you're using your new offering. So that's kind of a way to like. If you have a good brand, share to be like. Hey, I got a new product. I want to try it out using ads.

Shivali Patel:

Got it, and I see Sasha has a question here, and it is what's the best way to research Amazon keywords for low competition products? And I'll go ahead and add as well what do you do in the case if, let's say, there is not necessarily a market, maybe it's a brand new product that doesn't end up having any sort of crossover? You're creating a sub niche.

Elizabeth:

Yes, those are the most difficult. The two most difficult products to advertise for are one to your point of like there really is no relevant traffic for it. Or two, when you only have one keyword that has any search volume and there's like nothing else besides one or two keywords, because every single one of your competitors knows those one or two keywords and there's really not anything else to choose from. So there's not really a way to like play a sophisticated game. You just got to like grin and bear it in those categories, which is like kind of painful sometimes. So reword I mean your keyword research is really going to be exactly the same as for any other product. You're going to be looking at your competitors, seeing what they rank you for. I mean, we use Helium 10, love Helium 10, just did a walkthrough of how we did keyword research using Helium 10. Like it's a really great tool.

Elizabeth:

The one different way that we have of generating your first keyword. We actually generate two keyword less in the beginning. So what we'll do is we'll use, say, like a commonly searched keyword. So a lot of times people will start with like all right, type in a commonly searched keyword and then like, look at the ranked competitors, choose them, you know, choose the relevant ones and then go through that. What we will do is we will take that first you know pretty general keyword that we're pretty sure is relevant to the products, and what we'll do is we'll type that into.

Elizabeth:

I'm going to get them mixed up. I'm going to say it's magnet, it's the keyword research tool, so you type it in and then you look at search, so you sort by search volume and what we'll do is we'll actually go down that first list and find what we call our highest search volume, most relevant keyword. So what you're looking for is the intersection between where you actually have good shop or search, and it is also relevant to your product, because the more hyper relevant you get to the product, typically speaking, not always the lower your search volume is going to be. On those keywords You're like all right, what's my top of the mountain? Because oftentimes people will be like, oh, metal cup, that's a great keyword, yes, but it's not highly relevant keyword. So you're looking for, like women's metal cup for running or something like is there a good search volume there? How can I like niche down a set? And then what we'll do is we'll take that search page for a highly relevant keyword and use that as our springboard to find our top competitors.

Shivali Patel:

So we do also have a question from David where he asks how would you use not sure what that's supposed to say for top competitive keywords when your product have multiple attributes such as gold diamond ring, gold solid hair ring and engagement rings should I run through, bro, on each? I'm assuming that's just supposed to be. How would you search for top competitive keywords? So? Yeah so I would, I would just look for.

Elizabeth:

I would look for whatever is the highest relevancy, highest search volume, one that's going to give it and you're going to have a lot of applicable keywords. So the walkthrough that I did I think it's just yesterday what we did is we were looking at baby blanket, and what we start doing with our final keyword list when we're looking again we're prioritizing relevancy is you will find what we call buckets of keywords, right. So when I was doing baby blanket, it was like girls receiving blanket, receiving blanket for boys, like some like okay, there's a bunch of girl keywords and their bunch of boy keywords and these are actually a little bit related to specific variations. You can start getting really sophisticated with it. But as you do that keyword research and as you're looking for that relevancy, you're probably going to find a lot of these buckets. So what we'll do on launch is we'll like take our group out and be like okay, so to your point, we have a bunch of diamond keywords.

Elizabeth:

Oh wait, I have a bunch of solitary keywords, right. So you can actually group those. I can take all my solitary ones and be like hmm, I wonder if the search term solitaire is. I wonder if people like my product in relation to that search. Okay, so let me take that out. Let me put those in their own campaign. I'll label the campaign like solitary keywords or something and then I would advertise the products there or engagement ranks, right, okay, maybe that's applicable to my products. Let me again pull those out and put them in a subgroup and a campaign. The reason why I like doing this is because then I can just scan campaign manager instead of having to like go in and like, look at a campaign with, like the solitaire keywords, engagement ring keywords, gold, diamond keywords. I can be like, oh, these are sub group in campaigns and then when I'm in campaign manager, I can simply look at how each of those three campaigns are performing and be like oh, wow, it seems like gold, diamond ring keywords actually perform best and you still want to analyze at a keyword level. But that makes it a little bit more scalable to like understand shop or search behavior in relation to your product.

Shivali Patel:

Now I see that David also would like to know about the filter for keyword sales filter, which it is essentially just telling you on average how many sales occur for that particular keyword every single month. So that's really what you're looking at there, but, Elizabeth, maybe you want to expand on whether that's something that you end up looking at when you're doing your keyword research for these different brands that you work with.

Elizabeth:

I don't really Everything honest. The two things that I look at actually probably three things is I would like to look at. We look at numbers to the count of competitors that are ranking again, because we're doing that whole like find, you know, do the first list to find the second keyword, to find the really really super specific products. So if you can find good super specific products, then you can kind of like use their ranking on the keywords. So actually I love that Helium 10 added in that column because it was one that a lot of us were like calculating.

Elizabeth:

When I'm like God, I don't have to do the formula, I just already filter for the list, so it's really awesome. So we'll download that list and then you know, we'll just see what's the highly relevant and the kind of cross check that with search volume you can use. I don't think it's a bad idea to use, you know, kind of like the sales volume, because sometimes what you'll find is that even though there's like a high search volume, if the keyword is sort of like a little bit broader keyword, you might actually not have as much sales volume through those keywords as you would think. So it's not a bad idea to analyze it at all. We just find if we're like again, we're super honed in on that relevancy factor, then we tend to come up with the ones that have better sales volume anyways.

Shivali Patel:

Okay, I think that's really, really insightful. We also have Sergio. Sergio, do you like to use the same keywords for each campaign in broad phrase, and exact campaigns?

Elizabeth:

I do. I would say the one sort of not qualifier would put on it, the one thing you should be aware of. I would recommend keeping the bids lower in the broad and the phrase match. I don't always agree with Amazon's recommendations, but if you listen to their recommendations on this, they actually recommend that you keep it lower.

Shivali Patel:

And Sasha has a question. If I was to start selling a product that has a monthly volume of 60,000 units a month, how should I position myself? Should I run out?

Elizabeth:

I would first want to know how the product performs. That's your first goal. You want to figure out what your average cost per click is and you want to figure out what your actual conversion rate is. Once you have those factors, you can actually start building production models and sales production models and stuff. Actually, it's not hard to build or not search. You want to search traffic production models based on oh, I want to hit $50,000 a month in products, this is my conversion rate. What you need is you need your conversion rates. You really need your conversion rates is the main one, and then you're going to need your cost per clicks in the ads to be like all right, this is what it's going to cost me. Right now, you're going off of nothing. I know I've said it about 20 different times on this live, but I'm going to say it again relevancy, focus on your exact target market, see what your numbers tell you, and then you can build up from there.

Shivali Patel:

I think that's a good plan, so hopefully that is helpful for you. Sasha, I see we have Sweat's leaving, but he has found the response was informative. Now I wanted to touch on something we talked about at the beginning of this call, which is Q4, right, we've been talking a little bit about auditing your strategy and some general PPC knowledge, but also what about, I'm sure a lot of you guys that are watching? If you're already selling, then you probably aren't full swing. Maybe you've already gone ahead and optimized your listings for Q4. But what happens if maybe somebody is just starting to be like oh no, I completely dropped the ball? Do you have? Hopefully, not Hopefully, none of you guys are in that position, but let's say something like that happens, sort of maybe if you have a take on what somebody can do to make sure that they're still able to tap in on Q4's potential.

Elizabeth:

Yeah, so we're assuming it's a brand new launch product and we have nothing.

Shivali Patel:

We can assume that they've been selling for a while, but they haven't changed anything for Q4.

Elizabeth:

Got it, got it, got it. Ok, no, that's fine. So I would say if you're already selling, most likely you probably have some ad structure. You're not in a bad spot. Ok, q4, right before Black Friday, December and Monday, we're not launching a whole bunch of test campaigns. Don't do it, because what happens is Black Friday, Cyber Mondays Really, what you're doing, you don't get same.

Elizabeth:

I know there's not really data available, but honestly, nobody's really looking at that. An inside campaign manager. You're not going to be able to say, oh OK, I got 20. My ACOS was so much better this last hour, so let me increase these budgets, right? What you have to do is you have to look back at historical data. So if you want to test anything, do it before this week is out. Get those campaigns up, get that data, because you're going to be completely flying blind If you launched a bunch of stuff a day before. You're completely flying blind on performance metrics and it's so easy because of how many clicks are happening on the platform to really lose your shirt. So I would say, if you're like oh my gosh, I don't have any specific campaign set up for Black Friday, so that's fine, you're actually in a really good spot. So what you want to do these weeks leading up to it you actually still have time you want to go into your account and you want to evaluate what is working now, what is crushing it right now, and then I'm going to make sure, as that traffic comes in, that those have good budgets. I have healthy bids on them.

Elizabeth:

To be honest, days of for the most part, unless we have a really specific keyword on a very specific brand, they're like we have to be aggressive when we must win top of search for this particular keyword. For the most part, we're adjusting budgets. Day of is our typical optimizations. So what we're doing prior to that is we're like all right, if we're going to be increasing budgets, we want to make sure that all of this is super solid. So you're doing two things. One, you're identifying all the stuff that really works and you're like all right, I need to make sure again, budgets are healthy, bids are healthy, all my optimizations are done. And then the second thing we're doing and this is also very important is what is all the stuff that's not working, meaning Clips with no Sales? Where are all my high costs, low sale keywords going on? Here's a good one. What are all my untested stuff, that I've just been increasing bids. So it's so easy.

Elizabeth:

If you're like normal optimizations, right, we're going to go in what has no impressions, increase the bids. We do this as well. It is not a bad practice. What often happens, especially if you don't have any caps so we have caps, we're like, all right, we're never going to increase past x amount of dollars or whatever If you don't have any caps. Sometimes what happens is you're like you can end up with like $10 bids.

Elizabeth:

So what I would recommend doing go into your targeting tab. I would filter for everything with zero orders, or you could just leave it totally blank, sort by the bid what has the highest bid in your account and you might look at it and be like holy crap, I had no idea that was in there. And what you want to do is what we call a bid reset. So you're just looking at all this stuff and you're like, hey, it's not getting any impressions. Anyways, it's not going to hurt me if I lower my bids, but then at least I know when that traffic hits all of a sudden that random keyword that didn't have any search volume, that I had like $10 bid on. It's not going to like pop off and waste all of my ad budgets.

Elizabeth:

There's another filter that is really helpful to identify the irrelevant stuff. I'm not saying pause all these things. I'm saying use this filter to bring to the top everything that you're like how the heck did that get in there? Because it's super easy. When we're looking in our search term reports we're like, oh, this converted once. Let me go test it Again. Great practice. What happens is sometimes you get these random things in the account so easy for it to happen. So what you do is you go again. Targeting tab is going to be your friend here. You're going to want to filter for anything that has what is it? Zero clicks, zero, maybe once, two clicks.

Elizabeth:

We're looking for impressions. It has probably at least 1,000 impressions on it and you want to filter the click-through rate by anything that is lower than maybe a 0.2 or 0.15. So this says it's got a lot of impressions, it's not really doing anything in terms of sales volume and it's got really bad click-through rates. And then sort that by either your click-through rates highest or lowest to highest, or you can maybe start by impressions, highest to lowest. So what you're trying to do is what it has a bunch of eyeballs that nobody cares about and what you're doing is that brings up.

Elizabeth:

So a lot of people saw it. Not. A lot of people clicked on it, which oftentimes means irrelevant stuff, and because it's only got a couple clicks, there's not a lot of data, so it hasn't moved into our optimization sequences. So again, it's just a once over of the account. The first time you do this you'll probably be like what the heck, why is that there? And then, if you find that great pause, it put low bids on it, just kind of. Again, we're doing clean up. If you don't find anything that doesn't make sense for you, conkudos to. You're doing really, really good targeting. But either way, it's a really good thing to give it a once over before again traffic hits and things kind of go crazy.

Shivali Patel:

Now we do also have your keyword sale filter. Says 89 with low search volume, and another keyword has 20 keyword sales but a higher search volume. Is there one that you would kind of opt for? I know you said you don't typically look at the keyword sales Filter.

Elizabeth:

Yeah. So the two things I would look for is one I'm gonna say again, relevancy. I believe in it so strongly, I'm gonna say it again. And then the other thing that you would look at is, you know, the Helium sandwich. Again, another thing that I appreciate that you guys have added to the download keyword reports is the Recommended bits. Now, again, you guys are pulling them direct from the API, like Amazon does provide the recommended bits. However, as we all know, like if you go in you launch campaign, you like add different products, the recommended bids change, so their benchmarks don't take them as gospel, but they are really helpful to again kind of help you identify how competitive a particular keyword is over the other. So, like a budget's were concerned, you're like, well, you know, this one has like 20 sale, like the sales volume is pretty good, but like, wow, that one's Really competitive. I got to pay two dollars cost per click versus the other one where I'm like, well, I only have to pay like 50 cents cost per click. That probably would play into my decision.

Shivali Patel:

Okay, all right, there's. I know I said to, but let's just do this last one and then we'll. We'll call it. And so how do you structure your top keyword campaigns versus your complementary keywords? I know we briefly touched on this earlier.

Elizabeth:

Yeah, so I will cash with. So I saying I'm not a huge fan of doing everything as a single keyword campaign. I think it's way too overkill. You end up getting way more confused than you do in sight From doing it like that. That being said, if we do, I definitely have like a top keyword. We are going to put that in a single keyword, exact, match, specific campaign. The sort of it depends Questions and answers that I always give is the more the higher amount of Control I need over where I'm going to be directing my ad spend, the less keywords I want to have. Then more important it is for me to gain impressions on this keyword. For, again, for my campaign strategy, the less keywords I'm going to have. So if it is a top keyword, if it's my main ranking keyword, if it's super, super important to me, single keyword campaign right, because that's I need to control ad spend. I need a lot of impressions on this and super, super important versus another keyword set, right. Maybe I don't really have it. So the other, very other end of the spectrum is going to be like a whole bunch of a Campaign that actually works really well.

Elizabeth:

For us is single word meaning, like you know, cup bowl dish In broad match low bits. Do not put high-pits on these. Even if you have great ACoS, don't put high bits. Not a good idea. But we'll run these all the time. But what happens is because we cap our bids at, say, I think it's from 25 cents, maybe 30 cents, maybe in 15 cents. We never intend to grow our bids past that, right.

Elizabeth:

So how is it important for me to control ad spend at the campaign level? Not really because I'm controlling it at my bid level, right. How important is it for me to gain impressions? Not really because I'm expecting half of these keywords to not get impressions whatever. So I would be fine with putting, you know, say, 50, 100 keywords in that campaign, right, because for me it makes no sense to create 10 different campaigns that I have to like keep an eye on, versus just one important like oh yeah, that's that strategy and that's kind of like my background thing, right. So I would look at it through that lens again. How important is it for me to control spend at the campaign level? And then, how important is it for me to gain Impressions on these particular keywords? The more infatily you answer yes to those two questions, the less keywords you should have in that campaign. The more you don't really care about those two things, or they don't really matter as much then I would be okay with a lot more keywords.

Shivali Patel:

Alright, well, wonderful. Thank you so much, Elizabeth, for your time and your information, your knowledge. We appreciate it. I know a lot of people learned quite a bit. Sasha says thank you. We have sweat who says you know he was also waiting on those other questions that you were answering. That was very informative, so we do appreciate it so much. And yeah, that is it for today. You guys will catch you on the next TACoS Tuesday. Thank you!

Elizabeth:

Awesome! Thanks, I appreciate it.

#510 - Amazon Seller Success Stories, Flat File Strategies, and More!

If you've ever wanted a peek into the world of Amazon selling, this episode is your golden ticket. We're joined by elite sellers and Amazon specialists, Christine Douheret and Sasha Zubatov, who share invaluable insights and strategies they've used to overcome challenges and achieve incredible success in the E-commerce space. With their unlikely backgrounds - Christine hailing from Hollywood with a degree in interior design and Sasha from New York with a computer science degree - they bring unique perspectives to the table.

Our guests reveal their strategies, such as utilizing flat files and Helium 10 Elite training, that have helped them stay ahead of the curve. They divulge how their diligent manual research, constant learning, and strategic use of VAs have been instrumental to their success. Listen in as Christine recounts her staggering 300% sales growth in just a year, and Sasha shares her client's seven-figure sales accomplishment. We also delve into the not-so-pretty side of things, including having listings hijacked and the struggles of facing stiff competition.

As we wind down our engaging chat, Sasha shares her take on Walmart's competition and the suitability of products across platforms, offering her top flat file strategy. We also discuss the potential risks and rewards of creating product variations. Christine, always ready to help, extends an invitation to listeners who may need assistance or have questions about their Amazon journey. We wrap up the episode with a look at possible future Amazon and Walmart meetups and the unique challenges these could present. However challenging, the future of e-commerce remains thrilling, and we're here to help you navigate it. Tune in and let Christine and Sasha's success stories inspire you to create your own journey to success.

 

In episode 510 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley, Christine, and Sasha discuss:

• 01:53 - Sasha's Funny Helium 10 Swag Story
• 10:35 - Sell on Amazon, Overcoming Challenges
• 16:25 - Sales Success and Expansion
• 19:11 - Successful Strategies and Challenges On Their Amazon Journey
• 25:18 - Organize and Inform for Successful Outcomes
• 27:26 - Understanding and Protecting Flat File Strategies 
• 33:18 - Profit Margins and Competition
• 35:01 - Sales Performance: Amazon vs Walmart

► 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 a couple of elite sellers and Amazon specialists who have come from completely different backgrounds but now have found success on Amazon, Walmart and what is even going to share his unique flat file strategies with us. How cool is that? Pretty cool. I think we know that getting to page one on keyword search results is one of the most important goals that an Amazon seller might have. So track your progress on the way to page one and even get historical keyword ranking information and even see sponsored ad rank placement with keyword tracker by Helium 10. For more information, go to h10.me/keywordtracker.

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've got a couple elite sellers on with us from opposite sides of the coast here, if I'm not mistaken or I'm not. Let's find out. Actually, where are you guys actually from? Let's start with Christine. Where are you at right now? Where are you calling in from?

Christine:

I'm in San Diego California.

Bradley Sutton:

You're in San Diego, so forget it. You're local to me. I don't know why I thought you were on the east coast for some reason. Where in San Diego are you at?

Christine:

Carmel Mountain, Carmel Valley area.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, about like 30 minutes away from me. You know towards what is it? Towards the stadium down there, right? No, not like about 10, 15 minutes, okay, cool, wow, you're almost my neighbor and Sasha, about the distance south of me, you're north, you're up in like Orange County, California, right?

Sasha:

Yeah, I'm within like half an hour of any local workshop you guys put on.

Bradley Sutton:

I love it. I love it. Now here's a funny story about Sasha, like one time our you know, one of our executives, Bojan, he in our private Slack channel he posted a picture and he's like sell and scale summit t-shirt spotted in the wild or something like that, and he had snapped the picture of somebody that he saw in the checkout line in his grocery store up in I don't know somewhere in the OC and I was like wait a minute, that looks amazing. I was like yes, it's Sasha right there. So you're famous inside of Helium 10. There for wearing a Helium 10. Swag out in the wild, love it.

Sasha:

From now on, every time I go to Costco, I put that on. All right, you never know when a Helium 10 employee might capture you, awesome, awesome.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, Christine, let's go to your origin story. Is San Diego where you were born and raised, or are you a transplant, or what?

Christine:

I was actually born and raised in Los Angeles. My parents were transplants. However. They came from Switzerland on the Queen Mary for their honeymoon, and so they landed in Los Angeles, and that's where I grew up.

Bradley Sutton:

The Queen Mary. That's now like in Long Beach, that one that you can actually.

Christine:

Wow, nice, that one 1955, that came over.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome, awesome, Sasha. What about you?

Sasha:

I'm originally from Odessa, Ukraine, and so I speak Russian, and I wound up doing a lot of business with Russia, and that's what actually led up to Amazon eventually.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay now, how long have you been here in the States?

Sasha:

I grew up here. I grew up in New York in 1980s.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, so you must have moved here when you were one or two years old, all right. So growing up in New York, you had emigrated over here. What was your aspirations? Were you just wanting to be a fireman or an astronaut, or what did you think you'd be when you grew up? Quote unquote.

Sasha:

I had very little choice. My dad was an engineer and my mom was an actress, and all my life isolated between the two. So jump back and forth.

Bradley Sutton:

What did you end up going to college for then.

Sasha:

I ended up going. I got my bachelor's in computer science initially, and then, when my business was doing well enough, I went into a theater program.

Bradley Sutton:

So you still made both of them happy after my goodness, the model son here, Love it. What about you, Christine? What did you think you'd be when you grew up?

Christine:

I always wanted to be an interior designer and actually that's what my degree is in. So I was an interior design when I lived in LA, in Hollywood, for a big firm and often did a lot of the studio sets with the studio designers and maybe did something for Sasha's mom or there, you never know. Actually Johnny Cochran's office, I did.

Bradley Sutton:

Oh, okay, all right, wow all right. So now you know what. How many years were you in that field, Christine?

Christine:

10 years.

Bradley Sutton:

10 years and then after that?

Christine:

Then I went into nurse recruiting.

Bradley Sutton:

Nurse recruiting.

Christine:

Well, yes, recruiting nurses for travel assignments. So a travel nurse assignments across the US in every hospital there's probably 20-30% of travel nurses, so that they can adjust their fluctuations in census, and so they bring in travel nurses when it's high census and reduce the travel nurse population when it's lower census.

Bradley Sutton:

I'm half Filipino. Is it true that, like 30% of nurses, are Filipinos?

Christine:

They do bring a lot of Filipinos over, yes.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, all right, so you're moving Filipino nurses around all the country, and others as well, and then how long do you do that?

Christine:

Ten years, at least ten years.

Bradley Sutton:

Oh, so you stick with stuff. You start. I like that. All right, so well. There's 20 years of work, so you must have started working when you were three, four years old, yourself there, okay, and then after that, did you find e-commerce or what's next in your life?

Christine:

Yes, and I found e-commerce, so it brought together everything I've learned and I just wanted to be able to do something that I could do from anywhere in the world. Since my family is from Switzerland, as you know, since my parents immigrated, I like to go there frequently and I wanted to be able to do a business I could do from there, if I needed to be there for two, three months, or from anywhere in the world, and I found this.

Bradley Sutton:

So did you just like Google at the time? Do you remember like where you know things I can do on the road, or something like that? Do you remember what you searched for?

Christine:

No, no, I um. I always like to buy things on Amazon, and I knew that it was growing, that people would be buying online more frequently, and so I started searching how to do that, and I did several webinars and classes and seminars In fact, I did probably six months of education before I even jumped into selling to make sure it was something that I could do, that I had the skills for, that I had the money for and that I would be able to grow with. See, like in nursing nurses, they can grow, they keep growing in their careers, they do all kinds of different things, they advance, and I wanted something that I could also grow with, so I could become a bigger seller, I could expand selling to different regions, different countries, and so I found this fit the bill.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome. What about you, Sasha? How does somebody who studies theater and engineering end up in e-commerce?

Sasha:

I went to Russia with a suitcase full of computer parts. That's how I started in business, and from then, on, I think one dollar Sounds very shady.

Bradley Sutton:

Well, I don't know how.

Sasha:

Listen, I mean nothing with. Russia is a white hat, let's put it this way. So yeah, and so that led eventually to doing a lot of exporting to Russia. I did everything from computer parts to software to eventually slot machines even, and mining equipment, so that kind of led naturally to.

Bradley Sutton:

Did you say slot machines and mining equipment? Amazingly, yes, never in the history of vocabulary has that, I don't think, been used in the same Both of those things? That's interesting. So you're basically exporting whatever and whatever they wanted there. Huh Okay.

Sasha:

So it really does depend on relationships there as well, just like here in the States, and so wherever you can find a competitive advantage, that's a good place to go, and so eventually, when that died down as a market and now essentially it's almost entirely out of reach, you look for other opportunities, and by that point I've already had a number of other businesses that I was involved with, and so I started Amazon on a dare with a friend of mine who really did not believe that we could do any sales on Amazon when his website was doing so well.

Sasha:

So I bet him that we could beat his website sales with Amazon sales, and that's how it was what year are we? Talking about this was just not too long ago, I think it was 2018,.

Bradley Sutton:

I think it was Okay so that's about five years ago. All right, and then, and did you make that bet without even knowing a lot about Amazon? Or at that point, had you done some studying and research into it, or something?

Sasha:

I knew very little about Amazon. I did not have any experience selling on Amazon or listing on Amazon, but just simply understanding the marketing and the size of the market and the demand there. It just seemed it was a bet I couldn't lose.

Bradley Sutton:

So yeah, okay, I took it, Christine. What about you? What year approximately was it that you made this leap into e-commerce?

Christine:

Well, I launched my first product at the end of 2019.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, Around the same time and are you still selling that exact product today?

Christine:

No Can you tell us what it is, then well, there's still kitchen products, but Well, I am still selling the remainder of that particular Also, somebody is still active.

Bradley Sutton:

That's pretty impressive for your very Not many people are still selling, like four years later, their very first product. Usually, it's like they just get their feet wet and they're like, oh nope, this was the wrong choice, but that's pretty impressive. You still have some inventory left and still going on that yes. Now how did you learn to how to sell on Amazon?

Christine:

You know I did a course. I did a course, but I can't say that I really learned how to do it from that course. What I really learned was when I started believe it or not signed up for Helium 10, because they have so many of the courses, you know the get started courses. That's where I really Like I was already on the platform beginning the sales, but there is so much to learn.

Bradley Sutton:

So in Helium 10?

Christine:

I did all of the modules you know, from the first set to the second set. I mean literally everything and I would say that, and also being part of the elite meetings, that is where I really learned how to sell, so you joined elite even before you were that big of a seller. Yes.

Bradley Sutton:

And then that that was me, Like in 2016, 2017, I wasn't even a seller and I was like you know what I just want to, like be a fly on the wall in these trainings and learn, and that's how I like. I probably learned more in six months than I could have, you know, in like two or three years taking a course or something. So I took a very similar path as you, All right, so that's interesting. What about you, Sasha? Did you take a course too? Or you just like got just dove right in? Or how did you learn to do what you were doing in the first?

Sasha:

year or 18? It was all just manual work, digging into Amazon specs, so really digging in into the specifications of flat files and categories. And I actually started with there are not category listing reports, but with transaction reports. You know those reports that list every transaction and the challenge there is that Amazon doesn't give you a flat file there. It actually is grouped by different categories. It's very, very hard to figure out exactly what the expenses are, so it really makes you work to break it up and clean it up. And that took a lot of time to break up that file and eventually I made it so that every column would be would represent a single type of expense, so it'd be easy to run pivot tables on it and analyze it.

Bradley Sutton:

There goes your engineering background a little bit there. Now, where are you still selling the very first product that you started with?

Sasha:

No, and it's not because it wasn't selling well, it's just it became less of a product for the manufacturer. So I don't really sell my own products. I help partners that I have sell products in their accounts typically, and so it depends in a way what they're.

Bradley Sutton:

So that first one that you launched was that for your friend, who you made that with.

Sasha:

That's right, that was his products and businesses that have storefronts that are brick and mortar they have other channels, so they have other needs, other interests, so they might have distribution, they might have a retail store, and so Amazon website aren't always their first priority.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, that's another thing that one of you have in common with me is when I first started until I worked at Helium 10, I didn't have any of my own products 100%. I launched over 400 products before I started working at Helium 10. 100% was for other people partners or people who hired me. Just my mindset was like I'm good at what I do, I have a specific thing I'm doing and I like doing this where there's not risk, like I'm not risking my family's savings and it could totally fail, so I'm gonna get. I mean, it's not.

Bradley Sutton:

Of course, I always try to have success, but I didn't have to stay up at night knowing that I risk my second mortgage or something to do this product launch. Amazon could just close the account down back in those days. Now, if I had things to do over again, now that I know what I know, I would have probably gone ahead and launched on my own products. But in those days I was very happy just getting a paycheck and if they made a million dollars from my $1,000 work, great for them. But then if they lost money, it's like all right, sorry, not sorry. We did it. We did what we could.

Sasha:

I hear you. I hear you, but for me it's entirely different. I prefer to work with somebody else's product and do the marketing. In a way. For me it's sort of more customer facing for me. To figure out what it is they need, what their needs are, and make it work.

Bradley Sutton:

What's the biggest success story? Like some projects that you've worked on and now they've scaled up to X number of sales in a year or something like that. Anything stick out in your mind.

Sasha:

For me. There was a client that had not been on Amazon at all, but their products have for years and years. They're a large manufacturer of beauty products who sold through retail and distribution and when I took them on, they had hundreds and hundreds of listings that were not created by themselves but by other resellers that needed to be on Amazon. So in the end, when we eventually were able to capture that market share, those beauty products wound up being really large, really large numbers for them.

Bradley Sutton:

Hmm, well, how large we're talking. Well, we're talking about seven figures. I like it all. Right, excellent. Now going back to you, Christine, like you've been selling now for like three years or four years, which year was your peak in sales and approximately how much was it?

Christine:

I would say this year is the peak in sales. So this year's increased like 300% over last year.

Bradley Sutton:

Wow.

Christine:

An increase, and well, we're in the high six figures at this point.

Bradley Sutton:

Excellent, so this is your full income now.

Christine:

Yes.

Bradley Sutton:

And do you have employees, or are you doing this all on your own?

Christine:

Oh no, I couldn't possibly do it all on my own. Now I have a VA who does all of the reporting and all of the things like that for me, and of course I have a team. I've got the photographer, videographer, social media.

Bradley Sutton:

So that's in-house, or you just like have somebody on retainer or something.

Christine:

I just contract out as I need it yeah.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome, awesome. Now, what's been your biggest L, your biggest loss, still with you, Christine, like the worst thing that's happened to you since you started selling on Amazon, because that's something that I like to keep it real. Amazon is not all rainbows and unicorns Listings gets shut down, you get hijacked and bad experience with customer service. Let's keep it real here. Let's be vulnerable. What's your biggest loss you've taken, or worst thing?

Christine:

Well, I had a. It's a product I still sell, so it was actually selling very, very well and it was like top you know top numbers and a new person had designed a similar product and so they came in and cited us as patent infringement. Amazon pulled all the listings down, which, of course, stopped the sales immediately. Now we had authorization to sell, we had a patent, we had everything, and I contacted Amazon with I mean right away and sent that document, sent it to the person that claimed the IP, and it still took over two and a half weeks to bring the listings back up. Of course, by then sales were lost. It had to sort of rebuild its rank and everything, and this person did it which I've learned since in order to launch his product right.

Bradley Sutton:

So he wanted to clear the way so that he was the only kind of player in the chain.

Christine:

Exactly, and so that's my first time really realizing the tricks that people play just to get ahead and that was disappointing. It was sad I lost money, but you know what? I wasn't going to let him win, so I just worked hard to get those sales back.

Bradley Sutton:

I love it. Now let's flip the script. What's the coolest thing that's ever happened? You like something unexpected or something amazing where you went viral, one of your products you sold out of inventory in two weeks or you made ridiculous profit on something. What's one of the coolest things that's happened to you?

Christine:

Well, yeah, I have sold out of inventory, but I've learned now to keep that in stock in backup. But actually this last prime day was probably one of the most exciting for me because I sold over a thousand units on that day For me that was A thousand units in one day, wow. Yeah, for me that was big, that was a big, exciting moment.

Bradley Sutton:

How many SKUs?

Christine:

In that particular product line there were five SKUs.

Bradley Sutton:

Wow. So how many units did you have in stock to cover that? That's a huge day.

Christine:

Well, here's what happened is I did run out, but I have a backup over at Deliver. So when it ran out it pulled from Deliver and gave me enough time to get more in. So I had, thank goodness, in the backup warehouse. I had a whole another thousand units ready to ship. And was able to send them in immediately as Deliver was fulfilling the overflow orders.

Bradley Sutton:

What would you say is the reason you did so well on Prime Day? Did you have some kind of, you know, Prime Exclusive Discount? Did you have a coupon? Did you send some outside traffic? Is there one thing that resulted in that crazy sales day?

Christine:

Well, I did a Prime Exclusive Discount. I also, prior to that, made sure all my ads were prepped and primed and that I made sure that the listing was 100% perfect and the pictures were perfect all before that Prime Day. So I guess I was just prepared.

Bradley Sutton:

I like it, Sasha. What about you? You know, sometimes, working with multiple accounts, you get exposed to even more things than the average. You know, seller, what's the worst thing? It doesn't have to be from you, but just like you were part of an account and you heard that something crazy happened. What's?

Sasha:

on Amazon. I think the most heartbreaking thing is when listings become hijacked. I mean, I've seen policy violations on Amazon and all sorts of difficulties that we have working with Amazon, but when listings get hijacked, that's just. I think. To me that's the toughest part.

Bradley Sutton:

And so what was one of the worst? Like somebody who had like, was there any? That was like they were selling 100 a day and it went to zero because of it, or something crazy like that.

Sasha:

They've got an entire product line with something that competitors were able to put Covid-related keywords in there somehow During the time when Covid items were hot and Amazon was blocking sellers, and so their entire list product line was shut down.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, all right. Well, let's not be doom and gloom. Christine talked about her. Great, you know, 1000 sale prime day. What about you? What's a crazy, amazing thing that's, like you know, can't happen, probably in the rain or it's very. It would be very impossible or very difficult for it to happen off of Amazon, but you've seen it happen on Amazon.

Sasha:

Gosh, I have to think about that, but the thing that comes to mind that the most satisfying thing that I had experienced was when I finally figured out how to put attributes up on Amazon that they don't give you in the category listing report. There are, for some, certain categories, like in the, for example, a grocery category that I work with a lot. When I was finally able to put up the nutrition table to get all the nutrition values up for products when it's not it's not regularly available in your category listing report, that was probably the most satisfying experience.

Bradley Sutton:

Where is that show on the list? Or does it show on the listing, or is this is only? We're talking about the back end here.

Sasha:

So it shows on the listing right above the bullet points. It's in that prime space below the title and right above the bullet points it'll show like nutrition information. It'll show ingredients and it will show the nutrition table that you usually see on products in the grocery store.

Bradley Sutton:

But for most products you don't actually get those attributes even if you download the flat file that you would, you know like it's not going to. It's not going to show up there.

Sasha:

It's not going to show up, even though it should.

Bradley Sutton:

So how do you do it? Do you like copy it from another category listing report that it does show up and then just paste those columns or something? Well, at this point, at this point.

Sasha:

You could probably find it. You could probably find it in some other category. I had to search for those attributes throughout the internet. I found them eventually in a European Amazon catalog. So I had to scrape them off of there and that's how I populated those columns. It didn't exist anywhere. My suspicion and I don't know this for sure, my suspicion is that they were available for products that were sold through Amazon Fresh. You know Amazon Fresh that product line, and so if you were in stores at Amazon Fresh, you had access to those fields, but not if you were in seller central, and so that was a bit of a hack.

Bradley Sutton:

All right, we're going to come back to you because I know your specialty is like flat files and stuff like that. So we're going to be getting lots of strategies. But going back to Christine, let's talk some strategy. Not anybody can have a thousand sale prime day. Not anybody can scale up on their own to high six figures. So what are some things that you think you're doing that is unique or that you're focusing on? Maybe it's not so unique, but it's like you put a big focus on it and you feel that that's part of the secret to your success.

Christine:

Well, I have these master files on literally everything that's required. So I think being organized and having all the information in one place is really important for me. For example I have, since I'm on both Amazon and Walmart I have like a spreadsheet that's got you know the UPC, the ASIN, the titles, the bullets, I mean literally everything on it that I can then, you know, adjust before fixing a listing, and I can refer to that sheet at any time I need to when I'm doing something else in Amazon, and also the same with Walmart. They have different IDs, different things, and this sheet goes as far as it has dimensions of the products and the pricing of the products.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, guys, I don't know if you picked up on this, but something I like to tell people is, no matter what career you come from, there's things that you can take from your previous life and apply to Amazon. You know if you guys picked up. You know Sasha used to be, you know computer science and engineer and stuff, and now he's got this analytical mind and now he just happens to be an expert on you know Excel and flat files and stuff. And listen, Christine, you know being an interior designer. You know she couldn't just like throw stuff together. You know like she probably had.

Bradley Sutton:

You know this system where she would really plan out her sets and very detailed, and now she's taken that and applied it to the way she manages her interior, designing her Amazon catalog, so you can always take stuff from and then play. You know, plus, sasha, you know being a service provider too. You know he's taking his acting lessons. He's very well spoken and eloquent there and very good looking too, so he's using whatever he can do right there. Sasha, back to you Another, maybe a flat file strategy that you can share with the community.

Sasha:

So with flat files, I think it's important to know that the category listing report is not necessarily what's live on the product page, and that's a major misconception that people have is that when they receive the category listing report, when they download it, they think that that accurately reflects what's up on the system, and it's not the way I would. The way I think about the CLR is that it is just a suggestion. It's what you've uploaded to Amazon and then Amazon makes a decision about whether they will accept that recommendation and update the data in the system or not. Conversely, the file itself, the category listing report or the category template, that is also Amazon's suggestion to you, what you can upload to the, to the cloud, and you don't necessarily have to follow that recommendation.

Sasha:

That's why there are a lot of ways to hack the file, the Excel file that comes down from from Amazon, and so one of the first things that you do if you do have a conflict, if you have an issue, you may take a look at what's in your category listing report and then compare it to the, to the UI, to the data fields that you see in your seller central when you click the edit button and take a look at the shaded text and numbers that are right above the field, which shows you what's what's on the cloud live, and very often you'll find that what you've uploaded is not exactly the same as what's on that now, and that could be things like title, it could be bullet points, clearly, product ideas and other other fields that Amazon doesn't think that you have the right to update or you have the priority to update. So that's one check that I would do once in a while to make sure that what you think is being uploaded is actually getting up there.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, is it? I mean, I know this was the case years ago, but you know what would happen and how some people would get their listings, you know, shut down. Is you know, like, like, like COVID type keywords, but any adult keywords, drug related keywords, they would go to a marketplace where that seller wasn't in and where there's open spots in their flat file sometimes they would get to, you know, throw some of those keywords in there and then it would stop it. And then you know what was you know one way years ago of how to stop that is like hey, hey, you know, make sure everything in your flat files are filled out and even upload it to different marketplaces. Is that? Can that still help? Or what is the latest protection on how you can stop people from abusing the flat file system? Where, where they can get your listing, you know, shut down?

Sasha:

That is absolutely the right thing to do is fill out the category list and report with all the fields that are relevant to your product, and there's a couple that that are sort of not part of your product listing unless you're in the adult category that you should also update. But that is the good recommendation to update as much as you can that is relevant to your product, because bad actors can update your listings by doing that in other marketplaces or by virtue of having access to higher level of Amazon account, for example, they can do it through vendor central right. So that is that is a good recommendation. It is getting harder for people to to hijack casually because Amazon is making it more difficult for people to create and modify listings for that are owned by brand registry. But they they could still do it, and so I would.

Sasha:

I would say don't go overboard and try to complete every single empty field in your listing report, because you really cannot do that. There are many more fields that are related to your product. Then you can actually see when you download your category listing report. So you can't really even contemplate completing every possible field, but you should fill out those fields that are relevant. You should fill out those fields that have to do with compliance has met and so on, and you should fill out the field that has to do with is is this an adult product? To make sure that those don't get in there. Aside from that, you could you could still have bad actors put bad, bad keywords in your product. They'll get you shut down so that yeah, that's that hijacking process still exists out there.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, I'm just curious what's your ratio of sales from Amazon to Walmart? Five to one, 10 to one. Amazon more, Would you say it?

Christine:

for me it's. Let's see, last year it was like Five to one, this year it's more like eight to one on one.

Bradley Sutton:

It changed so eight to eight. For every eight dollars you sell on Amazon, you sell one dollar on Walmart.

Christine:

Yes.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, are you using WFS?

Christine:

Yes.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, how's your profit margins? You know like after, if you know calculate out what you're you know selling or you know doing for PPC, etc. Is the profit margins similar or you making more money than one platform, than the other?

Christine:

Well, last year I made more I mean profit margin was better on Walmart. This year the advertising Something's a skew there. So the profit margins not as good On Walmart as it was last year and I'm hoping they fix that and that goes back up. But typically because Walmart doesn't charge as much for delivery, they do still charge the 15%. They don't charge as much delivery. There is room for a better profit margin on Walmart.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, interesting, interesting. Do you find that there's less competition for your niche on Walmart compared to Amazon? Are you fighting more competitors on Amazon or is similar to the same ones? You who are there on Amazon are also there on the Walmart.

Christine:

I think it's less competition. It's less competition, but it's harder to rank up for some reason. But you know, it's a unique client. Each platform has its set of unique clients, right and certain products. Like I, have five different products With many, many skews. So one product does very, very well on Walmart and Not so well on Amazon.

Bradley Sutton:

So you're doing better on Walmart than you are on Amazon for one product.

Christine:

Yes, yes.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, I know Kerry's got one or two like that too interesting.

Christine:

Yeah, and where the other products do better on Amazon. It's interesting. So I I come to where I'm picking out different products for the different platforms.

Bradley Sutton:

Could you have predicted that, like you know, when you were looking in helium 10 at the search volume or the competitors, like could you have said you know what I think this might be, or it did it just happen, and then now, in retrospect, you know what to look for as far as science about what could be better on Walmart than Amazon?

Christine:

I think it just happened. But yes, now in retrospect I can look a little bit more, I have a bit more information about what to look for and you know, price is a key it's just a key thing on Walmart. So having good price products so if you have a product that's a little bit higher priced For me I'm putting it on Amazon it just doesn't move as well on Walmart. In my category I'm talking about kitchen now in another category it might work just fine, but in my category the lower priced products that appear to have the best value for the price let's put it that way Move better on Walmart. And yes, now I'm picking out things that fit that category.

Bradley Sutton:

Sasha you doing anything at all with Walmart, or everything that you do is all on Amazon.

Sasha:

I help with Walmart as well, but it really varies by client. There are certain products that don't do well on Walmart at all because they are on Walmart shelves and so if it's a, if it's a product that can be purchased from Walmart, in the store and Amazon and Walmart will ship it at their Walmart price, it's very difficult to compete with an Amazon price that includes FBA fees. So it it's really kind of all over the board where some products do Better on Walmart when there's no competitors and there's some products that really don't even have opportunity to compete.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, and what's your last strategy for us? If I were to ask you for your 60 second, your 60 second strategy of the of the day for you? I mean, I said flat files because that's your specialty, but it could be about anything.

Sasha:

I'll stick with flat files. My top recommendation would be to create variations. Create them often and Don't wait until it's too late. You're your ASINs, your, your product listings are your assets on Amazon and they're constantly at risk. They could be taken down for multiple reasons, and so when your product reaches a level of maturity, when you have Thousands of reviews and is doing very well, create a variation, even if you don't think you need one. Create something with small, small modification. Pair it up with your best seller and let that new product gather reviews and that new product becomes a new asset and Then, once are doing well, you have the option of splitting it off from your main parent and take up Amazon real estate. So that's one of the top strategies I use with clients is I create variations with, with new products cool, cool.

Bradley Sutton:

Now. If people wanted to reach out to you, Sasha, to see if you know to contact you and ask for your you know Russian escapades, or perhaps talk about you know flat files or whatever, how can they find you on the interwebs out there?

Sasha:

If, if they want, if you want to have, they want to have that beer, I'll tell them the local bar. But if they want to talk about Amazon I'm usually on the Friday calls at 11 o'clock that those are always great case studies, so I'm usually. They are also in the Helium 10 elite Facebook group and of course it. If you want to reach out directly, my email is at amazon@cutterstone.com. Cutterstone spell, just like it sounds.

Bradley Sutton:

Cool now, Christine, you know, no pressure, you don't have to say your contact information, but if somebody was inspired by something you said and they wanted to reach out to you, dude, would you like anybody to reach out?

Christine:

Yeah, I'm happy to help. I mean, so many people help me along the way I want to do the same, so I'm happy to help, and my email would be christioinfo@gmail.com.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome, all right. Well, you too it's. It's a great, you know, been having you and you know weekly calls and seeing you at the elite events. And Next one, probably neither of you can make it to because I'm doing it, we're probably doing it in Germany, so that'll be a bit of a bit of a drive for you guys who are used to being here in Southern California, but perhaps I'll see you at the next, you know, like online meetup or Next conference. You know be great to see you again.

Christine:

Thank you.

Bradley Sutton:

Great to be here.

Helium 10 Buzz 11/16/23: Amazon On Snapchat & Instagram | Buy With Prime Benefits | M.Y.E. Update

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.

Snapchat users can now buy Amazon products without leaving the app
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/11/15/tech/snapchat-users-shop-amazon-products/index.html

Meta lets Amazon shoppers buy products on Facebook and Instagram without leaving the apps
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/09/meta-lets-amazon-users-buy-on-facebook-instagram-without-leaving-apps.html

How Shein and TikTok Shop are trying to shake the ‘Made in China’ reputation
https://restofworld.org/2023/china-shopping-shein-tiktok-shop-global-sellers/

3 new shopping benefits Prime members get when using Amazon’s Buy with Prime
https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/retail/buy-with-prime-new-shopping-benefits-2023

Advertisers Are Investing in TikTok Shops Despite Mostly Tepid Results
https://www.adweek.com/social-marketing/advertisers-are-investing-in-tiktok-shops-despite-mostly-tepid-results/

Walgreens Shifts eCommerce Fulfillment From Warehouses to Retail Stores
https://www.pymnts.com/news/ecommerce/2023/walgreens-shifts-ecommerce-fulfillment-from-warehouses-to-retail-stores/

Join the Helium 10 Weekly Buzz newsletter on LinkedIn. We break down all the week's news in the Amazon, Walmart, and E-Commerce World, New Feature Alerts, and Training Tips!

But that's not all, we're also diving into Amazon PPC and keyword research techniques. With new updates and features to Helium 10’s Amazon PPC tool, Adtomic, we discuss how you can sharpen your spending strategy and optimize it. Our special training tip from Shivali will guide you on how to mine long-tail keywords from a root keyword or phrase to boost conversions. So, strap in and stay tuned for a session packed with valuable news, tips, and insights!

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

• 01:02 - Amazon & Snapchat
• 02:51 - Amazon & Instagram
• 05:10 - Shein Sellers Wanted
• 07:37 - Buy With Prime
• 10:02 - TikTok Shop
• 12:11 - Fulfilled by Walgreens
• 14:40- Manage Your Experiments
• 15:38 - Amazon Robots
• 16:41 - Weekly Buzz Newsletter
• 17:08 - Helium 10 New Feature Alerts
• 20:30 - ProTraining Tip: How To Find Long-Tail Keywords From Root Keywords

► 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:

Customers will soon be able to buy Amazon products without leaving the app Snapchat, Facebook and Instagram. Buy with Prime launches, more benefits for dot com sellers. There's now new kinds of split testing that you can do in manager experiments. These new stories and more on today's Weekly Buzz how cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I am your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that is the Helium 10 Weekly Buzz, where we give you a rundown on all the news stories that's going on in the Amazon and Walmart and e-commerce world. We also give you the new Helium 10 features of the week as well as a training tip of the week that'll give you serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. Let's see what's buzzing. We've got tons and tons of really exciting news stories today. sometimes it's a little bit dull out there. You're trying to scrape the bottom of the barrel. Sometimes it seems that I'm trying to like find news stories, but this week we got a few bangers out there, so let's go ahead and hop right into it

Bradley Sutton:

Now. The first story is actually from CNN and this is entitled. Snapchat users can now buy Amazon products without leaving the app. Now, this I thought was an interesting story. It's going to be followed up by another story that was actually announced last week, but according to CNN here it says Amazon will now run shopping ads for select products on popular photo messaging apps, snapchat, and Amazon spokesperson confirmed to CNN Now. This spokesperson said that for the first time, customers will be able to shop Amazon Snapchat ads and check out with Amazon without leaving the app. All right, so. So that means like a lot of these social media apps, the last thing that they want you to do is leave the app. So there's been a lot of reluctant sometimes for links that just take them out, because what are these social media apps want? They just want you to just stay. Stay in the app, right like you see the moves that TikTok shop is making, they don't want you to have to go to Amazon, they want you to just buy right there in TikTok shop. like a lot of these apps make it difficult to go outside of the social media app because they just want you consuming the content there and consuming the ads, et cetera. So this is actually interesting. On Snapchat, you don't even have to leave the app to purchase Amazon products anymore. Now it says in app, shopping with Amazon is available for select products advertise on Snapchat and sold by Amazon or by independent sellers in Amazon store. So this is not just like a shipped and sold by Amazon. This, these are products that are you, you sellers out there are going to be able to sell. Now the bottom of this article says this Snapchat news comes on the heels of a similar Amazon initiative announced with Meta's Facebook and Instagram platforms last week.

Bradley Sutton:

So that's actually our second news article of the day, and it's by CNBC, and this was from last week, in case you missed it out. There this was entitled meta lets Amazon shoppers buy products on Facebook and Instagram again, what's the key? Without leaving the apps, all right. So meta debuted this feature that lets users connect their Facebook and Instagram accounts to Amazon so they can more easily buy goods, promote them their feeds. Now it wasn't clear. If Snapchat is doing the same thing, I mean you'd almost have to. If you're not leaving Snapchat, that means that your Amazon account must be linked inside of Snapchat in a way. Now, this is just like super, super interesting to me because TikTok shop, as we know, has been making all of the waves lately and and this could be like Amazon answer to social commerce, as it's called, and like hey, maybe they see, like hey, this is the future. people are browsing social media and you want to kind of capture them while they're browsing, and at the same time, make these apps happy by not taking them to the Amazon app.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, the Amazon spokesperson said to CNBC said customers in the U? S will see real time pricing, prime eligibility, delivery estimates and product details on select Amazon products ads in Facebook and Instagram as part of the new experience. So it's not just oh, there's going to be like a little button over here where it says, yeah, go ahead and buy with prime or buy this on Amazon. It sounds like like the buy box experience almost on Amazon where you can see all these details about when it's Going to get there. So, like this, this is, I don't know, I don't want to say like as flown under the radar a little bit. this is already like a week old. I'm reaching out to a lot of my contacts at Amazon to try and get some more details on what this is gonna entail, but I think this could be depending on how it's rolled out could be huge for third-party sellers to be able to advertise Directly on some apps and, especially, depending on the kind of flexibility we're gonna get for targeting so it could be something super, super cool and, again, like just more and more opportunity for e-commerce sellers out there now with this kind of like new Thing of social commerce. be it tick tock shop, be it snapchat, now Instagram, Facebook Really exciting times to be an e-commerce seller.

Bradley Sutton:

Speaking of e-commerce sellers, the next article is from restofworld.org and it's entitled how Shein and tick tock shop are trying to shake the maid in China Reputation alright, so it's talking about how these platforms are looking for global sellers and it gives a couple of examples. Like it talked about somebody who was in Latin America who was selling on the platform there that we all know, is one of the top ones in Latin America, which is mecca libre, and she was, she was doing, like $15,000 of revenue and she actually said that. like, when I first started considering Amazon, the process was confusing. There's too many documents required. The process to become a seller was very long, she said. But then this year in January Shein I hope I'm pronouncing that right, I don't even know Shein, but anyways Shein Contacted her and I was like, hey, would you like to sell on our platform? And there was actually Mexico based advisors that she could reach out to and they helped her set up the account, so that what she had said was difficult on Amazon, wasn't on Shein, and she's already sold $16,000 worth of goods on Shein's marketplace since it launched in Mexico this this past June and it's already surpassed Her medical Libre sales that she's been selling on for years now.

Bradley Sutton:

in the past for those who don't know much and including myself, I don't really know much about Shein never bought one thing on it, but Before it was almost all like. China, Chinese sellers on there and made in China products, but then last year they opened up distribution facilities in Poland, us and Canada this this article says and it's also opened up factories in Brazil and Turkey and also one coming in India. Now this article says, they're trying to compete with Amazon and that's why they're trying to build their fulfillment network and also open up to international third-party sellers. Now go ahead and check a link in the description, for the rest of this article is actually a super long article, but interesting. I really don't think she is like a big threat or anything to Amazon. I'm I think the reputation of the products and service is kind of low right now. But it's something to look out for and I'm curious. Shein reached out to this seller To sell on Amazon. What about any of you guys watching this? Have any of you been reached out to by Shein and Temu and TikTok shop to sell on the platform? Let me know in the comments below.

Bradley Sutton:

Next article is a press release from Amazon and it's entitled three new shopping benefits prime members get when using Amazons buy with prime. So buy with prime, was announced earlier. We actually talked about it on the show where you can take like the Amazon Prime experience and kind of put it on Dotcom websites. All right, so until now you could see, like reviews and things and things like that. You can have the buying, literally buying with prime, right, you get the same day or one day or two day delivery. But now Amazon is announcing three more updates to this program.

Bradley Sutton:

This article says that this holiday season, prime member benefits now will include 24 seven customer service through a live chat feature. Again, this is for buy with prime obviously this has always existed for just regular Amazon. But now if somebody's shopping on a Shopify website and that Shopify sellers using buy with prime, these are the benefits that the customer is going to be able to get. So, again, 24 seven chat, live chat for customer service. Another main benefit is that you're gonna be able to see all of your orders in one place. So let's say, today I buy something from my Amazon app right. Tomorrow I buy something from the Amazon website. Day after tomorrow I go to dot a dot com website that's using Buy with Prime. I buy something there, I can go in my Amazon app and I'm going to see all of those orders in the same place. So that's something that's new that you know. Now is another benefit again, 24 seven live Support. you can see here in the screenshot what that is going to look like.

Bradley Sutton:

And then the returns. Amazon's already kind of pretty easy to have returns, but now by with prime can go through the same return process Even though they're buying from a dot com website. Now it says customers are gonna be able to choose from an expanded number of convenient drop-off locations at UPS stores, whole food markets or Amazon fresh stores, without boxing up or labeling Items. All they have to do is show a QR code and hand over the item being returned. All right, remember this is something bought from a dot com website. And now by with prime, members are gonna get all these kind of like regular Amazon prime Benefits. I'm just curious how about you guys out there Anybody start by with prime? Does any of what I just mentioned here make you more inclined to perhaps do buy with prime? If you've got a dot com website, let me know in the comments below.

Bradley Sutton:

Next article is from ad week calm and it's entitled Advertisers are investing in tick-tock shops despite mostly tepid results. And this is interesting to me because the title says, oh, mostly tepid results. But then the article goes on to just like give example after example of people, kind of like crush it on the platform. So the article to me didn't really match the, the, the headline here. But it says hey, there's mostly lackluster results in tick-tock shop. It says like, that's not what I'm that's not what I'm hearing. But then in the next paragraph it says hey, cosmetics brand beat BK beauty Join tick-tock shop. When it opened up three months ago, barely ab, barely spent anything on advertising and since joining the company has more than doubled revenue. Don't you see how, like why I'm confused with all this negative talk. Like in the title, in the first paragraph. The next Paragraph says oh yeah, somebody has spent digital, a single digits advertising and now they've doubled their revenue.

Bradley Sutton:

The article talks about how the platform is offering incentives such as ad credits, customer coupons, they're covering fulfillment charges, offering tons of promotions to gear up for Black Friday. I've talked about how helium-ton elite members like Elizabeth have been really absolutely just crushing it on that platform. In this article another story they give they say hey, mental health focus journal company, Zenful note, has generated 45%, pretty much half of their sales from tick-tock shop in just two months. So again, I don't know why they're kind of dissuading people from TikTok shop but at the same time talking about how people are just crushing it on there. But it's going to be interesting to see how this work. how this goes because, like I, really have high hopes for TikTok shop. It seems like they're doing the right things and it's not just taking like a whole bunch of random products from manufacturers in China that they're shipping snail mail. that takes three day or three days, so three weeks or something to deliver, like Shein or Temu. I mean, this is just like regular, kind of like Amazon level of product. So I really think that's next year that is going to be the platform that a lot of sellers are going to want to expand to.

Bradley Sutton:

Next article is from payments.com and this is entitled Walgreens Shifts Ecommerce Fulfillment from Warehouses to Retail Stores, and it talks about how they're, instead of fulfilling their dot com orders from their Walgreens warehouses, they're trying to do it at its 8,700 stores. They had this quote that says 78% of Americans live within five miles of a Walgreens. How about you guys listening out there? You probably have a Walgreens pretty, pretty close to you, but 78% are near there. So this maybe doesn't necessarily affect third party sellers too much, because this is. Walgreens mainly sells a lot of their own products.

Bradley Sutton:

But this is what I've always tried to talk to you guys, especially when I talk about Walmart and other places. We think too much only about selling online. If you can get and brick and mortar, it can be very lucrative. I've talked about when I worked at another company and they would sell in Walmart the kind of PO's that would cross my desk where one PO was like way more than what our entire year of Amazon sales were and we were in seven figures of Amazon sales and that would be like one PO from Walmart's because of how many Walmarts there are. We had accounts at that same company. I worked at Walgreens and it was still a big business and you don't have to worry about. a lot of advertising and customer service and all this stuff.

Bradley Sutton:

So like, when you are building your brand, absolutely start on Amazon, start on TikTok shop, but be thinking bigger picture, like, like, really create a brand and great packaging and things like that. Because now, if you start crushing on Amazon, you're going to get on the radar of buyers and at some of these places potentially, and maybe you can get your product in a Walgreens or a Walmart. And then this kind of move that Walgreens is doing is like pretty cool. Like imagine if you were making some kind of supplement, right, and you got it into Walgreens, brick and mortar. Now your online sales for Walmart, or Walgreens.com would also be pretty high because the fulfillment process potentially could have even same day delivery. Walgreens is saying that they're going to use, like Uber, eats and DoorDash drivers to deliver their stuff. But anyways, just something to keep in mind, guys, don't just confine yourself to thinking that you're only going to sell on online marketplaces. Getting into brick and mortar can be very lucrative.

Bradley Sutton:

The next article is not really an article at all, but it's something that is in your manager experiments dashboard. So if you go to manager experiments, that's Amazon's kind of like split testing tool. It's always been free on live listings and you've been able to do stuff like test your, your main image and things like that, but now you can actually start testing your A plus brand story and also you can do simultaneous experiments to where you, where you test two separate things, all right. So this is something newish that maybe some of you didn't know about is available. I still recommend Always doing your split testing and audience kind of like polling before you even have your listing. You can do that with Helium 10 Audience. It's just right there in your Helium 10, dashboard. It's also available. it's made by a PickFu and I've been using that for six years now and that's like a game changer. But if you didn't do it before you launch and you're having trouble, absolutely you can use manager experiments on your live listing.

Bradley Sutton:

Last article of the day is just kind of a funny one I wanted to throw in here because it kind of has to do with Amazon. But it's kind of crazy what we're going to. And this is CNBC and it says Amazon's Astro Robot is now a roving security guard for business. I mean, guys, we are literally going into the Terminator world. Amazon is selling this robot for $2,300 and it's for businesses and it's like a security guard. it's on wheels but it like roams your store during the day, make sure people are not stealing it roams it. During the night, when you, when you leave your place of business. But amazon is more than just a marketplace. They're like at the forefront of a lot of different technologies. And now there's robot security guards. Guys, in 2023, 2024, what is this world coming to? Ai robots, what is next? All right, that's it for the news this week.

Bradley Sutton:

One thing I wanted you guys to know about was if you like to get the news and maybe you're not always about watching a video, you just want to watch it or read about the news. I have a brand new newsletter that covers in depth A lot of these news articles. We're talking about a lot of the things that we discuss in this show. So if you would like that, just email to you from LinkedIn and you have LinkedIn super easy, one click to subscribe to it completely free. Go to h10.me forward slash newsletter. H10.me forward slash newsletter takes your LinkedIn website and then just hit subscribe and you'll get notified every time if there's a new article.

Bradley Sutton:

All right, now let's get into the New Helium 10 Feature Alerts of the week. every week, Helium 10 has is releasing new tools, new filters, new features, new functionality that you guys have been asking for, and so here's a rundown of what is cooking for this week, the first one that I'm going to talk about actually, all of these are an Adtomic, our PPC management tool, and the first one is about day parting. All right, so in the past, you could select certain campaigns and then in helium, you can look at the data that Helium 10 provides and see that, wow, my, my, a cost is like infinity. It's like terrible Saturdays from 7am to 9am. So what I'm going to pause my campaign every Saturday at that time so I can save some money, right, but that's just kind of like partially.

Bradley Sutton:

Why people like day parting. a lot of people might want to increase their bid. Like maybe on Sunday mornings a cost is like 6% on a certain campaign or a group of campaigns. Well you might want to increase your, your, your bid at that time. Other times, maybe you don't want to pause the whole campaign, but maybe you want to decrease your bids. Well, now you're going to be able to do that if you go to your day parting schedules section and you go to the bottom here where you can create the rules. You can just select which day you want to choose the time period that you're wanting to do. Like, let's say, I pick Mondays from 3am to 7am and now I can do increase bid, I can decrease the bid or pause the campaign, and I can do this at the campaign level or at the portfolio level or even at the product level. So, super cool update from Adtomic. That way really allows you to kind of like laser focus your spend and optimize it based on the previous performance, but on time of day and day of the week.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, another quick filter that is new in Adtomic. we have our AI bidding suggestions and that's like based on the algorithms that you, that you choose. I'm going to talk about a New update to the algorithms too, but like, for example, I've got a whole bunch of AI suggestions here about how, what I need to do to my targets as far as on the bidding in order to reach my goal, right, and so we have a couple new filters where I maybe I just want to see hey, show me all of the suggestions, the AI suggestions, where it's asking me to increase the bid or decrease the bid All right. So that's a new filter that you're now going to be able to see on your suggestions page. The last update or feature alert for the day is the ability now, on auto campaigns, to choose a bid rule. All right. So a bid rule is kind of like.

Bradley Sutton:

maybe you're trying to hit a certain kind of target ACoS. Maybe you want to use our algorithm that maximizes the number of impressions. Maybe you want to maximize the number of orders. Maybe you want to use one of your custom bid algorithms, all right. So before for auto campaigns, you weren't able to set these, but now for the auto campaigns, you can go ahead and choose one of our algorithms or one of your own and go ahead and activate it right there. So I highly suggest everybody go ahead and do that if you're using Adtomic. Last up, we've got Shivali here for our training tip of the week and it has to do with a keyword research technique, a very, very simple way that, within seconds, you can get tons of keyword ideas based on you entering a keyword into our tool, Magnet, Shivali. Take it away.

Shivali:

How to find long tail keywords from a root keyword or phrase. Why is this important and how can you use it to make money? Well, as an Amazon FBA seller, of course you're interested in ranking on the top half of page one for your main keywords as well as your supplementary keywords. But how exactly can you lead to even more conversions? Well, of course you want to get in front of a audience that is ready to purchase, and the best way to identify that is by taking a look at your long tail keywords. What exactly do I mean by that? Well, these are those keywords that have maybe two, three, four, five additional words in the actual search term. And by taking a look at those search terms, right, you're starting to take a look at those people who are ready to purchase their warmer leads. They know what they're looking for, and that means that they are ready to buy so long as you can convey exactly what it is that you are selling and it matches what they have on their mind.

Shivali:

So let's go ahead and take a look at Magnet. I'm going to show you a filter you can use, and that is simply this word count filter right here inside of Magnet, that you can use to input a minimum or maximum and narrow down your search results. So I went ahead and inputted coffin shelf as our main seed keyword and clicked get keywords. We were outputted 3,204 filtered keywords in results. And then I want to narrow that down further by finding those really excited consumers. I'm going to go in and input in a minimum of four, I'm going to click apply and, as you can see, it immediately narrowed that down to 792 filtered keywords compared to the 3000 plus we had before. Now, of course, not all of these are going to be relevant. I'm already seeing that instead of the coffin shelf, we're now taking a look at Vampire Diaries makeup. That's not really relevant at all. So let's go ahead and combine this with the phrases containing filter and I can input in coffin, click apply filters and you'll see that automatically narrows me down even further to 157 filtered keywords.

Shivali:

Now this was a very, very fast way for you to go from 3000 filtered keywords into 157 and find keyword phrases where people are looking for something very specific. Of course, if I were a consumer and I were typing in bookshelf, that's going to be a significantly different feel and probably browsing for different styles of bookshelves, compared to somebody that's typing in coffin shaped bookshelf or coffin shelf or coffin bookshelf large six feet tall. So this is a very precise market and of course I'll still want to go in and open each one of these up and see whether or not the search term is relevant to our product. But of course this is really easy to also remove if I realize that that's not a phrase I want to maintain as part of my listing later on.

Shivali:

So, as you can see, this is a really easy way for you to find those really strong buyer intent keywords or key phrases that you are looking for. That can help you boost your conversions really fast. Of course you want to be ranking for those keywords and you want to drive traffic and all of that's great, but you also want to convert and so when you're using those longer tail keywords, you can get in front of audiences that are looking for something specific and that allows you to make that conversion a little bit easier. So that barrier to entry to actually get them to purchase is so much better when you are using words that are a little bit longer in length. So with this, I hope you go into Magnet, you implement, you take a look at those long tail keywords and you find success. I will catch you in the next video.

Bradley Sutton:

Thank you very much, Shivali, for that. I really recommend, if you guys haven't done it recently, even if you've already been selling for a while, go ahead and put some of your main keywords, especially if it's a not a long tail keyword. Put that into Magnet and just see what comes up. hit the smart complete button, for once you have the keywords that come up. After you put your main keyword in there and see how many keywords come up, and I bet you, I guarantee you, there's going to be keywords that are completely related to your main keyword because it's your main keyword is literally a part of those keywords that you possibly didn't even know had search for him. So that's just like a cool little homework assignment for you guys. All right, thanks everybody for joining us this week. We'll see you next week to see what's buzzing.

#509 - From Italy to Amazon: The Journey of Two Sellers

Picture this: Three successful Amazon sellers from each corner of the globe sat down in a quaint Italian café, their journeys colliding over a shared passion for selling on Amazon. In this episode, we're chatting with Peter and Franco, our guests who symbolize the true essence of a global Amazon seller. Born in the US, raised in Australia, and operating out of Asia, Peter's journey through the world of Amazon selling is a fascinating tale. Then we have Franco, an Italian native who transitioned from a traditional upbringing to become a leading e-commerce entrepreneur. We listen to their stories, not just the triumphs but also the trials, like the time Franco’s competitor created fake test reports to tarnish his reputation.

Venture with us as Franco shares his extraordinary journey as an Amazon seller. From hitting his peak year of gross sales to navigating the fiercely competitive medical device field category, his story truly is a rollercoaster ride. Then we turn to Peter, who climbed to the number one spot in the health and personal care category within a mere three weeks. His dedication to producing reliable products and setting the right price point made him a standout entrepreneur. His unwavering commitment to his product and the pursuit of excellence are lessons for every budding e-commerce entrepreneur.

As we bid our Italian farewell, we delve into Franco and Peter's strategies for success, from image testing to understanding European selling regulations and leveraging social media. Get a peek into Franco's vision of reaching nine figures and perhaps even owning a football team in Italy. We draw the final curtain discussing the potential of the Italian Amazon community and the role Amazon plays in shaping the European market. Join us for this riveting conversation brimming with success stories, challenges, and unique experiences in the world of Amazon selling. We promise it's worth the listen!

In episode 509 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley, Franco, and Peter discuss:

• 00:00 - From Italy to Amazon
• 01:55 - Discovering Cultural Diversity in a Podcast
• 04:01 - From Australia to Italy
• 11:21 - Launching Products in Global Markets
• 14:58 - Challenges and Successes on Amazon
• 16:29 - Medical Device Field Competition and Tactics
• 24:32 - Strategies for Amazon Success
• 27:54 - Challenges With Listing Product on Amazon 
• 32:35 - European Market Testing and Selling Strategies
• 36:21 - Discussion on Translations for International Marketplaces 
• 39:25 - Italian Farewell and Appreciation for Italy

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

Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

Today we've got sellers in the show that I originally met in Italy and now they're selling millions of dollars on Amazon. We're going to hear their story, which includes a case where one of their competitors even sent fake reports to the media about their product safety in order to get them kicked off of Amazon. How crazy is that? Pretty crazy, I think. What was your gross sales yesterday, last week, last year? More importantly, what are your profits after all, your cost of selling on Amazon? Did you pay any storage charges to Amazon? How much did you spend on PPC? Find out these key metrics and more by using the Helium 10 tool Profits. For more information, go to h10.me forward slash profits. 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. And today we are doing what I think is a first we are having a three continent podcast at the same time. We're not recording this separately. I'm here in North America, we've got Peter, who, I believe, is in the Asian continent, and we've got Franco, who is in Europe. So welcome to the show. And the funny thing is, I met all of them in person, at least in Italy, which is why I'm wearing my Mona Lisa shirt, my Mona Lisa shirt, here. So anyways, welcome to the show, guys, and good afternoon and good morning to Franco, and it's good evening here.

Peter:

Thanks for having us.

Bradley Sutton:

Now I, as I said, I met these gentlemen at a conference in Milan, Italy, recently and you know, just talking to them a little bit and I was like man, all right, I don't want to know too much more because this sounds interesting and I just love to find out about the rest of you know your stories. You know, along with everybody else, the podcast. Now, that was like a couple months ago. So the cool thing is, you know, with my terrible memory, the little that they did tell me I've already forgotten. So, guys, I am going to be learning everything you know, right, right with you, with all the listeners today. So let's, first of all, you know the first thing that that that blew me away was, here's Peter, and you guys can't see him. You know he, he is, he's in Asia right now and he is of Asian descent. You know like he looks. I'm half Asian. I don't look Asian. Peter looks Asian and here he is sitting with me in this Italian restaurant and ordering in perfect Italian, like, what? Like? Do I really have jet lag? What is going on right here? Let's start with your backstory, were you? Uh, oh, yeah. And, by the way, the way he speaks English was also a little bit different, so were you. Were you born and raised in Australia, or were you born and raised?

Peter:

Yes, sir, I grew up in Australia, but actually I was, I was. I was born in the States. I don't know if I mentioned that in the state.

Bradley Sutton:

That makes it even more interesting I love it when we're about here in the States, in Minneapolis, minneapolis Okay, man, that's, that's. That's still the coldest I've ever been. Uh, not sure I want to go back there in winter, but all right. So you were in Minneapolis, and how? I mean? You know, the Minneapolis Australia connection is not very common, so how did that happen?

Peter:

Yeah, so if I take it back a step further, as you said, um, I'm, I'm Asian. My parents were born in China.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay.

Peter:

And they. They met in the US, so that's why I was born there, okay. And then, after um, they finished their studies, they decided they wanted to move to Australia. So when I was a baby, still be immigrated to Australia.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, all right. And then now, growing up in Australia, what do you think you're going to be when you grow?

Peter:

Yeah, I didn't have any, you know, any special, different aspirations. I was like all the other kids.

Bradley Sutton:

Fine.

Franco:

Anything like that.

Peter:

Yeah.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay.

Peter:

I didn't think of being an entrepreneur or a commerce guy or anything like that.

Bradley Sutton:

Did you go to university in Australia?

Peter:

Yes, I did. I studied engineering Engineering. I had a very traditional upbringing?

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, okay. And then, upon graduation, did you start working in that field?

Peter:

Yes, I did I um. So as I had no real exposure to my Asian roots, I wanted to do one year in Asia. So I ended up working in Hong Kong. So I worked in uh in Hong Kong for a little while with uh in the engineering field related to engineering.

Bradley Sutton:

Did you speak Chinese?

Peter:

I did not. That was one of the reasons why I wanted to go to Asia, because, growing up in Australia, yeah. At that time, I was the only Asian kid in school. Um, there was no real interaction with other families or anything, so, um, I just spoke English.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, Now you know USA to Australia, to Hong Kong, how do you end up speaking Italian?

Peter:

So when I was in Hong Kong, um, I got headhunted for a job in Italy. So, yeah, I took the opportunity and went over there and um lived there for a few years and worked there for a few years.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, that's cool that you learn the language. You know some people, uh, you know, go to other countries and you know years and they don't are not able to learn the language. That's a, that's a cool, uh cool skill there and and all right. So so that brings us to. I mean, obviously you're not in Italy anymore, so how long did you stay in Italy?

Peter:

Right, uh, I think it was about five years. About five years, about five years in a minute. Okay.

Bradley Sutton:

All right, and it was it during your your run in Italy there that you learned that you started on Amazon. Or how did you go from engineering to e-commerce?

Peter:

No. So, um, while I was in Italy, I also got headhunted for another job and I was moved to Shanghai. And while I was in Shanghai, I met a one of my friends who I did sport with, was very much into Amazon, and he always kept talking about it. And then, finally, uh, one day I said this sounds really interesting. Why don't you show me what you're doing? And I offered to invest in what he he was his business, because it sounded like it was really good. And he said no, why don't you just try yourself? So I did it as a um, as a hobby, for a while, and then eventually it became became a full time thing.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, all right. All right. Now we're caught up to to kind of like the e-commerce list. Let's go ahead and take the journey with with Franco. Now for you it's a lot easier backstory Were you born and raised in Italy and lived there your whole life? Or or do you live in 17 million countries like, uh, peter?

Franco:

No, I was born and raised in Italy. I passed a couple of years in China, but it means that I was there like uh, every month of April and every month of October since 2003. So it's not was not like living permanently there. I was living in a hotel. So basically, I've been living my life in Italy.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, all right. Now. What about you? Uh, what did you go to university for?

Franco:

I did pure maths and when I was starting at the university, I thought that I would be doing academia after that. Okay, and then it changed my mind.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, what so? Upon graduation then, what did you enter into if you didn't want to go ahead and take that route that you thought you were going to take?

Franco:

Yeah, I did. When I graduated I didn't really know what to do because I changed my mind. I didn't want to be a university professor of math, so I was going into my other side of me, that was, being an entrepreneur. So I did an MBA and after that MBA I worked for a couple of years as a marketing assistant in a company and during that time I founded two companies, two different ones, with friends of mine. And then I resigned and from that point I always been an entrepreneur.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, all right. So what year did you go full-on into e-commerce? Then what did you say?

Franco:

I went into e-commerce probably more than 10 years ago.

Bradley Sutton:

Dot com or other marketplaces, or what Now?

Franco:

in Europe, we're selling.

Bradley Sutton:

At that time, what I meant was yeah, the dot com is on Europe, but what I meant was like online sales or was it like a marketplace that you were on?

Franco:

No, it was our own e-commerce, our own website, and I was selling on with my company. I was selling rubber trucks that are the equivalent of tire for excavators and accessories for construction equipment, so something that probably even today you cannot sell on Amazon because like super huge and super heavy.

Bradley Sutton:

So you exited that company and then you said you became like a full-time entrepreneur. What was that endeavor like Full-time into? Like what was your? Was it just still online sales, or now you got into Amazon, or what happened there?

Franco:

Okay, so well, now most of my time is well, 100% of my time is on Amazon. But yeah, the other company, the one that's now, is doing Amazon as a long story, because it started in 1999. And we've been doing so many different stuff because we started from scratch with nothing. So we started doing multimedia content, then we went into doing CD and DVD duplication that means producing physical discs, then USB flash drives, accessories for smartphones, electronics in general, and then medical devices. When we went into medical devices, we went quite big on our e-commerce. That was not something that we were doing in this company. We're doing business to business mainly. And then from that, we went into Amazon. Not that we even had tried to do Amazon before, because we opened the Amazon account in 2014. But it was just a sort of let's see what's happening there, not really investing in that. So we were becoming big on Amazon since 2020.

Bradley Sutton:

All right, now we're kind of caught up in a similar timeline here. Let's go back to Peter then. Are you still selling your first product today, peter?

Peter:

Yes, I think I started with two or three, and all of those three products I'm still selling. How? Long has that been?

Bradley Sutton:

I started in 2017.

Peter:

Wow.

Bradley Sutton:

The same product. How many reviews do you have now approximately on that one?

Peter:

Maybe 3,000 or something like that. Reviews and ratings.

Bradley Sutton:

All right, so you're still selling the same stuff that you got into. How did you find that first product? Did you just take some course that a lot of people did and then just use the criteria to find the product and just struck gold in your first one? Or how in the world did you hit a home run with your very first product?

Peter:

So my friend had done the ASM course and so he suggested I did it as well. He told me the beginnings that I was doing the normal thing everyone was doing Just looking for a product that had an opportunity, that seemed like a good, not too competitive, good price, etc. Etc. And I was just lucky, I picked something that could last well.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, during this time you said you were back in China or were you in Italy?

Peter:

No, I was already in Shanghai at that point.

Bradley Sutton:

Ready in China? Okay, and then. So what marketplace did you launch this product on? Usa or Europe?

Peter:

Yeah, so I started in the USA. But I think within the first year I knew I wanted to be in Europe. So I immediately started in the European marketplace. I applied for VAT and everything. So yeah, pretty soon after the US Europe, I was into Europe.

Bradley Sutton:

Now? Was it any more easy than another person because you had lived in Italy before, or that meant nothing? Were you an American citizen, since you were born in America?

Peter:

Technically I have dual citizenship, but I always traveled on Australian passport. But, answering your question. So when I started Europe, I wanted to try the UK and Italy first before going into all the other countries. So, yes, there would have been a small advantage, starting with the Italian market, because I didn't have to worry too much about translations and more understanding what things were going. So small advantage, I would say, but not huge advantage.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, All right Now. In the first couple of years of selling on Amazon, what was your peak of sales for like a year? Gross sales.

Peter:

I think it was about the second or the third year I reached seven figures. So I was going at seven figures for a while, but in the last two years I decided to focus more on profitability than revenue. So it's now in six figures, but making more profit overall. Now at what?

Bradley Sutton:

point did, like you said, it become your full-time job. At what level did you have to get to for it, to replace your engineering jobs that you've been doing for most of your adult?

Peter:

life. Yeah, I was able to replace it. I think it was maybe three or four years into the business, maybe four years.

Bradley Sutton:

You say you sell in multiple marketplaces. Do you aim for the same profit across the board, or is there a marketplace that's giving you better profit over another?

Peter:

For sure, Europe is way more profitable than the US, for products Is it? The shipping? Is it the?

Bradley Sutton:

PPC or what's you know, you're able to charge a higher price. What's the difference?

Peter:

It's the sellers in Europe. There's less of them, in my category at least, and the sellers are less sophisticated so they're not as good at branding PPC and just the basic stuff.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, all right, let's go back to Franco then. So when you started on, amazon sounds like you started doing different things, but was there a point where you were only doing the medical devices, as you said, or did you start with only medical devices and that's all you've been doing this whole time?

Franco:

When I started in 2014,. We started with electronic, with accessories for smartphones, but I mean, we were making money with other stuff, so we were, we didn't really take it care of a lot about that and we were a little bit inexperienced. So we also did a couple of mistakes, like in the quality of the products. So we just like got a lot of bad reviews and we say, okay, we are making other stuff, we don't care about this, and we just kept the account open but we didn't use it. When, in 2020, we started doing medical devices, we went big almost immediately on Amazon. But before that, as I said, we were doing pretty well, like six or seven months before, on our e-commerce. That was the same e-commerce that was selling the electronics. That was like that website that we changed it and were you?

Bradley Sutton:

and were you only selling in Amazon Europe?

Franco:

Yes, because I'm proud to do not have the certification for selling in the US. They are very highly restricted and certified, so the regulatory stuff in US is completely different.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, what's been your peak year of gross sales? Approximately how much? 10 million, 10 million only in Europe in one year in medical devices. Yes, wow, is it safe to say that now Amazon is the main, as opposed to your?

Franco:

website. Are you still even?

Bradley Sutton:

doing anything on the websites or just all Amazon.

Franco:

We still have it. But I think it's very important because one of the reasons why we were successful on Amazon is because we know so well our customer. We know so well what they want from the product and when we launch a product we can tell to our customer. There is also this new product. You can also find this in Amazon, so it gives a lot of help. But because of the growth that we had on Amazon, we have a little bit of neglected our website. So as soon as we have more banned, we should keep making the website better and grow the website as well.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, as Peter was saying, europe is very profitable for him, partly in fact due to low competition. I would imagine being in the medical device field makes it even less competition. Would that be a fair assessment that it's very few competitors you have, or has it gotten a little bit more tough to?

Franco:

So I would say there are not so many, but the ones that are there are very aggressive, okay.

Bradley Sutton:

Aggressive as in they might do some black hat strategies and things like that, or what do you mean by aggressive?

Franco:

Yes, also Because on medical, it's very like you can get suspended for any kind of claim. So yeah, it's quite an aggressive field.

Bradley Sutton:

What's the craziest thing that has happened to you. I would assume that you've maybe had your account shut down or at least products suspended or what's been some crazy experiences you've had.

Franco:

The craziest things that happened to me was a competitor that wanted to get rid of all the big seller of the same product, so it creates some fake test report. It passed those tests to the media and from media they went on national TV and that was insane At the same time. Hold on, hold on.

Bradley Sutton:

So he made some fake report about like that your product is like unsafe, or something gave it to like a TV station and it got in TV.

Franco:

The first thing to give it to the media, to a newspaper To a newspaper and it made the biggest newspaper. From the newspaper, bump it to the national TV.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, and then and then. So what was the result? Like, did Amazon see that and then shut you down, or did you start getting bad reviews, or what?

Franco:

happened At the same. We were waiting experience on all the way to do stuff properly on Amazon. I mean, we didn't even have the brand registry at that time, so they were also able to hijack. At the same time, they hijacked our product and they left all our picture, the branding of our product, but we could not access our listing anymore. It's insane. I know it's insane.

Bradley Sutton:

Wow.

Franco:

Up to now I haven't heard of anyone that has an attack like that.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, it's intense.

Franco:

Yeah, and after like so the listing was destroyed because one month to get back the ownership of the listing and when it happened it was not possible to. I mean, it was like flu. That was probably more than a thousand of bad reviews, one thousand of, like one star reviews.

Bradley Sutton:

Now did the newspapers and media and stuff? Did they ever submit like retraction or correction?

Franco:

Oh well, yes, the newspaper, they we submitted like a press release, the newspaper, the newspaper added our press release to our today news. But customers don't really care. I mean, amazon business is a quick business, it's very quick. So we went, we look into that with, probably I think that the best lawyer we could find we usually have very good lawyers and there was no other way to have it fixed as soon as we wanted or to have like an economical compensation because of the way it was structured. Okay, the attack.

Bradley Sutton:

All right Now, peter, you know like it's safe to say that you've never had that level of attack, or you know?

Peter:

I don't think anybody has had that level of attack. So but I'm sure you have had my things on national television.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, I'm sure you've had some crazy things happen. Anything like anything that's happened to you. That would you say. You would call it. You know, your, your, your your kind of like worse experience on Amazon or craziest experience.

Peter:

I haven't had anything really horrible. I've had a lot of the standard like minor attacks from competitors, but probably the scariest one I had was Just I think it was three weeks before Christmas a big competitor in our space did an IP complaint against me and had my products suspended, but luckily I was able to get it back within a week. That could have easily dragged on for months, but I was very lucky. I got it back in a week. That was obviously very scary. How did you get it back? Just submitted appeals I used. I have a lawyer which I use all the time and even they said that's way faster than we normally see. You were really lucky. So I was just super lucky.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, now you know let's not just scare everybody with all these bad stories. Peter, you know, sticking with you what's the best thing that's happened You're the craziest in a good way or biggest surprise, or biggest win you've had over the years on Amazon.

Peter:

I think the first one, which was really a happy experience for me. I've heard other guests on your podcast. I think they're similar. I had a product, one of my standard products, and in the UK suddenly I was having 10 times sales that I normally have. So and this was quite early on, so I still didn't know about being attacked, so I wasn't worried like I would be now, and in those days you could still write to the customers quite easily. So I was writing to a few of them and I got a response back that a celebrity. I've seen the products used by a celebrity on their you know, on their social media. So yeah, that was fantastic and yeah, I knew that celebrity. So it was pretty cool.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome, awesome. Now you know you've sold in multiple marketplaces, but you know you're probably an expert, I would say on the Italian one. Is what you do on Amazon Italy, 100% the same strategy across the board? Like, I mean, obviously the language is different, but is your PPC strategy the same? Is your branding strategy the same? Is your keyword research strategy the same, or is there something different that you're doing in Italy? You know due to your experience there.

Peter:

No, I would say everything's particularly the same. As I mentioned before, it was a small advantage, and even now it's practically no advantage with the translation software that's available. So I'm just doing the same thing in all the marketplaces.

Bradley Sutton:

That's good to know, because you know some sellers out there. You know they start in a marketplace, whether it's Italy, whether it's Germany, whether it's USA, and they're like kind of scared sometimes to branch out because they're like oh man, I'm gonna have to learn a whole bunch of new strategies to go to this new marketplace. But no, it's across the board. I mean sure. You know every now, and you know there's VAT, you know, and then in Japan you might have to do a little something different. You know, but for the most part the strategy is the same. Now, what's going on these days with you know? You mentioned you sell in UK and Italy. What changed after the Brexit? Like, now do you have to send inventory to UK and then send inventory to Italy separately, and it's completely separated and segregated, or what was the difference after Brexit?

Peter:

Yeah, so you've probably heard of Pan-European and probably you'll. Listeners who have some experience know about Pan-European. Maybe I can explain that really quickly. Go ahead, please. It's like the US when you send a shipment to, it goes to one location and then Amazon will spread it out all over the US, right?

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, we call that. North American remote fulfillment is what it's called over here.

Peter:

Right, so they have the same thing in Europe. If you're VAT, you registered in their core countries, which was UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain I think that's all of them. It was the same thing. You'd send it to one country and then they would spread it out amongst all the countries as if it was one country. So that was very convenient. When Brexit happened, the UK became its own separate country, so all the work that you do logistically, which you used to do for Europe, then you had to repeat it for the UK. So it's a bit of a hassle, time-wise.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, all right. Now, switching back to Franco, you had the worst thing that somebody could possibly imagine happening. Now the same question that I gave Peter what was the best thing that's happening? I mean, other than the fact that you're not even selling the USA and you can still gross 10 million a year? I mean that by itself is pretty amazing, but what else other than that is a cool thing. That's happened to kind of like pump up people's spirits after feeling so sorry for you.

Franco:

Yeah, well, I think that if I put on my hand the bad thing and the other thing, the good things, the good thing outweigh the bad thing. And the best one was the velocity to which we could reach the number one in health and personal care category with our products like in three weeks.

Bradley Sutton:

So number one, as in BSR, one in the whole health category.

Franco:

Yes, yes, Wow, that's pretty impressive. Yeah, that was between 2020 and 2021,. We reached that position in like three weeks with our product.

Bradley Sutton:

that's why we got a time Three weeks from the time you launched yes, Wow, okay, well, okay, well, then tell me, I gotta pause you there. Then how in the world did that happen? Like, did you have some crazy campaign? Was it all organic?

Franco:

How would you go from zero to number one so fast? No, they were proud of the COVID.

Bradley Sutton:

Ah, okay, okay, that's the reason. Now, did you was this after COVID you started? Or did you just get lucky, like it was something you were starting and you had no idea COVID was happening and the timing was just right? Or how in the world did you manage that?

Franco:

Well, we have been manufacturing in China since, I told you, since 2003,. We have a very strong presence in China, and so when COVID hit in China in January 2020, I knew it was coming to Italy or to Europe. I was pretty sure. I also wrote article about that, and so when that happened, I was a sort of reference for many people to say, hey, can you help in something? Because you know, italy was the first country in the Western world to be hit very hard, and so we started doing those like masks, those kind of product for COVID, and at the beginning, we were just doing that for hospitals, like for what was really needed.

Franco:

And then after that, we went to doing this on our e-commerce and the reason was that we ran out of money because the request was so insane Because we look into that so deeply that we were 100% legit. Our problem was like, probably the safest you can buy at the right price. We didn't want to speculate. We really want to have the country, and so we had a good product at the right price and we have an insane amount of demand for all those state-owned stuff, like the police even the finance police was buying from us. And so when we ran out of money. We opened the e-commerce because we need some very short money cycles and you know, on e-commerce you get the money like right away. And so after that, six months later, and also we got a lot of. Our e-commerce was an instant success as well, because we were supplying all the hospitals and so our product with our brand was in every hand, everyone hands and so our e-commerce was an instant success.

Franco:

And then we asked it like in April 2020, to our product to be listed on Amazon, and Amazon didn't accept it. And you have to consider that at that time on Amazon, it was fluted with product that were not legit, like all the things you were finding on Amazon related to the kind of product was like not compliant. We submitted our product. We were rejected. We said, okay, I don't care, I have other stuff to do. And then in October, I tried to resubmit the product. It was rejected again, okay, but in November, for I don't know what I receive, like Without asking again to to be listed, the I so the listing the listing was there but was not like, not active. The list he became active.

Franco:

From that point, I think that because we have so much, I'd say, brand recognition, yeah. Trust from the customer. As soon as we told the customer we are on Amazon was like that. I mean, we could have been number one, probably in a week. The only problem was the, the velocity, and that we need to have the product on their warehouse. Yeah, and so it was like giving three days out of stock. One day, then three, because of the space that Amazon was giving us, because when you are number one, you have to send a truck every day, or even more and and so, yeah, that's the story, that's cool.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, you know, for the last part of this, you know let's just go back and forth with some, some strategies, you know, and I don't mean, oh, you know, keep your a cost down and and and have a nice logo, or you know it's just standard stuff. But you know each of you to be at the position you are, you know which is, you know Amazon is your full-time business and you've reached six, seven, even eight figures. You know you've got to have some, some unique strategies and some, some things that are that you feel are the difference of why you've been so successful. So we'll start, you know, franco, with you. What is something that you know? So you know, it could be a PPC strategy, it could be a launch strategy, could be branding strategy. Uh, what? What's your first strategy of the day?

Franco:

I think that's still uh, the obsession with the product is a key. So like, uh, having the best product you can have for your customers, and so listening to all the advice and Now you can use AI and do all your research. But, uh, do the extra, the extra mile. Don't only use AI, because AI is very good to finding, um, like patterns, like to put in together Something that is saying a different way, but it's not good to find out liars, and many times in the outliers there are some very good gold nuggets, so talk with as many as you can, even even call them and Understand what are they paying, what are they, what they really want.

Franco:

When you have the best possible product, then you need to apply all the techniques that amazon Required. Like I have the best possible page. Uh, add those pains and uh, emotion of the customer reflected in your stack image At the best possible main image ever. Like, do a lot of testing, an insane amount of testing, until you know you will be the number one choice and never Let the customer down. Whatever they have a problem, solve it, solve it. Solve it, because then you have To, you have to reach the position, then you have to stick to in the position. Yeah, it's an ever-ending story.

Bradley Sutton:

All right, switching back to peter. Uh, what's your um first strategy you'd like to share?

Peter:

Uh, I'd give a general one and then maybe an amazon specific one. Very general. Uh, I think there's a lot of listeners on your podcast that are maybe just starting out, so I would suggest just to keep things simple. I've seen some people they they try and go to advanced from the beginning and it's uh, they get in over their head. They don't understand what's happening. So I would just keep it simple, even though I've been doing it for a long time. I I also Follow the same principle. I don't have any, I don't have any full-time staff. I I just try and keep things as simple as possible. And then, specifically for amazon, as I mentioned before, I think if you're, especially if you're getting started, you really need to think about products or a product that you can brand. And if you, if you can't brand a product for example, if you're doing I don't know stationary or Cleaning accessories or something, it's very difficult to build a brand around that, to build User excitement. So that's something you probably need to consider as well.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, Going back to Franco, you know like you can give us another strategy, but before you do that, I wanted to kind of like double down on what you were talking about. You know you were saying hey, you know, have the best listening, have the best images and and do a lot of testing. How are you doing this testing and how are you making sure that? You have you know the best.

Franco:

Well, I'm using all the Software as a service, as a this are available. So I like take my few four competitors and I test my main image against their, I mean against the main image of my competitors. Then I got all the advice from the pollers, like we choose this because of this, we don't like this because of that. We run AI on that. But we don't only run AI.

Franco:

I read all the response one by one and I try to see how can make it. I can make it better. And then I write like Something that, what, what need to be done. I pass this to my and I try to be very, very Pacific. Like many times, I take a piece of paper and make driving by myself, like this is how I want this to be, and then I pass to my designer and then the designer make a new Couple of variation and it test again and sometimes I go very deeply on that. Like I am not happy until, like I get that out of five possible choice of main image, my main image gets 60% of the clicks and the other four share the 40%.

Bradley Sutton:

So it's not just a matter of all right, hey, I won with 30%, another one has 28, another one has 26. That's even though you won. That's a failure to you until you can get to the 60%.

Franco:

Yeah, I won like 60% and 40% spread between the other four, then I know that I'll stand out, and this is the first step. Then I need to like the page has to be consistent. And then I need to maintain my promise to the customer.

Bradley Sutton:

Are you selling? You're still with Franco here. Are you selling in all European marketplaces, like including the newer ones like Poland, netherlands, or are you focused only on the bigger ones?

Franco:

So my sellers, I sell both on one P vendor center and three P seller central and I have all the accounts. I mean all the nine accounts in Europe, but the only one that really matters are the big five UK, Italy, Germany, Spain and France. And for the most of my product I cannot use the Pan European, as Pita does, because there are specific regulations for each. So there is on top there is the EU regulation, but then there are specific regulation on a country level. So, amazon, do not allow us to do the Pan AU. We need to stop the product on each country.

Peter:

Okay, that's a lot of work and increases your workload to manage your logistics in each country like that.

Franco:

Yeah.

Bradley Sutton:

All right, going back to Peter, you have any more strategies for us. But before you get to that, what about you? You mentioned UK and Italy. Are you also selling in all nine marketplaces, or are you only keeping your listings active in the big ones?

Peter:

Yeah, it was only UK and Italy when I first started in Europe to get an idea of how it worked.

Bradley Sutton:

And almost immediately.

Peter:

I think I only did UK and Italy for three months and then straight away I went into the Pan European.

Bradley Sutton:

So for the last few years.

Peter:

I've been, yeah, outside of the big five.

Bradley Sutton:

If you have to pick one of the newer ones, are they all doing equal or is there one that you feel? Hey, down the road, this could become the sixth one, that's a good question.

Peter:

Now I haven't really focused on any of the new ones. I think whether you're Belgium, sweden, I can't remember, but Poland's Check for public. But from what I've seen they're all very minimal. I haven't really put an effort into them. I wouldn't say there's one that particularly stands out.

Bradley Sutton:

And then for all of those, are you just using what Amazon does for the auto translation, or did you, did you commission official translation with a service or something? Obviously, you did the Italian one yourself, but what about for these other languages?

Peter:

Actually, I didn't do the Italian one myself. I used Yana's service, ylt shout out to Yana. But for the other marketplaces, no, I haven't specifically worked on those. I've just left it with Amazon doing their own translations, and then they have a similar system to NAF. So, for like for Canada and Mexico, then for the other countries that we just mentioned, they'll take the product from Germany or France or wherever, and then send it over. It's a similar system.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, all right. Any more specific strategies for us that you'd like to?

Peter:

share. I do a lot on social media. I don't know if you've seen that's been a huge part of improving profitability in the last two years. So the PPC costs were going up incredibly Like for us. It was getting. Tacos was getting up to 30%, maybe even 40% for some products and now, with some strong, a lot of work on the social media side and managed to bring that down to less than 5%, which I think is quite rare in the industry for the TACOS Less than 5% TACOS. Wow, that's very impressive and most of the TACOS is brand defense on the product page. So, yeah, that's been huge for us to make that change.

Bradley Sutton:

All right. What does the future hold for you, Franco? Like you, just hey, let's just keep going. Or are you looking to exit your business and retire? You looking to start any more brands, or what's your you looking one year down the road, five years down the road? Buying a lower division Italians football team, or like what's gonna, what's gonna.

Franco:

Yeah, yeah, maybe, maybe Now. Well, my dream would be to. I have my figure. My company reached nine figures. That's a very, very difficult endeavor, and at that level.

Bradley Sutton:

I think you might be ready for Inter Milan or AC Milan.

Franco:

Forget the lower division, you'll be ready.

Bradley Sutton:

Let's buy one of those.

Franco:

What else. And that could be through acquisitions of other brands or through expanding our product range. We have been looking to many, many things, okay what about you, Peter?

Bradley Sutton:

What's the future hold for you?

Peter:

Yeah, I'm just happy doing what I'm doing. I don't have any new term plans to sell the business. Enjoy what I do and just gonna keep going.

Bradley Sutton:

All right, excellent. Now why don't we just go ahead and close this out with a one or two sentence words of farewell in Italiano here. Start with Franco. Say something for the Italian community out there.

Franco:

The Italian community of the Amazon vendors has to grow to a great potential. Amazon has become one of the most important markets in Europe. So, guys, we're gonna win Amazon.

Bradley Sutton:

All right, and, peter, where were your Italian words of wisdom?

Peter:

Italian. If someone in Italy hears this, I'll pass their Shanghai. So they're content with the Vedetti.

Bradley Sutton:

All right.

Peter:

I have no idea.

Bradley Sutton:

This host of the podcast is a crazy guy.

Peter:

Shoot a sexy host of this podcast is what I said.

Bradley Sutton:

All right, there we go. That's good, I'll believe that. All right. Well, guys, thank you so much. It was great to have you on. It was great to meet you and hang out in Italy. We found that little nice restaurant that I was not expecting much, but I was really, really delicious food. My whole time in Italy was good food, but I look forward to seeing you at a future conference, whether it be in Asia, north America or Europe. So thanks for coming on.

Peter:

Thank you.

Franco:

Thank you.

#508 - 2024 Amazon Keyword Research Masterclass: Part 3

In this third installment of our Seller Strategy Masterclass for Amazon keyword research, we pull back the curtain on advanced Amazon keyword research strategies, unveiling how discovering what keywords competitors are getting sales from - ones you don't even have in your listing - can revolutionize your Amazon FBA business. We shed light on the power of Helium 10's keyword research tool, Cerebro, and how it can swiftly identify highly searched keywords that your product is ranking for. We also discuss the clever use of the multi-ASIN search to see which keywords your competitors are capitalizing on that you aren't even indexed for. 

Continuing the conversation, we explore the advantage of understanding your relative rank on relevant keywords, and how to use filters to spot keywords where your competitors outrank you. We share some keen insights on how to leverage sponsored ads to boost your rank, and even how to find keywords that your competitors aren't running sponsored ads for. We believe that this strategy could make you a ton of money. Listen in as we divulge ways to automate keyword research, and how to use Magnet to identify loosely related keywords and get quick information on a list of keywords.

Wrapping up the discussion, we delve into how you can get ahead of your competitors by finding hidden gems and uncovering keywords that your competitors are getting sales from that you may not have thought of. We provide guidance on using Magnet to find the most searched terms starting with a word or phrase and using the word frequency feature to identify trends. We also show you how to use auto-complete to quickly find the most searched terms. Don't miss out on this episode filled with actionable strategies that you can implement right away to give your business a competitive edge!

 

In episode 508 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley talks about:

• 00:00 - Advanced Strategies for Amazon Keyword Research
• 10:36 - Product Placement for Competitor's Importance
• 16:39 - Sponsored Rank Average and Keyword Competitors
• 20:05 - New Feature in Cerebro
• 23:16 - Automating Competitor Keyword Tracking
• 27:47 - Analyzing Keywords Using Magnet
• 32:55 - Expanding Niche With Keyword Filters
• 39:32 - Keyword Search Volume and Popularity Ranking

► 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 is the final part in a three part series on advanced Amazon keyword research, and we're going to talk about really cool strategies, such as how to find out what keywords competitors are getting sales from that you don't even have in your listing. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think you want to know what keywords are driving the most sales for listings on Amazon. 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. h10.me/cerebro. Don't forget to use the Cereous Sellers podcast discount coupon 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 is a completely BS free, unscripted and unrehearsed organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world, and today is part three in a three part series where we've been giving you guys just nonstop fire strategies all about keyword research, and I've been telling you in these episodes these are the kind of strategies that could potentially make you thousands of dollars. And if you want to raise my flag in other words the BS flag on that statement, let me just illustrate why I say that it could mean thousands of dollars easily. All right, let's just say you're a newish seller, all right, maybe you've only got one product and it's doing pretty good. You know, maybe you're projected to get about $100,000 worth of sales for a year. All right.

Bradley Sutton:

Now how many sales come from search? You know it varies by category, varies by product. If you take a look at your search career performance and look at the attributed sales to keywords that actually happen within 24 hours of the click, it's kind of a long, a long story how to calculate that out, but you know, maybe you see that 30% of your sales come from keywords. Now, obviously there's probably more that comes from it, just from your PPC alone. But again, let's just talk about that stuff that happens within 24 hours of a search of a keyword, which is called a denormalized search results. All right, so 30% of your sales come from keywords and you're doing 100,000 a year. That's like $30,000 come from keywords. Right Now, let's just say that, hey, that $30,000 that comes from keywords, it's from like 30 main keywords that you have already, on your own, found and you're getting sales from.

Bradley Sutton:

Now. Imagine if you could just add five more strategies, all right, total, I've given you, or at the end of today, you'll have 30 different keyword strategies that I've been giving you in episodes, or the the first edition, the second edition, now the third edition uh, over 30 strategies. From those 30 strategies, let's just say, for some strange reason, all you can get out of it is only five more keywords to get sales. Only five more keywords, all right, how much is that? If you were already getting $30,000 from 30 keywords, you just added a thousand dollars worth of sales for the year. All right, let's just say, no, you don't just have one product. You've been selling on Amazon for a few years. You got maybe 10 products doing about a million dollars a year. Total, all right, not even each, just just total.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, how much if you're adding like five, only five keywords that you've discovered through these strategies, all right, that's $10,000 worth of extra sales just by following some of these strategies. Now, I really think you guys can get more than five new keywords out of these 30 strategies that we've given you. So, again, if you're just hopping in on this episode, you can go ahead and listen to it, but, but I suggest watching the? Uh, the other two episodes first. Now, those episodes are 506 and 507. Uh, if you're watching this on the web, you can just get that at h10.me forward slash 506 or forward slash 507 and catch it on YouTube. But anyways, um, even if you just want to go ahead and keep watching this, no problem, all right, let's go ahead and hop into the strategies. All right, uh, this is, if you guys have been keeping count, this is strategy number 21,.

Bradley Sutton:

Out of our Cerebro strategies, all right, and this one is how to see which keywords your competitors are getting sales from that you aren't even indexed for. Now, why is this important? How can it make you money? Well, this is like the easiest no brainer of them. All right, your competitors very similar product to you. They're literally getting sales from a keyword because you know they're high on page one. Uh, for a decent search form keyword and you don't even have the keyword in your listing. All right, doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand how this is one of the easiest strategies of everything that we have here that can put money in your pocket. Uh, how do you go ahead and do it? Let's go ahead and hop in.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, the first thing you're going to do is this works on a multi-ASIN search in Cerebro. So you put your product first in Cerebro and then you had put, you know, like four, five, six, seven, eight, nine other competitors right there as well. Now what you want to do is you are first going to hit position rank, zero and zero position rank. What that filter is is it means your rank, which is why you have to put your product first in this list. So if you put zero and zero for minimum and maximum, that means you're saying I am not ranked at all. And then what you're going to want to do is you're going to go ahead and go to the number of competitors, filter All right, number of competitors, and you're going to go ahead and put minimum one. That's all you care about. You just want to at least sell at least one person, and then nothing on the max. And then you're going to go to competitor rank and then you're going to put, let's just say minimum one, let's say maximum 10. So that means not only are your is at least one of your competitors on page one, but they are, like you know, at the top of page one. Like I said, they're probably getting sales. I'll go ahead and put since this is the US marketplace, I'll go ahead and put a minimum search volume of 400. You know you can do more or less than paying if anything comes up. And I mean the goal is for if you do this, you don't want any keywords to show up, right, you know that's the goal, like you're doing. All right, if no products or if no keywords show up.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, in this particular case, only one keyword came up Gothic cabinet, all right. So the way that you can see if a keyword you have is indexed or not you might not even have it in your listing Go ahead and take this list of keywords. Now, in this case it's just one keyword and you're going to want to go into index checker, right, that's the next step. So normally you might have, you know like 10, 15 keywords. Me, I'm doing all right. So I only have you know one keyword on there, but you're going to go ahead and paste the keywords into index checker and you're going to put your ASIN as the ASIN and index checker that you are checking, all right. So I'm going to copy my ASIN, I'll bring it over into index checker and then you just run index checker and then what you want to do is see does it say that you have indexed or not? All right, in this case. Yes, I am indexed. All right.

Bradley Sutton:

Now let's just say one of the some of these keywords was not indexed. Well, the way to know if you are indexed or not, make sure to check the videos here in index checker and you can find out how exactly to check if you are indexed or not. But again, super simple, just a few clicks. Again, you want to see where you are not ranking at all, not even in the top seven pages, but your competitors. At least one of them is getting sales from a keyword because they're in the top, in the top 10 positions. And then the next step, if you just want to see if maybe you're not indexed at all, is go to index checker. One more quick thing I'm not sure if I mentioned this before, but in another video we have match type here, all right. So I've been talking in strictly about organic ranks in a lot of these videos, but helium 10 is checking if they're also in the now defunct editorial recommendations.

Bradley Sutton:

If they're showing up in an Amazon's choice widget, that's different than just the regular Amazon's choice button, but in our badge it's an Amazon's choice widget. That's sponsored ads. There's a highly rated widget. They're sponsored brand header videos or sponsored brand header ads and also sponsored brand video. So these are all different match types in Cerebro, where it'll have a little letter next to the keyword showing that, hey, this is what keywords you know what's the match type of this keyword. It'll say oh or s or other things like that. So this is also valuable. Like, maybe you want to know, hey, where is my competitor showing up in the search results? And they've got a sponsored video ad. All right, hey, where's my competitor showing up in a sponsored brand ad? Hey, well, what are the keywords where my competitor is showing up for like five or six or seven different things all on page one. I mean they literally could be, could be doing that. So this is a great way to look at that as well.

Bradley Sutton:

All right, let's get into the next strategy how to find the keywords. Competitors are beating you on. All right. In the previous strategy, we talked about looking for the keywords where a competitor is getting sales from, but you might not even be ranked or indexed at all, and definitely not ranked. But you know what? If you're ranked on page four, five or six, or even on the bottom of page one, but most of your competitors are ahead of you, all right, why is this important? How can this make you money? Again, this is one of those no brainers. Hey, you want to show up before your competitors, right? So maybe you know there's a keyword Gothic decor and there's six competitors on there that are coffin shelves, and you're a coffin shelf. Right, there's customers who are searching for Gothic decor, who are looking for a coffin shelf. Now, they don't see all of those other products on the page. You know, maybe there's some Skull Candleholder or some moon shaped mirror or some weird Gothic thing, right, they're looking at only the coffin shelf. So it doesn't really matter the position placement there. Like, hey, is this page one, position five? Because if the first four products are all something different than what they're looking for, it's almost as if those don't exist, right? Does that make sense?

Bradley Sutton:

So, in this sense, like what we call your relative rank is important. Where are you showing up in the search results compared to your direct competitors? Because those are the ones who you are fighting for. You know the sale from. How do you view that? All right, so, again, this works if you have done a multi-ASIN search and then I, you know, I like to go ahead and let's put a minimum of 300 search volume. Now, what you want to go to is where it's called relative rank. All right, so I'm going to go here to the relative rank and let's just say hey, where am I? At least three, four. All right, that means I'm at least the third one that comes up. And let's go ahead, apply filters and we probably going to have a lot of keywords here. Yeah, look at this, 38 keywords show up. And so, again, these are all the keywords now where at least two of my competitors are beating me on. All right, if I wanted to, if I wanted to see all the keywords where four out of the competitors were beating me on, I would go ahead and put a minimum of four in relative rank.

Bradley Sutton:

Now let me explain how, again, this relative rank works. Here's coffin shelf. It says over here under relative rank, I am six. That is terrible. This is the most important keyword for my listing and it says I am six. So what I can do is I can put my mouse over this relative rank and I can see where my competitors are ranking. For Now, the one that is my ASIN. It's going to be in bold. So right here, clear as day, I can see why my relative rank is six. I see one competitor is one, another is two, another is nine, another is 14, another is 15. And then there I am, at 17. So here is a complete list of keywords where at least two out of my main competitors they are showing up on page one before me or just anywhere in the search results. You know, maybe I'm on page two, maybe they're on page two and I'm on page five. You know, regardless, this is a great metric that you want to look at. Where are your competitors being on? You are ranking for the keyword, so at least you're in the. You're in the ballgame, right, but you're not getting sales when your competitors are all showing up before you. So a great quick way to see where your competitors are being you from, find those keywords, figure out, you know, like, how you can increase your rank. You know, maybe it's by putting some more money at your sponsored ads for those keywords and hope your conversion rate goes up. But find a way to start beating your competitors so that you're the first in the relative rank On those keywords.

Bradley Sutton:

Next strategy how to find keywords that your competitors are not running sponsored ads for. Now, wow, how can this strategy make you money? Um, you know your main keywords. No matter what, if none of your competitors are, you know, doing ads for it, or if all of them are, you still got to do ads for it. All right, you want to rank for it, for you know your most important keywords. But sometimes you know you might want to look for keywords that have a little less competition, or maybe at least your main competitors are not the run the ones running sponsored ads. You could view that as opportunity to make some money. So how can you find that out? Again, if you are in a Multi-ASIN search, you have the results here. Um, sometimes you can go ahead and put a minimum search volume of 300. That's what I'm going to do right here.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, what you want to do is you want to. There's a couple ways you can do this. One way is finding out where not many people, not many of your competitors, are running sponsored ads at all. In that case, you're going to want to find the filter that says sponsored rank count and you can put like a maximum of, let's just say, two. What that means is, hey, show me the keywords here where my competitors a maximum of only Uh two are even running sponsored ads. Now, a lot of times, a crazy number of keywords are going to show up here, like even this one says a thousand keywords. So in this situation, I'm actually going to go ahead and put another Filter, which is the competitor rank average. All right, that means, hey, these aren't just random sponsored ads they're running. These are ones where they're probably, you know, getting organically around page one or two. So I'm going to go ahead and put minimum competitor rank average one, maximum 50, and then when I apply that filter now the number is going to be a lot less of these keywords.

Bradley Sutton:

And here, 56 keywords, like, for example, here's one right here gothic bookcase. It's probably is fairly relevant, right, and I can see there are only there is nobody running sponsored. Good grief, I can't believe this. There is zero competitors running sponsored ads on gothic bookcase, which is a very relevant keyword. Here's another one coffin bookshelf. Only one competitor is showing up in sponsored ads. Uh, for this keyword gothic cabinet Nobody is running sponsored ads. So that's a great way again to see which keywords your competitors are not even focusing on.

Bradley Sutton:

Another situation could be instead of the number of competitors, you might want to look at sponsored rank average and maybe you want to see where their average is like, at least Like 30, you know meaning they're probably a lot of competitors are not even on the first. You know few pages of sponsored ads and if I go ahead and apply the filters on that, so again, sponsored rank average, minimum 30. I'm not putting anything in sponsored rank count. Now I see nine filtered keywords and see here, here's one keyword right here coffin decor. There are a couple of competitors showing up in sponsored ads and this is a keyword that a lot of people are on page one for. But look at this the main competitors are are 33rd and 69th as far as sponsored ads. That means that's like page three and page Six probably in sponsored ads. That means if I come in, I would potentially be the only person. If I bid high, I would be the only person on page one For this keyword in sponsored ads.

Bradley Sutton:

So another great way to find valuable information that can save you money in advertising so that, uh, you know that you can focus on certain keywords and you're not going to have much A competition at all on the flip side. Maybe you're just curious hey, where are most of my main competitors? Uh, you know advertising for where they, where are they, concentrating their top of search spend? You can go opposite on there, say you can say, hey, show me, uh, you know, put in the filter here, show me where they're sponsored rank average, regardless of their competitor rank average. So me where it's between one and 20, meaning that on average they're on page one, and that's going to show you where most of your competitors are concentrating their spend. So a lot of different ways that you can filter through this information, but it's important to do that so you can really like dial in your ppc game.

Bradley Sutton:

How to get a quick view of top products for amazon keywords. Why is this important? Well, as you've been seeing from a lot of our Cerebro strategies here, sometimes when you do search results, uh or in Cerebro, you can have hundreds, if not thousands, of keywords. Not all of these keywords are completely relevant to your product and you shouldn't just base it on our competitor performance score. You know, like I said before, that that doesn't mean it's always 100 relevant or that there's not other Keywords that are very relevant.

Bradley Sutton:

If you're looking for uh keywords where most of the top you know 10 products or the pages, the ones that are at the top of page one, are somewhat similar to your product, you know how would you? How would you do that One by one? Well, you would have to go and click each keyword and look on amazon to see all right, gothic decor, are these all coffin shelves? Oh no, when I click on gothic decor, I see a whole bunch of of random products like dream catchers and and gothic bed frames and stuff like that. Right? So now you know, okay, this is probably not a keyword where a lot of people are searching for coffin shelves. Right on the flip side, if I search for, um, you know, mini coffin bookshelf, all of the all of the products might look like one of my products. I hope that makes sense.

Bradley Sutton:

So, instead of having to go one by one and just checking what these keywords look like, we have a brand new way in order to uh see this inside of Cerebro. Let me show you how to do it. All right. So, in in Cerebro, if you mouse over any of the keywords, you're going to see this pop-up window, if you don't have the advanced view on, and you're going to see thumbnails of the last time, helium 10 check the top 10 products, the thumbnails of the main image. Super, super cool. You no longer have to go to amazon to take a look at the keyword. You'll instantly see the thumbnails. If you're looking for a little bit more information, you, you're gonna. You can hit the advanced view and if you hit advanced view Now, you can actually see the titles of those products, you can see the price, you can see if it has variations. The rating Super, super cool guys is one of the uh, newest features of Cerebro. Um, you know, depending on when you're watching this, you might not have full access Uh to it yet. Um, but this is a really cool feature where you no longer have to go click one by one and then look off of Uh, helium 10 back on amazon to see what kind of products are on the top of page one.

Bradley Sutton:

All right, how to automate your amazon keyword research. All right, we've been talking about a lot of strategies as far as how to find top keywords from your competitors. You know from your own listings, uh, etc. Now, the way I showed it to you guys, it doesn't take too much time. But maybe you've got 10, 20 products and you wanna be checking your competitor's keywords once a week. Well, it can start getting pretty tedious and time consuming and a lot of data that you're gonna have to process to every single week or every other week, go through all of your products and all of your competitor products and know, all right, is my competitor ranking for any new keywords that I didn't know? So I can put it in my listing. So how would you like a way to just put time back in your hands? I mean, time is money, right, so this could take hours and hours a month, but instead of that, let Helium 10 do the work for you.

Bradley Sutton:

How can you automate keyword harvesting from your competitor's keywords? Well, it actually goes back to your dashboard, all right. So what you're gonna wanna do is you're gonna wanna go back to just your regular dashboard, okay, and you're going to hit insight settings on the very bottom left of the screen insight settings, all right. Once you do that, you are going to find the keyword insight settings and then you are going to hit four insight types and you are going to select customize under keyword suggestions based on my competitors, all right. So hopefully you've set your competitors and if you haven't set your competitors on your insights dashboard, there's videos that we have on our dashboard on how to do that. But you wanna put your top five competitors for all of your products and these are the ones that you probably are running Cerebro off of.

Bradley Sutton:

Once you've got that done, like I said, go to your insights types, hit under customize under keyword suggestions based on my competitors, and what you're gonna do here is you're gonna enter exactly whatever you like to do inside of Cerebro. You're basically automating your Cerebro process. So maybe you said, hey, I wanna know any keyword where the search volume is at least 400 and my rank is like maybe I'm not ranking at all, so I'm gonna put zero and zero, but at least one of my competitors is ranking in the top 20 positions. All right, that's what you just fill it out, just like you would on Cerebro. So now, any time that one of my competitors for any one of my products, right, is getting sales from a new keyword that I'm not ranked for now. I'm going to get actually an insight on it or a notification right here and it'll tell me hey, your competitor is ranking for these new keywords.

Bradley Sutton:

Would you like to start tracking it? Would you like to start putting it in your listing? This is like super, super cool guys, next level If you don't have access to it, you're gonna need the diamond plan in order to access this. But I mean talk about putting money and time back in your hands. I mean this saves hours and hours of work. You now don't have to even run Cerebro almost ever again on your products, unless you wanna do some advanced to filtering, but you can now get those keywords delivered to you in a message saying hey, your competitor is getting sales from these keywords. Do you wanna put it into your listing? So, guys, if you wanna start automating it, make sure to set that up on your insights dashboard. All right, guys.

Bradley Sutton:

So we just went over a lot of strategies in the last three episodes on Cerebro 25 of them in total. I've just got a couple of strategies here using our other keyword research tool, magnet, so let's go ahead and get into it. How to find loosely related keywords to an individual keyword phrase. How can this be important? How can it make you money? Well, we showed you in Cerebro I had to get a lot of really specific information. But maybe you're doing a little bit broader research and you wanna kind of like, hey, instead of just looking at what these exact products are ranking for, let me have a broad view of keywords that are very loosely related and some closely related and see if something comes up that maybe didn't come up in Cerebro. Let me show you how to do that. If you go to Magnet, our tool, let's go ahead and enter a coffin shelf if that's my main keyword and I'm gonna hit get keywords.

Bradley Sutton:

And now what's going to show up here are all of the keywords that are loosely related to coffin shelf, and how these keywords are sourced is from different databases. One of the sources is organic, meaning these are the keywords that other products ranking for coffin shelf are also ranking for. Right, we've also got smart complete. Smart complete means hey, let's take this word, coffin shelf and then what are some long tail keywords related to it? I'll show you guys in a later strategy how to a little bit more recent. I'll show you in a later strategy a little bit more detail on that. And then last it's showing Amazon recommended keywords for other products that are on the coffin shelf search results, all right.

Bradley Sutton:

So for example, I just typed in coffin shelf and take a look, even without any filtering at all. Look at some of these interesting keywords that come up Gothic kitchen decor, punk room decor, creepy room decor, goth bedroom, curiosity cabinet. So these are other keywords that maybe wouldn't have come up in my Cerebro searches. But I'm just getting a little bit more information here and a little bit more keywords on things that I might want to put into my listing. There's a lot of filters here. Like, maybe I just wanna see all the keywords that have over a thousand search volume, I can use that filter. Maybe I wanna have all of the keywords that have at least three words right, I don't want any one word phrases, I don't want two word phrases. You know I could use that filter. Tons of filters here. Maybe I'm interested in what are all the keywords that have a title density? Maximum three, all right. What does title density mean? Title density is the number of products on page one of the search results of a keyword that have that exact search keyword in its title. So there's tons of different filters you can use.

Bradley Sutton:

And then again, this is a great way to round out your keyword research or perhaps get other ideas how to get top level information on a group of keywords. All right, let's just say that you came up with, you know, 30 keywords from Cerebro that your competitor is beating you on. Or let's just say you've been, you know, getting a whole bunch of data off of Amazon, like you've been looking at Pinterest trends or Google trends or TikTok hashtags or whatever, and you just have this random list of keywords and you're like, hey, I just wanna see you know what's the search volume of these keywords. Let me show you how you can just get some really quick information without having to, like one by one, go through these. All right, so let's just use the scenario, first of all, that maybe you were on Cerebro and you found nine different keyword phrases that your competitors are beating you on and you maybe wanna know what is some information on those keywords. Well, I'll just go ahead and copy these keywords right here and I'm actually going to paste them into Magnet. All right, and again, these keywords can come from anywhere.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, where I want to go, if I want to analyze multiple keywords, is the second tab of Magnet, all right, so once you're in Magnet, hit the analyze keywords tab and then go ahead and paste all of those keywords. I can put up to 200 in here and then you can hit the button analyze keywords. All right, now what comes up is not all of the long tail keywords or not the loosely related keywords. This just brings up the exact keywords that came up. All right, from the ones I pasted, and now I can just see the information, such as the estimated keyword sales for each one. I can have the buttons that go to the brand analytics. I have the search volume for each keyword. Let's just say these were the keywords that my competitors were beating me on, or that my competitors are on page one from. Well, the cool thing here is I can actually see a keyword summary of the total search volume. So instantly I'm like, okay, wow, my competitors is beating me on keywords that have a total search volume of 7,200. All right, so there's a lot of cool information that you can see here.

Bradley Sutton:

So again, this is a great way to just get some like quick information on a group of keywords instead of having to go one by one on your keyword list, how to find long tail keywords from a root keyword or phrase. Now, why is this important? How can this make you money? Well, you might know what your main keywords are. You might know what other keywords products are ranking for, but it's important to understand that there might be longer tail versions of these keywords. Maybe they don't even have that much search volume that can really round out your keyword research, and maybe you'd be the only competitor who is ranking for these keywords, all right. So how can you do that?

Bradley Sutton:

Let's hop into Magnet. I just use one of my main keywords coffin shelf. Here and again, there's thousands of keywords that came up, but if I wanna see the long tail versions of this, all I have to do is I'm going to select the match type of smart complete, all right. So smart complete is allows me to show what keywords coffin shelf is the root of. Where are maybe there are some plural versions of this keyword? Where are some keywords where the order is different than the original word?

Bradley Sutton:

Do you know how you do autocomplete on the Amazon search bar? If you type in coffin shelf, it'll just show you keywords that just start with the word coffin shelf. But look at some of the words that came up when I did smart complete here for coffin shelf. I see coffin shelves. I see coffin shelf large six foot tall. I see glass coffin shelf. So there's a keyword where it starts with a different word. I see book shelf, coffin. So there, all of a sudden, it mixes up the words and even adds another one. Here's another one coffin wall shelf. It took those two words, coffin shelf, and then put a word in the middle of it. So this is like a great way to kind of like look for longer tail versions.

Bradley Sutton:

Now that what I just showed you, that smart complete. It's also indicative of what could come up in a phrase match target for PPC. All right. So if you do phrase match or broad match, right. So Amazon sometimes will change the order of the words. It'll add a word before, it'll add a word after In broad matches. A little bit, you know more crazy the kind of things that it does. But now, instead of just all right, let me just see what's gonna show up on a broad or a phrase match. You can actually get a preview of what kind of keywords would come up if you do a PPC campaign on a certain keyword. That's kind of crazy if you think about it. What is everybody else on Amazon doing? They're just like all right, amazon, take the wheel. You know, let's just see what you're gonna show me for no, now you can know the exact keywords that potentially could come up in one of those campaigns.

Bradley Sutton:

Another way that you can use this information is by trying to see where you know like maybe you wanna expand out in your niche, like I am selling coffin shelves here. I have this list of 3000 keywords ready to coffin shelf and I just wanna make something coffin shaped, right? Maybe it doesn't start with coffin shelf. Let me show you what you can do With the list unfiltered. The first filter you're gonna do is you're gonna go to phrases containing and then I'm gonna go ahead and put coffin there, all right. And then, once I apply the filters, now any keyword out of these 3000 that came up that have coffin in it show up. So maybe I'm like all right, where are the keywords that have at least 400 search volume that have the word coffin in it? And now, all of a sudden, I see 40 keywords.

Bradley Sutton:

Right, and if I'm selling coffin shelves, all of a sudden, something else might strike my fancy here, like I'm just looking at this and here's something that I didn't realize. There's 400 people searching for coffin coffee table all right. There are 500 people searching for coffin decorations. There's 500 people searching for coffin bowl what the heck is a coffin bowl? I might wanna look at that. There's almost a thousand people searching for coffin rug all right, and here's a creepy keyword skeletons carrying coffin.

Bradley Sutton:

These are like new product ideas that I can expand my brand out to, that I didn't even know existed and all I did was I just put in my main keyword into MAGNET and I was like, let me do a filter for any keyword out of these 3000 where coffin is in it, and now I can see tons of product potential. So here's three different ways that you can find long tail versions of keywords what might come up in a PBC campaign, or even new ideas for product line extensions, how to see the keywords in a niche that are trending up in search volume. Now, why is this important? How can it make you money If you've got a lot of keywords that you're considering to use and maybe you can't fit them all in? Or maybe you're looking for new product ideas.

Bradley Sutton:

Well, how are you gonna prioritize it? Sure, you can prioritize it by search volume, but let's just say that even there, hey, all these keywords, there's a lot of products that have this, or a lot of keywords that have the same search volume. Well, how do you prioritize then? Well, what I like to do is I like to prioritize by the ones that are trending up. Right, if a keyword is going down in popularity compared to last month, I might not wanna focus on that keyword. So how can I easily see which ones are trending up?

Bradley Sutton:

There's a filter right here in MAGNET. So if I have any search results up in MAGNET, all I have to do is look for the filter search volume trend. And maybe I wanna see something that has a minimum of 50% increase compared to last month. I'm gonna put a minimum of 50 and I'm gonna hit apply filters. And now any keyword that has a big trending up is going to show up here. And look at this. Oh, my goodness gracious, I see coffin Zen garden is up 104% on search volume compared to last month. Coughing candy bowl is up 261%. So if I was looking to prioritize keywords, do you think I'd wanna prioritize some keywords that are up by over 100%, absolutely. So an easy way again to see in your niche what keywords are on the way up. Or, conversely, maybe you wanna see what keywords are on the way down. Just put in any keyword into MAGNET, check the related keywords and use that trending filter how to find common root words in an overall keyword niche. Now, why is this important? Well, again, I like to use this almost as a product research tactic. It could be, and also a PPC play too.

Bradley Sutton:

When I enter in Magnet a certain keyword, that's my main keyword and I'm looking at a whole bunch of loosely related keywords. Maybe there are certain trends that I don't realize. Like it doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand that if I put in coffin shelf, there's probably gonna be a lot of coffin related keywords, but sometimes there might be other keywords that could give you other ideas that you weren't even thinking about. How can you find that? Let me show you. Let's just say I searched coffin shelf here in MAGNET. I'm gonna look at this box called word frequency and what this means is, of all the search results that are showing up and I can also filter it down even a little bit what keywords appear the most in the phrases. And again, just like I thought the number one keyword here or actually the number one keyword is decor at 1000, but then coffin was 600. But maybe there's something else here that looks interesting. Like, for example, I see a spooky and I'm like spooky, 131 of these keywords have the word spooky in it. So if I hit spooky, what happens is is now all of the keywords on that list that start with the word spooky are gonna show up here and I can start getting some ideas. Like look at this 38,000 search volume for this keyword. Spooky basket 1400 search volume for spooky home decor. Spooky desk accessories has a couple hundred searches a month. All right. So now, all of a sudden, I just discovered, maybe in like a new sub niche where I'm looking at coffin shelf. But I see, wow, look how this keyword spooky is trending in so many of these keywords. And again, I can use these keywords in my listing or use it as potential PPC test or use it as an idea generation for new ideas for my brand. All right.

Bradley Sutton:

Last strategy of the day how to instantly see the most search terms on Amazon that start with a word or phrase? All right. So this is pretty cool. Like how can this help you out? Well, you know, you might just be doing very, very like kind of low key research where you discover something you're like, all right, well, what is the most search term? Like, hey, I saw this garlic press, you know, is garlic press the most search term that starts with the word garlic? Or is there something else you know, coffin shelf. Is coffin shelf the highest search term that starts with the word coffin, or are there longer tail versions of this keyword that have even more search volume?

Bradley Sutton:

Check out a super simple way to find out in seconds which keywords are the most searched. When you start with any letters, word or phrase, all you have to do is just go directly to magnet guys and start typing. That's it. So let's just say I'm gonna type in coffin. If I pause just a few seconds, any keyword that has a lot of search volume is gonna show up here. And here I can see that the number one keyword that starts with coffin it's not coffin shelf. Coffin shelf isn't even top 10. It's coffin charcuterie board. That's crazy. I didn't realize that. All right, maybe I'm wondering. All right, what are the most search terms that start with coffin shelf? Here we go coffin shelf is number one. Coffin shelf large is number two. I mentioned garlic press earlier. What are the most search terms that start with the word garlic? Well, whatever shows up here in this autocomplete, right here in magnet, it is the words. It is sorted by the number of searches. All right, so I can see. If I put in garlic, the number one keyword is garlic, number two is garlic press, then garlic powder. So any keyword you can possibly think of on Amazon.

Bradley Sutton:

If you're just really curious, hey, what are some other keywords that might start with this keyword and one of the most search ones? Just start typing anything you want into magnet. Don't even have to click anything. Whatever comes up in the magnet autocomplete are the highest search terms. All right, guys, there you have it. We just did, I think, by my last count, 31 keyword research strategies over the last three episodes. Now don't just sit there and be like oh wow, that was amazing, Bradley, those are some incredible strategies and that's it All right. That does nobody any good. That means I just wasted my breath here in all these strategies. What I want you to do is pick some of these strategies and start doing it right now on your own account.

Bradley Sutton:

Maybe you haven't even found a product yet, but there was ideas that I brought up in this keyword research on how you can find product ideas. Maybe you've got an existing brand and now you know of how you can come up with expanded ideas by doing keyword research. Maybe you've got your product on the way to you right now from your supplier and you need to start building your listing and you wanna make sure you've got the best keywords. These 31 strategies are going to help you with that. So, guys, hope you enjoyed these episodes. Bookmark these, go back to it, refer to it. I'm gonna try and put copies of these videos also inside of our tool and inside of our Helium 10 Academy so you can have them as reference. Let me know, guys, in the Helium 10 members Facebook group or, if you're watching this on YouTube, in the comments. Let me know which one of these strategies you thought was the coolest, which ones that have helped you find new keywords that can help you get those extra thousands of dollars of sales on Amazon.

Helium 10 Buzz 11/9/23: TikTok Fulfillment | Walmart Black Friday | Amazon Analytics Update

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 Creating Its Own eCommerce Fulfillment Network
https://www.pymnts.com/news/ecommerce/2023/tiktok-creating-its-own-ecommerce-fulfillment-network/

Amazon beefs up Prime loyalty program with One Medical discount
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/08/amazon-beefs-up-prime-loyalty-program-with-one-medical-discount.html

FTC: Amazon halted Seller Fulfilled Prime enrollment despite strong delivery performance
https://www.supplychaindive.com/news/ftc-amazon-lawsuit-seller-fulfilled-prime-enrollment-shipping-delivery-performance/698780/

Walmart Black Friday deals 2023 start today
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/walmart-days-of-deals-2023-day-6-165846150.html

Watch how Amazon delivers to customers in favelas across Brazil
https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/transportation/how-amazon-delivers-to-customers-in-favelas-across-brazil

Stay updated with the newest features from Helium 10 that can help you stay on top of your Amazon game. Plus, stay tuned for Carrie's hands-on tips for leveraging the power of AI inside our Listing Builder tool for quick and efficient listing creations. So, gear up for an expedition into what’s buzzing in Amazon, Walmart, and E-commerce with us!

 

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

• 00:55 - Fulfilled By TikTok
• 02:02 - Amazon Analytics
• 03:55 - Amazon Medical
• 05:16 - FTC Case Update
• 08:23 - Walmart Black Friday
• 09:19 - Brand Registry Update
• 10:11 - Amazon Brazil
• 12:40 - Helium 10 Feature Alerts
• 18:40 - Pro Training Tip: Amazon Listing Builder With AI

Transcript

Transcript generated by Podium.page

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Bradley Sutton:

TikTok Shop is building out their fulfillment network. Have you used the new customer loyalty dashboard in Amazon? Seller Central? FTC again gets things wrong in their case against Amazon. Walmart Black Friday has started.

Bradley Sutton:

These stories and more on today's edition of the weekly buzz. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I am your host, Bradley Sutton and this is the show that is our Helium 10 weekly buzz, where we give you a rundown of all the news stories that's going on in the Amazon, walmart and e-commerce world. We also give you all of the new updates for feature alerts to Helium 10, and we give you training tips of the week that'll give you serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. Let's see what's buzzing. We have a lot of news articles today, so let's go ahead and hop into it Now. The first article that we have today is actually from paymentscom and it's entitled TikTok is creating its own e-commerce fulfillment network. Now, this is interesting because this is not completely new news. We've talked about some of our Helium 10 elite members who have gotten in the beta program on some of these fulfillment, but for most of you who sign up for Tick Tock shop, you have to fulfill your own products or maybe fulfill it through Amazon, but they've been investing in a warehouse and fulfillment network. According to this article, wall Street Journal also confirmed that you know, talking about some of the endeavors that they're doing, so they're really making some kind of like waves in the industry, just even without fulfillment. It's kind of amazing what they're doing, because they're investing a lot you know, like giving sellers the ability to not have, you know, commissions for right now and giving incentives to influencers to promote products. So now imagine once their fulfillment network is fully in place. It's going to be pretty cool. What's you know to be selling on Tick Tock shop?

Bradley Sutton:

Next news article is actually from your seller central dashboard, and this is just a reminder about something that released a little bit ago on Amazon. It's called the customer loyalty analytics dashboard. Now this news article that came out talks about how it helps brand segment and reengage customers based on their past purchase behavior and engagement with your brand page. Some of the things that it allows you to do are identify high value customers, build your strategy for the right customer, engage customers at the right time, it says optimize marketing ad spend, reduce customer acquisition costs. So if you haven't taken a look at it, it's in your customer loyalty analytics page and it's, you know, in the similar places brand analytics and you can see a lot of interesting information, you know, at the weekly, quarterly, monthly or even yearly level, and you'll see some interesting unique metrics that you've probably never seen before, like the number of hibernating customers that you have. You'll see some interesting charts here.

Bradley Sutton:

There's also a cool feature on the right hand side that you'll be able to see. It's called new and potential customers. All right, and then it says, like you know, for for Manny's Mysterious Oddities, right here it says hey, there's 12,000 people have recently shown interest in your products but have not yet purchased, and allows you to create a promotion to send these customers a promotion code to encourage a purchase. And so if you click on this button, it actually brings you to the brand tailored promotion page that we've talked about before, and so this brand tailored promotion function allows you to send coupon codes to customers and have it show up if they happen to browse on your page again. So pretty interesting stuff, you know. Take a look at that. Have you been using it? Has it helped you at all with, you know, getting some customers on board and you can see the metrics and brand tailored promotions on how successful they are. All right.

Bradley Sutton:

Next article up here is from CNBC and it's entitled Amazon Beef's Up Prime Day Loyalty Program with one medical discount. So this is something that is going to be a subscription that's going to be $9 a month or $99 a year. All right, now what is one medical? I guess it's kind of like I mean almost like a medical insurance kind of thing. This article from CNBC says, you know, one medical operates a network of boutique primary care practices in some parts of the US and it's around major cities, and users can access care from a doctor through the one medical app and they can also schedule virtual or in-person appointments at a brick and mortar location. All right.

Bradley Sutton:

So again, you know you might be wondering well, what in the world does this have to do with being an Amazon seller? Well, we always like to talk about what are Walmart doing for the Walmart Plus program? What is Amazon doing for the Prime program? The more sticky an Amazon Prime member is, you know that means they're not going to cancel their Prime because there's just so many benefits. Guess what you know. That's going to be better for you, you know, because obviously the majority of Amazon seller sales come from Amazon Prime members. So the more benefits that Amazon gives to its Prime members, that's going to benefit us, the third party sellers.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, you know we haven't talked about this in a few weeks. There hasn't been much news articles. But again, you know, FTC is showing that they really have no idea what the heck they're doing. Um, at least you know, with what I see in the news, you know who knows, maybe they've got some other stuff. That just news. You know, casters haven't picked up on, but I can only report on what I see in the news.

Bradley Sutton:

And this article is from supply chain drive and it's entitled FTC Amazon halted seller fulfilled prime enrollment despite strong delivery performance. All right. So basically, what the FTC is saying is hey, you know, uh, back in 2018, when there was seller fulfilled prime, now they're seller fulfilled prime again. You know, sellers met the delivery estimate requirement more than 95% of the time. Now FTC even said, you know, went on to say, oh, these sellers at times outperform orders covered by Amazon's own fulfillment service. Uh, had Amazon genuinely cared about improving shipping speeds, it would have encouraged seller fulfilled prime sellers to use independent fulfillment providers instead of shuttering SFP to impede those providers growth Wrong, all right, guys, this is not right. You know, like Amazon prime now, amazon prime in 2018 is a lot faster than than what the majority of sellers can do for seller fulfilled prime.

Bradley Sutton:

Amazon clapped back at this whole story. They're like saying, hey, the fact is that in 2018, the sellers using SFP Amazon says this is a quote we're promising deliveries within two days less or within two days or less less than 16% of the time. So what? What is FTC thinking that? Oh, yeah, you know the. They think that all these sellers were were beating Amazon's prime one day and same day and two day delivery. No, they weren't. You know there's a few who could match it. Sure, like these gigantic companies that had their their own humongous, uh, logistic systems and and things like that. But you know, a regular seller couldn't just go to you know from California and like, hey, let me go ahead and send this two day shipping to Florida, you know, for $5, you know, like you can with Amazon prime. No, that never was happening in 2018. It's not happening now, all right.

Bradley Sutton:

So I, I really, I mean I really wish that FTC focuses on the things that Amazon sellers, day in and day out, are complaining. You know like uh, you know sometimes the customer support uh service that they receive and and things like you know getting suspended with no notification and and differing rules and allowing a lot of hijackers and and listing abuse and and and allowing too many subsidies for for sellers from China. I mean, the list goes on and on. You guys probably have a lot of complaints for Amazon, and rightfully so. No system is perfect, but I haven't even seen any of these complaints kind of like brought up in this FTC trial. Instead, they're they're like focused on things that are like literal non issues. Anyways, I guess that stuff like makes my heart race. Let's go to the next article, and this is from Yahoo, just giving a reminder that, hey, walmart Black Friday deals. We're starting yesterday, uh, on Wednesday. We announced this a couple of weeks ago in the weekly buzz that you know it's crazy what Walmart you know.

Bradley Sutton:

Black Friday you know used to be Black Friday. You know that's the Friday right after Thanksgiving. We're not even close to Thanksgiving, we're at the first of November and Black Friday deals are coming up. But the reason I mentioned this again is because this Black Friday deal has deals have started going on. You should see a little bit of increased traffic on your Walmart store. So so let me know over the next couple of days, are your sales up on Walmart? Keep an eye out there. You might want to check your ad spend if you're running Walmart ads, because your budgets might run out a little bit earlier If you, if you're reaching the budgets, because there's probably a lot of extra traffic on the platform at this time.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, the next announcement was actually from an email that went out to a lot of brand registered sellers and it was from Amazon brand registry and it said hey, just launched managed selling accounts tool. So this is a new self-service tool that gives users with the brand administrator rule the ability to unlock brand benefit eligibility for users that have a active seller central account. Now, in the past, you had to like if you wanted to like, give access to another account, or or maybe you know you've got a reseller selling your products. You wanted to give them the rights you've got to like contact, brand registry, support and open up a case and do all this stuff. But now you can do it directly from your managed selling accounts on your brand dashboard. So if you want more information, just go to your brand registry dashboard and you'll be able to uh to see your managed selling accounts.

Bradley Sutton:

Last up, uh, they had a cool video on one of Amazon's website, uh, and it was talking about how they deliver in a favela from Paraisopolis in Sao Paulo, brazil, and this is a place that's like a really like kind of like dangerous neighborhood it was talking about and like nobody else would deliver packages to this neighborhood. But Amazon is using AI and machine learning to be able to ship. And it was just an interesting article. You know, we've we've talked about before how Amazon delivers on donkeys in some places, but here Amazon, you know, delivering to dangerous uh uh areas where other carriers might not deliver packages to, but Amazon is. And it got me thinking uh, there was an announcement that kind of flew under the radar. But did you know that North American remote fulfillment by Amazon also now covers Amazon Brazil. Uh, when I posted that in a couple of Facebook groups, you know most of the sellers didn't even realize that. You know, I think everybody knows that NARF, or North American remote fulfillment, that allows you to take your U S FBA inventory and open up listings in Canada and Mexico and be able to deliver there. But now, as long as you've got your Amazon Brazil set up you know you've added it as an account on your seller central and you've set up a bank account and stuff, you can actually now, uh, have North American remote fulfillment going to Brazil. Obviously it takes longer, but you know you don't have to. You know, set up inventory down there, you don't have to worry about taxes. Uh, the, the listings are translated and then if somebody buys the product it comes from your USA inventory. So let me know in the comments below did you guys know that Amazon is now shipping your FBA US inventory down to Brazil? And if you didn't know it, how many of you are have taken advantage of that? You know Brazil is a rapidly growing marketplace and so that's something to definitely look into.

Bradley Sutton:

All right, that's it for the news this week. Now one thing I want you guys to do is go ahead and follow our this podcast Instagram page. All right, it's on. Just go to Instagram and just go to serious sellers podcast. All right, serious sellers podcast, give us a follow. Sometimes I'll you know post. You know stories about my, my trips and different things on there. But mainly this has all of the clips from every single podcast episode. We do even this one, the weekly buzz. So make sure to go there If you have missed a couple of episodes. You can get some clips on recent episodes. A serious sellers podcast.

Bradley Sutton:

All right, let's go over this week's helium gas Weeks. Helium 10 feature alerts. Remember, every week we are launching new things at helium 10. Here are the new things for this week Now. The first one we talked a little bit about last week, that is in listing builder. All right, so if you guys go to your listing builder tool, you have your regular part of the listing. You know all the top of your description and bullet points and things like that. But if you scroll all the way to the bottom now you'll see a new section called Amazon post and if you have, you know if this is the actual listing and it's all filled out with the information up above. Now you can just hit a button, write it for me, and then helium 10, using AI, is going to write a bunch of Amazon post captions. All right, so this is good if you are, you know, having kind of like writer's block and you have a lot of images that you want to go ahead and put to Amazon post, but you can't don't want to have to think about making a unique caption every single time. We have a caption generator right there.

Bradley Sutton:

All right, next up a really cool feature to your competitor tracking. So for a while, we have Allowed you to add up to five competitors for every product that you have in your store and then you can start tracking if they're running coupons and get alerts, if, if they raise their price, if they lower the price, if they change their Image, if they change their title, if their BSR changes dramatically, etc. Etc. Now this was limited to, like I said, five different Competitors for every one of your products. Now, what if you've got more competitors you want to track in addition to those five? Or what if you're just like examining a new niche and you just want to start like tracking some products randomly and you don't have, like your own product to tie it to. Well, now you know, really cool we have the ability inside your competitors to just add competitors, all right.

Bradley Sutton:

So how you can add competitors to this new section? Just go to your, your main dashboard. If you've got the diamond plan and you're gonna want to hit Competitors here on the top left, all right. Once you hit competitors, this is going to show you probably all the competitors you already have here. But now, when you hit the button add competitors, now you have the option on if it's a current competitor and that means you're gonna have to tie it to one of your products so that you can get the full benefits there. But if you have a brand new product, what's new this week is now you can put potential Competitor and then you don't have to tie it to your product.

Bradley Sutton:

Like you can see here, I'm tracking a Battery operated LED light, right, and there are no competitors now. But now I can track this guy's revenue. I can track their sales. I can see they've got an $8 coupon going. I can track their price changes, etc. Etc. So super cool addition Start tracking your competitors. Guys, start looking at other niches. Maybe you're trying to expand your brand. Add those to this Competitor dashboard so you can see what's going on, not just like be able to track it in this dashboard that I just showed you. But remember, you are gonna start getting insights Into things that you said that you want to know about that might be changing with that Competitor, you know. Maybe they're ranking for new keywords, maybe they have a coupon, maybe they turned off a coupon, etc. Etc. So, super cool.

Bradley Sutton:

Speaking of insights, we've got some new changes To or some new insights that are happening in your insights dashboard. Now, for those who don't know the insights dashboard, this is like next level. You know we're giving, we're doing the work for our customers. Like, for example, you've seen my insights dashboard. It says, hey, we discovered 15 keywords that your competitors are ranking for that you are not. Hey, you're ranking For a keyword in the top 10 and you don't even you might not have noted because you're not tracking this keyword.

Bradley Sutton:

Well, some of the newer insights that we now have Refund rates. So you can see here hey, refund rates for five products have decreased by 6%. That's great. That means I'm giving out less Refunds than before. All right, the opposite. We also added as an insight hey, maybe your refund rate is increasing or your return rate is increasing. You'd want to know about that, right? Well, you don't have to be downloading your reports every week, or even looking at Helium 10 and looking at the reports there. We will give you an insight based on the settings, the triggers that you set, on what you want to know about, on if your refund rates are going up or down.

Bradley Sutton:

We have some new atomic alerts that come on your Insights dashboard. So if you use that Helium 10 Atomic and you are getting a lot of clicks or a lot of spend in a certain target, you are going to get a notification. Hey, you've got. Look at this one I got here. You've got four targets with zero sales that have spent $70 in the last 30 days. You might want to review your targets and maybe negative match that. Again, you're not having to download reports. We are telling you this information. Another new one that has come up recently that we have is your storage fees. If your storage fee month to month is dramatically increasing, you're going to get a notification now about that. We're adding new Insights left and right. Guys, this is crazy. I mean we're living in the year 3000 while other Amazon software tools are parting like it's 1999 still I mean, this is not only our have. We had these advanced tools in Helium 10 where you can find these things, but now you don't even have to use those tools because now we're just giving you these insights and giving you these notifications to let you know what's going on. So that's it for our Helium 10 feature alerts that we have added in the last week or so. All right.

Bradley Sutton:

Next up, we have got a training done by Kerry on listing builder with AI. Just a quick review on how to generate listings and let me tell you the things that she's going to show you today. I literally created two listings. I'm doing a test listings for some project, five case draws. I use her exact strategy. I created two brand new listings that were for identical products because I'm testing it in two different accounts, but it created two separate listings in about three minutes. For myself. That would have taken me maybe an hour to have done back in the old days. So how did I do that? Kerry will show you how she does it.

Carrie Miller:

When I started out in the Amazon space, I was actually a freelancer and I actually was writing listings over and over again for a lot of different companies and they always wanted to know what my secret was, and I never told them my secret. But I'll tell you my secret now. Helium 10 was my secret. I use the keyword research tools and listing optimization tools that Helium 10 had at the time, so around 2016, 2017, 2018. And now they've gotten even better. So I want to show you how to use our new tools, especially for any of you who have a hard time writing or maybe have higher writer's block, we have a great solution for you to help you really optimize your listings in the best way using Helium 10. The first thing that you want to do is you want to log into your Helium 10 account and you're going to go to tools and then you're going to click on listing builder. I'm going to show you how to do this from scratch. So what we're going to do is we're actually going to just click on add listing up here and we're going to click on get started from scratch right here. You can choose whatever language you want to do, but I'm going to show you first in English how to do this, and I'm just going to start building. I have a keyword list and I'm going to just show you this from our for our coffin shelf. Here they are. So when you click add to bank, these keywords are going to be added to your keyword bank and if you wanted to add some more, you could add some more keywords up here manually, or you can actually go ahead and import keywords from an Excel spreadsheet or, if you wanted to do a cerebral search, you can do it here. I always recommend just making sure you have all of your keywords squared away before you even start writing your listing, so you should have your list already created. The next thing is you're going to go over to the listing optimizer. Now, this has AI in it, so it's going to help you to be able to write this very quickly and efficiently and it's going to give you, you know, help you get past that writer's block. If you ever have it. You don't know where to start. This is going to be great for you.

Carrie Miller:

Now you can write if you want to, if you wanted to write your own listings. So you know Manny's mysterious, you can just go ahead and write your listing there. Or what you can do is you can add in product characteristics and this will write it for you. So I'm going to put in coffin shelf black. I'm going to put Halloween, I'll just put Gothic Dwarfers actually Gothic decor, perfect gift for a Goths. Witchy decor, maybe something like Goth decor for home, goth decor for bedroom.

Carrie Miller:

You can put as many as you want, up to 500 characters, and the more you put, the more input that you put into this, the better it's going to be. And the next thing is you can put your brand name in and the next is that is the product name. So I'm going to put you know Manny's mysterious oddities here and I'm going to ask for it to be put at the beginning of the title. You can have it put at the end of the title if you want to, and then the coffin name is, or the product name is coffin shelf. You can choose the tone. So you can do casual, friendly, humorous. I'll just put casual in there. The target audience is got Gothic, goths, halloween and I think I'll leave it at that. So the more input obviously you put here, the better these are going to be. But I want to show you how quick and easy this is. So I'm going to ask it to write a title for me and I'm going to click on write it and it's going to come up with a title for me in a very short amount of time here. That's going to be, you know, helpful for me to get started, or it's something you could use right away.

Carrie Miller:

So Manny's Mysterious Oddities coffin bookshelf with coffin mirror unique Gothic decor coffin shelf home and bedroom. So I actually I put coffin mirror in there and coffin bookshelf, which we actually don't really need those. So I'm going to go back here and I'm going to take off bat shelf and coffin mirror and coffin bookshelf here and I'm going to hit next and I'm going to try this again and I'm going to click rewrite for me. So we don't have those keywords on the list and it's going to probably be more accurate. So you want to make sure all of these keywords are you know exactly what you would want in your listing. See Manny's Mysterious Oddities coffin shelf black Gothic decor for bedroom. Witchy and goth decor for home. Perfect gift for Goss Halloween fans. Intriguing coffin shelves for your dark side.

Carrie Miller:

I'm going to go ahead and use that suggestion and you know you can if you wanted to also kind of ask them to rewrite it. It's not going to erase that once you click on use suggestion and then you can get more ideas and you can kind of manually edit this as you go and just keep getting more ideas. If you want to see if it's worded better in the second suggestion, you can do that or you can discard it. Once you click on, you know, add suggestion, it's going to cross off the keywords over here to make sure that you optimize this fully and then for the bullets you click, write it for me, and the same thing it's going to write these bullet points for you and it's going to give you some great suggestions. Now, a lot of people what they do is they use this as a great starting off point to writing their bullets. Some people use this, just just these bullets that the AI created. It really is up to you how you want to do it, and this is the most updated form of chat GPT that is integrated in here, so you can see some great stuff here.

Carrie Miller:

So goth shelf our coffin shelf is a perfect addition to your goth a come to core. It's black, eerie designs out of unique touch to any room, ideal for goss or Halloween fans looking to show off their spooky stuff. I like that. I'm going to go ahead and say use that suggestion, and then you can see that it actually crossed out some of those keywords. And if I just go ahead and say, use suggestion, use suggestion, and I use all of these as suggestions, they have pretty much used all of the keywords in there. You can also have it write a description for you and it's going to write the description and you can choose to use that or not.

Carrie Miller:

Search terms If there's anything that doesn't get used and most of it usually does get used in the bullets you can add those into the search terms and you can put that in the back end. And so if you, you know, maybe aren't a writer and you want to really get some help with your listings and you are really good at keyword research, you can put those keywords in and AI can help you. You can always go back and edit it. You can keep getting more suggestions and editing as you go. It makes it so much faster and easier. So I want you guys to check it out and let us know what you think.

Bradley Sutton:

All right. Thanks a lot, Carrie, for that training tip of the week. Have you guys used Listing Builder yet? I hope you have All right guys. That's it for the weekly buzz for this week. Don't forget to tune in next week to see what's buzzing.