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

#476 - Walmart Q&A And Troubleshooting Issues with Flat Files

Welcome to another episode of our Winning with Walmart Wednesday series! Today’s host is Carrie Miller, and she sits down with two sellers who found massive success in the Walmart marketplace. They share their inspiring stories and reveal the secrets behind obtaining the coveted Walmart Pro Seller Badge. From speeding up inventory check ins WFS to mastering the art of A/B testing for different product types, this dynamic duo provides valuable advice on how to excel selling on Walmart.com. Tune in to learn about their 90-day product launch plan, how to use flat files to solve your technical problems, and the latest Walmart parameters for the Pro Seller Badge eligibility!

In episode 476 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Carrie, Gustavo, and Leonardo discuss: 

• 02:06 – Gustavo And Leonardo’s Backstories
• 03:03 – How Much Are They Selling In Walmart.com?
• 04:23 – Why Did They Choose Walmart?
• 06:10 – 90-Day Product Launch Plan In Walmart.com
• 09:22 – Walmart Changing Parameters For The Pro Seller Badge?
• 11:20 – Optimizing Your Listings For Walmart.com
• 14:15 – The Buy 3 Variations In One Listing Technique
• 15:38 – A/B Testing Your Listings And Product Types
• 19:07 – Reduced Pricing Strategy
• 22:07 – How To Get Your WFS Inventory Checked In Faster
• 23:56 – Check Out The Walmart Lessons Inside Freedom Ticket
• 25:50 – Selling Liquids In Walmart.com
• 27:10 – How Do I Turn One Of My Images Counter Clockwise?
• 32:14 – Walmart Selling Advice

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Transcript

Carrie Miller:

Today we are gonna be talking to two Walmart sellers who have found quite a bit of success on the Walmart marketplace. They’re going to share their listing optimization strategies, tips on how to get the Pro Seller Badge and tips on how to get your Walmart inventory checked into WFS quicker. How cool is that? Pretty cool. I think

Bradley Sutton:

If you guys would like to network with other Walmart sellers, make sure join our brand new Facebook group called Helium 10, Winning with Walmart. You can actually just search for that on Facebook, or you can actually go to h10.me/walmartgroup and you can go directly to that page. So make sure to join, you can tag me and carry with questions, and ask questions of other Walmart sellers or even share your own experiences in that Facebook group.

Carrie Miller:

Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers podcast. I’m gonna be your host, Carrie Miller. And this is our winning with Walmart Wednesday that we do every month where we give you some great Walmart information and we answer all of your Walmart questions. So today I’m really excited because I have two new guests that you’ve probably never seen before, and they are Walmart experts. They’ve been selling on Walmart, and so they’ve got a lot of great knowledge to share. So we’ll ask them some questions, you’ll get to know them about their story. And then we’ll go ahead and take your questions live. Go ahead and bring on our guests and introduce them to you. So we have Gustavo and Leo and they’re from Venezuela. So thanks so much guys for joining. How are you doing?

Gustavo:

Thank you so much, Carrie, for having us.

Carrie Miller:

Yeah. So I’m pretty excited to talk about your story. You guys are pretty inspiring. You’re, you know, been working really hard on Walmart. And so I wanted to just kind of give people a background about you just about your kind of e-commerce start and how, you know, your, your company got started. So can you tell us about, you know, just how you got started in, in e-commerce?

Gustavo:

Well, I don’t know about inspiring. But we started on Amazon in around 2016. We sold household items in the UK. We eventually launched in the US and after a couple of years of trial and error we did reach the bestseller badge with several of our products and, and we got excited and launched new brands and we grew those as well. And so more recently we did hear that Walmart was starting to grow a ton. We decided to give it a try. We knew some people and some brands that have launched there successfully. And so far it’s been really exciting. We really didn’t expect the platform to work as well as it is. Walmart’s like a sign us an account manager. They’re adding new features every day. It’s kind of cool cuz you can see some of the like Amazon features that we’ve known you know, for years starting to pop up on Walmart. So it’s like they’re really putting money into this. And you know, we’re already reaching a good amount of sales things are growing, so it’s exciting.

Carrie Miller:

Can you tell us maybe how many sales you guys are doing on like a monthly basis or just to give people kind of an idea of like what your sales are in Walmart so far?

Leronardo:

Sure. We just launched into Walmart, but right now we’re doing that between 20 after eight k a month right now. For the top product in our assortment, we are in average selling like 45, 45 units daily. Even without having top organic ranking position. We even launch for the same position right now. We have the, the second position after, you know, a month of alert work of optimizing our listings, adding rich media, tested the main images, mainly all the, basically all the Amazon, Facebook, and also all the send resources and also suggestions available in your podcast and in your webinar. So we’re very thanking for that.

Carrie Miller:

Oh, that’s awesome. Yeah, so I mean, 45 sales a day for some products is pretty amazing. I mean that’s you know, more than some people are probably doing on Amazon for some of their products. So really, really exciting news and really inspiring knowing that there is some, you know, definitely some good opportunity on Walmart. So basically the main reason you guys decided then is just you wanted to expand. Why did you guys choose Walmart to start selling?

Gustavo:

Right. Wo we’ve seen several successful Amazon brands launch to to Walmart. And I mean, we do a lot of modeling. Like, we try to see what the, what is the best brand out there, what are the best brands doing? And if we can, you know, take a similar path, that’s usually a good choice. And so we’ve seen like, hero Cosmetics obviously had a fantastic run at launching from Amazon into retail. I think they recently got acquired by like hundreds of millions. Yeah there’s like, we, you know, there’s like Angry Orange True skin, like a lot of really good brands that have launched from Amazon to retail. So it’s, to us it was like, okay, some of the big brands are doing it, like they’re really successful people are doing it. Like there’s gotta be something there. To us it’s better to come in early.

Gustavo:

So if Walmart continues to grow, like, I guess, you know, the brands that are in now have a, have a headstart. It’s also easy to find, like in walmart.com particularly, you can look at a lot of information with tools like Helium 10. Helium 10 is actually the one we use the most. Cause you can actually like, analyze the sales. There’s not, like on Amazon, there’s like a thousand softwares that do that, like in, in walmart.com, there’s not too many. It’s also like part of a multi-channel strategy for us. So walmart.com is like the first platform, but ideally we’re trying to look at can we get into Target and Ulta that we’ve heard are fantastic platforms as well. And like, there’s other ones as well. So it’s a, it’s a first step into, into a retail expansion and understanding how other markets work. And we’re seeing that applying a lot of the Amazon strategies do actually work. There’s not a lot of people doing these things. You know, optimizing listings, optimizing your images, doing all the things that you kind of know from Amazon.

Carrie Miller:

Yeah. That’s awesome. So I guess that leads into my next question cuz when I talked to you before Leo, you mentioned that you have like a 90 day plan when you launch on Walmart and that’s kind of the day, the amount of time that it takes you to even get to considered for the Pro Seller Badge. So can you just kind of like walk us through your 90 day plan when you launch a product on Walmart, all the things that you do to optimize and then get the Pro Seller Badge?

Leronardo:

Yes, for sure. Due our experience in Amazon, we link our strategy of launching Walmart into the process of obtain the Pro Seller Badge in Walmart. Because this, the badge involves all the key elements that are successful seller must have in any marketplace. He wants to participate at first they want, they have to provide a great customer experience through onsite deliveries and also providing great customer services. They have to also target a 90% listing quality score in order to drive conversion across the whole assortment products. Third, they have to be compliant with any Walmart target product policy and content policy in order to have a reliable offer in this marketplace. And also to have consistent sales over these 90 days. So the first thing that we, we, we do to achieve that is to use WFS to reduce our sales exposure to any delay in our shipments and also in the imagery handling in order to fulfill this orders.

Leronardo:

The second thing that we do is optimizing our listings based on the warmer suggestions, based on the huge same suggestions and also using the best practices that are competitors are using in their listings in Amazon on also in Walmart. The third thing that, that we use is having all our complimentary information updated. I’m referring to the MSDS, I’m referring to the in Snowbird and also to the product labels that are needed to adverse to sustain a case of product content, product ownership, and also to convert our products to WFS. And the fourth, and I think is the most important thing for our company and for our brand is to have a great product. We have a great product that match our customers expectation and also the promises that we make in our business.

Carrie Miller:

Yeah, that’s very good. That’s really good. I mean, it’s true. The Pro Seller Badge is kind of like a guideline to help you to really not only rank, but just get more sales, but then also people start filtering for the Pro Seller Badge too, which gives you even more sales. So it gives you more exposure. But something I think people don’t know about the Pro Seller Badge too is that you actually get 20% discount off of your referral fees, which is really cool, a really good perk cuz it’s gonna increase your profitability. But did you guys get the email, I think I got it today that said that they’re changing the parameters for the, for the

Leronardo:

Yes.

Carrie Miller:

What did you think about that?

Leronardo:

Yes, and I think it’s a way that Walmart is going to filtering more the sellers that are participating into Walmart because as customer, I always buy, even if we’re in any part of the United States from Walmart, cause it has reliable prices, it has shipments. So I think for one hand it’s a great idea in order to feature in more sellers for the other hand maybe be difficult to meet some of those requirements if you are not participating in programs like WFS. Yeah. If you’re, yes, because you have to, to reduce all exposure to those delinquencies that warm is more targeting this one.

Carrie Miller:

Yeah, definitely. So if you are fulfilling products yourself, you have to be very careful because the, the qualifications are, I mean, there’s just really no margin for error when it comes to, you know, shipping. So you pretty much have to use WFS if you want the Pro Seller Badge. They also increase the number of sales you have to have within a 90 day period to 250. So I’m curious to see, you know, how many people maybe drop off of the the, the pros seller badge, but that’ll be that’ll be something to watch.

Gustavo:

We made that mistake at the beginning. We, we launched with our own warehouse and we were fulfilling orders ourselves, but it is just much better. It’s like with Amazon, you eventually realize that you, you need to be using FBA. It’s just works much better. Fees are better, you’ll get the prime badge. Like same thing with Walmart. You, you just need the WFS badge, like we were fulfilling in three days. But if like it was ever four and then you would start to get like you know, your score would decrease cuz you’re not fulfilling on time. And so it is just like go all in. If you’re gonna go to Walmart, just go all in, just send your inventory. It’s gonna be much simpler longer term.

Carrie Miller:

Yeah, I agree with that. Yeah, cuz especially cuz you can get kicked off the platform if you make certain little mistakes. So it’s, it’s just easier overall, less anxiety probably. Okay, so what tips do you have just in general for optimizing your Walmart listings? Just to, to get them so that they’re going to, you know, rank and, and convert the highest on Walmart?

Gustavo:

So we track our conversion rate the most. I think that’s one of the, obviously the, the biggest or most important metrics along with like sessions. But when you’re tracking that the main thing, you’re obviously, you’re looking to increase it. But what we do is we will maybe test main images for sure and then the other images in the listing, but it’s like very targeted, like you wanna change, like the position of the product, the appearance of the product, the lighting, everything, anything you can, any items that are inside the product, like in the, in the main image for sure. That’s like super important. It’s probably, you know, with the 80 20, it’s definitely in, in the 20% of things that, that produce 80% of the results. Helium 10 has audiences, which works great for that. Shorter titles, like we’ve learned stuff along the way.

Gustavo:

Like we used to have long titles like on Amazon and now it’s shorter titles we’re realizing work better. We’ve also realized we can upload videos, which increased conversion a ton. So that’s by creating a case. You can upload videos, which is fantastic for conversion as well. We’re testing out a ton of stuff with the copy inside, so just changing the copy, like the main bullet points stuff that you say inside the listing. Anything that you can to really just bump up your conversion rate, then you just have to be tracking it. Like if you’re not tracking it, you don’t know the result. So you just have like a weekly tracker or even a daily tracker of your conversion rate and you can go, okay, I mean I changed this on Tuesday, it’s been four days. Like how’s it changing? It’s been, it’s been a week. Like sometimes there’s a delay.

Carrie Miller:

Yeah, well I love how you guys, you know a lot of people just put their listing up on Walmart and they’re like, oh, it should be converting. It’s just like Amazon. But I love that you guys have taken the time to really optimize for Walmart and doing, you know, you can use audiences like you said to split test images because images on Walmart are, I think, the most important thing because you literally have people advertising right. Below you and you have to sell the customer pretty much in the images. So that’s a really good point. But I love how you’re really testing these things and really focusing on all the things that are available on Walmart to, you know, get to the top. And it shows you guys are, you know, successful so far. So it, it’s been

Gustavo:

One example of that is we’ve realized that a lot when we went, when we went to our orders, we actually have several variations and people were buying all three of the variations at the same time. Yeah. So we saw a lot of people were buying ’em, but we’re, we were never promoting them together. So in the listing we now talk about you should get these all three together cuz they actually do go together. But we weren’t like, oh sweet, we, we weren’t promoting them together after we realized a lot of people are just buying all three right away. We’re like, okay, maybe we should put that on the list and go, you can grab these, you know, together. So that’s just how–

Carrie Miller:

How are you putting it on the listing? Are you just writing it on there?

Gustavo:

On one of the images, you could just go, these three go well together and you can give the reasons why they go well together and then you can grab ’em all here and kind of put it–

Carrie Miller:

How do you help people find it? Do you just like say grab ’em on Walmart or find them on Walmart or

Gustavo:

Well there if you, we would have all three variations on that same listing so that you could, okay. Like people can easily see that like all those three products are there. It’s just a reminder that you can buy all three right away.

Carrie Miller:

That’s a really good point cuz some people don’t really think about it. Sometimes you have to tell them what to do. That’s really, really a good like a strategy. So that’s even good for Amazon. So if anyone’s listening that isn’t on Walmart yet, that’s something, you know, you could definitely remind people that they, you know, to get all, all the products on your, all the variations basically.

Gustavo:

We actually got that idea cuz we try to talk to customers as much as possible. So we had customers on our website and stuff and we call them every so often. And one customer said, oh I, you know, I always buy, I like your product because I can buy all three that I need at the same time, can I just click on add to cart to all three variations? And we’re like, oh, that’s, that’s a good idea. Like, then we checked our orders, we saw that a lot of people were doing, then we’re like, oh, we should, we should really remind people that they can do that here.

Carrie Miller:

That’s that’s such a good point. Oh my gosh. The little things that really can make a difference. Okay, so going along with you know, AB testing, what do you all think about AB testing the product type and do you have any strategies for that?

Leronardo:

Yes, it’s very important for us. At first we target the product type and also the path that our competitors have for every keyword. Because if we don’t have the correct product also path, our product is not going be index for the main keywords we’re targeting to. So our recommendation should be to use, maybe to use Helium 10 or also to search manually through the search grid what are the prototypes that our competitors are using. And also because if you, if you target the correct prototype, you’re gonna have a bunch of filtering attributes displaying your listing that were being displayed to the customers before. So these filtering attributes are also very important to be find, to be search searchable in all the keywords that your customer are looking for in, in warmer any changes can be made using a case by submitting a case in support center, even for the club side and also for the shelving bag. We also recommend to use a case instead of changing it through the growth opportunities dashboard because it is more directly and also it’s going to be, you’re gonna, you’re gonna be, you have received a response maybe in the next couple hours, no more than that.

Carrie Miller:

Do they give you better product type options when you do it that way?

Leronardo:

No, I usually search for the prototype.

Carrie Miller:

Well, you know which one you want.

Leronardo:

Yes, I know what whatever. Because in the, in the growth opportunity dashboard, they, they show you a couple of of them, but sometimes it’s not best. And sometimes also your competitor has a more accurate prototype depending on the first, on the first vaccination that Walmart gave gave to you.

Carrie Miller:

Okay. Where are you finding these, the product types of your competitors? Is it on the, the shelving path on the listing or where are you looking?

Leronardo:

Yes. AB testing.

Carrie Miller:

Okay. Yes.

Leronardo:

The second last we’re targeting to.

Carrie Miller:

Okay. Yeah, I mean it’s interesting how much more exposure you can get. Cause I noticed myself just having a challenges getting into certain keywords. So it is really important to, you know, AB test the product type. So how many times is there a product that you had to do multiple, multiple changes on the product type? Like what’s the most you’ve had to change the product type to find the right one?

Leronardo:

We have a product that has like bestseller product, let me say like around creams, bestseller creams. So you have to look for any specific prototype that is also go, is going help you also to achieve maybe the vessels batch in that category because we know that the four top five, the four five products are going to have the vessels branch. So depending on the prototype, ah, their picks, the popular picks or this kind badge, like the best seller badge are gonna be assigned to you. So it’s very important.

Carrie Miller:

Yeah. That’s really, that’s a really good point. Yeah, so look at the products. They’re the best seller badge products so that you can look at their product type cuz they probably have the right product type. That’s a really good point. Okay, so something else I wanted to talk about is reduced pricing because a lot of sellers have a hard time getting the reduced tag. And so you’ve actually explained the reason for that to me and maybe a different strategy to get a reduced price on Walmart. So can you talk a little bit about the reduced price strategy that you guys have?

Leronardo:

Sure. Walmart, since Walmart used the 90 day average price to calculate whether you’re giving the strikethrough or not, you should have a strategy based on when you are going to display it and how much are going to display. At first our, our story is to have two prices. The main pricing that we are advertising any point of time without being containing a deal. And the second price we are using for the flashback and also for campaign or maybe special days we are targeting like weekends where maybe the traffic warmer is higher than other days. It’s very important since Walmart demands that some items in order to participate in these campaigns are also flashbacks, have the strikethrough. If they, if they don’t have it, they’re not going participate. So you have to be very careful. And the second strategy we use is the timeline. If you, you have to, to narrow the timeline, you’re displaying this strike through because if you’re not, if you’re not going to narrow it, the the 90 day average price is going to become lower. So if you want to add, to get this right through to this and also to increase your conversion rate, you’re, you’re gonna have, you’re gonna a lower and lower price. Ok. So in order to be, to get the structure,

Carrie Miller:

Yeah, so that’s really interesting. I didn’t realize it’s the previous 90 days. So you have to kinda keep beating that 90 day average price when you do the strikethrough. But Flash Picks is probably a good one. So you have your, your main price and then if you get the plat flash picks deals. And I think you mentioned to me too that you can open up a case if you don’t see Flash pick steals available to you in your growth opportunities. Is that correct? Is that what you guys did?

Leronardo:

Yes, and also because you have to submit offer for any case, for any flash pick or for any campaigns. And you have to be, you have to work with former in order to monitor all this, your submission status. Cause sometimes maybe the campaigns already started and sometimes you get in time, but there are some, maybe if you are offer is not good enough if you’re, if you’re selling also your products in other market places, so search on Amazon and your price is not getting bid by that, but that the price you’re advertising there, maybe you’re not considered. So, but thankfully to our account manager, we, we have been, we run through this and we are taking care of any flash pick on any campaign we’re advertising.

Carrie Miller:

Very nice, very good. Another question here is we were talking about WFS Walmart fulfillment services and how sometimes, I mean for me it’s taken like two weeks and sometimes a little bit longer to check in inventory and I think you have a strategy to get the products checked in faster. What, what do you think about that and what, what’s the strategy that you use to get your products checked in faster?

Leronardo:

We usually know that for the timing longer for hazardous products at first to convert our products we use flat file from changing from server fulfillment to warmer fulfillment. We received this advice from support center. Cause at first we were having issues also to cover our products to WFS and the second advice is to having an US compliant MSDS. Sometimes warmer does reject some products, even if they’re not hazardous since they don’t have an MSDS, which is complained to to the US regulations. The second thing we, we need to consider is that we have to, is better to send a print images of the packages instead of a picture. Because in the plot file is is mandatory to send a print picture of the label. So in order to avoid any delay, they should send a print images instead a picture. And the third consideration should be also the, the type, the product type you are sent, you are inputting in the flat file because we at first considered that our products were notone instead since chemicals, they should be considered as them even if they don’t have any hazards component in their formula.

Carrie Miller:

Okay. Yeah, that’s really interesting. Yeah, so flat files are probably the best way to go on Walmart. And we actually have instructions on how to use flat files for Walmart in our freedom ticket on Walmart. It’s under, for all helium 10 subscribers, it’s in our Freedom tickets. It’s week 11. So our our freedom ticket course that comes with every paid subscription. You can go into that and we’ll, we show you how to do that. There’s another thing that you mentioned to me about flat file uploads though, that was like you were having a hard time updating the product and you said that you need to use the, the original flat file upload in order to update products. Is that right?

Leronardo:

Yes, that’s right. There are like two flat files. The new items set up flat file or maybe all the conversion flat file or even the change some specification from the prototype but different from the new item setup. The new item setup allows you also to display more keyboard feature attributes and more attributes are display in the, in this flat file. They are not going to be displayed even if you use manual setup the product or even if you change after using the other type of app file. So for us it’s always the best way to also to update any images, to update on any descriptions. Even the key features we copy the with when, since the key feature has like a specific formula, like specific, I have to say like a way to input it in the Walmart seller Central, we always start at first the key features in the manually setup product setup. And then we copy the exact formula that Walmart give us is like a code for a website, you know, when they have like molding, when they have any specific character and then input it into the flat file and put it into a Walmart.

Carrie Miller:

Wow, that’s pretty interesting info. Okay. Another thing is too, cuz you sell, I think you sell kind of liquids and I, I’ve actually run into an issue on trying to get a product into WFS because they want you to label as a pesticide first and then they check it. And did you have that situation where like for our product we were trying to upload it to WFS, but they said we have to label it as a pesticide and then send the safety data sheet. Did you guys have anything like that when you were trying to get into WFS because you had liquids or were you, did you get accepted right away?

Leronardo:

We get accepted right, right away since we changed correctly the ide, which was a chemical. Okay. And secondly, we already sent the MSDS stain pesticide product. It wasn’t like any, doesn’t have any hazardous check the standard requirements that are needed to send an MSDS a compliant msds. And some key features like as you said, pesticide, any canus component, any even California regulations that are ingredients should need, it should be staying in the MSDS. As soon as all these criteria are met, we they’re good to, to go.

Carrie Miller:

Okay. Very good. Very interesting. All right. It looks like we have a question here. How do I turn one of my main images counter clockwise 90 degrees and how do I change the order of variance on an in seem color size? I, I’ve had this issue too, like literally my sizing, it’ll go large large, medium, extra large. It, it’s not an order for the sizing. And I don’t know something must be happening with his images where they’re not like showing up correctly. So do have you guys had this issue?

Leronardo:

No, we haven’t. We, we, we shouldn’t try to any, any images we submitted into Walmart or any marketplace. We when we upload in this cloud, we try to check if the images are the correct, have the correct size, and also are the correct ones we’re trying to submit. We haven’t, we haven’t confirmed this issue. I dunno, it should even as

Carrie Miller:

Do you upload your images directly or do you do it in the flat file with a url?

Leronardo:

We use a flat file with URL might, what you used to do is we, we use Google Drive link. You can, you cannot submit a Google drive in the normal form to download or your copy from Google. You have to transform in a specific formula. We find even in the internet that you would allow to any, any person to only click in Daily Link and that automatically is gonna download the file into your computer without doing anything, without showing display. Like, I dunno, like any new screen,

Carrie Miller:

Is it like a tiny URL or something like that? Or,

Leronardo:

Yes, it’s.

Carrie Miller:

Okay.

Leronardo:

I can even share with you the formula in order to use it.

Carrie Miller:

That’d be great. That would be awesome.

Gustavo:

And that, and that’s probably the best way to upload images. Cause if he is or or if they’re uploading images using like the edit button on the listings, that’s like the worst way to try to upload images. It sometimes they won’t go through so as, as I said flat files are probably best using the link. Otherwise get

Carrie Miller:

And you have to create new links though for each time you upload on a flat file though, because I’ve noticed that they, when you upload the same flat file or the same images again, it doesn’t, or maybe you wanna change a few or the order you have to change the URLs. Is is that still the case for you guys or changing the URLs every time you re-upload a flat file?

Leronardo:

What happened with us is at first we weren’t able to modify the order because we have like WFS conversion request pending is while the, we have other conversion WFS conversion that already got involved into Walmart. Ok. So maybe we think it’s a problem in the system on one hand. The second thing that we do is we change the world that we’re displaying. We use like a open hosting cloud in order to always been changing this images. If this is not happening, we always create a case. A case we get a case and we submit the flat file in order to Walmart to consider also the assets and the change on those assets we’re requiring to.

Carrie Miller:

Okay. Yeah, so maybe that’s probably the way to fix that, is to submit a flat file exact so that you can fix that the image issue. And then what about the order of the variations? Do you use case, do you, did you have to just submit a case when this happened to you? Or what do you do to fix that?

Leronardo:

We haven’t confirmed this issue. We know that the first a variant that’s going to display or is, is the primary variant. If it’s this is not happening we always create a case in Warren in order to maybe change the order of those variants we we’re displaying.

Carrie Miller:

Okay. So maybe the yeah, maybe the primary variant should always be the size you want to come first. Maybe that’s something I’ll try. I actually have opened multiple cases because my sizing is wrong too, so that’s really, really helpful.

Gustavo:

And there’s also a way to change, like the image that appears in the variant, which is, I mean, something small, but like you can maybe use an Oh really add something else to highlight whatever it is you’re, you’re selling. Like if you have different flavors and you have berry and stuff, like you could put like an image of a, of a berry there, like something that can show a little bit more what the berry is.

Carrie Miller:

Wow. That’s, that’s even better.

Gustavo:

It’s something small, but it’s kind of cool, which is like, can highlight whatever it is you’re selling.

Carrie Miller:

Very cool. I think this was a lot of really great Walmart information for everybody who’s listening. So I think it’ll be really helpful, especially just troubleshooting and knowing you should, you know, there are some ways to fix things like with flat files especially, but then also opening up a case is always a good idea too. I wanna thank you guys so much for joining. Is there anything else, any kind of advice that you have as before we let part ways and just that you have advice for anyone who’s wanting to sell in Walmart or thinking about it? What do you guys think?

Gustavo:

So there, I mean there’s, there’s definitely a couple thing we’ve learned. We were told that Amazon, at Walmart, I can say Walmart Amazon, Walmart might suppress. I, I think Walmart might suppress you if your price like higher than in your other channels. So you, you definitely wanna make sure that you have, you have similar pricing as you have. Like say if you’re selling on Amazon or other marketplaces, try to match those prices. Focus on quality listings. Rich media is a big one, I think like Rich Media is coming up and that’s gonna be very big. I think similar to how Amazon added the a plus, you know, yeah, there’s tons of room to, to explore with adding images, videos, stuff inside your rich media. That’s, that’s gonna be very big. I think it’s gonna help with conversion and a ton of stuff like that. People post reviews quite fast. I think that’s not happening as much with Amazon with like new products. Like people will post reviews fast. So I think it’s important to have a quality product right off, right off the bat. And yeah. And you’ll have to invest in pbc We’re, we hired a, a manager for now, but I think that’s, that’s definitely key as as just as it is with Amazon.

Carrie Miller:

Yeah. It’s actually crazy how many people, when I ask them if they’ve started pa pay-per-click on Walmart, they’re like, no. Cuz they’re like, you know, they’ll say, oh, I have no sales on Walmart. And I’m like, well, did you do pay-per-click? No. So you would never do that on Amazon. Right. So it’s crazy.

Gustavo:

You, you have to, yeah. Yeah. It’s part of the, it’s part of just like, you know, knowing how to play that game.

Carrie Miller:

Yeah, definitely. Well thank you guys so much for joining. Really appreciate you guys taking the time to answer questions and just, you know, show, tell us all the things that you’ve learned. I think this is a lot of really great info for anyone selling at Walmart. I think people are gonna be really excited about it. So thanks again and I guess I’ll see you all later. Bye everyone.

Gustavo:

Thank you Carrie.

Helium 10 Buzz 7/20/23: Amazon Prime Day Stats | Walmart Open Call | Search Query Performance Tip

In this episode, we talk about a record-breaking Prime Day, Walmart Pro Seller Badge eligibility updates, and more breaking news in the eCommerce industry! 

#475 - GS1 Q&A, GTIN Hijacking, & Barcode FAQs

In the world of e-commerce and retail, barcodes play a crucial role in product identification and inventory management. But what lies beyond those familiar lines and numbers? Join us as we dive into the fascinating world of barcodes with an exclusive interview with Michelle Covey, a leading expert from GS1 US.
 
Michelle shares insights into her current endeavors and sheds light on the latest innovations in barcodes. We discuss whether Walmart adheres to the same GTIN requirements as other retailers and explore the concept of GTIN hijacking scenarios. For Amazon sellers, we uncover strategies to avoid GTIN problems. Additionally, we address the varying pricing ranges of GS1 licenses across different countries and provide guidance for those who purchased second-hand barcodes. Tune in for an informative and engaging discussion!
 
If you’re interested to learn more, here are additional resources talked about in this episode and provided by GS1 US:

• Homepage – https://www.gs1us.org/
• Estimate How Many GTINs You Need – https://www.gs1us.org/tools/barcode-estimator/home
• GS1 US Podcast – https://next-level-supply-chain-with-gs1us.podcastpage.io/

In episode 475 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Michelle discuss:

• 01:39 – What Is Michelle Up To These Days?
• 02:24 – Is There Innovation In Barcodes?
• 03:03 – Does Walmart Have Same GTIN Requirements?
• 06:05 – GS1 US Answers All Your Burning Questions!
• 07:53 – What Is A GTIN Hijacking Scenario
• 09:50 – How To Avoid GTIN Problems With Amazon
• 13:13 – Why Amazon Does Not Like Barcodes Outside GS1 Or Resellers
• 14:00 – Why GS1 Have Different Pricing Ranges For Other Countries?
• 16:09 – What If I Bought Second-Hand Barcode?
• 18:10 – What GS1 Barcode Or GTIN Fields Does Amazon Look At?
• 20:31 – What Are GS1 License Owner Certificates?
• 21:35 – Does A Brand Name Change Need A New GTIN?
• 23:28 – Common Error Messages Amazon Sellers Get From Their Barcodes
• 25:24 – Always Think About Your Packaging Strategy
• 27:30 – Upcoming GS1 Barcode Innovations
• 29:43 – Michelle’s Healthy Habits And Habits Outside Work
• 31:20 – How To Reach Out To GS1 US & Michelle Covey

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Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

If you’re a serious seller, you know you need an official barcode from GS1. But there’s error messages that come up here and there, and questions about what Amazon can really see from GS1 and other concerns. So we actually invited an official rep from GS1 to answer all these questions. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think.

Bradley Sutton:

Are you afraid of running out of inventory before your next shipment comes in? Or maybe you’re on the other side and you worry about having too much inventory, which could cap you out at the Amazon warehouses, or even cost you storage fees? Stay on top of your inventory by using our robust inventory management tool. You can take advantage of our advanced forecasting algorithms, manage your three PL inventory, create pos for your suppliers, create replenishment, shipments, and more. All from inside inventory management by Helium 10. For more information, go to h10.me/inventorymanagement. And don’t forget, you can sign up for a free Helium 10 account from there, or you can get 10% off for life by using our special podcast code SSP10. Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers podcast by Helium 10. I’m your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that’s a completely BS free, unscripted and unrehearsed organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. And back for the second time, we’ve got somebody who indirectly helps millions of sellers out there potentially. Michelle from GS1. How’s it going?

Michelle:

It’s going great. Thank you for having me today, Bradley.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome. Awesome. Now we’re not gonna go too much into your backstory this time. If you guys are interested, make sure to check out episode 357. All right, so episode 357 was the first time that she was on the podcast. And we talked about, you know, the history of, of GS1, and we talked a lot about some, some basics, you know, like what’s the difference between GTIN and EIN and a whole bunch of cool stuff. But I wanted to just, first of all, just what have you been up to? Like, how’s the last couple years been since you’ve been on the show?

Michelle:

Well, you know, always busy. I think there’s always plenty of work to do. And I’ve changed roles. I’m now in our innovation team, so, but I still help support a lot of the Amazon community, but I’m also working–

Bradley Sutton:

All right, hold on. I gotta ask. Barcodes are barcodes. How do you innovate that? That sounds like a really tough job to have. Like, all right, barcodes are completely set now. We need you to innovate something cool.

Michelle:

No, you could always innovate. I think that, well, we can take that discussion too, but like where industry is going with barcodes, you’ve seen the linear barcode on your products. They’ve been around for 50 years and they’ve been working great, but you start to see 2D barcodes, QR codes on things why not make that the barcode that goes beep up the checkout stand? So we’ve been working on that too. So yeah, I can talk more about that if you want.

Bradley Sutton:

Now that you mentioned that I saw something interesting the other day. It was like these crazy, I’ve seen, you know, QR codes that have some like logos, you know, embedded in it, but now it’s like, looks like art, but it’s really a bar. Like it’s really a QR code. I’m like, how is that even possible? But okay. There is innovation barcodes, I guess. There probably wasn’t for, for a few decades, but now, now we’re getting back back there. You know, right, right before the call, you know, you had mentioned Walmart, and so I just want, you know, let’s just start off there. One thing that’s interesting, you know, about you know, when we’re talking about barcodes, I know just from my limited experience, you know, obviously on Amazon, you know, I have tons of experience. I usually actually put an FNSKU, obviously everything needs a GS1 barcode, you know, for the backend. But I put the Amazon FNSKU sticker you know, over it when I send it to Amazon. But when it comes to Walmart, it’s actually the opposite. Now I have to actually cover up, if I had, like, if I had printed my Amazon FNSKU I actually have to cover it up with the original UPC. Now,

Bradley Sutton:

What is your experience like, you know, like do you, do you see a lot more sellers you know, selling on, on Walmart? And does Walmart have the same kind of very strict rules like Amazon does about the GS1?

Michelle:

So, good questions. I think, and this is something we always talk about when we are talking to the seller community, especially new companies that are just starting out. First of all, always identify your product with the GS1 GTIN that global trade item number, that’s what gets encoded into the barcode. So we talk more about GTIN but again, if you look into listen to that pressed episode, we, we interchange ’em with barcodes very quickly. But so get your, your number. And that’s what’s used on Amazon, but it’s also used on Walmart. So Walmart has the same GTIN requirements for identifying your product. But their barcode requirements are the traditional GS1 barcode. So having that UPC barcode, or if you did assign an EIN, that EIN barcode to your product, so they want that one to go, you know, beef at the checkout. Amazon doesn’t really have, in most cases, a traditional checkout. Everything’s done on the marketplace. And so they use that FNSKU for like their just fulfillment process in their warehouse.

Michelle:

Yeah. Okay. But for most part, we always say, you know, again, sellers usually start on Amazon and don’t think about it, and they’ll just do the FNSKU and then they won’t think about, well, if I am expanding into other channels, I now need this other barcode. So it is a challenge. We’re hoping that Amazon will use more GS1 barcodes in their fulfillment center because it does cause that dichotomy among how you, you know, barcode your products, whether it’s for Amazon or for most other traditional retailers that use the GS1 system.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, personally, I have never applied for a GTIN exemption, you know, to get, I mean, like, I just don’t understand the, the point, like even if I’m not selling on other marketplaces, it’s like, to me it’s just a no-brainer. Would you agree with that? I mean, people might say you’re biased here, but why do you, is it just laziness that some people don’t want want to get a, a barcode or that’s being cheap, or what?

Michelle:

It could be. So there are a couple of reasons why a GTIN exemption or seller seeks GTIN exemptions. One is if you do have a generic product or you label your product generic, right now, currently Amazon does not allow you to have a generic product with a GTIN. However, that’s changing soon. So we do know that they’re, you know, cuz in the standards you can actually have a GTIN associated to a generic product. So they’re working to change that. So we’re really excited that they’re understanding the use of our standards. So that’s one category that we’ve seen the GTIN exemptions, generics other ones could be laziness. Yeah, it could be. We’ve also seen it in high SKU intensity, like in the apparel sector where they have, you know, runs of a hundred thousand different types of t-shirts that could be all customized, that’s a lot of GTINs to assign and maybe not every one of them will be purchased. And so, you know, why, why spend that money on it? So that we’ve seen that case too trying to come up with some solutions for those categories. But ideally, of course I’m biased. I would always say assign a GTIN to your product.

Bradley Sutton:

Sure. Yeah. Alright. I mean, I’m not biased and that’s what I would say <laugh>.

Michelle:

Yeah.

Bradley Sutton:

I actually, you know, there, there are some questions from some of our users, you know, when they found out that I was going to, you know, go ahead and have you back on the show. And, and, and Jay you know, who’s actually been on this podcast before, he was wondering about what’s the latest as far as like catalog corrections made when, like, let’s say the ASIN is showing the incorrect brand, but the UPC is assigned to your brand or no, aligned to your brand. So I’m not sure if I understand that question, but looks like maybe there’s a product that has the wrong brand but has the right UPC, you know, like is does, is GS1 gonna provide any help? Like, does, can Amazon see that, you know, if if it was a GS1 barcode, can Amazon see that it’s assigned to a certain brand in GS1? And then maybe that will help you know, make the transition.

Michelle:

So I think what you’re explaining is what we call a GTIN hijacking scenario. Where you go to list your own product, you own it or, and you have the GTIN associated and then it’s already on the platform.

Bradley Sutton:

If that’s what he meant, then yeah, that I exactly know what that is. It’s happened to me before. Okay. So, so how do you, what’s your suggestion on?

Michelle:

So the best way that, you know, we’ve been working with Amazon selling partner support to try to help sellers through that because it can get very tricky. So if you are the, the rightful owner of your GS1 GTIN what we recommend is, first of all, when hopefully you know, or the reason why it might be out there is it was on the platform a lot longer before Amazon started doing some of the checks against the GS1 database. So we’ve seen that. Because right now, anytime a new GTINs listed, it does check against our database to ensure that that company is associated to that GTIN. So

Bradley Sutton:

What does it mean by like associated? Like what if I have multiple brands, it let’s say I have two, or let’s say I have three companies, you know, obviously with, with you know, GS1, you know, I’m one company, but let’s say on Amazon, you know, I might have three or four accounts, you know, each of them have four different accounts or four different brands or something. If they’re all in the same GS1 account, does that count as, you know, being, I forgot what the word you used related or whatever, or do I need separate GS1 accounts as well?

Michelle:

You don’t need separate GS1 accounts. Now the, this is where it does get tricky cuz you think about like some of the large multinationals, like Coca-Cola, everybody knows Coca-Cola, right? The company is Coca-Cola Company, however, they have multiple brands. They have Diet Coke, Coke, Coke Zero. So they’ll have a whole list of brands. Now, unfortunately we don’t store at GS1, we don’t store all the brands associated to that company. So I think what you’re saying is how does Amazon know that I have Diet Coke, Coke, Coke Zero, all that. That is upon the brand to submit that to Amazon. So they have a like a brand authorization form that they’ll ask new sellers to provide so that they have listed out all the brands that they are authorized to sell. We’re working with Amazon to try to figure out how to help provide that data. But Amazon is looking for that brand level information from directly from the sellers. Right now, unfortunately we don’t, at GS1 don’t collect all that brand information too. So we collect the company name Coca-Cola Company and then your license, but we don’t collect all that brand information and share that with Amazon.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, because I was, I’m just thinking, you know, like in my personal experience, I have like a GS1 UK account and I use it for our, you know, helium 10 products, which is called Project X’s Reality TV show that we did on YouTube a couple years ago. But then I also use that same account for the GS1 account to, to make barcodes for some of my other, you know, personal Amazon accounts and, and other people’s Amazon accounts that I, or not other people’s, but you know, other accounts I have full control over. Now I haven’t had any issues, you know, on the Amazon side, so is it maybe because Amazon has already tied, you know, these different accounts to that same, you know, GS1 will say, okay, it’s using the same, you know, prefix and and it’s obviously coming from the same account. Is that why I’m not having issues or It

Michelle:

Could be, it could be. And it could be that your brand, so you are using only your, your brand. There’s cases where third party sellers can be selling same brand. So two or two or three people can be selling the same brand. And so how does Amazon know which seller is authorized to sell that brand? Cuz some may or may not be able to. So in those cases, especially the third party sellers, if they’re not a first party seller, then they might have to submit this brand authorization form, if that makes sense.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. All right. All right. Sounds good. Another question from Jay, and this is just, you know, I was gonna ask this myself too, but still pretty much the same, where like, Hey, Amazon does not want anybody buying barcodes not from GS1, like from, you know, resellers that that’s still gonna be a, a chance to get you in trouble, right?

Michelle:

Yeah, again, they do check that license information against the GS1 database and they, they are pretty firm with that. You know, I’ve, I’ve heard other cases where I’ve had it before again, before they started making these checks against the GS1 database some of these GTIN s were allowed on the platform, or maybe they weren’t true GS1 GTINs, but they are definitely staying firm with it must come from GS1.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah. You know, a few people are just curious, like why different GS1 offices have have such different pricing structures. So like, are you guys pretty much different entities or does one have more value? Like does one have more power than, than the other? Or more value as opposed to you know, we’re talking about, you know, databases in Amazon, et cetera, or what, what’s going on there?

Michelle:

We get that question a lot. So if you’re not familiar with GS1 or if you don’t wanna go back and listen to that other episode, just a real, real quick recap. GS1 is a global company as far as we have global standards and we manage them in each local region through local offices. So GS1 us, GS1, uk, GS1, Germany, GS1, Brazil and each of those offices, while we all help administer the standards, we do all operate independently. So we all have different business models. So it’s kind of like a federated model across the, the globe. We all help administer the exact same standard but in each region different business models. So yes, you’ll run into different pricing structures. You might also run into different bundled offerings or support offerings in each region.

Michelle:

So why, why would you go to one over the other generally in your local region, you’d go to your local office. So in the US, GS1 US supports the local office we have in, in-language support and in time zone support. So some, you said you have some accounts for GS1 UK. They may not have, correct. I mean, they actually are an English speaking country, but if you were needing support and it was, you know, your three o’clock in the morning, that’s when you could get them. But maybe not at your, you know, four o’clock in the afternoon. So it just depends on where you want your support and maybe some of their offerings. But it’s up to you, it’s up to, you could go to any GS1 office to get your GTIN s. It’s just, you know, you make those decisions on language support, you know, customer support and possibly other service offerings.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, cool. Another question that somebody had here was, let’s say, you know, there’s somebody who didn’t know any better and then got one of the, the these secondhand, you know, from eBay or somewhere else or what they thought was a reputable website, a GS1 or a bar a barcode or UPC and they want to get compliant, you know, cuz maybe they’re scared that Amazon might shut them down or something. Like what should they do? You know, that they’ve got an Amazon listing, it’s already tied to this shady UPC code. Is there anything they could do to become not shady?

Michelle:

Well, you know, so Amazon is going back and doing, not only are they checking on initial listing they are starting to go back and clean up bad data or data that’s not authentic GS1. So you might might be a seller that have been on the platform for a while with a non GS1 GTIN and be asked to update it. So we’ve seen that. We do find it’s actually tricky if you are one of those sellers that has a non GS1 and you’re like, out of the goodness of my heart, I wanna update this to a GS1 GTIN. I’ll be honest, I don’t think Amazon has a very good standard operating procedure for that to help sellers do that. Because when you do switch it over, it doesn’t carry some of your customer reviews, you know, all of the, the stats that you want it to. Very easy. I know that they’re working on a process to make that easier for sellers to do that changeover. But from my understanding, it’s still pretty tricky to do that in the, in the middle of, you know, a listing that’s already active and then also if you have inventory in stock in their warehouse that causes an issue. So there’s a lot of complications. So it’s not a quick yes, do it. There’s a lot of considerations to, to be made before you actually do that.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, now, you know, if we’ve done the right thing and, and we do have GS1 account and, and, and we’re, we’re doing, we’re, you know, generating new UPC codes, the, the right way, you know, setting it up on Amazon, et cetera. You know, what exactly is Amazon looking at from GS1? Like what’s the fields that are important or what, what are the ones where, hey, don’t, don’t worry too much about it. You know, like, I’m assuming that they’re not going down to the very SKU level or manufacturer SKU field inside, you know, when we’re creating a GS1 barcode, but, you know, are is the most important thing the you know, what company we use to register with that we make it our brand or what, what is actually Amazon looking at when they’re verifying information from GS1?

Michelle:

So they have a lot of like proprietary scripts. So some of it I’m not too aware of cuz they do have their own algorithms, but the, the fields that they use from GS1 that they check on the database is your company name. So like, again, I’m gonna go back to the Coca-Cola example. Coca-Cola Company Inc. So they’ll look at your company name, they’ll look at your prefix or your license. Cuz at GS1 US, we also license single GTIN. So it could either be your prefix or even your single gtin. And ensure that that the identifiers you are adding to your listing match your range within your prefix that’s assigned to your company or your single GTIN. They do look at brand name, but again, they don’t collect that from GS1.

Michelle:

So they kind of marry it together and then use that brand name for a validation as well. And then going through the rest of the listing process, there might be some other errors that come up. Again, I think I told you, if you’re now then listing for a generic, it’ll check and see, oh, does it have a GTIN or not? You know, and it may throw an error or not. So there are some other checks along the way. And then of course, you know, they do all other checks not necessarily against GS1 data, but like, you know, you know, the product descriptions are right or, you know, they have other fields that they check. But from a GS1 perspective, it’s the company name and the license and oh, and the address of the company.

Bradley Sutton:

Now this has never happened to me, but I know I’ve heard or I’ve seen in like message boards or something where sometimes maybe there’s an error, you know, Amazon says, Hey, no, this is not your, your, you know, the right GS1 or something, or the right you know, UPC, you need to submit something to prove it is, or maybe there is something that you could submit. So what would I be going to GS1 and printing off or something to, to show Amazon that, hey, I’m legit.

Michelle:

So for each identifier, you’re, you license for GS1 you get a license owner certificate, so a prefix certificate or even a single GTIN certificate. So at GS1 us, you log into your my GS1 US account, print your certificate, and that shows your company name with your g your prefix and or your GTIN. And it also gives you we also assign a, what we call a GLN, a global location number, which is basically that that ties to that address and that submit, if you submit that into selling partner support, that proves your ownership.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, cool. Cool. Elizabeth here has a question. She says, can I keep the same barcode g gtin if I switch brands, keep selling the same product and rebrand it? Somebody had told me that I have to create a new login entirely with a new brand and get a new barcode. So it sounds like maybe she’s been selling, you know, let’s just say she’s selling this water bottle under, what is this Takea brand, right? and she’s still gonna sell this water bottle, but now she wants to, you know, to, to change it to select bottles in cor you know, select bottles brand or something like that. What responsibility does she have, if any, on the barcode side you know, maybe on Amazon, everything say the same, same ASIN and, and things like that. Does she have to do anything differently now that it’s a new brand?

Michelle:

Yeah, that’s a good question. So anytime your product changes materially so a brand name change would require a new gtin because you’d also think about it too, from a sales perspective and tracking sales. You would wanna know which brand sells better than the other. You could do that. But from a GS1 standards perspective, yes, as a product, if your brand changes, if an image on your package changes, if if the contents change significantly, if your net weight changes there’s a couple of other things, but you know, if even if you printed it in English and, and you also sold it in Spanish, you know, if you have two different types of packages, you’d want two different GTIN.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. We touched on this a little bit earlier, but what are some, you know, I know we touched on it last episode, but you know, things change in in a couple of years. What are the, you know, some common error messages that Amazon sellers are getting these days? As far as you know, when it comes to their, their UPC,

Michelle:

There’s like two or three as it relates to GS1 data. One of the first ones when you first go in to enter, like the very first question on the listing is what is your product identifier? And then there’s a dropdown, and it’s GTIN, UPC, EIN, there’s a couple others ISBN that one always confuses people because we’ve confused people. We call ’em GTIN s. But then you know, when you get a 12 digit, it’s actually associated to the UPC barcode. Again, go back to your Previ s episode. So if you’re entering the 12 digit, you’re actually supposed to select UPC instead of GTIN. If you have a 13 digit identifier that gets encoded to the EIN, select that one or the 14 digit is actually the GTIN.

Michelle:

So that one always trips people up because, you know, GS1 calls ’em GTINs, but then we also interchange them with UPCs and stuff. So that’s one of ’em. And then again, if it’s a GTIN hijacking that, that says this product already exists on your, on Amazon, but you are like thinking this is the very first time you’ve entered it, it’s probably a GTIN hijacking. So again, providing your certificate to selling partner support saying this is truly my GTIN. And they could help you clear that. We do find that if you write the words, especially if you’re submitting a case online, write the words GTIN hijack or hijacking the, their algorithm sends it to the proper queue. So that’s been a tip that we’ve heard works and we’ve heard also internally from the selling partner support team put that word in there and gets ’em to the right queue versus other words in your list, in your case. And then again, the, the generic that one kind of trips people up, but we’re, we’re hoping that that one will change here in, in the coming month.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. All right. What are some other, you know, common questions that, you know, I, I think we hit a lot of the most common ones. And these are literally the, the questions that, that people are asking me about this. But are there any others that you’ve been getting that maybe I haven’t asked today that, that you think some of our listeners might, might have?

Michelle:

I think we touched on it initially, but again, you know, a lot of sellers start their journey on Amazon and just feel like that’s the only place they’re going to stay. But we always say think about growth strategy. So think about where you, your product may end up and it could end up on a store shelf. It could end up on another channel such as walmart.com or some of the others. So, you know, think about your barcoding strategy, your packaging strategy. We did hear I, I did talk to a seller a couple weeks ago about somebody who did not print their barcodes on their products and then all of a sudden they got picked up by Target and now they have to figure out how to redo all their packaging and they have like thousands of packages that they now need to put a barcode on.

Michelle:

So, yeah you know, think ahead, you know, she didn’t expect it, which was a great problem that she had, but you know, now she has to go back and print stickers and put it on her packaging, but change her packaging in the future. So so that’s one thing. And then you know, know, we’re also, like I said, we’re working with industry to move to that 2D barcode. So start investigating if you are using barcodes on your products, how that 2D barcode could be used as well, cuz it could be used for not just the point of sale scan. It now can inc include, include consumer engagement. It could in include traceability, so you could track your product back to source. It’s good for recalls. You put warranty information, there’s a lot you could encode into that 2D barcode. And so we’re hoping to see a shift in, in barcodes that innovation in barcodes over the next couple of years. So always we’ve got a wealth of resources at GS1. If you’re interested in going and innovating in your barcode we could help with that.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. Interesting. Interesting. Well, let’s talk a little bit more about that. Especially being on the innovation side here, do you think that there might be a, a day where, where there’s gonna be a new standard instead of just you know, the, the, the typical, you know, barcodes that products have had for, you know, a thousand years not a thousand years, but, you know Yeah. For, for, for every hero. Like, like could we move to QR codes as being a, a new standard or, or some other kind of format.

Michelle:

So it’s, remember it’s not necessarily a new standard, so you’re still using that core set of identifiers, that GTIN it’s just embedded into a different type of barcode. So at the base of it, it’s still using the same standard. And you’ll still need to get your GTIN, it’s just encoded into a different type of bar barcode cuz that barcode, the 2D barcode, can carry so much more information than just that linear barcode. I mean, think about it, you could scan a QR code with your phone, whereas you can’t scan a linear barcode with your phone. So that’s where technology is going. And so we thought that the barcode should move with the technology changes and now a consumer can scan that barcode and find so much more information about it than just used for a price lookup at the checkout stand.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. Any last words of wisdom or last strategies that you think the listeners need to know about?

Michelle:

No, I mean, I kind of talked about it, you know, just always think about growth, always think about where your product could end up. And you know, plan for, plan for success is what I always like to say. So yeah.

Bradley Sutton:

Now one thing I do ask not along the lines of, of e-commerce here, but I’ve been asking almost all my guests here in 2023. This is my year of physical health, mental health, hobbies and stuff. Cuz you know, regardless of we’re selling on Amazon and we’re working at GS1 or whatever, you know, sometimes we, we get a little bit too much caught up in our work and we don’t remember to, to disconnect. So I’m just curious, what’s your, what’s your, what’s a couple of your hobbies? You know, mine is, is food and and travel a lot of it, but what’s some of your hobbies and what, what about your you know, you have any routine for mental and physical health?

Michelle:

I am an avid gardener, so most people who know me know that I love to, I guess, decompress in the garden. So but I’m not a vegetable gardener, so I’m an ornamental gardener. So I like to plant flowers and I like to. Yeah, flowers. Yeah. I can’t grow vegetables like the, the squirrels and the gophers and the birds eat everything. So I gave up on that kind of gardening. So I’m an avid ornamental gardener, so that’s where I decompress and have fun.

Bradley Sutton:

Unique ones in your garden?

Michelle:

I’m starting to get into herbs because you could also use them for cooking, so kind of on the edge of vegetables, but they’re also really they’re just different. So yeah.

Bradley Sutton:

All right, well, if the zombie apocalypse happens might not be able to have a lot of food there, but you’re, you’ll have a nicely decorated place, I guess. Okay.

Michelle:

Be very loving.

Bradley Sutton:

All right, cool. Cool. All right, well, there you go. I like it, you know, no, no, two people have the same, the same hobbies, but, but the important thing, guys, if you’re listening, you know, every single guest does have something that they’re doing. You know, it’s important, you know, cuz there, there was a time where I probably couldn’t say that I did. And, and, you know, you work yourself, you could literally work yourself to death if you don’t have your own escapes True. So it’s important that everybody picks their own their own thing. All right. Well you know, Michelle, thank you so much for, for joining us again. And if people want to, you know, maybe they’re like, Hey, I didn’t get my question in, or I’m still curious about this. People wanna, you know, reach out to GS1 to ask some questions. How can they they find you guys on the interwebs out there?

Michelle:

Sure. So we’ve got first of all, our website is gs1us.org which has a lot of information out there. We also have a very robust YouTube channel, the GS1 US YouTube channel, which has a lot of great videos. We also do a couple of spotlights on small businesses and how they got started out with GS1 and some of the challenges they may have been facing. So those are some great business some great resources. We also do a bo a podcast if you’re interested in just all things supply chain. We’ve got a, the supply chain podcast, which I’m sure we could provide all the links for you. So those are some great resources.

Bradley Sutton:

Cool. Awesome. Awesome. Will I be seeing you at any upcoming Amazon events like Amazon Accelerate or anything like that?

Michelle:

I don’t dunno yet. I haven’t really I usually go to the Prosper Show. I think we saw each other at the Prosper show, but I don’t have anything planned at the right now for the rest of the year.

Bradley Sutton:

Cool. All right. Well, I look forward to seeing you when I see you. And then if not, you know, next year we’ll definitely try and bring you back on the podcast and see what kind of cool things you’ve innovated there at GS1.

Michelle:

All right. Sounds good. Thank you.

#474 - Post Amazon Prime Day PPC Strategies, Video Ads, & AMA

In this special TACoS Tuesday episode in SSP, we dive deep into the world of Amazon PPC strategies with Melissa Davis, a Fiduciary Account Manager with Profitable Pineapple Ads. She has 8 years of experience in managing Amazon PPC. In this episode, Melissa shares her valuable insights on the main strategies for Prime Day. We also discussed the key performance indicators (KPIs) to consider when stopping a campaign based on your PPC strategy and answered other burning Amazon PPC questions that the community asked live.  
 
Melissa provides valuable tips on video ads, highlights what’s working and what’s not. Furthermore, she shares her top things to do when taking over a new account and sheds light on when it’s appropriate to consider DSP and what an acceptable minimum spend on DSP is. We wrap up the episode with Melissa’s advanced Amazon PPC tactics and her expert advice on building a solid Amazon storefront, whether you have one product or multiple. Don’t miss out on this insightful TACoS Tuesday Amazon PPC ask me anything episode!

In episode 474 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Carrie and Melissa discuss: 

• 01:59 – Melissa’s Background
• 04:26 – Main Strategies For Prime Day
• 06:23 – How To Control ACoS In A New Listing
• 11:05 – What KPIs Do You Use To Stop A Campaign Based On The Underlying PPC Strategy?
• 12:16 – Using Top Of Search Boost
• 13:10 – Insights On Video Ads, What’s Working And Not
• 16:06 – Top Things To Do When Managing A New Account
• 20:18 – When Should You Consider DSP?
• 21:58 – What Is An Acceptable Minimum Spend On DSP?
• 22:40 – Do We Need To Calculate Your Bid Price Or Choose Suggested Price?
• 23:52 – How To Determine What PPC Costs Are Going To Be
• 26:36 – Keyword In Exact-Match, Is It Better To Negate It From Phrase Match?
• 28:01 – Advanced Amazon PPC Tactics
• 29:54 – How To Build A Solid Amazon Storefront
• 33:30– Building Your Storefront If You Only Have One Product
• 37:40 – How To Get In Touch With Melissa Davis

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Transcript

Carrie Miller:

Today on the show, we have Melissa Davis from Profitable Pineapple. She’s a fiduciary account manager for them and has over eight years of Amazon PPC experience. Today we’re gonna be talking about Amazon Prime Day strategies for your PPC Amazon stores and the importance of running ads to them and video ads, and so much more. How cool is that? Pretty cool I think.

Bradley Sutton:

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

Carrie Miller:

Hello everybody and welcome back to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. My name is Carrie Miller, and I’m your host today for TACoS Tuesday, which is our monthly podcast where we talk about all things PPC and answer your questions live. So let’s go ahead and get into it. Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of TACoS Tuesday. I have a very special guest who we’ve actually never had before, so I’m really excited to have her. Melissa from Profitable Pineapple, she’s the fiduciary account manager. Thanks so much for joining me, Melissa.

Melissa:

Hi, Carrie. It’s really great to meet you. I’m super excited. Yeah,

Carrie Miller:

Yeah, I just wanted to kinda get into, you know, your background and, you know, see who you are so that everyone in the audience can get to know you and yeah, so

Melissa:

Definitely. So I started on the Amazon platform about eight or nine years ago as a data assistant. So I started cleaning search term reports before I even knew what a search term report was. I’ve always been really good with spreadsheets and, and admin, things like that, so awesome. I’d started there with a fairly well known Amazon guru and just cleaning data for her and saving her some time and efficiency on that kind of stuff. And then I started asking questions and I started saying, you know, what are these reports and what do you do with them and how does this tie in? And what do you do with all these other things? And she was so great. She kind of took me under her wing, taught me everything that I know to the point that at like we were building courses and teaching.

Melissa:

So some people might recognize me from that. I was very blonde then though, like in 2018-2019. I was very blonde then, so maybe they don’t recognize me. But yeah, I used to run q and as for a pretty well known course that a lot of people have taken and really started just getting into all of the aspects of running an Amazon account from advertising to inventory, to issues with support and all of that. So really have like a, a pretty unique and well-rounded experience and skillset. But advertising has always been kind of my main focus. So I would say definitely expert level advertising, but gosh, if you’ve been on working with Amazon for as long as I have, I think you’ve probably seen just about everything. So in the meantime, you know, covid hit and everything kind of went a little crazy and so I’d, I’d gone off on my own and I was managing some clients just who knew me through the course and through some other things and just recognized me and that I started working with different agencies, doing some consulting, doing some account management really just depended on what their needs were.

Melissa:

And then most recently jumped on with profitable Pineapple. So I know that you guys have had Adam and Travis on before, so working with them and their team, and they are absolutely fantastic. So

Carrie Miller:

Yeah, I’m so excited. Yeah, they’re great. We’ve we’ve had Dr. Travis on here before, so yes I know lots of people really like his teachings. He’s been in our elite group too. So I wanna get started though, because today is Prime Day. So I wanted to you know, just see if you had any tips or anything that you wanted to talk about in regards to Prime Day. And if you guys have any questions in the audience about Prime Day let us know what PPC questions you have in regards to, you know, what kind of strategies you should be using, or if you have any questions of something that’s going on right now, go ahead and drop those in the chat.

Melissa:

Yeah, definitely. So first of all, everybody breathe because I know that Prime Day is like very, very exciting and nerve wracking and oh my gosh, it’s this big thing. Take a breath, everybody’s gonna be okay. The day is here and tomorrow will come too. Main strategies for Prime Day are really just manage what you’ve already got going. I really do tell a lot of people, you know, look at the history of your campaigns. Look at how they’ve done in the previous 30 or 60 days. Not necessarily not necessarily when they’ve announced Prime Day, cuz then you start to get into the, the shoppers are clicking, they’re adding to cart, but they’re waiting for Prime Day to purchase cuz they wanna see that, that discount bar pop up when they go into their cart this morning. I know I’m guilty of the same thing.

Melissa:

I do avoid ads though, you know, business ethics and things like that. But I, I looked in my cart this morning to see kind of what was on sale and what was going on with that. So I, I think that’s becoming a lot more popular than it had been previously. So one thing that we did see quite a bit across the board was a lot of clicks, higher ACoS with these weeks coming up to Prime Day because everybody’s just shopping and they’re looking to see, you know, what that deal’s gonna be then. So I like to base performance on like I would say like May 1st to the end of June. So looking at that, is your ACoS okay? Is it a, is a campaign that’s converting or a target that’s converting for you? Generally on Prime Day you know, you’re gonna see the same kind of thing. You’re gonna be able to convert then and get those sales coming through at that point. So that’s how I kind of trust my metrics in the system and trust my decision making in increasing budgets or, you know, increasing bids because that attribution’s so delayed, you’re not seeing exactly what’s coming in and those numbers look really, really scary right off the bat. So really looking at that history that history to see where you should be increasing those budgets and increasing those bids at to see where you’ve already won.

Carrie Miller:

Yeah. So do you have like a calculation of how much you should increase the budget or do you think it’s a good idea to do it quite a bit?

Melissa:

Usually the well-performing campaigns, I do about 20 to 30% increase right off the bat. Like, I’ve got it ready to go. I know that I wanna spend more there because they are say 5%, 10%, 15% under the ACoS that I’m comfortable with. I already know that they perform well on their own. And then I just really watch ’em throughout the day. I log in, you know, every hour, every couple hours, what’s still in budget, what’s almost outta budget? Is it one of those really well performing campaigns or is it not? What are the metrics? It’s, it’s so many things. What are the metrics look like today? Is it something that’s never performed before? If it’s something that’s never performed well before, I generally don’t give it more budget than I’ve already had because then you’re gonna just see a higher a cost, you’re gonna see more spend come in on something that you don’t have any, you know history or data that’s gonna come convert. You’re just really testing on a day that has the highest traffic, you know, that Amazon has. And it can be a reward, but it’s a huge risk to try to get there and it’s certainly not guaranteed.

Carrie Miller:

Do you think there’s a certain placement, like do you think video ads do better on Prime Day? Is there a certain kind of strategy with just placement too or do you just go with what you already have?

Melissa:

I usually just go with what I already have except for maybe not necessarily video, but sponsored display. So one of the strategies that we’ve really kind of leaned heavy in for for Prime Day is sponsored display remarketing for views remarketing in the last seven and 14 days because so many people have been shopping lately and they’re viewing, they might be adding to cart, but maybe they didn’t, they just looked at it remarketing to them right now and showing them that you have a deal on it, they’ve already seen it, it’ll get that light bulb in their head to say, oh, I recognize that I was looking at that and now it’s 25% off or 50% off. Awesome. That’s what I wanna do. So for these two days, I, I really lean heavily into that seven and 14 day remarketing. And then the post Prime Day strategy that I’ve been using is to also run that same kind of remarketing, but only down to seven days and then keep a coupon on it.

Melissa:

It can be a little coupon, five, 10%, but show the customer that even if they didn’t purchase on Prime Day, they’re not totally missing out on a deal. So that’s something too that we are I’ve seen it work, but we’re testing it in a few different categories now. But you know, a lot of people are going after those really high ticket items on Prime Day whether they get ’em or not, they might feel like they’ve really missed out the days after, but they’re looking if you can get them on those remarketing cuz they’ve looked and not purchased, that’s usually where I like to go.

Carrie Miller:

That’s really smart to do the remarketing. I, yeah, hopefully everyone was listening to that and I actually noticed just in my own sales, the sales, you know, when we kept the coupon on, they continue to be kind of Prime Day numbers,

Melissa:

The, the next two days. Yeah. Yeah. You definitely see that velocity transfer over the next I would say probably like a week, maybe even 10 days. 10 days seems like a stretch, but through the weekend for sure.

Carrie Miller:

Yeah. That’s amazing. Okay. It looks like we’ve got some questions rolling in. Yay. How can we control, this is from Asim. How can we control ACoS in a new listing?

Melissa:

So controlling ACoS in a new listing is going to depend on how much you wanna spend and what those CPCs are gonna do. You really want to decide what your strategy is for that. Do you want to gain organic rank on a couple of keywords and really go really heavy into those? Or are you trying to span that out across a larger number of keywords to really just see where you can get those conversions and testing? So the ACoS is going to heavily rely on what you’re willing to pay for that traffic and whether you have any data on whether it can convert. So I guess if it’s a new listing, you probably don’t have any of that historical data for targets, unless it’s like a variation or something similar to what you’ve already done. But I would definitely say controlling that spend is going to be your best way of controlling your ACoS.

Carrie Miller:

All right. Thank you. Yeah, it says his next comment says when we start PPC and a new listing, the ACoS is much too high. So yeah, I guess it depends on,

Melissa:

Yeah, so what I generally say is, you know, if your a cost is really high, your a and it really does depend on how much you’re spending. So you can, you can have a hundred percent AC oS on a $20 product when you spent $21. The ACoS is a little misleading at that point because you really haven’t spent that much money on it. And if you have, you know, a $2 click or a $3 click, or a $2 $3 CPC, you’re only testing that on, you know, eight to 10 clicks to try to get that conversion. But you really need to look at some more things within your listing. You know, do you have any ratings? Is it possible to add it as a variation to see those ratings to gain more traffic? There’s a lot of different variations or variables within there that that you can kind of play with a little bit. But I would definitely say if you’re trying to control ACoS, definitely control that CPC and what you’re spending.

Carrie Miller:

All right. Thank you for that one. Okay. Yeah. So what KPIs do you use to stop a campaign based on the underlying PPC strategy?

Melissa:

I guess I would have a, just kind of a follow up for that. Is it a ranking campaign? Are you trying to go after organic rank or go after knocking off specific competitors to gain some B S R? There’s a few different things in there. I generally always look at tACoS. I’m, it’s tACoS Tuesday, but I’m big on tACoS. So if I have some campaigns in there that I’m really trying to rank for organically, I’m okay with those being a little bit higher on the ACoS side. Because I’m looking for overall sales and I’m looking for those organic sales to come in. If it’s a really competitive keyword, you’re gonna have to spend the money on it to get up there. And that’s really the only way that you’re gonna start getting those sales if you’re using strictly Amazon advertising.

Carrie Miller:

Okay. Okay, so here’s another question. Have you ever run SP and SB campaigns for the same keyword at the same time?

Melissa:

Absolutely. A hundred percent. Yep. So essentially what you’re doing is you’re showing the consumer that you are incredibly relevant or you believe you’re incredibly relevant for this keyword that you are the best product there. So get that headline for that keyword, get those sponsored product spots. You could even do a sponsored brand video and take another spot within that page. Yeah, we’ve for sure done that for, you know, full search page domination.

Carrie Miller:

Awesome. okay. He has another one. Do you increase the bid by x percent in campaigns for TOS visibility?

Melissa:

Are we talking, I’m assuming we’re talking top of search boost or let’s see here for doing top of search boost? Yes. I, I use tap of search boost all the time. If you’re looking to try to get some more visibility, but you’re not comfortable really putting that CPC super high, the top of search boost percentage is a great way to do that.

Carrie Miller:

All right. Okay. And he said, yeah, the TACoS is the truth at the end. Very true. Yeah. The TACoS are very, very important. So I wanna talk a little bit about video campaigns, cuz I think a lot of people I, I get questions about this cuz they’re like, oh, I don’t have enough money to make a video and I don’t, you know, I don’t know how to make a video, but in my experience, very simple videos have done really well. So can you give us some insights on just video ads and what you think works best for video ads?

Melissa:

Yeah, definitely. Amazon has a video builder. If you don’t have any, any experience with it, Amazon has a video builder within campaign manager that they can do that. You can also hire it out. Amazon has their content creators and different things that you, if you wanna spend some money to do a really good one, you can certainly do that. But I really find that it’s the visual that brings everyone in and it needs to be something really quick. So you have to catch their attention right away because what they’re doing is scrolling and you wanna get ’em to stop scrolling so they could scroll right by, you know, if it’s a very, you know, blurred, there’s no words, it’s just like a product that’s like zoomed in and zoomed out. It’s probably not super interesting to what they’re looking for. But that’s why I like to say it kind of ties into the question before, if you’ve got the headline, you’ve got the sponsored product and then they see it again as a video that’s three times.

Melissa:

Now that they’ve seen it within the same search, they’re likely to click on that. So I would definitely say something that really punches out right away within the first couple seconds. You really wanna get their attention to get them looking at that. So that’s gonna be the most important part. I’ve, I’ve worked with quite a few clients that are, you know, they want the ad to tell a story and they want their ad to show them this and this. And I said, you know, the idea that people are watching 45 seconds of an Amazon ad is fairly low. I mean, some of them do, but most of them don’t. You, you really wanna just catch ’em right off the bat and go, oh yeah, that’s what I’m looking for. Have ’em click on it and then get that sale from them.

Carrie Miller:

Yeah. Like maybe they put their top selling point right there or exactly

Melissa:

What

Carrie Miller:

Exactly,

Melissa:

Whatever that benefit is that your product offers that you think makes it way better than everybody else. Put it right in their face, put it bold, bright, and ready to go.

Carrie Miller:

Yeah. Something I think could be a good place to look for inspiration is if they have it, TikTok is really good. Those viral videos that they have, the people who go viral, they usually have some really good attention getter right at the beginning and it’s the same idea. Just you gotta get something that, and they do a lot of product sales on TikTok. So really something to think about. Maybe add that kind of what is the best thing that my product has offer and what you know, what can I do to really stand out?

Melissa:

Yeah, definitely I feel like all of those all of those start with like, someone like yelling. They all start <laugh> somebody yelling about the issue that your product is gonna solve and then they get into how your product solves it. Yeah. I know I’ve caught myself a few times watching ’em and not even realizing that I’ve watched an ad Yeah. Until I’m like 10 seconds into it and I’m like, oh, they got me. They really did get me on that one. So yeah, they really do. Yeah. It’s something like right off the bat that really kind grabs ’em, shows them what your product can do right away. But I think you definitely see a longer viewability in TikTok than you do on an Amazon ad. People don’t quite scroll the same way on the Amazon ad as they do. But what I do love about the Amazon ad is how much space it takes up before they get to more of your competitors.

Carrie Miller:

Yeah, exactly. For sure. Okay, here’s another question for you. Say you were to take over a new account. Okay. And and this new account they’ve not been doing well and they need some help to really boost their sales and their, you know, their TACoS are outta control. What are some strategies, what are the first things that you do to kind of, you know, when you take on a new account to really optimize it and just start improving upon the account?

Melissa:

Yep. So I first take a look at where they’re bleeding money. So what are they trying to spend money on where they’re not converting? What do those targets look like? Are they relevant? Are they not relevant? If they are relevant, why aren’t they converting? Tie that back to the listing. Take a look. Are they, is it in the title? Is it in the bullets? Are they indexing for it? You know, really looking at where those huge issues are right away and then stopping it. So we might need to get back to it later, but let’s make sure that for the time being, let’s run on what we know works. Rather than doing too much testing, I think that a lot of new accounts when they first get started, if they don’t have the knowledge, it is all a test, but you really need to like dial it back just a little bit because you are just throwing things out there, letting Amazon spend your money and not necessarily knowing where you’re gonna convert if you don’t have any historical data.

Melissa:

So I love using long tail keywords that are super relevant. They don’t have as much, they don’t have as high a search volume, but you can get ’em a lot cheaper. Start getting those conversions in and then expand from there to go a little bit broader with those. Get the organic rank going, get those reviews going. That’s where I like to start with maybe like a new listing. But making sure that within a new account that they’re also working on that too. I also like to look at their negatives. Have they added any negatives? Are they spending a bunch of money in auto campaigns that they ne they shouldn’t necessarily be? It’s another point that I would look at. And then I really start to optimize starting with their best seller. So everybody’s got a best seller or a number one product hero product that they have.

Melissa:

Start with that. And then really do really good keyword research, really good competitive analysis, making sure you have all the targets that you should be on and do that profitably. So if you can be a little bit more competitive where you wanna rank, put the spend there If you wanna test out some more stuff cuz they don’t have enough historical data, span it out a little bit. But I’ve had new accounts come to me, you know, with, they’re trying to go after 20, 30, 40 targets and I’ve brought it down to two or three and just said, this is where we’re focusing that money, this is where we know we convert. Let’s get that organic rank up and then let’s start expanding.

Carrie Miller:

Okay. So how quickly do you usually expand those keywords? You know, when you, you’ve narrowed it down? Do you just put them in different campaigns or how do you?

Melissa:

So I like to put them in different campaigns. So I like to, if if a campaign is performing poorly, I’m totally fine shutting it off. If it has really good history though, I really like to try to save it. So if it’s got good history, you know, let’s say you’ve got a manual campaign, it’s got all exact keywords in there and there’s 10 keywords, there’s two in there that perform really, really, really well. Everything else is terrible. They perform at a good a cost, they bring in the most orders. That one I could save, turn everything off, pick the best seller and change that into like a single key phrase campaign. So just using that one for that I would save the history there, move the second one to its own and see how it does by itself. That’s really the best way for you to control the top of search, boost the product page, boost the budget, the CPC to determine how much you should be spending on each of those. So if you’re going for organic rank, that’s where I really like to push that in those single keyword campaigns.

Carrie Miller:

Wow. So you just have literally just one keyword in each campaign.

Melissa:

One keyword in a campaign per product. Cuz that’s really the only way that you can attribute the right sales to it or attribute the in the right metrics and decide if this is going to work for you or not.

Carrie Miller:

And when you expand out, are you doing more single word campaigns? Are you gonna add to those campaigns?

Melissa:

I’ve done both. So it really depends on how the product and how the account has taken to the single key phrase campaign. If it took a little bit to get it going, I’ll probably start another manual campaign with four or five keywords in it that I wanna test, see how those do in there and then start picking them out. One thing that I don’t do though is I’ll shut it off in there, but I never negative it. Like if it’s a good keyword okay. And it can pull from there. If you can get it cheaper in an auto campaign, get it cheaper in an auto campaign, you don’t need to put a negative in there as long as it’s still relevant.

Carrie Miller:

Okay. Very good advice. So DSP, I’ve had actually some people ask me, you know, when they should dis you know, move into SDP, they’re not really sure if it’s worth it or how they can really see if it’s working for them. So can you give us some insights on, you know, when you might wanna consider DSP, how you know it’s working and you know, what, what you should?

Melissa:

DSP is a big commitment. So DSP needs, it needs a good amount of spend to work. So I will say that right away. I mean, if you can commit to you know, the thousands of dollars that it takes to get DSP running, I’ve, I’ve personally tried to, in the last couple years, tried to run some DSP campaigns with an agency that we were working with with really low budgets like 500 or a thousand dollars a month. And they don’t work, they just don’t get the traffic. They should, they don’t get the conversions they should. You really need to be in a place where you can test that and you have the commitment for that spend. If you’re confident in your product that you can use that type of placement and use that type I would definitely do it cuz we’ve, we have for sure seen it be super successful where it’s appropriate. But it’s not a, it’s not a beginner’s game. That DSP is something that you know, you really need to get into. And just speaking from previous experience if you’re working with a DSP account manager, don’t be afraid to push back a little bit.

Carrie Miller:

Okay.

Melissa:

Push back a little bit. Tell them where you want your product to be. Tell them what your competitors are. Tell them where you don’t want your product to be or what, who your competitors aren’t. I know that some of the ones that we’ve done previously, we almost did them as like an entire campaign build and a spreadsheet and sent it over and we were like, this is the only place that we want to be. Please don’t spend our money elsewhere. Okay. So that’s, I mean that’s something that we have done before. It takes a little bit of a, an edge and a little push, but it’s certainly doable.

Carrie Miller:

What do you think the minimum spend should be? Just to give people an idea? Cuz I know you said definitely not 500 to a thousand,

Melissa:

Not 500 to a thousand. I’ve heard 10 K is a minimum for most. Okay. I’ve heard that. I’ve seen it work for five, but I would not, I mean, if you’re not willing to spend like two or three K at least and be prepared to not see super awesome results at that, I would wait until you can get to the point where you can do five or 10,000.

Carrie Miller:

We just started some DSP and it seems like it’s working, but our, our budget’s 5k, so Yeah.

Melissa:

Yep. I would say, I would say right around there is a comfortable spot to start. I would be worried about, about anything a little bit less than that. Yeah.

Carrie Miller:

That makes sense. All right. So we have some more questions here. Do you calculate your bid price or just choose something in between the suggested price range mentioned by Amazon?

Melissa:

Depends on how important profitability is for you and where you’re at in your sales journey for your product. If it’s a new product and you really need the, and you really need the traffic to get going, you’re gonna have to use that suggested bid price. If your margins don’t allow for you to be within that suggested bid price, all you’re gonna do is just like slowly bleed money over a long period of time cuz you’re really not getting a lot of traffic. You really wanna push out there and get out there right away to make sure that you take advantage of that honeymoon period that Amazon gives you right off the bat. So I would say at the beginning of the product’s life, you’re definitely gonna wanna be in the higher end of that suggested bid range. After you’ve been established, you have the reviews, you’ve got organic rank, then I start to figure out the bid price based on profitability and what we can do with that. That’s how, I guess that’s where the, the different phases that I usually go with are a very easy way. If you’re not getting impressions, a very easy way to find out why is to look at that suggested bid range. And if you’re under that low piece that, that very low excuse me, the minimum suggested bid range, that’s why you’re not getting impressions am Amazon doesn’t feel like you’re bidding enough.

Carrie Miller:

Here’s something a question like say somebody’s launching a new product and they’re not sure what the PPC cost is gonna be. Do you have a, you know, weight that you’re g you can kind of test that out or see what you should expect and whether or not you’ll be profitable with a product or?

Melissa:

Well, there is. So there is and there isn’t. So this is something that I have tested, but it’s not always true, but it does give you a really good idea of kind of how you can do this. If you’re brand new to Amazon and you’re saying, you know, I I just wanna figure out how much I’m gonna spend for what I’ve always said in the past, if you cap your spend, you’re gonna cap your sales. It’s always what happens if you’re gonna cap your spend, you’re gonna cap your sales. But what you can do is go into campaign builder, put the keywords in that you want to advertise on, add them to a a draft campaign, take a look at what those suggested bid ranges are, take each of those, multiply them by what you think you’re gonna convert on.

Melissa:

So are you gonna convert in 10 clicks, 15 clicks, 20 clicks? And then how much are you gonna give that per day? So looking at how much is gonna cost you per conversion based on the suggested bid range that they’re giving you. I usually just go off the mid range of that. Let’s say if I’m looking at a newish product, it’s probably gonna be like 15 to 18 because it doesn’t have a lot of reviews. It’s gonna need some more clicks to get going with that. Take whatever that is, multiply it by that and then say, okay, do I wanna give this enough to convert if this works, do I wanna give it enough to convert one time two times, three times a day? Cuz if you’re looking at 20 clicks 20 clicks for conversion, it’s a $2 CPC on average for the suggested bid range that’s gonna be $40 just to get you one conversion that that campaign is gonna have to at least have a $40 budget. Do you want more than that per day? That’s probably what it’s gonna take until that conversion rate starts to get better. So that’s kind of the formula that I use just in a, an estimation way cuz that’s gonna tell you what you’re gonna have to spend initially for those to get traffic. Yeah,

Carrie Miller:

That’s, I mean, I think, I think that’s the one thing that people forget to calculate when they’re calculating, when they’re trying to, you know start a new product or starting to sell on Amazon is they completely forget about the pay-per-click part. Agreed. And so I think

Melissa:

That’s a, and I think it’s like a, I think a lot of them come into it with a, oh, I only have to spend 10% of my sales to get there. And I’m like, but if you haven’t started yet, 10% is zero. So you’re gonna have to allot some money to get that going. Unless you have a magic genie of external traffic that’s going to build up your organic and you have an amazing email list and a lot of brand loyalty, you really need that, that Amazon PPC to help you build.

Carrie Miller:

Yeah, exactly. So yeah, it’s an interesting, interesting thing that but that’s a really good strategy, so thank you for that. Yep. Somebody else, streets of Ontario says, if I have a keyword in exact match, is it better to negate it from phrase match? Why or why not?

Melissa:

I, if it’s a keyword that’s converted, I don’t negate it anywhere. If you’ve pulled it out of somewhere else search term report or something and you’ve put it as exact match, I always leave it because you might get it cheaper in that phrase match campaign. It might pull a little bit cheaper from there than the exact match. And you want the sales regardless of where you’re gonna get them, because the ranking is gonna help you either way. So that’s not something that I do if I am, if I have a keyword that’s an exact match that’s not converting, if it’s relevant but not converting, I might negate that as an exact match in that campaign. But if it has something within there that is not ever going to be relevant, then I would do that. Just that word as a phrase match. So I’m not negating everything else in that phrase that’s relevant for mine.

Carrie Miller:

Very good. All right. If I cannot afford the suggested lowest bid price for a keyword, even though that might be relevant for my product, I have to skip this keyword and need to find I e a cheaper long tail keyword. Yes,

Melissa:

Correct. Yes. So I would do that and then I would start going after competitors that have the same price range as you within $5 ish. And then also go after about $5 ish and a lower star rating than you have. That’s usually how I kind of niche down competitors when I’m going after product targeting.

Carrie Miller:

Okay. Very nice. All right, so I wanna get into some advanced tactics. Yeah. So what are some advanced tactics or features within Amazon PPC that that experience sellers can leverage to gain some, you know, competitive advantage? They wanna just take it to the next level. What, what do you recommend there?

Melissa:

I I really do recommend these single key phrase campaigns, these single keyword campaigns that you really wanna dominate on. Give them enough budget, go after them, take it with the top of search if you know you’re converting on them. I mean, really, really go after that, really win that over and then take over multiple spots once you have the historical data. I know that a lot of people there was a, there’s a Twitter thread that went around I think about two years ago or a year ago that I swear 50 people sent it to me and they’re like, you have to see this, this thing is crazy. He shut off all his Amazon ads and I said, well, yeah, and I won’t name who it is, but

Carrie Miller:

Oh, I remember this, this thread. Oh yeah, yeah.

Melissa:

They’re in, they’re in Target and they’re in Walmart and they have their own website and they have all of this brand loyalty following where they already have the organic rank for it. They don’t need their PPC. Yeah. This is not applicable to 99.9% of sellers on Amazon. Yes. Like the fact that they put that out there. And then I had all of these, you know, there mid-age accounts, great products and everything, but I was like, this will not work for you. Everything in your account will die if we shut this off. Yeah. I, I don’t suggest going after things like that. You really need to look at when you’re taking advice or strategy advice from another buyer. Look at the level of their account, look at their category. Like if it’s something similar to that, that’s just crazy. But I really believe, you know, if you wanna take over a keyword and you want that organic rank and you wanna own it sponsored brand headline, really get the the sponsored products top spots there, sponsored brand video at the bottom. They also have the sponsored brand video that’s driving to the storefront now. Have you seen that yet? That’s taking over the headline search.

Carrie Miller:

Oh, I don’t, I don’t know if I’ve seen it. It

Melissa:

Is so sponsored brand video has opened up to storefront traffic, so you can drive to the storefront now rather than the product detail page. These are appearing in place of the headline ads. So they’re actually the first thing that you’re seeing to go to the store, which is super interesting because it’s not showing three products now, it’s just showing the one with the video, but they are going to your store so they can see your whole catalog. I really foresee Amazon starting to expand their store coverage and ads for the stores. I think it’s gonna be really, really big for brands. So another strategic thing you do is really make your storefront unique, authentic, and all about what you’re offering. I think storefronts for the most part are somewhat looked over at the beginning Yeah. Because it’s not a, they really wanna get that product out there and get that product sold. But the storefronts I think are gonna start becoming a lot bigger cuz you can drive so much more traffic to them. You can get those multi-unit purchases, you can get repeat buyers once they really like your stuff. And it’s really a good way to show your consumer that you are an authentic brand, you care about your products and really kind of portray that through your visuals and your creatives there.

Carrie Miller:

Wow. Do you, can you think of like a, a store that you’ve seen on Amazon that you think was really good example? I’m always trying to look for a good examples of of stores. Sometimes I go to the store and it’s like one little picture and maybe one tab and then others, they have this beautiful, you know, these beautiful infographics and videos and I can’t think really like a website.

Melissa:

Yeah. I can’t think of one off the top of my head, but I will tell you that if you just put I, I mean I could, I could come up with some terrible ones, but I could just give you examples of what, of how they build them. Yeah. The product grid, don’t use the product grid. The product grid is terrible unless it is at the bottom of the page. So if you’re, if, if you’re just trying to add variations to the bottom of the page, go ahead and put those down there. But what you really wanna do with your store is on that first page, highlight your hero product, highlight your number one seller, and then really give the creatives and the images like the chance to sell that. It’s like have it be used in real life. Really put the consumer in the situation where they would want or need that and they can see themselves using it. I think that’s the biggest thing, rather than just using the, the product square and it’s this, and here’s the price and that’s it. And you can scroll through the product images, but those really don’t tell you anything. I really think like expanding those lifestyle images, showing the product in use is huge for these.

Carrie Miller:

Yeah. and yeah, it’s, it’s interesting because you can actually do the stores yourself and it’s pretty easy to just kind of, they have these little templates that you can literally Yeah. Drag and drop and and do it, do it yourself if you want to start trying things out. And then you can get, you know, some graphic designers from Fiverr and to help you out. But definitely it’s such a great place to really showcase your, your products and mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, I agree with you. I think that people have been kind of sleeping on that and a lot of brands that I’ll click on their brand name, it’s literally just either their products.

Melissa:

Or they’ve not even built storefront and it just takes you to like the, the search for their brand name

Carrie Miller:

Or it doesn’t even take you to their products. It’ll be all their competitors’ products when you click on their brand name too. Absolutely. So we haven’t done a store. Yeah. It’s not too difficult to, to put together a store, but you know, a lot of people do hire professionals to do it, but I personally did our store myself. Yeah. So it’s definitely doable.

Melissa:

I built many a store.

Carrie Miller:

Yeah. And people are always like, oh, how’d you learn? I’m like, I just, you gotta get in there and just do it, you know? Yeah. It’s not,

Melissa:

The best way to do it is look at your competitors and see who you like, or even not your direct competitors, but look for a really good brand name of something that you purchase yourself. Something that you, like, a product that you trust or a brand you really trust. What does their storefront look like? Yeah. You don’t, maybe you don’t necessarily wanna copy obviously their images, but if you wanna look at their templates and the way that they’ve got it built out, and if it looks really eye appealing, it’s super easy to build with an Amazon. I mean, Amazon, yes. For as big as it is, it is very simplistic tech-wise when it comes to building out stuff.

Carrie Miller:

Yeah.

Melissa:

Fueling out one product, build out subpages for different things that you’re using for it. The other piece of this is your virtual bundles. Make sure your virtual bundles are on the appropriate pages for those products, because you can use those in sponsored brands too. As long as they’re in your storefront. They’re not in your storefront, you can’t use ’em. And that’s the only place you can get ads for those virtual bundles right now.

Carrie Miller:

Oh wow. That’s oh, somebody Shivali, she’s a Helium 10 girl that I work with. Awesome. She’s an evangelist as well. So she says, true I’m launching a new brand at the moment and looking forward to conveying brand values through the storefront, hoping it hits home with consumers. Yeah. I do think it is.

Melissa:

So, I think it’s huge and I think showing the consumer that it’s not a that it’s not necessarily Amazon that they’re buying from, because I, that’s really the general assumption of most consumers is that they’re buying from Amazon and they’re buying from, you know, Jeff Bezos and that’s what it is. But it’s a lot of small businesses, so every time, you know, I have friends and family who talk to me about Amazon and you know, they’re like, oh, Amazon did it. I’m like, you bought this from a private seller. Like, I know you don’t realize that, but this is a different company. Amazon didn’t produce this thing, they’re not running this, you are buying from like, an actual small business, whether you realize it or not most of the time. Yeah. So yeah, just trying to like, I’m always trying to like educate people and see if I can get them on board with understanding a little bit more of it.

Melissa:

Same here. But yeah, it’s it’s, it’s a different beast in Amazon and the, the overall assumption is that it is just Amazon. It’s a big store and there’s not a lot of personality to it. So if you can convey those things through your storefront and through your a plus content and all of that, yeah, it’s super helpful because I think it really makes a connection with the consumer where they trust your product and, and they know that they’re getting something of quality or they know that they’re working with people, you know, who care about what they’re doing.

Carrie Miller:

Yeah. I think that’s really key. Is it, it conveys quality because when I’m, I shop a lot on Amazon. I buy most stuff off of Amazon, and when the listing doesn’t have that added kind of the a plus content or just nice photos, I don’t really trust that it’s a good supplier because, you know, really if you really care about your products, you’re gonna put effort into putting mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, you know, into your photos, into, you know, what you’re doing on your listing and on your storefront. Yep. So

Melissa:

I usually assume, like if they haven’t put that much effort into it, I generally assume it’s mass produced and it’s probably of low quality that they’re just trying to put it out there to sell a high quality of it just to get them going. I really love, and, and working with Amazon for as long as I have, I shop a little bit differently than most. But I really think that like, you know, if you go to a, if you go to, if you’re shopping or something and you’re going to a small boutique, you’re looking for stuff of quality, you’re looking for something that you’re not gonna have to take back or send back. So I think that that’s kind of rolling over to Amazon a little bit more than it was previously where everybody used to be looking for deals. Don’t get me wrong, it’s Prime Day. Everybody’s still looking for deals, you know, you have to price competitively. But I think that you can really, you can really showcase your authenticity and the quality of your product in the different avenues and channels that Amazon is providing to you, which I think is awesome. So yeah, ABC content storefront, your video ads, they’re really giving you more opportunities to show a customer who you are.

Carrie Miller:

Yeah. Well, and on this storefront, that’s where people can follow you too. For Amazon posts. So you can even, you know, reach them even more. So, that’s pretty much the end of our show, so I just wanted to say thank you again for coming on. If somebody wants to get in contact with you because they really liked what you know, you’ve been saying on here. How can somebody contact you after this?

Melissa:

So you can contact me melissa@profitablepineapple.com, so that’s my email address. It’s the best way to get ahold of me. I work with, I’ve been working with Profitable Pineapple Team for a few months and I’ve known quite a few of the members now for years. So if you wanna get ahold of me, that’s probably the best way. If you have any follow up questions, I’m always happy to offer it. One of my passions with working with Amazon is really helping consumer or helping sellers build their businesses and seeing success with it. Having all of this knowledge is no good to me. I don’t have a brand, I’ve only ever helped people build theirs. Oh, okay. So yeah, that’s, that’s really my, my passion for working with Amazon is helping people navigate all of that and learn as much as they can through what I’ve already learned.

Carrie Miller:

Very good. Well, thank you. So your email address and then are you on LinkedIn at all or?

Melissa:

I am on LinkedIn. You can find me on LinkedIn. I think it’s my, the last part of it’s like melissa.davis515. But it’s Melissa Davis. You can find me on LinkedIn too.

Carrie Miller:

Okay. And thanks again everyone for joining and asking questions and and thanks again. Melissa and another person said he appreciates you too.

Melissa:

It was great to meet you. And thank you everybody else for coming on. I much appreciate the questions. Yeah.

Carrie Miller:

Nice to meet you and we’ll see you later.

Melissa:

Sounds good.

Helium 10 Buzz 7/13/2023: Prime Day Results | Temu Trouble | UPS Strike

In this episode, we cover the latest news in Amazon and the E-commerce industry. This week’s breaking news includes results from Prime Day, how the UPS strike can affect your business, and more!

#473 - The Story of a Near TEN Figure Amazon Seller!

In this exciting episode of SSP, we had the privilege of sitting down with Farhan Huda, he is part of an incredible company that is on track to become the first-ever 10-figure seller that we’ve had in this show! Join us as we dive into Farhan’s captivating backstory, their brand called Utopia, and his manufacturing experiences in China and Pakistan. We also discuss how they reached the impressive 9-figure mark and their journey towards 10-figures.  
 
Farhan also shares his valuable insights on avoiding problems with Amazon, their criteria for successful products, how they’re staying competitive in crowded markets, and strategies for success. Don’t miss out on Farhan’s top strategies for newer sellers and his 60-second tip that could transform your business. This episode is a must-listen!

In episode 473 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Farhan discuss: 

• 01:25 – Farhan’s Backstory  
• 03:22 – Talking About Their Brand: Utopia  
• 05:17 – Manufacturing Products In China And Pakistan  
• 11:49 – Hitting The 9-Figure Seller Mark & On The Way To 10-Figures  
• 12:53 – How To Avoid Problems With Amazon  
• 15:30 – “Every Household In The US May Have Bought Our Product”  
• 16:20 – How Often Do They Launch Products?  
• 17:26 – Are All Their Product Launches Successful?  
• 18:45 – Their Criteria For Successful Products  
• 20:08 – How They Stay Competitive In These Product Categories  
• 22:09 – 9-Figure Seller’s Top Strategies For Success  
• 23:56 – Selling In Walmart.com  
• 24:37 – Utopia’s Top Marketplaces Outside The US  
• 25:23 – Should You Consider Manufacturing Products In Pakistan?  
• 27:23 – Farhan’s Hobbies & Healthy Habits Outside The Amazon Grind  
• 29:12 – Top Strategies That Newer Sellers Should Do  
• 31:39 – Why Is There A Big E-commerce Boom In Pakistan?  
• 34:24 – Farhan’s 60-Second Tip

► 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 nine figure Helium 10 user who is going to be talking about their story of their company. And if we have them back on the show next year, their trajectory might make them the first 10 figure seller to be on this show. How cool is that? Pretty cool I think.

Bradley Sutton:

Are you a YouTube blogger, blog writer, course creator, or other kind of influencer or educator? Maybe you just have a network of people interested in e-commerce. Did you know that you can earn commissions of 25% for life? For everyone that you refer to Helium 10, we’ve got many partners earning hundreds, even thousands of dollars monthly in commission from Helium Ten’s partnership program. If you’d like to join our affiliate partner program, please go to h10.me/crushit and tell them you heard about it from the podcast. Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I’m your host, Bradley Sutton. This is a show that’s completely BS free, unscripted and unrehearsed organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. And we’ve got a super serious seller here I believe you’re in Canada right now? Is that where you’re calling in from?

Farhan:

I’m based off of Canada,

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah. Awesome, awesome. So Farhan, welcome to the show. Where, where in Canada are are you at?

Farhan:

I’m near Toronto. Mississauga.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, cool. How long have you lived out there in Toronto?

Farhan:

Oh, it’s been a while. I moved to Canada in 2003. So since then I have been in Canada, but I have been working in and out of US all along since I’m here. So I have been traveling quite a while. Yeah.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. Originally from Pakistan?

Farhan:

I was born and raised in Pakistan.

Bradley Sutton:

What part?

Farhan:

Karachi.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. Been that’s my favorite food in Pakistan when I’ve been there is, is from Karachi. The chicken briani was, Oh my goodness. Amazing. It’s my mouth water, just thinking about it. Yeah.

Farhan:

Near the beach. And then, I don’t know if you have been to Toronto, but if you come, we have a lot of good Pakistani food.

Bradley Sutton:

One restaurant here in like, all of San Diego that, or at least that I know of. And so, yeah. All right. I, I’ll, I have another reason now to go visit Toronto. Now I’m assuming you went to university there in Toronto as well?

Farhan:

So I did my bachelor’s from karachi. Then when I moved here, then I upgraded my degree from University of Toronto.

Bradley Sutton:

Well, what did you study?

Farhan:

Computer Science.

Bradley Sutton:

Computer Science. All right. Now, upon graduation and getting your degrees, is that what you started you know, getting a job in and things?

Farhan:

Yeah. Yeah. So I, I graduated in a software, and then I worked for a few software companies over here. Then I started my own software company basically working as a consultant. And then my friend was having this startup or expansion of Utopia, basically. He was working in New York as well, and trying to set up Amazon business. And then he needed my help, so I joined them and then expanded from there.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, so about what year was this?

Farhan:

So that was 2014.

Bradley Sutton:

2014. Okay. Okay. So

Farhan:

Yeah, when I started helping Utopia. So it’s about nine years.

Bradley Sutton:

Did it start as an Amazon based business, or was it a .com business? Was it a you know, brick and mortar business?

Farhan:

So a little bit of story is that, so my friend started around in 2009, 2010 when he had some stock. So his dad had a towel business in Karachi. Okay. So when he retired, he moved to New York with him. To keep him busy, they imported few, few lots tried to sell on eBay, well before even eBay. They had a wholesaler they contacted, but they didn’t have good experience. So they tried to sell it themselves. So started with eBay and then for a few years did eBay, then Amazon popped up. They started doing Amazon as well. And then obviously eBay went down, and then Amazon picked it up.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah. So when you joined the company, what did you join as, or what was your responsibility in those early days?

Farhan:

Early days, so I was in product management. We were adding more products. So initially I was doing part-time basically I was trying to figure out whether that’s gonna work out or not. So basically initially working on adding new product through Alibaba. Then we went to China, mainly Canton Fair few times between 2014 and 2016 added more product expanded the US business. And then between 2016 and 2019, basically we launched 2017 Canada and Europe. And then basically expanded over over there. And so me, from the beginning, I was in the product management. Then I grew from there took our other roles in supply chain, HR, procurement sales and whatnot. Yeah.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, the family business started in Karachi. Now, at that time, were they manufacturing only in Pakistan, or even at that time you were importing from other countries?

Farhan:

So initially it was towells only in in Pakistan. And then when it picked up, we saw some, some decent reserves from there. So then we started basically we are brand owners, so we manufacture only in our brand. So we were manufactured from China. So then we added other home textile product words like bed sheets, converters, pillows, curtains, you name it. So until 2018-2019, the other products we were doing from China, and in 2019 we started expanding our, our manufacturing facilities in Karachi and started slowly moving products from China to, to our own facilities. And now it’s about, I would say 80 to 85% manufacturing and in Pakistan, and rest is in China.

Bradley Sutton:

How do you choose what you make in Pakistan versus what you make in China?

Farhan:

So it was straightforward initially. Mostly the I would say stainless steel products. So we have, our bigger portfolio is home textile, but we, 20, 25% of our products are plastic based and cookware, stainless steel as well. So, so those were I would say we were, we didn’t have the expertise in the beginning, so, so we were doing those in China initially is still to date we are expanding our manufacturing capacity. The good problem we have is that whatever we manufacture, we, we import or buy ourselves in US and Europe and sell. So there’s always a challenge for the capacity. So if we wanna fill the gap, we want more inventory. So we still, sometimes we take some of the home textile goods from China as well, but mostly the kitchen products, stainless steel, although we are setting up our TNS steel and, and cost iron and product line in Pakistan as well. So the long run goal is to be independent and, and do all the manufacturing in Pakistan.

Bradley Sutton:

So the, the stuff that you get from China, it’s not necessarily, you don’t run the factory, you don’t have full control like you do in Pakistan, you’re just buying from

Farhan:

That is correct. So the main reason the business strategy was that. And that came into being around 2017-2018 other big sellers were coming on Amazon. Amazon was doing their own private label, so they were getting bigger orders from the vendors as well. So if you are manufacturing, let’s say from a bigger vendor as well, but they have multiple customers, so I mean, you are not higher up in the priority, and then you will face the supply chain challenges whatnot. So having your own manufacturing capacity, you have control for the manufacturing, supply chain quality and price as well.

Bradley Sutton:

Once you have a SKU that you’re producing in Pakistan or producing in China, I almost, I’m not sure if I understood correctly, but do you have backup factories at all? Like where sometimes you might make it at one place and sometimes you make it another, or once you have something made somewhere, a hundred percent of the manufacturing is at that factory.

Farhan:

So the goal is to have a hundred percent manufacturing of that factory, let’s say in Karachi and Pakistan. But if, if we are having some challenges in terms of, let’s say manufacturing capacity or some of the, let’s say the print items, right? We, we, we haven’t scaled up in our manufacturing. So, so, so part of this of the printed products on the Bedsheet side or on the, on the curtain side, we are still doing from China, because we have some, like, we are still setting it up in Pakistan.

Bradley Sutton:

But what I mean is like, let’s, regardless whether you’re making something in Pakistan or China, yeah. Like it almost sounded like you were saying you, you have like a backup. Sometimes the production is not enough, or Hey, this SKU is only made at this place, this SKU is only made in China, this SKU is, or do you sometimes, oh, man, we’re, we’re, we’re behind in Pakistan, so let’s switch manufacturing to–

Farhan:

Not like only in one location.

Bradley Sutton:

So that was why I was asking my question then, is like, that’s interesting to me because like, do you ever run into issues where, you know, the quality is a little bit different or customers notice that something is different, or maybe it’s just like the, the color is slightly off or anything like that when you’re switching back and forth between factories?

Farhan:

Yeah, yeah. So, so we would try to minimize that, but you’re, you’re right, sometimes the shades challenges are there. Quality. I think a lot of vendors or manufacturers, we are working in China. We are working for about 10 to 12 years, so they know what quality we like. And then we have a very, very strong quality team that do pre-inspections as well in China to make sure that quality is up to the mark. But yeah, on and off, we do run into challenges there sometime. And that could be from either side that one of the recent imports we did. And, and, and there are some, some bad reviews or in quality reviews are coming from there. Yeah.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. Interesting. Now, it wasn’t your product, but I, I was just thinking about that. And I ordered some I had bought a new, we, we, we bought a new sofa at our house, and then I bought these like, I don’t know what you call them, like sofa covers mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And then I just bought like, you know, four or five to test out over one part of the sofa, and we’re like, oh, okay, this is good. Let’s, let’s go ahead and buy the other four. And it was really weird. Like one of them, like, I know I bought the right color, but it was just slightly off. And I’m like, that’s kind of weird. Now, now I’m, I was too lazy to make a bad review and I just figured that nobody you know, my, it’s not so bad where my guests would notice, you know, but I’m like thinking like, Hmm, when you started talking about that, I’m like, huh, I wonder if whoever I bought this from, it, maybe it might have been similar. You know, they’re making, they’re making stuff at different factories and

Farhan:

Yeah, different locations, different manufacturing. And sometime it could be the different raw material or the way the chemical com compositions are even with the same factory when we make the darker shares like dark gray or black, even so in, when we are doing dying and, and, and other processes, sometimes those they, they can be a little different, right? We try to keep it exact the same, but, but it could be the raw material and, and other, other, other technical details. Yeah. Which could process with the difference of the shared, especially. Yeah.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, you know, our mutual friend Denise told me that you, you guys are nine figure, you know, company. When did you hit the, the nine figure? What year did you hit the nine figure mark?

Farhan:

Around 20 16, 20 17? Yeah, I mean, we are on track of, maybe by next year we will hit the billion dollars. So wow.

Bradley Sutton:

On, on Amazon Marketplace sales or what, what

Farhan:

On Amazon only? I would say it’s around six 50. I was talking about as a, as a global utopia. Awesome. But mainly big portion is, is Amazon. So Utopia is a umbrella, long mentioned. We have few businesses mainly are around Amazon, which is on Amazon sales, but Utopia Industries is for manufacturing. Then we have Utopia for fulfillment, which is mainly for our logistics, for all the warehousing and delivery from in and out, from warehouse to, to how,

Bradley Sutton:

How about like Walmart and, and other marketplaces as well.

Farhan:

We have tried, Walmart is not that big. Ebay, we still do, but I would say still like one to 2%. We do have our own B2B side YouPay d.com, which is about two to 3%, but 95% of our sales e-commerce sales is mainly from, from Amazon.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, when you have an account that is doing hu literally hundreds of millions of dollars on, on Amazon, like to me, I’d be super scared, you know, cuz Amazon, as we know, just sometimes just randomly my Yeah. Suspended account, like have you guys gotten suspended at all? Or, or your account shut down?

Farhan:

Yeah. Yeah. We, we had few few nightmares like that. And, and, and most of them when, whenever we, we worked with Amazon. So for the last three, four years, we are their premium account. So we are in the top of the chain. So we have a premium account membership so we work closely with, with the, with that team. So, so probably you’re aware that on and off Amazon run their bot or, or some sort of a algorithm and then they start sending those, those emails that your account is at risk and whatnot. So we worked clo we worked closely with them, but yeah, few years ago, there was a time when, when they kind of for a few days actually our account was stopped, right. And then we worked with the team and it was enabled again, and then we kind of had an SLA with them.

Bradley Sutton:

I mean, those two or three days, you’re losing more than many Amazon sellers make in a full year. That’s crazy.

Farhan:

Yeah, it was a million dollar multimillion dollar loss. Right. Wow. But then we work with them, we had an SLA and then now even if we get, it’s not at the account level, it’s usually at the product level. And, and, and most of the time, the, the premium account team, they resolve our issue right away. Like I would say the last month we had one of those emails, I think a lot of sellers got, got those emails. So I just called the guy and then he was able to re have, have it removed more.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah. Wow. That’s, that’s kind of crazy. Yeah. I’m looking, I’m looking at your, your, I was just looking at your, your main page on on Amazon here. And there’s, you know, you could just see some of these skews, like this is not the full, you know, just one skew 20,000 units. I mean, you’re selling like literally thousand units a day, onal for, for some of these, these, these products. And it’s just really, really impressive. And I just noticed that while we were on the phone, I was looking just to make sure that betting or that, that, that that throw wasn’t bought from you. But I just happened to, you know, I went to my orders on Amazon and I, I typed in Utopia mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, and sure enough, in 2022 I, I did buy some cotton washcloth. So if you guys are listening out there, check your Amazon orders, look for Utopia and see if PR probably 50% chance you’ve bought some one of the their products. In the past.

Farhan:

We have saying in our company that at, I mean, every household in us have at least one of our products, especially our bedding products, and we claim that we are like number one online bedding sellers in, in us. So we have been studying, if you see batch years, you will see reviews and then all that from there, you can see how many years we sell every

Bradley Sutton:

Day. Not exactly what you thought you’d be able to say in 20 years that when you graduated with computer science degree, not really that you’re gonna have a a home product in every household in North America.

Farhan:

No, I wasn’t even, I, yeah, I never thought of I, I would be doing that. I would probably, okay, I’m on the software side. I’ll probably make some, some products or work for a company. Like, I don’t know, Facebook was not a dead time, but Google and whatnot, and then probably having a startup and whatnot. But I mean, yeah.

Bradley Sutton:

Now how often, you know, do you guys, how often do you guys launch new products? You know, very often you just kind of stick to your bread and butter, or are you just constantly trying to find the next, you know, new

Farhan:

Very often solutions? We have dedicated so we have a big product management team, which, which looks after all the marketing, pricing, strategy and whatnot. And within those so we have 11 product teams out of two are dedicated for the research and development. So we have a process like every week we have, we are shortlisting products adding new variants and working on new products as well. So I would say in a given year, we, especially like last two years after Covid, we have been launching every month, tens of tens of product new, new categories as well, obviously in the diff same similar genre, home textile and in home and kitchen. But and a lot of products are, are, are, are being researched and, and in the last phases of launching as well.

Bradley Sutton:

Now do you, you know, because you have such strong, a strong brand and so much traffic and things like that, are all of your launches successful or sometimes you launch a product and you’re like, Nope, this is just not gonna work out. We’re gonna have to cut this.

Farhan:

No, we, we had some bad experiences in 2018, 2019 where I think that was not the right time. We tried to introduce some products, some electrical products. We were going out of our comfort zone, I would say or different genre. And then we did some baby pros as well, and even home, home and Kitchen Pro as well. And, and I think we were in that not that mature in terms of launching in 20 18, 20 17. So at that time, I would say our, our success was 15 to 20%, but nowadays for the last, I would say 12 months it’s, it’s easily 70 to 80%. So still, I would say 20, 30% of the product doesn’t work out. We try, we give them each product launch at least couple of cycles, two to three cycles. When I say cycle, it means that delivering decent amount of inventory to Amazon so six to 12 months, and after 12 months of a certain group launch we review and see whether we want to continue that or, or not. But

Bradley Sutton:

Well, what’s your criteria? Like what, what determines successful versus unsuccessful? Just profitability or a set number of units that you want to do?

Farhan:

Profitability is, is one thing, but I mean, for the first six to 12 months, we don’t look for profit, right? That’s part of the marketing strategy. So we look for how, how the customer is reacting to it, what are the reviews? If the reviews are 4.7 plus, we are accumulating reviews at a certain pace. So we are selling probably, you know, that one to 2% buyers give you reviews. So if you’re selling enough units, so you’re generating less in first year, you have 300, 500 reviews, good reviews and then you see the potential as well that where you can grow in terms of profitability wise and whether you can take the best seller or not, because where we are the size of, of the company, we are, we only, well, we mainly look for the best seller.

Farhan:

If we can get a best seller for that particular rescue or, or, or the group, right? If that potential is not there, if you’re not getting a good review from the customer, we still don’t decide to stop it. We, we see why customer is not liking it, whether it’s the quality, whether there’s the feature or is the U s p that’s why it’s not popular that we can improve. But yeah the criteria is to, to get the best seller, good reviews be on the top first page organically for sure. And then, then eventually making the profit on it.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, traditionally, you know, some of the categories you’re selling in are, are some of the most saturated, you know, most competitive categories out there. So are, are you, is it hard to stay profitable? Like, like are you having to, to play the price war game or because of your brand awareness, you can come in at a higher price point than maybe some of the newer Chinese sellers or, or things? Yeah. Like that and what’s your strategy there?

Farhan:

So, so for the last two years, it gets very, very price competitive. But for us, I think the main advantage is that we were always very price competitive. We work on volume rather than having a bigger margin on each, each unit. Right. And, and that’s why when we did our manufacturing and we leaned it, so we are vertically integrated, so we try to make our manufacturing cost at minimum and, and, and to keep the profit margin reasonably not very high so that we can give that advantage to the buyer, right? And, and then from, from from, because we were, we have some early seller advantage as well. We have been selling for, for last 10, 12 years. So, so the products they are there, which are mature, adding more variations to that or related product, they pick up very well when we do, yeah.

Farhan:

New launches. Then through our marketing strategies, like different strategies, selling on the 50% loss and then, and all that coupon strategies, deal strategies, we, we bring a product to a certain level, like first page or close to the best seller, and then we, we focus on, on the profitability. But we don’t, we don’t do like very high margin on, on any of our product. Our product, if you see like converters or pillows or even hangers they’re very price competitive as compared to even Amazon Basics. So because our competitors are like bigger giants, Amazon Basics and <inaudible> and whatnot. So, so, so we, we keep our price very competitive.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, what, what are some of your you know, let’s talk, you know, some strategies, some unique, some things that you, you think you do are unique. You know, you’ve already talked a little bit you know about, about your, your, your strategy here, but what you know about launching things, but, but what are some other strategies, whether it’s, you know, reviews, whether it’s branding, whether it’s packaging, whether it’s, you know, logistics. Yeah. You know, when you get to this level, I’m sure you’ve, you know, have a few tricks up your, your sleeve. So what, what are some things that you think you’re doing that maybe the majority of Amazon sellers might not be?

Farhan:

Yeah, obviously I, I won’t be sharing the core, core secret. Secret,

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, yeah, sure. Right? Yeah. But please show me all of your SOPs and let, let’s share it with the world

Farhan:

<Laugh> for sure. But on the high level, obviously, your product needs to first satisfy the customer need, right? So, so what’s your product? Whenever somebody’s launching a product, what are their U s P? It needs to be price competitive, because what you see sells, right? So your, your pictures, your, your videos should be up to the mark. You should do PPC marketing. It goes upfront, but to be competitive, obviously the packaging you mentioned, because if you’re doing fba, it goes with the volume and, and, and, and the dimensions as well, right? So your packaging needs to be accordingly. So it’s, Amazon won’t charge you too much for the FBA fees. Mm-Hmm. Mm-Hmm. And, and, and then, then the quality of the product and how, how you’re doing your, your marketing through the deals, through the coupons, through through keyword marketing. Obviously this is one of the main, the ppc you need to learn that art and, and, and you need to be on top of it. Amazon changes their algorithm, not very often, but, but, but they do change it often, right? So you need to be well versed about that, so, and then change your marketing strategies accordingly.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, cool. Now when you say, Hey, Walmart hasn’t worked out, do you just like, give up on Walmart completely, or you still just sell there? Just don’t put much focus on it?

Farhan:

We, we still sell. So we, we started on Walmart around 20 18, 20 19, actually, 20 18, 20 19. We tried a lot of platforms. We tried jad.com, we tried sharers, we tried Target, we tried Walmart, and then we said, no. I mean, our, I mean, it could be beneficial, but they’re way behind in terms of our revenue and, and, and return on investment. So, so we focused on Amazon. Recently for the last six months, we are still doing Walmart. You will see few of our products who are there, there are a couple of guys looking after that, but the focus is, is, is very low.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. Okay. Foreign marketplaces what’s num number two, three, and four for you as far, obviously, you know, USA is number one, but for foreign Amazon marketplaces, what, what’s some of the top for you

Farhan:

For us Europe and Canada? So Canada, in terms of revenue, I would say is, is around eight to 10%. But the profitability in Canada is very high interest. Profitability is, is around 15 to 18% uk. We sell all across uk, Europe in Europe, we have France, Germany, Spain, Italy. So if I do combination of all I would say in terms of revenue, 70% in us, 20% uk, Europe, and 10% Canada. But profitability ratios are different, obviously.

Bradley Sutton:

So, I mean, it makes a lot of sense that your company, you know, manufacturers a lot in, in Pakistan, obviously, you know, the company started there. But for, for anybody, you know, whether somebody’s from Pakistan or not, you know, there are certain perhaps products that you might suggest that, hey, you know, you probably should look at at, at Pakistan as opposed to China. Like, I, I, I agree with you, like, Hey, maybe stainless steel. Yeah. You know, unless you have your own stain, you know, like, like that’s probably, you know, good just to be in China and plastics and, and stuff like that. But would you say anything related to textiles is better to start in Pakistan or only certain kinds of, of textiles? Or how would you suggest to somebody who’s, who’s looking to get into a new niche and they’re like trying to decide where they’re gonna source their product?

Farhan:

De depending on, on, on the products itself, right? But I mean, home, home textile, if you’re doing any home textile, gu a lot of bigger retailers like Walmart, target, they’re importing from Pakistan, they’re bad shoes, they’re comforters their pillows. So, so the home textile not in Karachi, but even you go on the other province, Punjab, faba site, you have a lot of home textile manufacturing units over there. Spore goods are really good. Some of the dental equipments like FD approved dental equipments for, for dentistry and, and operations and whatnot. We do our cosmetic care products. We have utopia care brand so like scissors, cuticle, nis and whatnot. We do from, from from Pakistan as well. But yeah, any, any of the home textile good. I, I think in terms of quality and price competitiveness Pakistan is, is very good. Garments, even jeans related products they are being manufactured in Pakistan, and, and you will, you will find a very good quality I think in that region, like Bangladesh, Pakistan, the cotton, the quality of the cotton is really good. So, so those, those part sounds really good if, if they’re doing the justice with the manufacturing and, and, and the quality control.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. Now, we’ll, we’ll get back into you know, the, the, the Amazon strategies in a couple, couple minutes here, but one, one question I ask a lot of, you know, lately the, my guest is completely non, non entrepreneurial related, but it’s important, I think because, because, you know, I, I had health issues last year and, and as entrepreneurs sometimes we don’t know how to, you know, balance, you know, work, work and life. So just, I’m just curious, number one, what are some of your hobbies that you do when you want to get a, you know, step away from, from Utopia? So what, what’s your, what’s your opposite of utopia your, your personal utopia, and then also what are some of your, your habits, your healthy habits, like whether for mental health or physical health, like, you know, gym you have Yeah, yeah. You know, sports that you do. Go ahead.

Farhan:

Yeah, so, so first thing is, I mean, I, I have been playing cricket. I don’t know if, you know, there’s a sports like mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, baseball, cricket, it’s very popular in, in that region, Pakistan or England as well. So I still play that that’s the one thing I told my wife and we were getting married that I, I can’t leave cricket behind, so I still play in the summer, in the winter, obviously I play indoor in the summer I play outdoor cricket, right? Okay. Other than that I like biking and hiking. So in summer with, with my cares or with my friends, I go for biking and hiking. So that keeps for, for my mental health and whatnot. I have noticed that it’s very working well for me, if I, if I sleep early around 10, 11 and wake up around 5, 5 30, so I get my, my own time like without, with family and whatnot I get a few hours in the morning before kids wake up, and then in the night as well, I get a proper healthy sleep. So that, that’s working out very well. So that, that’s what keeps my, my mind at peace as well. And I think physically healthy as well, doing gym or just running in the morning. Yeah.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah. Okay. All right. Back to the strategies, I’m just curious, you know, you have a lot of experience on, on Amazon now, obviously, you know that the average person who’s just starting or maybe, you know, smaller company looking to expand, they can’t just use the same strategies that you, you know, they, hey, let, let’s, you know, take a huge loss for six months and let’s do this crazy campaign, and, and, and let’s get up to 20,000 units of sales in the, in this, I mean, like, you know, that’s not the average person, but you know, in your experience, like what, what, what should the average person, you know, whether they’re new or, or maybe they are like a, you know, small seven figure company, you know, like what do you see as some of the the niches or, or, or some of the, the opportunity, you know, cuz my opinion, I’m sure you, you agree that some people say, oh, it’s too late to, to sell on Amazon. No, it’s not too late. You know, there, there’s still plenty of opportunity Yeah. On Amazon, you guys have your niche, you guys have your process of what you do. Yes. But when you’re, when you’re doing your, your thing, I’m sure you see other things like, oh, you know, if I was just by myself, I probably would’ve done I probably would, would get into this or, or something like that. Yes. What, what would you think for for people out there?

Farhan:

No, you are absolutely. I I think it’s still opportunity is there and it’s huge opportunity on, on Amazon all across e-commerce. And especially in e-commerce. Amazon is the giant, right? So opportunity is there for, for anybody who’s starting or, or a small scale as compared to 2012 or 2014, it is a lot of more, more sellers out there. But it’s still, if you, if you can find categories or, or products I will not recommend to go for a niche product because obviously you’ll have to do more marketing and, and you’ll have higher risk score there. So, so products which are everybody’s need, every household need or product where you see less competition, right? Pick those product don’t like start crawling first, then walking and running, right? So look for the products and target maybe 10 units a day, then 20 units a day, 15 units a day, those make those smaller wins. And then then increase your portfolio from there. Target maybe make your milestones in a way that in first three months of selling, you wanna be on the second page on your, your keyword search. Then six months you wanna be on the first page organically, right? Because that’s, that will take you for the long haul. Maybe in the first year, you can be on the first page organically. That would be a great, great success order there.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. Cool. Cool. You know, I, I, I, I visited Pakistan a couple of times and seen firsthand the, the kind of like enthusiasm about e-commerce is crazy. Like I did, like, yeah, I don’t know, I’ve probably done five or six events and there’d be anywhere between 500 and a thousand people, you know, at each one. And what, how do you, how, how do you view the, the kind of like, you know, 10 years ago that wasn’t the situation, you know people weren’t into e-commerce. Like, what, what do you, what what’s going on over there? Like, like, why, why? So why all of a sudden is there this big boom, you know, like in the past, maybe people thought about, you know, getting, you know, help for their Amazon business, all right? Maybe Philippines, you know, maybe only India, you know, but like, why, why, why, why is Pakistan coming on so strong lately?

Farhan:

There, there, there are few, few success stories there as well. Utopia being one, right? When we started and we opened our first office in 2015, and we were having very hard time finding people with the e-commerce marketing experience, let alone Amazon, right? So what we did, we, we looked for the, one of the top a few top business graduates universities, and hired people from there and trained them, right? So over the course of, I would say eight, nine years there were a hundred of resources we hired and, and they moved out of utopia. They start, some of them, I know a few of them, Danish being one, they started their own entrepreneurship training centers as well. They help a lot of sellers as well. They work with other, they, they work with other giants, manufacturing giants or, or corporate giants were there to set up those training centers.

Farhan:

And at the same time, as I said Pakistan is a, a manufacturing, like one of the bigger strength in Pakistan is, is home textile and manufacturing. So those giants, they got entrusted looking into success of Amazon, success of Utopia and other like enablers and, and whatnot. And, and they, they came up with, with like a big, big, big initiatives to expand. And then on, on the talent side there has been a a lot of good talent. It’s just to show them direction, right? What I have seen when I, when I was kid, everybody was doing like, engineering and, and doctor and whatnot. But now for the last four or five years, it’s, it’s like there’s a boom of e-commerce. People know, and especially with the covid push, everybody’s going towards e-commerce or online sellings or social media, right? So, so on the talent side as well, people are very motivated and, and interested learning e-commerce and, and, and, and the good talent is, is working over there. And, and on, on the training side or on the university side as well people are, are, are taking initiatives and, and, and training those guys in the right direction as well.

Bradley Sutton:

Cool. Cool. Alright. Something we do on the shows LA last we call either the 60-second tip or 30-second tip. You know, you’ve been giving us different strategies and stuff, but you have something you can say that’s kind of quick hitting maybe 30 or 60 seconds strategy, Amazon or non-Amazon, whatever. Maybe, maybe it’s your own Briani recipe. You wanna, you wanna give in 60 seconds? I’ll let us know what, what, what can you tell us here?

Farhan:

I’ll, I’ll just say what I, I, I say my, my team. Whatever you guys do, just keep trying. If you’re launching a product or working as a virtual assistant in the beginning whatever field you’re working, try to be the champion of that field. Work. Go for the excellence, right? And then, or be the magnet and, and the other success and money will, will come towards you. So whether it’s been your marketing strategy or you’re making a ani, go for the go for the excellence of that particular task. And, and, and then things will come to you eventually. And then be, be persistent and keep trying.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome. Awesome. Well, Farhan, thank you so much for joining us. And Incre, congratulations on all your success. We usually try and invite guests back, you know, maybe once per year, and who knows, maybe by, by the next time you’re on here, you’ll be our first ever 10 figure. Sure. 10 figure seller coming on here. All right. I really hope. Thank you very much and we’ll see you later.

Farhan:

Thanks for inviting Brad. Have a good day. Take care. Bye.

#472 - ChatGPT Help For Amazon Listings & Helium 10 AI-Powered Tools

Welcome to another seller strategy masterclass episode! Today, Bradley walks us through Helium 10’s Listing Builder and Insights Dashboard. He shows us valuable information like how to get help from Chat GPT to start creating your listings inside Listing Builder, how the new Insights Dashboard can save you a lot of time by doing your work and delivering the results that you can view in an all-in-one dashboard! Plus, he shares an upcoming game-changing feature for Insights Dashboard that will blow your mind! Tune in and learn all his tips from these amazing Helium 10 AI-powered tools.

In episode 472 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley discusses: 

• 01:25 – Welcome Back To Another Seller Strategy Masterclass Episode!  
• 03:03 – How to Check If You Need Spanish Keywords In Back End of Your Listing  
• 05:29 – How To Prioritize Your Spanish Keywords
• 08:39 – How To Get Help From Chat GPT To Create A Listing
• 14:16 – How To Compare Key Metrics vs. Previous Time Periods
• 15:42 – How To Measure The Results Of Your Listing, PPC, and More Tests
• 19:29 – How To View All Of Your Product’s Metrics In One Place
• 22:14 – How To See Product Performance at Parent Variation Level
• 24:24 – How To Have Helium 10 Do a Lot Of Your Work For You
• 26:00 – A New Game-Changing Feature That’s Coming For Insights Dashboard
• 26:29 – Get Insights For Competitor Changes And Activities
• 27:19 – What Kind Of Insights Or Notifications That You Want?
• 30:39 – How To Send Your Feedback For The Insights Dashboard
• 31:24 – The New “Profitability Down” Feature

► 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 I’m gonna show you things like how to use ChatGPT to help you get started writing your listing, and also some new ways that you can save hours and hours of work by having actually Helium 10 do your work for you and just delivering you the results. How cool is that? Pretty cool I think.

Bradley Sutton:

Sellers have lost thousands of dollars by not knowing that they were hijacked, perhaps on their Amazon listing, or maybe somebody changed their main image, or Amazon changed their shipping dimensions, so they had to pay extra money. Every order. Helium 10 can actually send you a text message or email if any of these things or other critical events happen to your Amazon account. For more information, go to h10.me/alerts. Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers podcast by Helium 10. I am your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that’s 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’ve got another edition of our Sellers Strategy Masterclass, which is a monthly series where I give you guys just strategy after strategy on how you can use helium 10 and other tools in order to help your Amazon and or Walmart business.

Bradley Sutton:

And so today we’re gonna be focusing on a couple of tools. Mainly a lot of this is gonna be powered by ai. And so the first thing we’re gonna be talking about is Listing Builder. That’s why I’m wearing my LB hat. Today. Let me know if anybody actually knows what team this comes from, but I consider this my listing builder hat. We’re gonna be talking about how AI can help you, especially when you have writer’s block. And then I’m gonna be going into a lot of insights dashboard, which is just like next, next, next level stuff, guys, like, I’m gonna be talking about some things today where it might be a process that, that took you or one of your employees, maybe three, four hours a week, some of these processes.

Bradley Sutton:

And now it’s gonna be like three or four seconds, literally, I’m gonna talk about that. And then I’m gonna show you a way that you can participate in kind of like helping the roadmap of Helium 10, because this is just the beginning. There’s a lot of stuff that we actually need your input on. So I’m gonna be showing you some cool things that are coming, and then how you can actually shape the direction that we’re gonna take some of these new tools in. So let’s go ahead and get started. The very first strategy of today is how to utilize Spanish keywords in your listing when you maybe have more than 10 keywords. Now, this is something that I think all of us know, right? Like, hey, we need to have Spanish keywords in our listing to be indexed for them because there are so many you know, hundreds of thousands of people, not millions of people, for example, United States who search in Spanish on the Amazon platform.

Bradley Sutton:

So, like, for example, maybe you guys are familiar with you know, Cerebro and how you can find different Spanish keywords. Like here, I just looked up a collagen peptides, what I’m looking at here and there was like 20, 25 Spanish keywords that had the word colágeno in it that all had like 400 or more search volumes. So in the collagen space, there’s obviously a lot of products that utilize Spanish keywords and they have a lot of search volume. So here’s how you can know what to do here, because you don’t have room to put every single one of these phrases in the search terms, in the backend of your listing. By the way, I know a lot of people, or some people talk about using maybe image alt text from an actual image.

Bradley Sutton:

I’m gonna check that to see if you are not indexed, if that will actually get you indexed. I’m not talking about A+ Content, alt image. I’m talking about like in the meta description of, of your images. Gonna definitely be testing that I think it helps, or I’ve pretty sure it helps on Google, but I wanna see if you can it take you from a not indexed to an indexed state on Amazon. One thing that I’ve tested extensively and never have had much success on is doing that in the alt text of the actual A+ Content. You know, I’ve tried that not many times, like I’ve tried it like 13 or 14 times where I take a word, be it Spanish or be it another keyword that I am not indexed for, all right?

Bradley Sutton:

Not searchable on Amazon and put it only in the alt image text for the A+ Content, and then check like a few days later in my index and I can’t get it to work. Now some people might maybe just stuff it completely and then maybe have some success getting some keywords indexed. I wouldn’t do that in the first place. Even if it did work personally, I would not put Spanish keywords or just, just or keyword stuff, those alt image parts of A+ Content because it’s kind of against Amazon terms of service, first of all, because it’s, that’s meant to be a section that is for like blind people or people who use screen readers and things like that. And that’s just not even that’s just not cool I mean, there’s millions of people searching Spanish on Amazon.

Bradley Sutton:

Guess what? There’s thousands tens of thousands of blind people searching on Amazon. And imagine they go to your listing and they’re trying to understand what the images are, just, it’s a bunch of Spanish keywords and they’re not even a Spanish speaker. So it’s just not a cool experience. So for me, I put my keywords in the back end of listing the search terms. You know, a lot of that, a lot of it, not all of it gets indexed. So when you have 20 keywords like this the question might be, well, how in the world can you get indexed for all of these keywords? If you’re not indexed already, you can only put a few of these maybe in the search terms. So what I like to do is once my listing is active, if I wanna prioritize this, I’m going to go to Amazon to, to my listing and to the very top right, I’m going to select the Spanish version.

Bradley Sutton:

You click on the flag that’s next to the search bar, And then hit Espanol, and then it’s gonna transfer the listing in into Spanish. And then scroll down to where the Helium 10 Chrome extension has a little widget where you can see the BSR, and at the very top there’s these little buttons, And you’re gonna want to click on Listing Optimizer when this listing is in its Spanish form. And then what happens is, is you are now going to import that Spanish listing into the old Scribbles tool. So you could see how it, it put the title, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It says here, it pulled in the whole front end of the listing, right? So then what I do is I’m going to go ahead and put in those 20 or 14 or whatever keywords that I had been curious about or that I want to index for.

Bradley Sutton:

And I hit apply. And now what Scribbles is gonna show me is if the Amazon translation for this has these keywords in it Now, I said this is about Listing Builder. Obviously I’m showing you scribbles, but you can definitely do this in Listing Builder as well. And as you can see here, there’s only one keyword in phrase form that the Amazon Spanish translation has. Now, this is something you’re gonna notice. Amazon is using its own translation. It doesn’t mean it’s the most optimized form of Spanish that people are actually searching. Here’s a proof of it. This is a listing where the top keywords for collagen. It’s not showing up in that phrase form. So if you’re index for it, okay, maybe it you decide that, okay, hey, I don’t care if it’s in phrase form, all I care is about being indexed.

Bradley Sutton:

But maybe some of these keywords you wanna be have in phrase form in your listing, not in the translated form or in the translated version, but just in the backend of your regular version to send more of that rank juice to Amazon. So this will tell you how many of the individual keywords are in there. Like you could see Colcolágeno is in there <speaking spanish>. So like, there’s these various individual keywords that made up, the Spanish phrases are definitely in here, but perhaps the ones that I have the highest search volume where I think is the most relevant that’s what I’m going to choose to put into my listing. So this is a quick hack on how you can use Scribbles or Listing Builder, import the, the listing from Spanish the Spanish Amazon translation, and then see how the listing is optimized.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, let’s just talk about just regular English listings for Amazon USA. Maybe you are not a native English speaker you’re from another country, English is not your first language, and you’re struggling with getting started writing your listing. Or perhaps maybe you are a native English speaker like myself and just you have writer’s block, we all get it. Sometimes you’re like, man, I don’t know how to get started writing this listing. Right? What are some ways that you can use AI to help? Let me go ahead and show you. If you have your list of keywords your, your phrases and your words I’m talking about Listing Builder Now maybe you’ve got 10, 15, 20 different phrases, and then you’ve got an additional 100 or so individual words you want to get you want to be indexed for.

Bradley Sutton:

Well, you go into Listing Builder and then what you do, this is very important. You gotta enter in the product characteristics. You know, this is important because I know there’s some tools out there, or if you’re just using ChatGPT by itself and the tool only has, you like import keywords search terms are important to get in there, but you need to have product characteristics too. So like here, I just threw together something for this listing, this coffin shelf listing. I was like, Hey, this is a coffin shaped shelf for hanging on the wall or tabletop, it’s made of wood. It’s good for smaller spooky trinkets. It’s a black paint. And then I put the brand name. Now of course, I should probably have you know, put more here in product characteristics. You know, things that come from maybe the review insights of the of my competitors.

Bradley Sutton:

You’d want to fill this up as much as you can. I’m gonna put here, I wanna show the brand name at the beginning of the title what my product name is. It’s just gonna put coffin shelf. And then you can choose like the tone. So you know, do you want it to be formal, casual, friendly, humorous, persuasive, educational, empathetic, inspirational. You know, not all of us can just think and change our mode to these different, these different styles. But you can do that with with ai. So I’m just gonna choose humorous cuz it’s for a coffin shelf and then target audience maybe it’s just for men or maybe it’s for women’s for certain ages. I’m gonna go ahead and put that. And then like, let’s say under this words and special characters to avoid, let’s say I had some keywords that for sure I thought maybe ChatGPT is gonna try and throw in a, a drug related word that it doesn’t realize that it’s forbidden against by Amazon, like CBD or something.

Bradley Sutton:

Or maybe it, no, I think it’s gonna put in a cuss word because it’s very common. Or maybe a brand name or something like that. I can throw those into words and special characters to avoid. And now the mo, what’s the most important part of your listing? Well, it’s gonna be the title. So that’s what I suggest working on first. All right. And then put in the keywords that you definitely want to include in the title. All right, your top two or three keywords. The way you do that is you hit this button here, and I’m gonna go ahead and choose coffin shelf gothic decor and gothic decor for bedroom. Remember, that’s like one of the Maldives Honeymoon or Bali Blast kind of strategies is making sure that you try and have nested words together. Like, so if two of your main keywords are gothic decor and then gothic decor for bedroom, perfect example of you know, a couple keywords that you’d want to get into your listing or into your listing title so that you can kill two birds with one stone.

Bradley Sutton:

So once you go ahead and, and choose which keywords you want the title, just hit this one button, write it for me. And then what’s gonna happen is ChatGPT is gonna come up with a suggestion on what it can be. Now, look at this. I had put spooky, right? And it says here, Manny’s mysterious oddities coffin shelf, the perfect gothic decor for bedroom spook up your space. That’s even using, what is it called? Alliteration or something like that, with this black wooden coffin shelf. Now remember, these weren’t even keywords I put in, I put made of wood and it knew to change it to wood, and I put that it was a black color and it just put black there. So if, if I’m good with this, all I have to do is hit use suggestion and then boom goes to dynamite it used up some of my keywords.

Bradley Sutton:

So right there, I might not have been whether I’m a native English speaker or not. That is arguably a lot better than what I could have come up with in five seconds, which is how long it took ChatGPT to do that. And then basically you just keep going on, like say hey, alright I’m good with that title. Go ahead and write the bullet points and try and use these, these words. And then as you go along, you choose if you want to accept what ChatGPT has given or you wanted to rewrite it, and then keep writing out your listing and including your description at the very end. If you still have phrases and, and keywords left over, we’ll just go in there and edit it out and use up all the keywords.

Bradley Sutton:

So I personally don’t use ChatGPT in order to just make a complete listing and just like say, Hey, go ahead, ChatGPT, take the wheel. What I use it for is to get ideas on, on changing a title or if I am starting from scratch, just to get me on the right track you know, making some kind of theme that I can follow. Because you know, a lot everybody has writer block sometimes, and right off the bat it’s going to give you kind of like a direction you can go with on your listing that you probably wouldn’t have been able to come up on your own. So I highly recommend using this. This is for those of you who have the Diamond plan on Helium 10. Alright, let’s now switch to something new-ish.

Bradley Sutton:

You know, it’s been around for a few months and it’s called Insights Dashboard and some of the different ways that you can utilize this to help you with your analytics and help you basically grow your Amazon business. So the first strategy I wanna talk about is how to compare key metrics versus previous time period. So this is exactly what you see just when you log into Helium 10 now. And for example, I have the revenue metric being shown right here. Now at the very top of the screen, I’m showing like some dates from last month in June, right? May maybe I want to actually just look at the whole entire last month of June. So June one to June 30th. Now, if I have this comparison button toggled, what this is going to show me is each day it’s going to kind of show me this time period versus the previous time period.

Bradley Sutton:

So regardless of what time period I’m looking at, it’s going to compare it to the previous time period. So here I’m looking on June 16th. Overall my gross revenue was $322, but on that same day, last month, in May 30 days before it was $400, My profit margin went from 13% to 8%. These are things that I might want to look at, like, what in the world is going on? Why is my profitability down? Why is my sales down? Well, this will help you look at trends, So that’s the number one thing is comparing your metrics to previous time periods. The next thing is how to measure the results of your listing PPC and more tests. So I, I could be on any of these pages right here, but the cool thing is, is this add note button.

Bradley Sutton:

So let me explain why you would even use this. You know, maybe you’re using manage your experiments inside of Seller Central. Well it’s going to take detailed notes of well, what’s happening, what experiment you’re doing, but what are some experience you probably run on your own? What if you’re changing a bullet point? What if you’re changing an image? What if you lower the price of your product by a couple dollars? What if you maybe add some Spanish keywords, the backend of your listing what if you increase your PPC budget for a product? What if you increase your PPC target your target cost per click, right? On a certain a certain keyword or search term, right? I mean, the list goes on and on. We are always doing things to our listings, hopefully to try to increase sales or to get better conversion rates, et cetera, right?

Bradley Sutton:

Well, you could make these changes and then just go back and kind of like, remember when you did it, or maybe you wrote down some notes somewhere and then, alright, let me try and figure out when I did this and that. I mean, you should be doing that, I hope, I hope you just don’t blindly make changes and like cross your fingers, hope it works. But what you should be doing is taking detailed notes of when this happens. And so that’s what you can do right here on the dashboard. If I do something, I’m gonna hit add note, and then I pick what date I make the change, and then I choose, Hey, what did I do? And I could make my own, I put a whole bunch of tests right here, but I can make my own you know, action.

Bradley Sutton:

Like, Hey, increase my PPC bid or change this listing image, and then I choose the actual product that I did the change to, and then I can even write more notes here in the description. Now, what happens is it’s going to show up on that date, So for example, right here, if I hit this actually just shows me the alerts. So these are alerts that I made or not that I made, but that happened in my listing. But if I had made some change, like I increased my budget, it would show up here on this date. Let’s say it’s June 9th. And then what I would want to do is, let’s say I’m looking at that specific product and I changed a PPC bid. Well, what I’m gonna wanna do is after that exact point in time, I’m gonna be looking at my sales, or I’m going to be looking at my refunds.

Bradley Sutton:

I’m gonna be looking at my you know, my PPC spend, whatever my, my keyword ranks, whatever the case is, I wanna see what kind of effect that had. Now, you might think, oh, hey, if I just do that one time, I got one product. You know, that’s not that necessary. I don’t need to do that. But, but trust me, guys, even if you only have one product, this is important because maybe you remember three weeks from now what you just did, but you can remember a year from now, like Prime Day is coming up, right? And maybe you’re, you did some test, Hey, I, I’m doing a two week pre-prime day sale, or a one week pre-prime day sale. Well, a year from now, you’re preparing for Prime Day. Do you remember what you did?

Bradley Sutton:

Even if you only have one product last year, you might not. So now all you have to do is look back on the date range of this year’s prime day. I’m talking about a year from now. And you’ll see this note that you added, Hey, on this date, I lowered my price, I did a temporary sale. And now you can look back. Well, how did I do? Ooh, my profitability went down and my sales stayed flat. Were you gonna do that again next year for Prime Day? Probably not. So this is why it’s important to go ahead and take these notes inside your insights dashboard so you can track all of the different things that you’re doing that you’re trying to increase your sales. Next strategy here is how to view all of your products metrics in one place.

Bradley Sutton:

As you know, helium 10 has like a million tools. Seller Central has tons of different data points. Well, how can you see everything at once? Well, here on the bottom of your dashboard and the products table, you can see everything now. Like, here’s my my Project X Gui’s Chicken Coop egg rack, right? I can go ahead and see here. Hey, all of my keyword ranks, I don’t have to go into keyword tracker to see it. I can even see how many keywords I’m tr I’m in the top 10. I can see what is my category bsr, my subcategory, bsr. Maybe I wanna look at without having to go into Amazon or go into a tool, Hey, show me the entire history of the BSR of this product. What’s my star rating on it?

Bradley Sutton:

What’s the history of my reviews? You know, how many units do I have in stock? How many days of inventory does that stock represent? What’s the price history of this product? How many sales have I had today? How many units sold in this time period that I selected here at the top of the page, do I have, what’s my refunds been units and the dollar amount of refunds? How many page views in my page view rate? This is this is coming from your business reports in Seller Central, right? What about my sessions in my unit session percentage? What’s my conversion rate? What is my gross revenue, my net profit, my profit margin? How much Amazon fees did I pay for this product? What’s my ROI? What’s my cogs? It pulls in your PPC data for this product.

Bradley Sutton:

Here, look at this one. I spent $200 last month on PPC. This is how many impressions got me 140,000 ad impressions. This is how many clicks I got. This is my rate, this is my ACoS my RoAS. Do I have the buy box? All of this guys I know some for, for those of you listening to this, maybe in your car, as you have trouble picturing this, this would have to take multiple helium 10 tools plus seller central. It’s all in the same table, and I can choose different views as far as what I want to see. So this is kind of like what I highly suggest you guys doing right away if you haven’t played with this yet, but just hop right in there. Those of you with a diamond plan, you can have up to a thousand products that you can track here.

Bradley Sutton:

I think if you have the platinum plan, you still get like 20 or 50 or something like that. But go in there, start playing around with it. Take a look at your keyword ranks. Take a look at your alerts you might have had things happen to your listing that you didn’t even realize was happening. Take a look at your inventory levels. All of that is right here, and you’re not gonna have to go into separate tools anymore to see this. You can see it all right in one place. Now, one interesting thing that we kind of like are one of the first ones to do. This is my double egg rack. Now, I just happen to know that I actually have multiple variations. I’ve got this double egg rack, I’ve got the bottom rack and a top rack as well.

Bradley Sutton:

Maybe I wanna know, instead of just seeing the sales of this double rack. What is my whole entire egg rack listing? How is it doing on sales and some of these metrics? Well, if you hit here the related ASINs, I could say, Hey, view related child ASINs in the table. So now what, what it’s gonna do is it’s going to show me the, the three products that have to do with this ASIN. This main ASIN, it has two other variations. And now I can see all of those aforementioned stats that I was talking about together. Or maybe I’m like, you know what? I don’t wanna have to add up all of these maybe I have a listing that has 10 variations. Like I’m selling the clothing category, and I’m like, Hey, I wanna know for my t-shirt, my red t-shirt, total how many sales that I have across all the sizes.

Bradley Sutton:

Well, now you can actually view things at the parent level, And it aggregates all of the data. So those three child variations I was talking about, now this unit sold, represents all of it put together. So I I don’t know of any other major tool that, that does this, this has been something that you guys have been asking for, for a while, but those of you with variation listings, you can now view all of the metrics for your product. You can’t do this in Seller Central, right? You could even do this in Helium 10 before, but again, you could view it at three different levels at the very skew level. You know, like me, I have multiple SKUs per ASIN, because I have a FBM and a FBA SKU. You, I could look at it at the very SKU level.

Bradley Sutton:

I could look at the ASIN level so maybe it adds both of those s skews together, or I could look at the whole parent level where it shows all of the child items together my keyword ranks, my sales, my PPC, et cetera. The next strategy is basically how to have Helium 10 do a lot of work for you. And this is gonna be kind of like the thing I’m gonna be talking about the rest of this episode, because this is the most beneficial the most, the, the thing that can just really put money in your pocket because of the time and the data that it gives you. And you know, there’s a reason why this, this new dashboard is called Insights Dashboard, and that’s because of the insights that it gives you. So if you look on the left hand side, those of you with the the diamond plan you’re gonna start seeing these insights.

Bradley Sutton:

Like for example, hey I got this insight. Your gross revenue for this product is down 300% from the previous week. You know, you might wanna look at it. So normally maybe I’m paying somebody to look at my gross revenue or some certain metric, and hey, let me know when it’s bad. No, you don’t have to pay nobody to do that more. You can just program this to, to let you know when some of these things happen. Here that there are some negative keyword suggestions for my PPC campaigns I did not implement. This is telling me to go ahead and implement it. There are here it says competitor keywords that I’m not ranking for. Here’s another one where it says, Hey, your main image size is not a good dimension. You know, go in and, and you might want to check it out.

Bradley Sutton:

Hey, we found $50 worth of refunds that Amazon could owe you. Go ahead and submit that. Hey, transfer inventory to avoid running out. There are so many different insights that it’s already giving, giving you like some of the alerts that might happen to your, your product, like your image changes or your listing gets suppressed. Now here’s the exciting part because there are some things that are, are coming that are just gonna be kind of crazy soon. Or by the time you’re watching this, you might be able to click on competitors on your product table. You guys know me, I don’t use this word lightly, but this is what’s gonna be game changing for you guys, cuz you’re gonna be able to add up to five competitors per each one of your product.

Bradley Sutton:

Just like you kind of see here in this mockup. Now, let me explain the fire that this is gonna bring you all right. Now try and hold if you’re driving, you should pull over because probably gonna blow your minds and you might get too excited and start speeding and blame a speeding ticket on me or something, right? So, so make sure you’re sitting down when you hear this. You are gonna be able to assign competitors to each of your products, and that’s just gonna open the floodgates of insights. Imagine this guys, your competitor raises or lowers their price. You’re gonna get an insight or an alert about that. Let’s say they change one of their images they change their title. You’re gonna get this insight drop in your dashboard. No more having to like pay your employees to monitor you competitors every day for these kind of things.

Bradley Sutton:

Just get this guys. Let’s say your competitor is running like a lightning deal or a coupon, or they just changed their price lower or, or they’ll run a special deal today. Guess what? You’re gonna get an insight. You know, you’re gonna know, hey, your competitor is running a sale and you know, how do you use this information? Well, some people, they’re like, Hey, I gotta match whatever my competitor’s doing. So this is something, this is not like game changing in the sense that, oh my goodness, you’ve never monitored these kind of things from your competitors people. No, of course, I hope that you guys are monitoring that. But the game changing part is you’re probably doing, you’re having to do this, you’re yourself manually, or maybe you’re paying an employee to mindlessly go in and look at a hundred of your ASINs and then 300 competitors total for each of those ASINs and refreshing them every day.

Bradley Sutton:

Hey, let me know when they’re running a lightning deal. Hey, let me know if they changed their image. You’re not gonna have to do any of that anymore. We’re gonna let you know when these things happen. The thing, the parts that I really like is the keyword level. I hope it’s part of your strategy where you’re paying one of your employees to go in once a month or once every other month and run cerebro on your listing compared to your competitors listing to see if they’re ranking for any new keywords organically to see if they’re bidding super high for a certain keyword in sponsored ads that you’re not even indexed for. Like, imagine that you are gonna get a notification that says, Hey, your competitor is getting sales from this keyword, their page one, position three, and A, you are not ranking at all for this keyword.

Bradley Sutton:

B as a matter of fact, you’re not even indexed for this keyword. C how about adding it to your third bullet point? Would you like ChatGPT to create a new bullet point based on that? That’s the kind of stuff that’s gonna come guys to, to this insights dashboard. So again, if your mind is not blown, you don’t understand the gravity of how powerful this is gonna be. Now here’s the important part. We need each of you to kind of like let us know what other kind of insights you want to have that you now take action on based on what you is happening to you or your competitors. So now you kind of know the direction that this tool is going in, and now that you know you can assign 3, 4, 5 competitors to each of your ASINs, what kind of notifications do you, do you want?

Bradley Sutton:

Like, is there something you want to monitor on your competitors? Now, a few of the things I didn’t mention that’s already gonna gonna happen is like BSR level, you’re gonna be able to specify a percentage. Like, Hey, let me know if there BSR changes by this percentage. Let me know if their BSR passes mine. Let me know if my competitor sales goes down by this much percent. Let me know if their review of velocity goes up by this amount. Well, we’re already gonna do like tons of stuff. So maybe your ideas that you have, we might already have in, in motion, but still don’t let that stop. You still let us know what exactly you want to see from your competitors that you would want to get insights for. And especially I’m talking about strategies that you are already doing. Now, this stuff is not brand new like anybody could see if you’re, if a competitor BSR goes up or down, but you gotta manually do it right now.

Bradley Sutton:

So that’s what I’m talking about. I’m not talking about like showing you some new data point that nobody has access to. What I wanna do is take the strategies that you are already doing and how can we automate that for you so we can give you more time back in your pocket? So the way that you guys can give us kind of insights into what you would wanna see in Insights dashboard is scroll to the very top of your dashboard, and at the very top, there’ll be a button that says, send feedback that specifically for this dashboard. So make sure to click that and let us know. Just say, Hey, Bradley said to use this to to give feedback on what I would like to see for my competitor insights. Some more things that I didn’t show you guys that’s coming that’s on your own listing is you are gonna have this new metric where it’s called, I think we’re calling it the profitability down where it’s like, Hey, if my sales goes down by this much percent, or my conversion rate goes down by this percent or my sessions goes down, give me a note.

Bradley Sutton:

A notice instead of you, again, having every day to go in and look at your, your business reports to check these data points, we’re doing that work for you. So tons and tons of stuff that is coming to this Insights Dashboard, and it already is powerful that it can help you with a lot of your day-to-day activities like as of right now. So if you have not activated this dashboard, make sure to do it. But again, tons and tons more stuff coming and we’re gonna be able to build on this platform to bring you other insights, to bring you other metrics. So I really, really, really need a favor from you guys, and that is for you to just dive into here, play around with it, see how it works, and then hopefully your creative juices are kind of you know, turned on and you’ll be able to give us some, some feedback on the kind of things that we can help you with that our AI can, can go ahead and automate for you and just give you the results.

Bradley Sutton:

I mean, I’m super excited about this Competitor Insights where I don’t have to worry about having a VA every day check if my competitor has a coupon on their listing or if their image change or I don’t have to worry about you know, if my competitor is, is getting sales from this keyword that I’m not unless I’m checking it every day. No, all of this stuff is gonna be automated and I’m just gonna have this notification in my insights dashboard if it happens. So again guys, please click on that, send feedback and let us know. Hope you guys were able to learn a couple of strategies from this. If I talked about things that you guys currently aren’t doing, go ahead and watch the video of this helium10.com/podcast. You can look watch the videos on there of each of these episodes, or you can view that usually one week after it goes live on our YouTube channel. Just look for Helium 10 Serious Sellers Podcast and you’ll be able to find these episodes. So again, I hope you guys enjoy this episode and I’ll see you in the next one. Bye-Bye now.

Helium 10 Buzz 7/6/23: Amazon FTC Trouble | New PPC Alerts | Walmart, Etsy, eBay Updates

In this episode, we cover the latest breakings news in the Amazon, Walmart, Etsy, & eBay marketplaces. From Amazon’s FTC antitrust suit to this week’s training tip on how to streamline your FBA reimbursements.

#471 – Amazon Listing Optimization Tips, Buyer Journey Case Study, & More!

In this episode, we had the pleasure of welcoming back Lailama Hasan, to share the results of her recent case studies. Tune in and discover how her findings can help you enhance your Amazon listing optimization game! We started by diving into her customer behavior case study, exploring what consumers are truly looking for in your product listings. From there, we had dived into the significance of titles, premium features, discounts, coupons, and reviews in the eyes of Amazon buyers. She also talked about how changing titles led to an astounding 93% increase in sales. Surprisingly, she revealed that removing the brand name from your Amazon listing titles can be a game-changer. So, make sure to tune in until the end to learn how to level up your Amazon listing optimization game in 2023!

In episode 471 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Lailama discuss: 

• 01:09 – Catching Up With Lailama Hasan
• 02:30 – What Is Lailama Up To These Days?
• 04:15 – Diving Into Her Customer Behavior Case Study
• 06:33 – What Are Consumers Looking For In Your Listing?
• 08:18 – Titles, Premium Features, Discounts, Coupons, & Reviews
• 10:29 – Is Amazon’s Choice Badge Important?
• 13:55 – Changing Titles Lead To 93% Increase In Sales
• 14:22 – Removing The Brand Name In Your Amazon Listing Titles
• 17:47 – People Are Going For Shorter Titles
• 19:20 – Getting Creative With Amazon Product Photography
• 20:40 – Can AI Replace Creative Agencies?
• 23:05 – DIY Product Photography Techniques & Using AI Software
• 24:01 – Creating Compelling Amazon Listing Images
• 24:34 – Make Sure To Subscribe To Lailama’s YouTube Channel
• 27:36 – How Frequent Should You Refresh Your Listings
• 29:27 – How To Find Lailama Hasan In The Interwebs
• 29:54 – Find AMZ One Step At Helium 10’s Seller Solutions Hub
• 30:37 – Lailama’s 60-Second Tip

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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:

Today we’ve got Lailama back, and she’s gonna tell us the results of a couple of cool listing optimization case studies that she’s done that will help you optimize your listings for 2023. How cool is that? Pretty cool I think.

Bradley Sutton:

Do you wanna be able to sync your listings that you create in Helium 10 to your Amazon account in one click, including being able to sync subject matter, which you’re not able to even edit now in most listings on Amazon, you’re gonna want to use Helium 10 Listing Builder. Make sure to find out how to use Listing Builder by going to h10.me/listingbuilder. That’s h10.me/listingbuilder. Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Series Sellers podcast by Helium 10. I’m your host, Bradley Sutton and this is the show that’s a completely BS free, unscripted and unrehearsed organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. And we’ve got my sister from another Mr. back today on the show. My former co-worker here, Lailama. How’s it going?

Lailama:

I’m doing great. How about you?

Bradley Sutton:

I’m doing just delightful. Now, you’re back working at AMZ One Step And so I wanted to reach out to you and to kind of just like see what you’ve been, what you’ve been up to. I mean, even before you worked at Helium 10, you would come on this podcast and give us some cool listening optimization strategies and, and things like that were of great benefits to the audience. But before I get into that, are you moving with your brother and and sister-in-law to Toronto or just them?

Lailama:

Yeah, yeah. Entire time I am with them.

Bradley Sutton:

For some reason I thought that they were only moving, but you’re, you’re moving to that city. That’s a big move to go from Edmonton to Toronto.

Lailama:

It’s like a four hour flight, so it’s gonna be a big change too, like this city.

Bradley Sutton:

A cultural change though. Like it’s completely, it’s very different, right?

Lailama:

Like New York 2.0.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Okay. Do you guys have a place out there already?

Lailama:

Yeah, we’re all set. We’re packing up, busy moving these days, so, yeah.

Bradley Sutton:

And like having to leave friends behind and, and stuff like that or how’s that?

Lailama:

Sad. But, you know, we’re pretty flexible that way. We came to Canada seven years ago, so, you know I’m sure I’ll be fine.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, how does that work for like, AMZ One Step though? Cause obviously you and you know, Tayyaba your sister-in-law, like who was just in the podcast a few weeks ago. You guys do a lot of work at the studio, I believe you told me you were working at the studio there doing shoots until like 10:00 PM Like are you guys opening a new studio in Toronto, or all your work is gonna be remote now, or what’s going on there?

Lailama:

Not as yet. I don’t know if we’re gonna start like a studio there, but we’re gonna have a studio at home. Cuz I’m making YouTube videos now too, so that’s gonna be where I do most of my work in the studio.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay.

Lailama:

Work from home, but there’s gonna be a studio allocated to it.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, cool. Yeah, I’m sure you know, Saddam will keep you busy. He’ll make sure that you’re, you’re working. That’s one thing he does well, right? So that should be no problem. Now let’s, let’s talk a a little bit about, you know, what you’ve been, what you’ve been up to. Like when you go, went back to , like are you pretty much doing a lot of the similar stuff that you used to do back before? Like, you know, make content for them and then also like manage like photo shoots and things like that? Or what kind of stuff have you been working on?

Lailama:

Yeah, so content, YouTube, educational videos, and then also creating commercials for clients. So, you know, just, again, very listing optimization focused. But on the site I also have been running case studies to get some extra insights. Like, you know, all the sellers already know what works, what doesn’t work, you know. But I really wanted to dig deep into you know, how the little nuances, like for instance, this case study that I recently did was focused on consumer purchasing behavior. And I think, you know, a lot of us know how to optimize for the Amazon algorithm, but I really wanted to see the other side, like what makes people add your product to the cart.

Bradley Sutton:

So how did you set this case study up? Like were you like capturing the screen of how people navigate on the buying pages or what did this case study involve?

Lailama:

So this video is actually coming out, shameless plug, but what we did was we took a bunch of participants and we gave them like a price range. We didn’t wanna give an exact dollar value because you don’t wanna like tilt them in a particular direction either. Sure. And we were recording their screens and at the same time I’m behind the camera looking at their screens and trying to ask them at every point why they did what they did or what made them go for that. And they were also like voicing their opinions on everything. So it was great. Like, what are people thinking in real time as they’re shopping? And you know, there were some really interesting insights. So a lot of the information did confirm things that we already know. For instance, like I’ll actually give you a very interesting thing that I learned from it.

Lailama:

It was like, we all know that Amazon badges are great. It’ll give you the, you know, higher clickthrough rates because people, it builds that trust. It’ll increase organic traffic, so on and so forth. But once you’ve peaked the curiosity of your buyer and they click on your listing, you know, what happens after? Do they guarantee that sale? Not really. Like, yeah, you can reach out to the relevant buyers with these badges, cuz look, we’re here as sellers and we’re thinking, okay, we’re gonna do so and so these are our strategies in order to get that Amazon badge. But for the consumer, like they don’t even know how we got there, how we earned that badge. So they’re looking at it and they’re like, oh, it’s flagged Amazon’s choice. Let’s see why it is Amazon’s choice. Now they’re on your listing and they’re looking for information that will convince them to buy your product.

Lailama:

And so a lot of the times what I noticed with these listings was they’ve optimized for the algorithm, but not the consumer. Now what I mean by that is these weren’t being added into the cart. So I dug deeper and I’m like, okay, why aren’t you left convinced? Like, you know, they kept saying things a lot of the times it was either things like missing information in the images. So secondary images, people were trying to look at their competition and almost replicate the same kind of information that they had on their secondary images, which doesn’t necessarily mean that consumers wanna know that information. So that strategy where we just like copy paste from our competition is not gonna cut it. You have to look at the information in your reviews, your Q & A section, what people really wanna know about your listing. So missing pieces of information, you know was a big problem either in the images or in the product description. Sometimes it was too advanced, sometimes it was too beginner friendly and, you know, people who actually were enthusiastic about a certain category or were experts on the subject matter didn’t look for the information that they wanted. So, you know, I would say like, people aren’t optimizing for the consumer. We almost lose that sense of the consumer side of us when we become Amazon experts.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, I’ve always said that, you know, people focus too much on the algorithm. You should focus on the algorithm, you know, you gotta be discoverable and stuff, but at the end of the day, it’s not the algorithm who’s buying the product, it’s a human being. And so if you lose that part then, you know, then you’re in trouble. So what would you say, I dunno, top five, top three. What are some interesting things that you discovered from this, you know, analyzing the consumer behavior? Like what things that you found out that you think that sellers should now take action on, or at least should be thinking about it, you know, as they optimize their listening?

Lailama:

Again, going into the nuances of everything, right? Yeah, people will have nice titles, but what consumers were really looking for was a feature being listed in the title in the beginning or in the first few words, like let’s say bag with compartment. That was a big one. Like this person was looking for a bag with compartment. So that’s a feature. And then a lot of sellers were also listing the use cases of these features. So like bag with compartment for shoes, for laptop, for so and so. That sometimes would really confuse our buyers, you know? Sure. They were like, oh, if it says it’s used for a laptop, can I not use it for shoes? So I would say like, sometimes people almost go overboard with stuffing their title with keywords and that’s not necessarily a good idea.

Lailama:

A lot of the times, like whatever’s viewable in the mobile experiences, all that a customer wants to see, they don’t want like a huge list of it. Cuz sometimes it can confuse them as to what they can use the product for. So that was one thing. Another thing that was really interesting was pricing strategy was a big thing here. People were judging based on your prices. So if you were priced way below the market average people would be like, okay, is it not good enough quality? If you were way higher than the market average, then they were looking for that extra like premium feature that would make them think that it’s worthy of that price range. But then there were products that were competitively priced and the ones that were like even a bit higher, but discounted people went for that as opposed to the lower non-discounted prices. So discounts were playing a huge role in how they were making their decisions. Like they were really drawn onto the listing based on the discounts. And 80% of the people were not even adding coupons onto their carts. So they were drawn into the listing based on like 80%.

Bradley Sutton:

Good grief. That’s a lot.

Lailama:

Yeah. But they didn’t end up adding it to their cart. So it’s a win-win case for the buy a seller. Like if you’re not making use of coupons, then you should a hundred percent. But there’s one other thing to notice with the coupon rates is if it’s too big of a coupon, like a five, $10, whatever, it’s gonna be noticeable in the end price. So people will be like, oh wait, why isn’t it priced the same way? So they’ll go back onto the listing and add the coupon, whereas if it’s like one to $3, people usually don’t even notice it in the final price and, you know, will not even bother going back or notice it actually. So these were the two key things. And then the third one was reviews. A lot of people look at reviews because they’re shopping online. So yeah, we don’t entirely have control over our reviews, but working towards getting a higher review count. So one thing that was really common among people was they were looking for like a thousand reviews or higher, and that’s when they fully trusted the brand. Anything lower than that, they’re like, I don’t know. And then they would really focus on the review rating. If it was lower than 4.5, they’d be like, okay, this isn’t trustworthy.

Bradley Sutton:

I don’t take any products less than 4.5. I guess I’m a stingy person when it comes to that. Yeah. And a lot of people, I’m not the only one, I guess.

Lailama:

Yeah, no, a lot of people are like that. But you know, like you don’t really have a lot of control over your reviews, but what you can do is offer customer support. You can improve on the quality of your product. In fact, this happened during the case study I ordered for them and one of the product came damaged. So that product had no insert. They haven’t had an insert, but there was no like contact information or customer support mentioned on the insert. So they came up to me and the participants were like, can you get a replacement for this because it came damaged and I couldn’t find it anywhere. Even though on the description section they said reach out to us if you have any problems with the product. But they had nothing that they could, you know, help us out with cuz it was out of the return window for Amazon. So, you know, there’s like these little things that you can do to avoid negative reviews.

Bradley Sutton:

How much did it impact people’s choosing things in the search results or even their buying some of those badges? Like, you know, I’ve always been skeptical a little bit sometimes of how important like a bestseller badge or an Amazon’s choice badge. And it’s interesting now in the last like few days, there’s newer kinds of Amazon’s choice badges that are coming out. I forgot what it says. It’s like Amazon’s pick or it was something weird like that. But anyways, like, like did that have an impactful, did you see people trust those products more or not because they, they didn’t know where it comes from or what do you think?

Lailama:

So if it came in the first like five to 10 results, they were more likely to click on that first. So that was their first pick, which I would say is like a big influence, right? Because they were like, oh, if I Amazon you know, chooses this, or if bestseller, they would say, oh, I guess people are buying this, so it must be good. So I would say it had a major influence on the click-through rates at least. The rest is up to the seller then.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. Interesting. Now you also did a case study on, on titles. What about titles? Amazon titles, I’m assuming.

Lailama:

Yeah. so this was a case study where, you know, we were done on a client’s listing and we saw a 93% increase in their sales just by changing their title. And they weren’t doing bad.

Bradley Sutton:

93% just by changing the title?

Lailama:

Yes. Which was–

Bradley Sutton:

What did you do? Like make the title ooze gold or something? Like how in the world is that?

Lailama:

So here’s the weird thing. We did not change any keywords. Okay. Keywords were not touched. We literally restructured it. Shortened it so that it was exactly what fits into the mobile viewing experience and we removed the brand name. And that’s something that’s been really working because unless you’re a Nike or something, people really aren’t looking at your brand name. So you’re using the first couple of characters, really important characters towards the brand name, which people don’t even know you yet, right? And we put this unique selling point in the beginning, so like, it was cutlery, we said it was like this number of items in a pack or something like that. And this is the kind of information people are looking for. So you, I would say like, you wanna figure out what the unique selling proposition or what the key pieces of information in your product category is, and then put that in the front. Now a lot of people did ask us like, we have been suggesting that this to some of our clients. And a lot of people are like, oh, but like, it’s not compliant if we don’t put the brand name in there. So on so forth. People get nervous about it.

Bradley Sutton:

It’s actually really interesting right now. It’s so stupid because what you just said is right, that Amazon, in their terms of service wants you to put the, the brand name at the beginning. But it’s, it’s been now three, maybe four months on some of our listings where on certain keyword results, Amazon takes out the brand name, like you put it at the beginning and Amazon literally takes it out unless you go on the product page itself. So like, you know, sometimes that’s good because like, you know, like if you don’t have a lot of brand recognition, just like you said, you know, like people don’t care but the brand, they wanna know what the product is. But then if you are trying to build a brand, or if you’re like Nike or something like that, I mean, literally the whole thing about the product is the brand. And if your brand is strong, and now Amazon is just saying, alright, you know, shoes, you know, instead of Nike shoes, you know, it makes all the difference in the world. So that’s kind of interesting. But yeah, because of that, it kind of like, to me, at least in my mind, it makes it less likely where Amazon is gonna suspend your listing if you don’t put the brand at the beginning. I mean, how could they do that when even they themselves take it out, you know?

Lailama:

Exactly. And another thing is like, we upload it through, we always split test titles. So if you upload it through manager experiments it technically has passed that bot test, so you’re good. If they’ve approved it, then you’re good.

Bradley Sutton:

Have you ever had one where it wasn’t approved? In the manager experiments?

Lailama:

Not so far.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. Well that probably means you guys are doing the right thing. But that’s actually interesting point, like test like some extreme thing in manage your experiments to see like what it would approve because yeah, I actually just started one the other day and I was frustrated. I thought I would be able to start right away, but now it’s like, oh no, we, we gotta like, we have to like check this out and it’s gonna take like, you know, a few days. So obviously somebody must be you know, reviewing it or something before it approves it. That’s a good point.

Lailama:

Exactly. Yeah.

Bradley Sutton:

Alright. What, what else can you talk about titles?

Lailama:

I think, you know, like it’s, what I’m seeing so far is like, again, it, what we use here could not, might not work for another niche, but from what I’m seeing is like people are preferring going for shorter and shorter titles. Like a lot of buyers even confirmed by this case study where just not attracted to these long titles. They were just like lost in the details. So this was kind of the main point or takeaway from this case study as well, like two different case studies now that people don’t want a really long title. While it may be good for like ranking purposes and so on and so forth, but if people are getting confused, ultimately you don’t wanna put that in there. And highlighting the feature is really important. Like, I know people do it, but like, putting it in the forefront of the title and also highlighting something that’s really unique about your product would set you apart.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. Makes sense. Makes sense. All right. So, you know, these case studies that you’ve been working on what, talk to me about just like your, your bread and butter, which is, you know, I don’t think you were doing 10:00 PM last night, a case study. You’re probably doing a, a photo shoot. So, so don’t tell me about the, you know, I mean if, if that product’s private, you don’t have to tell me the exact thing, but, but can you just, I’m just curious about like how photo studios work. Like what was it an Amazon product you did last night? Like how did you decide to, to set it up? And you guys have some, like I saw in your Instagram story you were like putting some like Roman statue props or, or something like that in this photo shoot. So, so talk to me about what you did last night and just in general. So some recent photo shoots that you’ve done.

Lailama:

Yeah, we’ve really been trying to get creative with the photo shoots. Like the Roman thing was statues and everything. We wanted to do that for like a brand for pants. Now if you look at most of the, you

Bradley Sutton:

Know, a brand, well, how does a brand for pants have to do with Roman statues?

Lailama:

So it was kind of like a fashion shoot, right? Okay. Because we wanted to make it unique. Like you look at all these Amazon’s basics and their pretty much the same thing. So I feel like with competitive niches, it’s just so hard to stand out. And so your creatives really need to be at another level because a lot of people will go for Amazon’s basic pants. But how do you set yourself apart? So you need to have like a strong brand presence. And that’s what I’ve been really working on and like videos and photo shoots as well as you know, you don’t wanna use the same techniques over and over again. Like sure, it’s a candle, so put it on a podium and, you know, just do the basic stuff is like, how can you as a creative agency give them that unique outlook?

Lailama:

And you know, a lot of people talk about like AI taking over and while, you know, I think it’s really convenient with all these different softwares where you can create images and everything, it’s much easier if you wanna do it yourself, but you know, like at some point you are really losing your uniqueness as a brand. And yeah, you know, that’s when you’re looking at the images, like this was one of our findings in the case study as well, is they were one of the participants looking for gym gloves. All the images just looked the exact same way done on against a black backdrop, like copy pasted almost, but a little bit of a difference in the design. And then it came down to like the very basic factors, like, okay, review count, review, rating and pricing. So the buyer wasn’t able to look past anything any of those three factors because everything looked the same and the quality looked the same, so they were ultimately gonna go to those things. So if you don’t have the kind of review count that your competitors have, or you are not able to compete on the pricing, then you really need to stand out in other ways.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. Now what are some techniques that you think people should use if they can’t, you know, hire AMZ One Step to stay until 10:00 PM at night to do photo shoots and, you know, it’s not cheap, obviously, you’re, you’re not doing this for $5 an hour. How can people get that effect, you know, from, from like home? You know, like, I, I still suggest, Hey guys, if you’ve got the budget, you’ve gotta use professional agents as matter of fact I don’t even know, I don’t know if Saddam told you this, but I just hit him up yesterday because I’m doing like this mini kind of project X with, I’m helping out somebody’s supplement brand. And I was like, Hey, I’m gonna get them to hire AMZ One Stepto kind of like refresh their, their images, potentially do 3D and stuff like that.

Bradley Sutton:

Because, you know, they, they did their images on their own and it wasn’t that great. But maybe I’m just starting out, you know I don’t have a huge budget. I remember before you had done a few, you know, project x products you know, photo shoots just on your own, even though you had the, you know, full studio. I was like, Hey, try and do this on your own to try and imitate what people would have to do if they, if they can’t afford a, you know, a studio. But, but what are some best practices? You know, like I can’t just go and get a Roman statue to Yeah. To, to use as a a, as a prop. So, so what are some techniques you can, you can talk to us about?

Lailama:

Yeah. For anything, any small items, like you can just take a picture in good lighting. And then there’s so many AI technologies, like even with Canva, let’s say they remove your background for you and then you take that and, you know, use softwares like flair ai, there’s a bunch of others like Mid Journey. And what you can do is use that background, that product that now doesn’t have a background and put it onto like another background, whatever goes with your branding. It could be like a candle that’s staged on a podium against a silky backdrop or something like that. So for infographics like that, I feel like there’s quite a few options. You know, you just get the background removed, put it on something else, and you don’t have to buy the props, right? So it saves you on the cost. It may not look as realistic, but yeah, it just definitely gets the job done.

Lailama:

And yeah, but anything that may require a model, like I’ve been trying to experiment with that. While these apps do give you like a lot of options, but it doesn’t quite have that realistic look. It looks more like you know, like a fake hand or fake person. So yeah. But infographic style images, I would say. Yeah. Yeah. Like, if you don’t have the budget a hundred percent, just use one of these AI softwares. You don’t need to be an expert. It’ll remove the background for you, put it on to another background.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. Now, I was looking at your YouTube channel here, and I saw this, this video here, I always like screenshot on on funny, funny, funny poses of you. So here this, it was about creating compelling Amazon listing images. So I unfortunately did not watch this video. First of all, I always joke like how I think I’m an honorary Hassan because as soon as I saw this, I remember seeing this thumbnail. I was like, wait a minute, didn’t you borrow this blouse from your, your sister-in-law?

Lailama:

Your attention?

Bradley Sutton:

You too. Like, how do I know? How do I know your wardrobes? Even I know even, but anyways, so, so I was too distracted when I saw that. I was like, I couldn’t take this video seriously. Cause I was like, wait, this is not, this is not te I’m looking at here. But anyways, what was this video about? Yeah, this listing images. Can you talk about it?

Lailama:

I basically broke down the different image types, and that’s not necessarily the infographic lifestyle, but image categories that I created my own. Like there’s a lot of people who wanna do comparison to their competitors. There’s dimensions, you know, like the basic kind of images that everybody wants to cover. So one of them was about, one of the categories that I talk about is dimensions. And again, this is another thing that we saw in the case study is to this day, a lot of sellers will put like three centimeters long, four centimeters wide. Like that doesn’t work anymore. Like, and I mean, not, not that it worked before either. Like people, it’s hard for them to visualize, you know, being on the other end. So you need to I’ve basically shown people how they could show the scale and dimensions of their products in other ways.

Lailama:

So one was an example of a suitcase. What we did was put it under, we placed it under a bed frame. So now people know, okay, this is the usual length of the bed frame and this is how it fits under a bed. So they have like a visual reference of, you know, how to show their dimensions. Yeah, you can add the numbers as well, but this just gives them an extra kind of reference. There was another example of like Mike, you put it next to like a can of pop, and that was like, everybody drinks Coke and Sprite or whatever. And so now they know how big this mic is gonna be when it arrives. So just different kinds of product image categories that people can make use of and not have to stick to the regular, like with comparison, people, you know, make use of your regular charts. It has this feature, competitor does not cross. So, you know, you just don’t wanna use these old techniques. They’ve been overused. So just ways to stand out from the crowd.

Bradley Sutton:

How often do you suggest that people refresh their images? I mean, this is not something that people should be, oh, yeah, every, every week change your images, you know, that, that might mess up your, your listing. It doesn’t give people a consistent, a consistent feel, but like once a year you know, should, should we change a couple, once every two years, once every six months? Do you have any suggestions there?

Lailama:

Images and your product title? I think like once or twice even like this seller that we changed their title, they were doing perfectly fine. But, you know, my thing is manager experiments is like an amazing tool. You can just use that and keep experimenting, like keep split testing. You might uncover another opportunity, which could give you such a huge boost in sales, right? So I would say like once or twice a year when you can just change up your title, or doesn’t necessarily mean changing up your keywords, but just like structure it differently. And the great thing about manager experiments is like you are running both titles at the same time. So half the people are shown the original and half the people the other. So you’re getting real time data and if you lose out, you’re losing out on only 50%. So the risk isn’t that big, you know what I mean? It same goes with images. You know, it has the capability to split test main images, secondary images a plus. So the, the second you think, okay, sometimes there are times when your product has a feature that you realize, oh, I haven’t highlighted that, and that is something people are looking for. Or you got a good or a bad review based on a certain feature. Maybe that is a good time to add that feature into one of one of your images.

Bradley Sutton:

All right, before we get into your 60-second strategy for the week, you know, I referenced your YouTube channel right there, that pe you know, you’re definitely giving content. So how can people find you on the interwebs? Especially the, the content that you’re, you’re putting out for people? People?

Lailama:

Yeah. It’s posted on the AMZ One Step YouTube channel, and I also shared it on my LinkedIn, which is Lailama Hasan. My name if people can spell it.

Bradley Sutton:

Cool. All right. Now one interesting thing is like, AMZ One Step is part of the Sellers Solution Hub. But anyways guys, if you want to just reach out in general to AMZ One Step sometimes they have discounts for like, you know, elite members on the page, but if you are logged into your Helium 10 account, and then you wanna see what kind of, you know, bonuses they have, or at least just reach out through the hub, go to hub dot helium ten.com and then just search for AMZ One Step And you’ll be able to reach out to them that way. Now, what is yours? 30 or 62nd strategy of the, of the week for everybody?

Lailama:

Yeah. So a lot of sellers can get nervous about like, main image strategies, and we give a bunch of those strategies out right at the end. You wanna increase, increase your click through rates. So one way, one hack that I have for testing that out if you’re nervous about it, is upload the strategy that, you know, your agency or whoever’s come up with versus like a fully compliant image. And you know, what you wanna do is upload it on, manage your experiments, and if it gets through the Amazon bots, then you’re good to go and you can upload that image, actually, it will verify it for you, so it’ll automatically upload it for you. Because one thing I wanted to point out is a lot of people will be like, oh, this is not compliant, but you theoretically, 80 to 90% of the main images on Amazon are non-compliant with including props, you know, let’s say a fruit and fruit bowls or including a model in there, or, you know, adding an extra sticker onto your label. All of these are non-compliant. So this is just a hack that I have if you’re worried about it, and plus you get extra insights on which version works better.

Bradley Sutton:

All right, cool. Well well that was great to see you at the Prosper Show. Hopefully I can see you guys a again soon. I was trying to get you guys to go out to Bali, but with the move and everything that, that didn’t work out, I know you guys have a villa out there and another studio. But maybe we’ll get to work together on this one project that I was talking about for Project X. But regardless, I look forward to seeing you and your, your brother and your sister and your sister-in-law. Again, we can all, we can all hang up. Cause I swear I’m a, I’m a just a, just the American member of your of your family here. But thank you for coming on and sharing your knowledge and look forward to having you on the podcast maybe next year again.

Lailama:

Thank you for having me.

 

 

#470 - Amazon Ask Me Anything with Bradley

In this episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley Sutton tackles all the burning questions submitted by our amazing community. From optimizing your Amazon listings to how to improve your ACoS, Bradley leaves no question unanswered. Join us as we delve into topics like changing images for dropping conversion rates, the impact of new content in Amazon listings, alternative KPIs for effective images, leveraging ChatGPT for listing optimization, periodic listing updates for different keyword sets, Helium 10’s guide to product launches, and more! Don’t miss this jam-packed episode where he shares his expert insights and actionable advice. It’s time to tune in now and take your Amazon game to the next level!

In episode 470 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley answered the following questions:

• 01:53 – Changing Images When Conversion Rate Is Dropping
• 02:18 – Does Amazon Love New Content In Our Listings?
• 02:56 – Any Other KPI For Effective Images Other Than Sales?
• 05:42 – How To Use ChatGPT To Optimize Your Listings
• 07:31 – Periodically Updating Listings For Different Sets Of Keywords
• 08:45 – Is There A Helium 10 Guide To Launching New Products
• 09:09 – Should A Keyword Become A Negative Target With Good Impressions & Clicks?
• 12:55 – User Customized Order Threshold On A Positive Rule
• 15:09 – My ACoS is Over 100% Any Tips To Lower It?
• 15:55 – How To Improve Your ACoS Using Helium 10 Adtomic
• 19:09 – What’s A Good Target To Hit For ACoS?
• 19:32 – Look At Your TACoS
• 19:53 – Let’s Talk About Bid Strategy
• 20:35 – What’s The Best Way To Learn/Start With Adtomic?
• 21:33 – How To Setup Rules Inside Adtomic
• 25:52 – A Tool To Prevent Running Out Of Stock
• 26:13 – Which Is The Best Filter To Get A Keyword From Cerebro

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Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

Today I’m gonna be going over all of your top questions that you guys have submitted as far as Helium 10 and other Amazon strategies. 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’s completely BS free, unscripted and unrehearsed organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. And what we do, guys, is once a week, every week we have a training for our Sirius Sellers Club members, and our Helium 10 Elite members, Sirius Sellers Club is our private community of sellers who are doing over $500,000 a year on Amazon. And our Helium 10 Elite is one of our special communities as well. And once a month we are going to be opening up this kind of ask me anything to everybody and also repurposing it as we are doing right now as a podcast episode so you guys can take advantage of some of the questions that other people have and maybe it’s some similar questions that you have.

Bradley Sutton:

So here is our ask me anything for, for this month. I hope you guys are able to get some, some great tips out of it. And if you guys would like to participate in the July one, don’t forget to sign up to get notifications on when we’re gonna go live. If you’re on our email list, you should get a notification. If you’re subscribed to our YouTube, subscribe on our Facebook groups and you’ll get a notification on when we go live to do it. But we’ll definitely be doing this once a month. You guys could submit all your questions about Helium 10 live. Let’s go ahead and hop right into it. Whatever helium 10 questions you guys have on how I can help you with your Amazon business go ahead and throw it into the chat and I’ll try and get to as many questions as as possible.

Bradley Sutton:

Somebody from YouTube says, I changed my image because my, my conversion rate was dropping after changing my picture. It didn’t see much increase. Yeah, so just because you change your images, that doesn’t always guarantee that, oh, okay, hey, everything is going to be completely fine. You know, after that, that’s not, you know, that’s not, that’s definitely not the, the way it works. Now, that doesn’t mean you don’t try changing it because sometimes the image strategy changing can help, which is why, again, you use Listing Analyzer to look at what is working for your competitors. Andrea said Amazon loves new content. Yeah, sometimes that’s true. But I wouldn’t change your, Ima I wouldn’t change your listing all the time because at least on the, on the keyword side, sometimes it can actually confuse the Amazon algorithm. So just because you can do new, new listings and you’re a listing builder in Helium 10, I wouldn’t always, I wouldn’t always change my listing like nonstop because the, the algorithm might not be able to, the algorithm might not be able to, to react in time. Jesse says, is there any KPI we could use to see how effective our images are other than sales?

Bradley Sutton:

Well, I mean, at the end of the day, that’s what matters, sales. But sales is only the very, very end of it. There’s different steps. There’s add to carts. There is your session unit session rate. So for example, the first thing in Helium 10, I would be looking at, especially on our, on the new insights dashboard and something that I check like sometimes on a daily or weekly basis is my unit session percentage. Alright? Basically out, out of how many sessions, how many sessions, how many times people visited my page, what was my sales, right? And then the sessions itself, because think about it, if my keyword ranks stay the same, which they don’t always say the same, but let’s just pretend that on average my keyword ranks are similar from this week to last week and my sessions or page views, if either of those metrics goes down, what does that mean?

Bradley Sutton:

That means that people in the search results were choosing my product less. They clicked on it less. Let’s just say if the search volume was kind of similar, right? And so this is obviously something you can look over time. So I’m gonna be looking at my Helium 10 dashboard at my sessions, first of all, and my keyword ranks because if the keyword rank stays the same, but my sessions goes up, that means more people are clicking on it in the search results than before. Meaning that maybe they like this new price point I put, maybe they like my new title, maybe they liked my new main image. If my sessions goes down well then something is wrong. The same thing, like maybe we’re talking about your, your page views or I mean, maybe you actually change your a plus content or you change your secondary images, something you can’t see in the search results.

Bradley Sutton:

Well, the metric that would show that is of course your unit session percentage. All right? So if you were getting 100 sessions and you are doing five sales, well, your unit session percentage is gonna be 5%. That’ll show on your Helium 10 dashboard. But if all of a sudden that goes down to 2% after you change some images, well guess what? Whatever new images you have, they’re not performing as well as your old ones. So I would revert back to the old ones, right? If your unit session percentage went from 5% to 8%, well then regardless of what your sales did, you know, cuz maybe sales, you know, can go up or down if that, if that unit session percentage went up, you know, you made the right decision with changing your images. If you’re outside of Helium 10, and once you get into search crew performance, you can even take it to the next level and start examining your impressions versus your clicks versus your add to carts.

Bradley Sutton:

And then your sales Kunal says, how exactly can we use ChatGPT for optimizing and upgrading the listing? So here, let me tell you exactly how I do it. So I had a listing that I thought needed refreshing, and so what I did was I imported it into my listing builder and then I put some new keywords I wanted to include in there. And then for a couple of the, I didn’t do the whole entire listing, but like a couple of the bullet points, I just had the ChatGPT inside of Listing Builder, kind of like, give me another idea based on a different vibe. So like you can choose inside of Listing Builder the vibe that you want, like humorous or serious or there’s other, there’s other ones you can do.

Bradley Sutton:

So I was like, I wanna do a humorous one, maybe I wanna do a new title that’s humorous. So I put in there which keywords I want listing builder to use or ChatGPT And then I, I had it refresh I had it refresh a new title for me using that different vibe. And then maybe I didn’t use the exact one that it gave me, but it gave me an idea, like it made something in the way. I was like, oh, that’s a pretty cool way of saying that, or that’s a pretty cool way of saying this bullet point. So that’s how I personally do it. If I have a brand new listing, I’ll use it to get a start on it. I have all my keywords and I’ll have ChatGPT make round one. Now I go in there and I still change a lot of it, right?

Bradley Sutton:

I still change a lot of the listing because ChatGPT doesn’t always use all the keywords that I want to specify, but I have it get me on the right track because sometimes we all have, you know, writer’s block sometimes and we don’t know how to get started, but it usually as soon as ChatGPT makes a test listing based on what the inputs I put, I’m like, man that’s a great, that’s a great start. And then I go in there and I start optimizing it from the keyword the keyword basis. Matthew says, what are your thoughts on periodically updating your listing to try and optimize for different sets of keywords? So, so like I said, I am not going to do it that often. All right? Like when I say often I’m talking about I’m not, I’m not updating my listing like once a week or something like that, that’s gonna confuse the Amazon algorithm.

Bradley Sutton:

So I could do that in a Helium 10 Listing Builder. I could do a different listing every day if I wanted to, but no just because I could do it, I can do it doesn’t mean it’s a good practice. I usually don’t change my mature listings more than like once every couple months at most, because there’s usually not new keywords that comes up all the time. Now, if I just have a new keyword that I found that my competitor is ranking for, and it’s just a matter of throwing one keyword in there, sure, I can do that, but I’m not gonna change, you know, I’m not gonna throw into my title like once every month, you know, I don’t, I don’t wanna change my title that often, but I’ll throw in a keyword here or there if I’m trying to up, you know, change my entire bullet points, I’m not gonna be doing that once a month.

Bradley Sutton:

No, because again, the algorithm needs time to adapt to what we are putting in the listings. And if I’m constantly changing it, that could actually hurt my, my rank, my rankings. Is there a Helium 10 guide to launching new products? Yes, we have that like the mal, you know, we talk about in the Maldives honeymoon strategy. So this, the 466 and 467 is kind of like the, the pre-launch strategy, all right? So, so that, that’s what gets you like 80% of the way there. And then I would go to h10.me/400 And look at the second half of that episode as far as how I actually launch the products. After that, Michael says, should a keyword become a negative target if it gets a good rate of impressions and clicks? For me, let’s say I’m using Adtomic, I’ll tell you what my rules are that I put in helium 10 Adtomic is I say, Hey, if I get a keyword that has 20 clicks or spend, that equals half of the retail price.

Bradley Sutton:

In other words, if I have a $50 retail product and I’ve spent $25, I’m actually gonna suggest Adtomic to suggest to me to negative match that keyword. All right? If it gets like 25 clicks sometimes I’ll do even 15 or 20 clicks or $25 spend 50% of the retail price, because usually that means that there’s regardless of the buyer intent, my product is just not vibing with them. So it’s just wasting money. That being said, let’s just say that it’s one of my main keywords. Like if I’m selling a coffin shelf and I get great impressions, great clicks on coffin shelf and zero sales, before I negative match that, I gotta figure out what’s going on with my product because that I’m not gonna have success in Amazon. If one of my main 10 keywords, I am getting zero clicks, that means something is broken with my listing, something is wrong with my listing that people are not buying it, or I’m just gonna give up on that product because if, because if there’s nothing wrong if I can’t figure out what’s wrong, then I might as well just stop selling that product.

Bradley Sutton:

Because if my main keyboard, I can’t even get people to click on it and buy it, I’m not gonna have long-term success, I guarantee it. So if it’s just a random keyword, yes, I am negative matching that in Adtomic because it’s just gonna keep losing me sales. But if my impressions and clicks are really good and it’s one of my main keywords, and I can maybe make an analysis and, and compare my listing to other listings and figure out what are people not liking about my listing when they click on it, then yeah, I’ll try and fix it before I negative match that. Joe says, does Amazon provide more ranking juice for a keyword from a clicked product link versus a clicked PPC ad? It’s near identical, you know, in my test, and which is why like the Maldives honeymoon strategy that we talk about works, which is a hundred percent based on PPC, because it, you know, think about what matters to Amazon, right?

Bradley Sutton:

They want to get the sale, sure that they can get, you know, a 50 cent cost per click, and of course they, they wanna make money in sponsored ads, but at the end of the day, if they have a $50 product, Amazon is making $8 on the actual sale of the product, plus the money that they’re gonna make in fulfilling it. Their profit margins in the pick and pack and all that stuff, right? So at the end of the day, Amazon wants to make sales, and so it’s going to show the products at the top of the page that gives it the best chance to make that sales, regardless if it’s PPC, you have control over that, but the organic one is the one that Amazon’s algorithm has control over. So when you are optimizing your listing for keywords, and that’s what this strategy I’ve been talking about today is about, then you need to make sure that you are showing up either in sponsored or organic.

Bradley Sutton:

And if you wanna show up in organic, you have to start with a sponsor. So usually it’s, it’s not one or the other you’ve gotta try and optimize for, for both. But Amazon is checking what people are searching for, what they’re clicking on, regardless of if it’s organic or if it’s PPC. Easy stud rack from YouTube says under Adtomic suggestions, new keywords. I see in quotation mark here, user customized order threshold on a positive rule, I see red, yellow, and green dots on ACoS. I’m scared to check the suggestion. What is it suggesting? So when it says user customized order threshold on a positive rule, what that means is that you set a rule, which is what exactly, what you should have done is you set a rule saying, Hey, if, if in an auto or broad campaign, I get X number of sales at this, a cost suggest to me to add this to my manual campaign.

Bradley Sutton:

So that’s what you should have set up. It sounds like that’s what you did set up. So it’s suggesting, I mean, again, it’s suggesting whatever you entered into it. So the suggestions, there will be zero suggestions if you didn’t set up the rule yourself. So the fact that you’re getting a suggestion and an Adtomic easy stud rack, that means that you must have set up a rule. Now, I can’t tell you if the rule that you set up was good or not. This is a garbage in, garbage out thing. So if you gave it a terrible rule, well, yeah, you’re gonna get terrible results, but let me tell you what I put my rule, and then you can check your rules. So for my rule, for my positive rules, the one that means I’m adding keywords to another campaign I put in my Adtomic, if I get two sales for a search term or an ASIN, two sales, and the ACoS is below what my threshold is to be profitable, let’s just say it’s 30%, right?

Bradley Sutton:

If I get two sales at below 30%, ACOs suggest to me to add this to my manual campaign. So hopefully that’s what you did to set up yours, all right? And if you see it on the suggestion page and you hit the plus sign, you know, so you go ahead and submit the suggestion. It’s only going to do what you had set up for the rule. So I would go in, check what you had put for the rules, and then if you’re cool with that, then go ahead and run your suggestions through.

Bradley Sutton:

Michael says, thanks Bradley, your webinars ask me anything, and podcasts are literally lifting my business off the ground. I love to hear that, Michael, that’s awesome. Romaine says, my ACoS is over a hundred percent. Any tips lower. So hopefully you’re using Adtomic. So if you’re using Adtomic, this is what I would do. Romaine, I’m in the Project X account, and I mean, if you had the rules set up, Adtomic would be sharing, telling you what you need to do to get your ACoS down. But let’s just say maybe you didn’t set your rules up, or you just started with Adtomic. Like if you just, if anybody just starts at that Adtomic, here’s what I would, here, here’s what I would do. I, I would look at the last, like, let’s just say 60 days, all right? And I’m, I haven’t even looked at at the advertising here, so I’m hoping that nothing shows up here, but there might be some that that show up because I haven’t been on traveling for a while, so I haven’t been following up with my Adtomic here.

Bradley Sutton:

I’m going to go to my analytics and I’m going to go to search term, all right? I’m gonna go to search terms, and then what I wanna do is I wanna say, Hey, what have I spent at least or no, you know what, I’m gonna pick clicks. Is there any search terms that I have had at least 25 clicks? All right, but I have had zero PPC orders, all right? So this is just so simple. You can’t really, it’s harder to do this in Seller Central, but that’s why I love Adtomic. And look at this. Here’s 22 search terms, good grief that I have spent a couple hundred dollars on and that I have gotten zero sales. So take a look at this guys, right here, here is an asin. Alright? Maybe I wanna see what the heck is this asin.

Bradley Sutton:

So I’m gonna see what this ASIN is, this is another coffin shelf. Look at this, guys. I had not been paying attention to my Adtomic. I have gotten 116 clicks, this is terrible. What’s wrong with me? I’ve gotten 116 clicks on this keyword with zero sales. I spent $54. So I want to negative match, but I wanna see where is this showing up. So what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna show, I wanna see this in the ad group, the actual ad group. So I’m gonna hit this toggle for ad group. This is why Adtomic is so amazing, guys, if you guys aren’t using this, my goodness, you guys are wasting a lot of time. All right, so, oh, you see this is good. I actually have this ASIN as a target inside of, of this campaign. So I’m gonna actually click this and I wanna go into this campaign and then just take a look at what the heck I was thinking.

Bradley Sutton:

And what I did was I saw this on my analytics page, and now I opened up to the product target group, and sure enough, here is in the last 60 days, what ASIN was this? RK9, here’s RK9, 0 sale. So I’m gonna pause this. This is just wasting me money, like ridiculous. So I’m just gonna go ahead and pause this. And now I’m not gonna spend any more money on this target that is costing me money. Alright? What are some other ones here? Pink Coffin Shelf. Alright, for whatever reason on the research group, pink Coffin Shelf is not working for me. So you know what I’m gonna do? I’m without even having to go to the campaign, I’m gonna go ahead and add this as a negative match. So I’m gonna hit this negative target, and I want to negative match this on this research campaign.

Bradley Sutton:

There it is right there. I’ve gotten 85 clicks with zero sales, I’m gonna hit apply, and now this is never gonna show up in that campaign again. So if I would’ve just left this, that’s like $75 worth of spend potentially that I just saved over the next two months by, by taking three seconds and doing this in, in Adtomic. So, so that’s what I would do. The first step I’m going to do to lower my ACoS is seeing where I’m spending money and not getting any sales. There’s, there’s of course a lot of other things you can do, but, but that’s, that’s my, that’s my first thing. Michael says, what’s a good target for ACoS? It, it depends, you know, there’s, there’s no one answer for this. The best ACoS you could have is what makes you profitable, but you should also be thinking about your total ACoS or your TACoS, because sometimes you could be maybe not so profitable on an individual ASIN or on your ACoS on your actual campaign that you’re doing, but because you’re running this, it has this like ripple effect across your other products where overall you’re still profitable.

Bradley Sutton:

So don’t just just look at your ACoS, but if you just wanted to just be profitable exactly on what you’re advertising for, yeah, you can look at your ACoS and then you’ve gotta find that, that sweet spot where you can still be profitable. Pala says broad phrase and exact, what’s the difference between the bids strategy? Again, every, everything I do, no matter if it’s broad, no matter if it’s phrased, no matter if it’s exact, when I’m setting that up in Adtomic, is I’m just trying to be profitable and my target price for exact might be different than it is. You know, like maybe sometimes for broad and auto, I have to keep lower bids because the, you know, the targets can be all over the place, right? So I might have to keep a lower bid just to make up for all the keywords that it’s gonna show me that maybe I’m not gonna get many sales on. But yeah, it, it’s up to you and it’s, it’s up to your product at what you can remain profitable. There’s no magic number that you should be shooting for.

Bradley Sutton:

Robin says what’s the best way to learn with Adtomic is if you just started with Adtomic reach out to customer support and they’ve got like this eight boarding, eight boarding, I can’t even speak, right? Eight week onboarding, short and firm, eight boarding, eight week onboarding course where you can hop on calls like this once a week and just get demos on how to set the whole thing up. And of course we’ve got videos as well in the Adtomic where you can help get set up. But, but yeah, I would definitely rely on that, that eight week course, which is completely free to get ramped up. Brett says, I first started with PPC, had a very poor structure. I’ve heard that if you move keywords to new campaigns, you lose history. How do you recommend reorganizing? All right, so here’s exactly how I have it in Adtomic.

Bradley Sutton:

I wonder if I could even show you guys my, I think I can. Yeah, I’m gonna show you guys exactly how I have it set up in Adtomic, and this is, is the best way to have it have it set up. All right, let me look up my rules here. Perfect, perfect. All right, so I’m gonna show you guys my rules for Adtomic. Let’s just look at my promotion rules, my positive rules. This means how I find new keywords. All right? So take a look at what you see here. These are all of my campaigns for this egg rack product. I have got a research campaign that’s a broad campaign. I’ve got an ASIN product targeting campaign. I’ve got a performance campaign. That means that’s my exact manual campaign. I’ve got a sponsored display campaign here. I have an additional exact campaign because me, I like to keep my tar my campaigns, my exact campaigns to a maximum of 20 targets.

Bradley Sutton:

That’s just me. I just keep it on max 20. And then once I reach 20, I gotta make a new campaign, right? I actually have three of those here in this, in this, in this flow. And then here’s my auto campaign. So how I set these rules up, I know this looks like if you’re new to Adtomic, this looks like just a bunch of check marks. Basically I have this set up where it’s basically it’s saying, Hey, let me show you at the bottom here. If I have two orders on a certain target or a certain search term or ASIN and it’s 30% ACoS or less, by having, if I find that in the auto campaign, by me having this check mark in the research campaign, what it’s saying is if I find a keyword that I get two sales on, it’s going to go ahead and add it to my broad match campaign so I can maybe find some more long tail keywords.

Bradley Sutton:

It’s not going to delete it from the auto campaign that’s called keyword isolation. Some people call that I’m not doing that, I’m keeping it in the auto campaign unless it really starts taking off in the research campaign. The same time, it’s also adding an exact camp match for that search term that it found in the auto, in my manual, exact manual campaign, let’s say it finds something in the research campaign that’s my broad, it finds a long tail keyword. Again, it has to match this criteria of two orders and less than 30% ACoS. If I get that in my broad campaign, it’s also going to add that to my manual campaign. As you guys may or may not know in an auto campaign, it can show me for ASINs on product targeting, right? It can show me for an ASIN somehow. So the same rule applies.

Bradley Sutton:

That’s what I have here. I guess set up this once guys, and I never have to worry about this. If I get two conversions on an ASIN in my auto campaign, look at this, I have that, it’s going to add it to my product targeting campaign. Alright? My ASIN targeting campaign. So I can make Amazon show me for this ASIN and my sponsored display campaign. So again, all of my campaigns here are talking to each other thanks to Adtomic and I don’t have to go download my reports every single time and try and figure out and add things and delete things and negative, no Helium 10 is gonna do all that for me. And then, so let me just show you if, if the cam, if it actually works, I go to my suggestions. Let me see if there’s any new keywords that it’s going to suggest.

Bradley Sutton:

Hopefully, like I said, hopefully the answer is no, but wow. Look, look at this. Good grief. All right, so for this ASIN, look at this. I converted in a pink shelf or in my pink coffin shelf campaign. I converted for this ASIN right here. Look at this. I only spent $4 and I got $63 worth of sales. This was from an auto campaign, right? So if I put my mouse over here, it’s saying, Hey, you need to add this to your product targeting campaign and you need to add it to your sponsor display campaign. You think I want to do that? You better believe I want to do that. If an auto campaign can can perform this well, I definitely want to do it on purpose. So I just hit this button. Once I hit apply, boom goes to dynamite, it’s done. Adtomic just added that ASIN to my sponsor display campaign and it added it to my product targeting campaign.

Bradley Sutton:

That’s thanks to Adtomic finding it this keyword in an auto campaign. So now I’m gonna be targeting those 24 hours a day, theoretically speaking in my exact campaign. So that’s the power of what Adtomic can do. Jesse says, is there a tool we can use to prevent running it outta stock? Yeah, inventory management, inventory management and helium 10. If you set it up correctly and, and you set the right algorithm of what you know, of what your product is and the sales are all tied to, to helium 10, it’ll help you to not run outta stock because it’ll tell you when you need to order more, when you need to transfer some from, from your inventory, like from your 3PL et cetera. That’s what I use for all of my Amazon accounts. What is the best filter to get a keyword from Cerebro? I mean, it depends. There’s a million filters in there, but I like the one click filters in Cerebro. You know, if I enter a whole bunch of my competitor ASINs, the very first button I’m gonna click is the button top keywords, right? The next button I’m gonna click is opportunity keywords. Those will give you some great keywords right there.

Bradley Sutton:

Samuel says, Bradley, from your example, if you add those keywords to your sponsored display campaign and find that after 30 plus days it’s not performing in that campaign, do you pause that target? Absolutely. So it, regardless of how I found a keyword, when I found a keyword, why I found a keyword. If there is a keyword that is not performing well, I, and I’m not gonna go dig into figuring out, is there something wrong with my listing? Let’s just pretend that I know that everything is as good as it can be. I’m just finding out that this keyword doesn’t perform well. If I’m getting that 25 clicks with no sales, 30 clicks with no sales, or if I’m spending 20 bucks with no sales on a $40 product or a $30 product, yes, I am pausing that target because it’s just not working.

Bradley Sutton:

If you don’t have to get a sale every five clicks, no, but my, my number that I pick is anywhere between 20 to 40. If I go 40 clicks without sale a sale or 30 clicks, it’s very unlikely that I’m gonna get a sale after 60 clicks, for example. I hope that makes sense, so that’s why I go ahead and pause it after, after that amount of time. So I thank you guys for joining me on this training. We’ll see you guys next week. Bye-Bye now.