December 25, 2024 • 53 mins
Merry Christmas from BFHQ! Welcome to our Christmas Tactics Tuesday Episode and our Final episode of 2024! We explore the increasingly complex world of Amazon sales with fresh perspectives. Join me and Matt as we tackle the pressing challenges of inbound placement fees and growing competition from direct-selling manufacturers. Uncover how these changes impact profit margins and why expanding beyond Amazon could be your next game-changing move.
We dissect the art of boosting conversion rates on Amazon versus personal websites, sharing practical advice for using Amazon as a testing hub for product-market fit. Learn the secrets of optimizing sales strategies to enhance net profit margins and the power of the 80-20 rule in product listing updates. These insights will not only increase your brand's visibility but also streamline ad costs and outmaneuver competitors within the Amazon marketplace.
Harness the transformative potential of AI in Amazon optimization and explore how platforms like Temu and Shein are reshaping the e-commerce landscape, especially for premium brands. We dive into effective marketing through Creator Connections and influencer partnerships, and the importance of diverse customer avatars to maximize sales. As we prepare for growth in 2025, this episode is your roadmap to mastering Amazon's evolving ecosystem and achieving greater success across multiple sales channels.
🚀 Transform your brand on Amazon by building a powerful customer list with the After Purchase Funnel Blueprint course. Click here to get the full course for free.
➡️ Ready to go deeper into your Amazon FBA journey to accelerate your success? Get your hands on ALL of the Brand Fortress HQ resources, mentorship, and knowledge base by visiting us at BrandFortressHQ.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome everyone to the Brand Fortress HQ Tactics
Tuesday.
This is going to be our lastTactics Tuesday for 2024.
And, as a result, what we wantto look at is some of the
lessons learned, what things atthe beginning of the year that
we talked about, that a lot ofAmazon sellers and a lot of
Amazon brands thought were goingto have a big impact, what did
really have a big impact andeverything that we've kind of
(00:21):
encountered in 2024, kind of thehighlights of that as we record
this last Tactics Tuesday forthe year.
So I know we talked a littlebit before we hit record on this
.
Matt, you know, as you thinkabout 2024, maybe you want to
kick us off and you knowanything that comes to your mind
.
As far as you know, whatprediction really fizzled this
year or what came true, or whatyou see when you think about
(00:43):
lessons for 2024?
Speaker 2 (00:44):
or what came true, or what you see when you think
about lessons for 2024?
I think one of them that hasbeen the case for the last
couple of years now is ourmargins keep getting compressed
by different types of things.
I think the biggest theme, orwhat was a big part of 2024 for
me, with my brands and thebrands that we work with, are
like the new fees.
Inbound placement fee is onethat we've struggled with a lot.
(01:06):
That added a lot of complexity.
It added a lot of cost wherethere wasn't.
So I mean, that's really thebiggest thing for us is figuring
out, you know, how to becompetitive in these categories
where you have especially whenyou have Chinese manufacturers
that are selling direct andbringing the price points down.
(01:27):
Just protecting margins reallyis the biggest thing for me in
2024.
Of things that happened thatyou know, you, you, you expect
that to happen on Amazon and atthis stage of the game.
But something that rang truefor for me is this fees and and
how to, how to approach them.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
I think it's interesting on the fee front,
because so we've been seeing Imean, everybody's been seeing a
squeeze, you know, over the lastfew years on that front for
sure.
But I think it's one of thoseareas where if you are, if you
consider yourself to be, anAmazon brand, then those fees
(02:07):
become obviously massivelysignificant and you should, of
course, try and minimize thosefees, try to manage things.
One of the things that Matt wastalking about was the inventory
placement and then, of course,we've got fees for too little
inventory, fees for too muchinventory, you know, fees for
too little inventory, fees fortoo much inventory, you know,
like.
So the one thing that becameclear there and I'm fortunate
(02:28):
that we already had broughtsomebody on to manage that but
if you are the owner of thebusiness and you also are
basically the one managing allof the different aspects of the
business, I think one thingthat's true of Amazon now is,
because it's so much morecomplex than it used to be, that
being a one man or one womanshow is very difficult to really
(02:51):
grow a brand in any significantway.
Because even just being expertenough on and having enough time
to manage the logistics side,you know, and in terms of making
sure that you're addressing allof those fees that Amazon is
charging and shipping inproperly and at the right time,
and all of that sort of thing.
Like you can't just be willynilly about it, it has to be
(03:13):
very you know, regiment, let'ssay, and it's difficult to do as
an individual person.
So if you don't have peoplemanaging some of those different
aspects of your business,you're probably going to have
issues with it.
But the other thing for us wasit just made it crystal clear
that we couldn't any longerreally continue to be an Amazon
(03:34):
business, even though we'vealways focused on trying to
build the brand so thattechnically we weren't just an
Amazon business.
By the same token, virtuallyall of our sales have still been
Amazon-based.
We really haven't done a wholelot off of Amazon in terms of
sales channels, and now we'relooking at it and seeing that
moving into the commercialmarket for us is going to be a
much more profitable market forus, with much better margins
(03:57):
than selling on Amazon is atthis point, and also all of that
work that we're doing offAmazon, I believe, based on
everything that I've seen,should have a positive and
direct impact on our Amazonsales and improve our sales
there as a result of that offchannel stuff.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
So I'm curious how do you guys feel about this?
You know I see a lot of brands.
You guys talk to a number ofbrands along with you know
running your own brands.
How much do you feel like?
Because I think about like, okay, if you look at selling off
your website, you know I thinkwhat gets lost in the
calculation there that a lot ofbrands don't calculate in is is,
you know your marketing coststhere.
(04:35):
So what's my customeracquisition cost if I'm driving,
you know, somebody via aFacebook ad or a Google ad or
something like that,understanding that my website
probably is going to have a lotlower conversion rates?
And then we've had some guestson here earlier this year that
have talked about going reallythe wholesale route, getting
(04:56):
into actual brick and mortarretail stores and some uneven
success there.
So I'm curious from your guys'perspective is the increases in
fees and kind of the squeezingof margins on Amazon, because
brands that were mainly focusedon Amazon probably had it better
than other channels and nowwe're starting to see kind of an
(05:17):
equalization or is it thatAmazon is truly becoming a less
profitable channel than you knowkind of the standard channels
that are out there?
Speaker 3 (05:31):
I think part of it depends on how well you know
what you're doing.
Trying to generate traffic to awebsite and trying to manage
you know conversion rates andwhatnot, so that your customer
acquisition costs are reasonableis not easy, but it's doable,
and I think part of the issue, Iguess, in your question lies an
(05:54):
answer, that is, amazon for along time in many ways, was an
easy enough platform to sell oneffectively that you didn't have
to really understand marketing.
You didn't have to understand alot of those things.
You could literally jump onAmazon, throw up a product and
(06:19):
make money for a lot of years,and I think in that sense, I
would say that it is probablytrue to some degree that it's
really more of a balancing andan equalization of what is
required and necessary to beable to sell effectively and
profitably on Amazon versuswhat's required to sell off of
Amazon as profitably, because todo it off of Amazon requires a
(06:41):
lot of expertise to do it rightand be profitable in it, and so
if you don't have that, thenyeah, you're in a tough spot.
I'm fortunate that Amazon wasn'tmy first game.
You know like I was ine-commerce.
You know I've been there fornearly 30 years.
So I had a lot of e-commerceexperience previous to Amazon,
which made Amazon a breezebecause you know it was nothing.
(07:03):
Now margins are squeezed.
We can still be profitable,we're still doing fine, but
moving off of that channel andtaking advantage of what I know
about off Amazon marketing andwhatnot is, I think, going to be
a big benefit to us.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
I think the biggest thing that you said there, mike,
that I think not a lot of otherAmazon brands.
When they're thinking about offof Amazon, like it doesn't
always have to be Facebook ads,like there's things that ProTuff
, for example let's talk about acouple of the recent things
that we're doing at ProTuff Likewe hired an SEO agency.
When's the last time you heardan Amazon like, not Amazon SEO
(07:37):
or website SEO, and that's notsomething that a lot of Amazon
sellers even think aboutinvesting in.
But so like, that's just it'straditional advertising,
traditional marketing.
That that were that, yes, andactually the agency is helping.
That we found is helping a lotbecause they're a paper
performance agency and that thatwas new to me.
(07:57):
So the initial outlay isn't, youknow, you're not paying three,
four or five grand retainer forhoping to get better keyword
ranks.
Like they don't get paid unlessthey actually increase your
keyword rank, so like.
But then also like a socialmedia agency, like all of these
things that we're doing, wehaven't really paid any.
We're not increasing any adspend right now.
We're just making more contentso that we'll be attractive to
(08:18):
influencers and affiliates thatwe then can use, utilize to, to
kind of stroke the fire a littlebit, so to speak.
So it's not really just dumpinga whole bunch of money out of a
helicopter and Facebook ads.
It's investing in SEO on thewebsite and investing in content
for social media so that we canmake a push, but an organic
push in kind of some sort ofways.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
I think the other thing too and I was thinking
this a moment ago and then kindof forgot about it as I was
talking but that is theconversion rates on Amazon are
terrific.
I mean, if you even know alittle bit about what you're
doing on Amazon, your conversionrates will be significantly
better than they will likely beon your website.
That being said, even if youreally know what you're doing on
(09:02):
Amazon the conversion of aprospect to a customer, but then
also to a person who is now onyour list, which makes them
yours and not Amazon's thatconversion, if you're following
the whole chain, to where do Iget how many of them?
Am I actually getting to thepoint where, if Amazon shuts me
(09:25):
down, I still have a business?
That's way different, becausewe've been doing post-purchase
for a long time and I thinkwe're probably way better at it
than most Amazon sellers are andstill we probably only get I
don't know 25% ish of our Amazoncustomers to actually end up on
our list.
(09:45):
So even though our conversionrate to sale is pretty good on
Amazon, that conversion rate toactual subscriber is not On your
website.
You have a much betteropportunity there because you
have all of their information.
Now, of course, you probablywant to put a tick box Do you
want to subscribe Whatever?
But you're still going to get amuch, much higher rate of
(10:05):
return on that in terms ofpeople who end up on your list
that you can remarket to andwhatnot.
So even though on the front endmaybe you're only getting a 4%
conversion rate on your websiteor something, if you're good
maybe you get a little bit morethan that.
Some people are only gettingtwo to three if you're not very
good, and and Amazon might be 10or 15 or 20 or 30%, depending
on what kind of product you haveyour conversion to list is much
(10:28):
better and that ability toremarket to people is much
better.
So you have to weigh thosethings.
It's important to pay attentionto the whole chain.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
Yeah, and I mean I think you know, I would say over
this year, one thing that I'vebeen thinking about a lot in the
brands that we're working withis the right lever to pull at
the right time.
So brands out there that arelistening, if you're struggling
with top line revenue, thenAmazon is probably a pretty good
place for you to be, because ifyou can't make top line sales,
(10:59):
profit is a different story, butif you can't make top line
sales on Amazon, you're going toreally struggle off of Amazon
because there's something thatneeds to be tuned with your
product market fit.
Yeah, that said, if you're like, hey, you know we're I mean, of
course, we always want morerevenue, but at the same time,
if you're like, hey, we'd reallylike to increase our you know
(11:22):
our net profit margin, how manydollars we have in our pocket at
the end of the day, and you'vebuilt up enough revenue to have
a, you know, a decent businesswhere you're doing, you know, at
least a few hundred thousanddollars a year, if not more, on
Amazon, then, looking at, youknow things like what you're
talking about, mike, which is,hey, let's figure out how to
(11:43):
drive some traffic to our ownsites, make some sales there and
I mean that's a greatopportunity to have, you know,
complimentary products.
I think you know it doesn'thave to be the same products
necessarily.
And then, at the same time,thinking about, I think still
one of the least sexyopportunities that sits out
(12:03):
there is increasing yourconversion rates.
It shocks me every single timethe number of smart brand owners
that I talk to and I say, hey,when was the last time you
updated your listing or tried adifferent main image, a
different title, something toincrease your conversion rate?
And most of the time, somethingto increase your conversion rate
, and most of the time it's sixto 12 months.
(12:26):
Very few brand owners.
And again, I understand that itmay not be possible to do on
every single one of yourproducts, but just take the
80-20 rule and find that top 20%of your products and you really
should, on a regular basis andI would say just as a rule of
thumb and I would say you know,just as a rule of thumb,
probably quarterly be testingmain image or title or some part
(12:48):
of your listing in order toincrease your conversion rates.
Because even if you go from youknow a 12% conversion rate to a
13% conversion rate, not onlydoes that increase your
visibility, because Amazon givesyou more visibility, but then
think about the impact that thathas on ad costs.
I know you know we all talkabout how CPCs and that type of
stuff are going up, which isvery frustrating.
(13:09):
That's one of the easiest waysin order to get more efficient
with your ad spend is byincreasing your conversion rate.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
Well and we talked about this in a previous episode
One of the things that BrianJohnson's been working on with
what is the company called thathe's?
Speaker 2 (13:24):
DeepM.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
Yeah, deepm.
One of the things that he talkedabout when he was with us was
this idea of shelves in Amazon,seo, and that you might have 10
products that are essentiallysitting on a shelf and you're
below that shelf and maybeyou're sitting at this 12%
conversion rate and if you hit13, all of a sudden you don't
(13:45):
jump one slot, you jump 12 slotsbecause you jumped the entire
shelf and you don't know justhow much effect that little
increase in conversion rate canbe.
And so it's easy to look at itand say, well, we've tried
before and we've never reallygotten a decent change.
Maybe we got 1%, or 1% can be alot, and if you don't build
(14:05):
that in and you're not testingthat, you don't know.
And the other thing is, justbecause the changes that you
made before only gave you a 1%increase, it doesn't mean that
the next change that you domight not give you a 5% increase
.
You're going to try somethingnew, you're going to try
something different, and younever know from one test to the
next just how much of a changeit could be.
But if you're not doing it atall, then you know what the
(14:27):
change is going to be and that'snothing.
You're muted, I think, matt.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
In the spirit of the things that were hit or bust in
2024, one of the things that isall the rage and everyone talks
about is AI.
Everyone's talking about is AI.
But what's true about Amazonrecently, in the past year, is
that they've given us toolswhere there's really no excuse
(14:53):
now to not have like videos onyour listing, for example, like
there's built in tools in juston on the, in the backend, that
you can make videos in on incampaign manager, just with
static photos of your product.
So anything is better than nothaving a video at all, and now
you can make one for free insideof inside of campaign manager.
(15:14):
So AI is making it easier.
It's leveling the field, so tospeak, in terms of being able to
change out your imagery andthen split test your main, your
hero images and split test yourtitles.
You don't have to spend as muchtime as you used to because of
the prevalence of AI, andAmazon's now kind of starting to
weave it into the backend ofSeller Central to where it makes
(15:37):
it easy for you to make thingslike that now too.
So I think that's somethingthat in 2024 kind of changed the
game for Amazon sellers, bothon Amazon and off of Amazon in
terms of the tools that you canuse.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Yeah, I'll steel man that a little bit, matt, in the
sense of I think that you know,obviously, ai, a lot of the off
platform tools you know, whenyou start looking at how do you
write better listings and thattype of stuff.
I think there's a lot of greattools out there now for those
types of things that can kind ofget you 80% there and then you
know, spend again.
It makes it.
It's not perfect, but it makesit a lot easier for a human to
(16:12):
bring it all the way 100% home,to get those increases in
conversion or create a new asset, whether it be an image or a
video.
So I think those things aregreat.
That said, I am still woefullydisappointed in Amazon's AI
listing tool.
It is amazing at how not goodthat tool is.
(16:34):
Now.
Does that mean that youshouldn't use it under any
circumstances?
Absolutely not.
I would say.
One of the most interestingthings that we like to use it
for and I think we've talkedabout a couple of times on the
podcast is hey, if you have atitle or an image for your
product, especially if it's anew product, I really encourage
people to put it into thatlisting builder because it tells
(16:56):
you what based on the image,especially what Amazon thinks
that product is, which is reallyvaluable data.
When we talk about one of theother trends in 2024, which is
introduction of Rufus, that hasnow been, you know, much more
rolled out.
I think it's to everybody inthe U?
S now and I think they'restarting to expand that as well,
(17:16):
and I don't know if either oneof you guys have tried that as a
shopping experience, but it issignificantly different from
kind of the current standard of,you know, searching for
products based on keywords.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
I haven't used Rufus, to be honest, and honestly to
my detriment, because, even if Ididn't care about it from an
actual shopping perspective, Ithink that one of the things
that sellers should be doing,including myself, is using it so
that you understand how itoperates and how it thinks and
what it's doing, so that you cancraft your Amazon presence a
(17:51):
little better to line up withthe way that Rufus actually
operates.
And I would say, john, that inmy opinion, that listing tool
that Amazon provides, I amcompletely in agreement with you
that its most valuable useright now is to let Amazon tell
you what they think your productis, and I will tell you there
(18:12):
are a lot of products out therethat Amazon thinks it is
something very different thanyou think Amazon thinks it is.
And you know, like even ourproduct, you know, like Full
Tools, amazon, there's a lot ofconfusion over a lot of
different keywords in ourcategory in terms of what it
actually represents, and so it'sinteresting, you know,
depending on the title that youput on or depending on the image
(18:33):
that you give it, it's veryinteresting to see what Amazon
comes back with in terms of, youknow, bullet points and things
like that, because oftentimes itis nothing related to the
product that we're actuallytrying to sell, and it does help
you get a better understandingof just where the fault lines
are and how you might be able toyou know sidestep some of those
and make sure that you'reactually getting the placement
(18:53):
you want.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
Well, I think to that point, you know I would also
and again, I know we've talkedabout this a couple of times
this year on the podcast and Ithink you know we also have
Vanessa hung on that if you wantto listen to a in-depth episode
on this, talking about allthose different, you know,
frankly little items within yourlisting that got the most of
(19:15):
them got ignored for a long time, yeah, and now they're.
You know, productspecifications and all those
little nitpicky things arebecoming more and more important
.
As you know, rufus is usingthose in order to decide what to
show to shoppers, because it it, and again, I, you know I just
(19:36):
started using it a couple times,probably about a month ago, as
we are into the holiday season,looking for gifts and that type
of stuff, and what I noticedabout it is is that it
essentially bypasses a lot ofthe ads that we rely on in
Amazon at this point.
So there's no video ads.
Speaker 3 (19:55):
Amazon did just send me a message just the other day
talking about how they're goingto begin injecting ads into
Rufus.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
Oh, I'm sure they are .
I mean, I'm sure it's coming,but there will be no place that
Amazon does not inject an ad.
Yes, I'm sure.
That said, I think that justbeing aware of how those ads
display in there for example,you know, are they going to have
video ads Is it going to bethat, you know, or sponsor brand
ads, at least from what, whatit is right now and again it's
(20:24):
going to probably, you know,evolve over the next couple of
years is my guess is that adwill probably look more like a
sponsor product ad.
So it may not have.
You know, you're, frankly, mostof our listeners out there and
our brands that we like to workwith are premium level brands
that have a brand story to tellas to why their product is
(20:47):
significantly more than someproduct that's made at the
lowest possible price from anoverseas seller, and so when you
start looking at those brands,then it's okay making sure that
you have all the pieces that youneed within that what would
typically be a sponsored productad, in order to give those
buying signals in a way that canbe hard to do compared to or
(21:12):
sponsored brand placement, whereyou can tell a much more
detailed and in-depth story.
Speaker 3 (21:20):
Well, I think too, what's interesting about Rufus
is that it will give some ofthat nuance, right.
Because if anybody who's lookedat the reviews, their review
profile, lately, you notice thatat the top of that it lists a
lot of the things that customerssaid this about the product and
it's kind of these little.
It lists a lot of the thingsthat you know customers said
this about the product and it'skind of these little bullets
that are positive or negative orwhatever, which is also part of
(21:42):
that.
You know, rufus AI kind of asystem, and so what's
interesting about Rufus is thatit takes all that into account.
So if somebody, let's saysomebody was searching for let's
just go back to ProTel, they'researching for commercial grade,
you know, pool cleaning toolsor a commercial grade pool poll,
let's say you could put in yourlisting commercial grade and in
(22:06):
the past that keyword, then Imean, if you were doing your job
right, you should be showing upfairly prominently for
commercial grade pool poll,right.
But if the reviews for yourproduct all say this product
sucks, it's not, you know, itlasted a week, you know whatever
, then in the past you wouldn'tknow that until you got to the
listing and actually wentthrough the reviews to discover
(22:26):
they say it's commercial grade,but clearly it's not.
The reviews say it's not Rufus.
If I search for commercialgrade pool pool, it isn't going
to show me the pool pool thatsays it's commercial grade, but
all of the reviews tell Rufus,this is the cheapest pool on the
planet.
It is clearly not commercialgrade.
That customer won't even seethat product in Rufus.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
Yeah, and again, I'm sure the experience is going to
change, but based on myexperience with Rufus is you
only see a maximum of like twoto three products at a time.
So it's very different alsofrom, again, that search
experience where there's 15 to20 products if you count the ads
(23:08):
on the search results page.
So there's even less realestate and, like you said, Mike,
getting you know, getting Rufusto essentially recommend your
product, is going to be a verydifferent game than the search
results that we're used to.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
So one of the things we were talking about before we
jumped on here too so whilewe're maybe somewhat on the
topic of the things where peoplewere like, oh, the sky is
falling, you know, this is goingto happen, this is going to
happen.
So you know, we talked AI alittle bit, we talked about
Amazon fees and kind of gettingsqueezed on the profit margin
side.
But another one that was reallybig early on in 2024 was this
(23:49):
whole idea that Temu or Timu orhowever it is that you say it I
still don't know was going to bethe thing that kind of knocked
Amazon off their pedestal, so tospeak.
Matt, what do you think aboutthat in terms of whether it's
actually had an impact, whetherit's been significant or not,
whether it's changed how Amazonis doing things.
(24:09):
What do you think about thatsituation?
Speaker 2 (24:13):
I'm just not a Timu shopper.
It's very similar to buyingthings off of a Facebook ad
where you're pretty confidentthat it's going to come from
overseas and you're not going toget it.
For four weeks I did make apurchase on Temu I'm pretty sure
the Super Bowl commercial gotme and it was some incredible
promotion and I ended up withlike 30 products.
(24:33):
It was addicting the way thatthe platform was to actually
shop and add all these thingsthat were like 32 cents to your
basket, like I mean it was.
It was.
It got me to buy more than Iwould have, most of it's junk
that I ended up throwing away.
Like I got one thing out of itthat I still use.
I just thought that kind of ashopper so like and for me, I
(24:58):
sell and I'm involved withcategories where I'm the top end
of the price point as opposedto the bottom end of the price
point, which is more kind ofwhat Temu.
Now, amazon definitely took themserious, that's for sure,
because they have their own Idon't remember what Amazon's is
called, but that I think willhave an effect on sellers who
sell at the opposite end of theprice, the ones that are trying
to get into that race to thebottom with the Chinese sellers.
I think they're going to have amore difficult time.
You know, yes, the Chinesemanufacturers and the other
(25:22):
sellers playing that game aregoing to steal market share from
the ones that are higher pricepoint.
But I think that, like, takeagain, take ProTuff, that we
always use as an example, like,instead of racing to the bottom
in terms of price point, well,there is a another skew that
we're launching that is going toallow us to compete a little
bit better on price.
But like we're going otherplaces, like into the commercial
(25:44):
market, where they're payingmore for tools than they are on
Amazon.
So, you know, like I think thatTemu and Sheen and I don't know
how to say that, one Sheen butlike there are people that shop
on it, but like I, for me andthe brands that I'm involved in,
it's it's the opposite of wherewe're headed as a brand, as
opposed to some of the otherones who have to because they
(26:05):
sell the lower price point.
Speaker 3 (26:07):
It.
It's interesting to me that Ithink you know, as you mentioned
it and again I don't rememberwhat Amazon is calling it either
but as far as I understand it,they are rolling out, or maybe
have rolled out to some degree,this kind of competitor to Tem
products, because a lot of thoselow end, super low price
(26:40):
products depending on how Amazonactually does this may filter
out of the results that we'recompeting against.
Like you've got two differentshoppers essentially one in this
store and one in this store andmaybe we're no longer having to
sift through all of theseshoppers that probably never
would have bought our productanyways and are looking for
these low price products andwhat's left is the shopper that
(27:02):
we really want anyway.
You know, I don't know whatAmazon's going to do with that,
but for me I looked at it fromthe beginning as maybe it's an
opportunity, you know, for forhigher price products to
actually have somewhat of acomeback on Amazon as many of
those products maybe filter outof those listings, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
Well, yeah, I don't know Amazon haul.
It's called by the way Amazonhaul.
Actually, people commenting Mirhas told us in the comments
Amazon haul and he said it'salready out, there's already,
you can already purchase.
So I'm going to go check it out.
I want to go look.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
Yeah, I think it'd be well and what's interesting to
me and I don't want to make, youknow, too aggressive prediction
for 2025, but you know,understand that you know Temu
and Sheen and these types ofcompanies, and probably even
Amazon haul, is really dependenton kind of this weird loophole
in you know customs law withinthe United States, combined with
(27:54):
subsidies from the Chinesegovernment for shipping, that
allows these companies to exist,and so, again, it's no idea
what's going to happen in 2025as far as that scene is
concerned.
There's a lot of talks, sowe'll see.
Wait until there's some actionthere.
However, I think you do have totake into account of.
(28:15):
You know it's a pretty easywhat if, if you know that
loophole gets closed, that meansa lot of these lower end
products essentially no longerbecome viable in the current
process that Temu and Sheen andthese companies are using, and
probably Amazon haul as well.
Speaker 3 (28:33):
Yeah, agreed, it's.
In fact, it's one of those I'vehad a number of conversations
with people about.
You know, concerns overpotential tariffs and you know
what.
What is, you know, trump andhis administration going to do
when they get in?
And okay, you know like I mean.
We manufacture in China.
We've we've tried on a numberof occasions to to onshore our
manufacturing and just couldn'tdo it.
You know, maybe we end up in ascenario where we end up having
(28:55):
to, but at the moment thebiggest thing is because we are
a premium price product.
Even if those tariffs go intoeffect, they affect us far less
on a profit margin perspectivethan those products that are at
the low end of that pricingpoint, that have very slim
margins and especially, as yousaid, many of those actual
(29:19):
Chinese sellers who have a lotof these breaks.
Let's say that allow them topull that off as soon as that
rug gets pulled out from underthem and I'm not so sure that it
won't be, we'll see.
But if it does, again, samething, just like I was talking
about with the differentiationof the two platforms, maybe on
(29:42):
Amazon, is that there's a lot ofproducts that end up overnight,
potentially not even being inthe listings and all of a sudden
a product that was number 30,because there were all these
other cheap products ahead ofthem, now becomes number five.
Who knows exactly what mighthappen with that, but I see it
far more as an opportunity thanI do as a possible problem for
our company.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
Yeah.
So I'd like to pivot a littlebit towards speaking of premium
brands, since I know that's mostof our listeners and one of the
topics that we were talkingabout before we hit record here,
and we've talked about it a fewtimes this year on the podcast
which is Amazon CreatorsConnections and Mike, if Mike,
if you want to share kind ofhigh level your experience with
(30:20):
it this year, and then you know,we want to give credit where
credit is due, and I think itwas Josh Hadley who kind of
talked about how to go kind ofbeyond the basics of it in order
to get a lot more value out ofit.
If you can give kind of a quickversion of that, since I know
we've talked about it onprevious episodes.
Speaker 3 (30:37):
Yeah, for sure.
I mean looking at it from thestandpoint of, you know, benefit
or bust, you know, did ithappen or didn't happen?
Creator Connections is it'sbeen a good opportunity for our
company.
I think there is maybe anargument to be made for, you
know, the smaller your companyis, maybe the less potential
opportunity there is maybe anargument to be made for the
smaller your company is, maybethe less potential opportunity
(30:58):
there is there.
So take that into account.
But we did through.
Well, let me look at the dateson it so I can give you more of
a timeframe of how long it took.
We have so far we did onecampaign.
Well, I take that back.
We've done two campaigns.
The first campaign that we didwas horrible.
It produced virtually no result.
(31:20):
The second campaign, after weimplemented Josh Hadley's
strategy and, to be clear, hisstrategy not only helps you with
the actual performance of thecampaign itself in terms of the
number of creators that sign upand actually sell product on
Amazon, so it increases thenumber of sales that you get.
It also helps you on the backend of that you know, to create
(31:41):
kind of this list of creatorsthat you can work with off
platform.
So it's incredibly useful, butwe did a total of $115,000 in
sales from this one campaign.
Now it's a long-term campaign.
We started the campaign inmid-April, so basically it's
been eight months and itessentially ends at the end of
(32:04):
this month.
So we're almost done with thecampaign and we will absolutely
rerun it.
Without question, we will rerunit, and the nice thing about
the rerun is everything'salready set up.
We already know the template.
We don't have to change it.
We already know it works.
We are still, even to this day,eight months later after we
started the campaign, we stillhave creators that are signing
(32:26):
up to promote our product, andnot just signing up through
Amazon as a creator on thecampaign, but also they are
following the link to our Googleform, signing up to our
spreadsheet, which is just alist of creators for us to work
with, and then we get to vetthem, because we get a whole lot
more information about them onwhat other platforms they're on,
(32:47):
how many followers they have,how many video views they've got
, and so there's been a massivebenefit to us of that campaign,
because I probably only investedabout two hours in setting up
that campaign and now that Ihave done it, it will literally
take me two minutes.
(33:08):
The next time I set it upbecause I'm going to use the
exact same template, I'm goingto send them to the exact same
Google form.
All of it's already set up.
So whatever benefit we get outof the next campaign is all
based on what's going to beliterally a few minutes worth of
effort to produce.
Whatever we get out of it and Ican almost guarantee at a
minimum, we're going to continueto sign up creators and add
them to that list that we canuse off platform for getting
(33:30):
content.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
So you're offering a 15% commission and you've
generated 115K in sales.
You said, or 105K in sales 115.
Speaker 3 (33:41):
$113,408.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
So I mean, let's compare that to your ACOS on
Amazon advertising.
What do you like?
25% to 30%, 28% to 30% ACOS.
Speaker 3 (33:54):
Yeah, our ACOS right now is up in the 30% range.
We feel like we're doingrelatively decent if we can keep
it under 30%.
Fortunately, our tacos isbetter than that, but ACOS is
about 30% at the moment and so,yeah, it's a much better
performance track record forCreator Connections in terms of
(34:15):
our profit, let's say per sale,but then also we get the creator
on the back end that we canwork with our platform.
So it's difficult, quite frankly, to quantify just how much
benefit that is, but certainlywe're getting a lot of sales at
less cost than if we wereactually just advertising.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
Yeah, and that's the piece that I really want to just
double click on, because Iwe've done this with a number of
brands and, quite frankly, hadmixed success, and I think a lot
of it has to do with whatcategory that brand is in and
kind of some seasonality andsome other things, and so it
also size.
You know, typically what we seekind of depending on the brand
(34:52):
is, you know, this can be anadditional, you know, 5% bump or
so in revenue from based onwhat they're already doing.
So if you're only doing, youknow, 10 grand a month, it's
probably not going to be movethe needle in a huge way for
your brand.
But I would say you know, whatyou mentioned there, which is
connecting with those creators,is really where 80% of that
(35:16):
value is in this process,because that allows you to
really work on building arelationship with them, getting
them involved in your communityand having them as, essentially,
an ambassador for your brandlong-term, creating content and
doing all those other thingsthat we want influencers and
(35:37):
creators to do, and this is agreat way for them to discover
you without having to pay a tonof money, because there is
plenty of brands out there thatthey'll pay hundreds, if not
thousands, of dollars to findgood creators like this, and
essentially, they're coming toyou and working for you.
Like you said, matt, what boilsdown to a 15% ACoS for you.
Speaker 3 (35:57):
Yeah, no, it's, it's been, it's been terrific, and I
would say that the even for asmaller brand.
Well, let me ask you a question, John, because I'm curious
because, like I said, we ran a.
We ran a campaign previous tothis one and it was dismal.
I mean it literally was.
I wrote creator connectionscompletely off.
I was like this is worthless.
(36:18):
You know, in that there is a biglesson, because I think all too
often as sellers, we testsomething, we try some new
methods, some new advertisingopportunity, whatever, and if it
doesn't work, our answer tothat is well, this method sucks,
(36:41):
or this new service sucks orwhatever sucks, you know, or
this new service sucks orwhatever, instead of taking a
step back and, at least briefly,being a little bit
introspective about it andsaying what might have gone
wrong, what maybe did I do wrongthat made this not work and
maybe how could I make it workbetter?
You know, doing a quick searchon, you know on Google or
(37:01):
YouTube, or you know throughChatGPT or something, perplexity
and say, hey, this is what Idid.
The results were horrible.
What did I do wrong?
And see if anybody's out therethat has information for you to
help you correct it better yetlook for that information before
you do it the first time.
But but but I think you know inthat, just try to learn a
(37:21):
lesson out of it.
That isn't just this method orthis service or whatever sucks
because I didn't get a goodresult from it and I think
oftentimes we lose opportunitiesbecause we do that.
But to get back to CreatorConnections, I want to say three
or four months after we triedthe initial campaign is when I
saw Josh Hadley's presentationon how to properly use Creator
Connections.
I saw Josh Hadley'spresentation on how to properly
(37:44):
use creator connections, rightaway implemented it and it was a
spectacular success for us.
And so one of the things I'mcurious about because there were
two things there's a lot ofthings that Josh recommended and
I don't want to give it allaway.
I want to send people hisdirection.
But one of the things that hewas very keen on making sure
(38:07):
that people understood was ifI'm a creator, if I'm an
affiliate, you know, or of somesort, and I'm looking at
multiple potential campaignsthat I could contribute to
different brands that I couldconnect myself with, if I see a
brand that has set up a campaignand they're going to pay me 5%
commission and they have devoteda thousand dollars to the
(38:28):
campaign.
From my perspective, that isnot a serious brand that I want
to deal with.
I'm going to go find some otherbrand because, one, they're
paying me squat and two, thecampaign is capped at a thousand
dollars.
So even if I'm the onlyaffiliate that know affiliate
that signs up for this thingright which is likely not true,
(38:48):
but let's say I am then I do allthis work to create all this
content and all this stuff.
I maybe buy the product becausetechnically, creator connections
is not a, you know, we'll giveit to you for free, right?
And that's part of the thing islike go fill out our form and
we'll.
We'll let you know whether youqualify for a free sample, right
?
If you give us some information.
So that's how we give you alittle form.
(39:10):
But that's not the way that itworks in Creator Connections.
They have to buy the product.
So if you create a campaign andthey have to buy the product,
they have to create all thecontent, they have to get it all
listed on Amazon and thenyou're only going to pay out X
amount of dollars total for thecampaign and they don't know if
maybe you might run another oneor whatever, then that's a lot
of time, effort and money thatthey've wasted on that, so
(39:31):
they're not going to do it.
So one of the big things thatJosh was talking about was give
them a reasonable commissionrate.
You're not paying for Amazonadvertising, so at least give
them something close to what youmight reasonably spend on
Amazon advertising that youthink would be profitable for
you.
Give that percentage so it'sreasonably high, and then set
(39:53):
the campaign limit in terms ofhow much you're willing to spend
really, really high.
You'll never spend it all.
We set our campaign limit as$50,000,.
I think Well, we only sold$100,000 worth of product.
At 15%, that means we spent$15,000,.
I think right, well, we onlysold $100,000 worth of product
at 15%, that means we spent$15,000, which isn't pocket
change, but it's well worth it.
It's way less than we wouldhave spent if we paid for Amazon
(40:14):
advertising dollars.
Speaker 2 (40:15):
But even if you did spend it all, the most that you
will ever spend is 15%.
Speaker 3 (40:20):
Exactly, why not?
Speaker 2 (40:22):
I'll spend a million dollars.
Speaker 3 (40:24):
Yeah exactly.
So I'm curious on the campaignsthat you guys ran that ended up
being kind of a flop, Was yourcommission percentage a
reasonable percentage and wasthe cap that you placed on it in
terms of the amount of moneythat you were willing to put
into that campaign?
How high was that relative tothe frame?
Speaker 1 (40:41):
Yeah, I think those are great questions.
So I'd have to look to see, youknow, each one of the campaigns
, but kind of a ballpark likethe lowest we'll go is 10% and,
again, based on Josh'srecommendations, we generally
stick between a 10 to 20%commission.
That again, you got to putyourself in the creator shoes.
(41:03):
It's not worth their time.
And I mean to be quite frank.
I mean we've done a lot oftesting with, you know, creator
and influencer sales and thattype of stuff outside of Amazon
as well, and you know, one ofthe things that we've ran into
is is that in understandably so,is that a lot of these
influencers, they don't want apercentage of sales for a lot of
(41:23):
the micro influencers, theyjust want to get paid 50 or a
hundred bucks a video becausethey just they don't know what's
going to sell Right.
So for them it's just, you know, they'd rather have the
guaranteed cash.
So you're already kind of at alittle bit of a disadvantage
there.
Now I will say the one thingthat we were very aggressive
about is is is the budget pieceof it.
I don't think we launched one ofthose with less than a budget
(41:44):
of 10 grand and I think most ofthem were about $50,000.
Now, the hypothesis based on youknow kind of actually our
conversation today that I didn'tthink about as much, as if I
think about it, looking at someof those campaigns, I think the
ones that struggled and I'd haveto go back and look at the data
were generally products thatwere, let's say, less than $30,
(42:07):
which could make a lot of senseif you think about it, like,
okay, let's say, you have a 15%commission If it's a $20 product
, well, you know that's not awhole lot of meat on the bone
for that influencer and you know, honestly, for them it's
probably just as much work totry and sell a $20 or $30
(42:30):
product as it is to sell a $50,$70, $100 product.
So if they're looking at it andat least the influencers that
came through that we saw a lotof them were fairly savvy at how
these processes work and ifthey're looking at their ROI,
those higher price products makea lot more sense.
So I think that's another thingto keep in mind as far as and I
(42:52):
think this is again kind ofcomes full circle to what we
talked about at the beginning ofthis, of lessons learned in
2024, of man, if you're playingin that you know, kind of $20
product space.
Everything is hard if you'retrying to do it profitably,
whereas if you've got higherprice products that have higher
margins, it just allows you todo a lot more things.
Speaker 3 (43:15):
For sure.
I remember what other topicsdid we say we wanted to cover?
Was there anything else thatwe've not gotten to?
Speaker 1 (43:23):
I think you know, before we wrap up, the one that
I would consider a bust for 2024that has had a lot of kind of
buzz around it that I don't feellike ever really lived up to
its potential is Amazon posts.
You know, I feel like if you'vegot a massive brand you know say
they're 10 million or somethinglike that, you might get a 1%
(43:43):
bump from you know million orsomething like that.
You might get a 1% bump fromhaving somebody on your team put
up Amazon posts every day.
But I really think that,especially once they started
running ads, what we saw forsome brands that we were helping
put up posts on a regular basiswas a lot of that traffic.
Once there became an adcomponent to it, a lot of the
(44:04):
unpaid traffic essentially felloff, which is, you know, frankly
, what we see with a lot ofsocial media sites.
So I would say at this point itmight make sense to put up 10
or 20 posts just so that wayyou've got some posts if anybody
ever looks there.
But beyond that I don't thinkthat there's a lot of value in
doing.
For most brands that are, youknow, up to probably 10 million,
(44:24):
it probably doesn't make a lotof sense in order to do Amazon
posts on a regular basis.
Speaker 2 (44:29):
I mean, you can automate a good portion of it,
but even then, even automatingit, now that organic visibility
isn't really what it used to be,you're right.
I mean, I think, mike, you'veput together a process where you
create images and the copy forthem in the span of a couple of
clicks of your mouse, so thenyou know if you have the
(44:52):
resources internally to putsomething like that together and
then implement it.
I mean, you're you're talkingmaybe 20 seconds of actual work
to get that up at that point.
So not not really a whole lotof work, but still with the
decrease in visibility, likedoes that even make sense?
Does even 20 seconds per postmake sense anymore?
You know?
Speaker 3 (45:12):
Well, I think I mean you can do it quickly, and for a
while we were pushing on thatlever, trying to see what we
could do with it.
Briefly it looked like it wasgoing to be something and then
and then it really wasn't.
But I would say I would look atit from more of an opportunity
cost perspective.
I would not take somebody onyour team and have them do that
(45:34):
if there's other things thatthey could be doing with their
time.
There's way more things that Ithink would have a much better
result for the time investment.
If, on the other hand, youwanted to bring on some you know
a Filipino at three bucks anhour, you know, and you and you
give them your automated processand you're just like hey, go to
town.
Like the cost to you is goingto be negligible.
There's no opportunity lossbecause you don't have, you're
(45:56):
not soaking up time of one ofyour you know other employees or
something.
Maybe it's worth giving it ashot, but I really don't think
there's a whole lot of meat onthe bone there to really worry
about.
Speaker 1 (46:13):
There's far more things that you probably could
put your emphasis on and do muchbetter with.
So I guess, guys, as we kind ofwrap here and think about 2024,
what is, maybe you know, onepiece of advice that you guys
would have for listeners as wethink about lessons learned from
2024?
Speaker 2 (46:25):
I think, social selling platforms like TikTok.
Who knows what's going tohappen to TikTok in a couple of
weeks, but I think that it'sbeen proven now that people will
buy in those types ofenvironments.
Amazon tried to launch it.
It didn't work, but I rememberwhat theirs was called,
spotlight or whatever.
Whenever they tried to calltheir Spark, what did they call
(46:46):
theirs?
What was it called?
Do you remember?
Amazon had one?
Speaker 3 (46:50):
Either way either way , it didn't do it.
Speaker 2 (46:53):
Yeah, it lasted that long, but I, you know, I think
that I think for where.
I think that focus in 2025 islike if you before it was like
figure out a way to get peopleon your list and your audience
and we're still doing thosethings and that's important.
But I also think that findingcontent creators and influencers
like you know, I still see nowwhere brands find that one
(47:15):
influencer who, for whateverreason, made a video that looked
really ridiculous when she sentit to us but then popped off
and went viral and sold hundredsand hundreds of units Like
that's happening on those typesof platforms.
So I think, building out yourand Mike, you have a really good
system in place now to takethose creator connection
applicants and put them on aspreadsheet that then you know
(47:37):
like you can reach out to themlater on and use their content
on other platforms.
I think that's important Goingforward.
You know, back five years ago,when you said influencer, you
would see like Kim Kardashian inyour head, but it's not like
that anymore.
I mean micro-influencers.
Having an army ofmicro-influencers could really
do really good things for yourbrand and they're not really
hard to find.
(47:57):
There's one on every streetcorner nowadays.
So I think putting effort intobuilding out your kind of brand
ambassador program, I think isis, you know, is gold, no matter
what platform rolls outtomorrow or which platform gets
banned.
Speaker 3 (48:11):
Yeah, I think probably the thing that I would
say is to come back to thecomment that I made earlier,
which was be a little bit moreintrospective about your
failures and try to determinewhether that failure was was
something that you could.
You could iterate on and turnit into a success, rather than
just writing it off.
Social is one of those.
(48:31):
There are a lot of sellers whohave tried social and it didn't
really do anything for them andso they've written it off and
said that's not for me, myproduct doesn't work there,
whatever.
I would say that at this point,social, if it's proven anything
, it's that there is no productout there for which social could
not be a channel that you coulddo well with.
(48:52):
The question is how creativecan you be about it and how much
effort are you willing to putinto it, to make it produce and
to use it in a way that's bestfor your product?
So don't write things off justbecause you weren't successful
with them before.
Do some more research.
Look to the people who have hadsuccess and hopefully maybe
(49:14):
have had success with a productthat at least in some ways is
similar to yours same category,same whatever.
How were they successful?
How could you be moresuccessful with it and pay very
close attention to how you canuse those things to affect your
Amazon presence?
Because, again, I mean mostlywe're speaking to Amazon sellers
(49:35):
here.
Obviously, we've got otherpeople who are just e-commerce
and whatnot, but many of ourlisteners are Amazon sellers and
so if you're not looking offplatform and paying attention to
the things that you can do tobuild your brand off platform, I
promise you there are notenough levers that you can pull
on Amazon that the other sellersin your category can't pull
just as well as you for you tosucceed there the way that you
(49:57):
want to.
If you're not pulling those offplatform levers, you are
failing already, even if youdon't see it.
Speaker 1 (50:04):
Yeah, and I'll just kind of wrap up with this, which
is to build off what you said,mike.
I mean, I think that in orderto be a successful brand coming
up in 2025 and beyond, I thinkyou have to.
It's not a Amazon or somewhereelse, I think it's an and, and
so you did a good job of summingup.
Hey, if you've tried otherchannels social, whatever it
(50:26):
happens to be and it wasn'tsuccessful for you, be
introspective about why thatdidn't work and what you could
do differently in order to besuccessful next time.
And then what I would add tothat is, especially if you've
already got traction on Amazon,is the and there is.
What do you need to be testingon Amazon?
Is that conversion rate on yourlistings?
(50:48):
Is that a different approach toyour ads?
And thinking about how you canoptimize your revenue and your
profits from the business thatyou're already doing on Amazon
even more than you are right now.
I think you need to do both ofthose things in order to
continue to be successful in2025 and beyond.
Speaker 3 (51:07):
One of the things that I would add to that, too,
is don't be afraid to considerwhether the avatar that you're
chasing is no longer the avataryou should be chasing, or
whether the avatar that you'recurrently chasing is still good.
But there's another avatar outthere, or multiple avatars out
there, that you could be chasing, with different listings, with
(51:29):
different content, for even thesame product you know to, to
increase your chances of successthere.
I can't tell you the number oftimes I have heard the story of
a seller who took a product andstarted selling it under, you
know, a different kind of a nameor a different keyword that was
in a somewhat slightlydifferent category or something
(51:52):
that was now to a differentcustomer avatar, and doubled
their money or more, sometimessold more in that category into
that avatar than they werecurrently selling to the one
that they've been selling to forfive years avatar than they
were currently selling to theone that they've been selling to
for five years.
So really take stock of atleast the hero products in your
(52:14):
list, and maybe even some ofthose that aren't hero products,
and decide is there maybeanother avatar that I could
attempt to sell this to withouta whole lot of extra effort and
at least test it and see whetherthere's another channel of
opportunity there for us, evenon Amazon, to sell that product
in higher quantities, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (52:29):
Well, I think those are some great action items for
our listeners.
I would just encourage anybodywho's listening pick out the one
that makes the most sense toyou as you think about growing
in 2025, run with it.
We'd love to hear what yourresults are from it, and thank
you everybody so much forlistening.
Welcome everyone to the Brand Fortress HQ Tactics
Tuesday.
This is going to be our lastTactics Tuesday for 2024.
And, as a result, what we wantto look at is some of the
lessons learned, what things atthe beginning of the year that
we talked about, that a lot ofAmazon sellers and a lot of
Amazon brands thought were goingto have a big impact, what did
really have a big impact andeverything that we've kind of
(00:21):
encountered in 2024, kind of thehighlights of that as we record
this last Tactics Tuesday forthe year.
So I know we talked a littlebit before we hit record on this
.
Matt, you know, as you thinkabout 2024, maybe you want to
kick us off and you knowanything that comes to your mind
.
As far as you know, whatprediction really fizzled this
year or what came true, or whatyou see when you think about
(00:43):
lessons for 2024?
Speaker 2 (00:44):
or what came true, or what you see when you think
about lessons for 2024?
I think one of them that hasbeen the case for the last
couple of years now is ourmargins keep getting compressed
by different types of things.
I think the biggest theme, orwhat was a big part of 2024 for
me, with my brands and thebrands that we work with, are
like the new fees.
Inbound placement fee is onethat we've struggled with a lot.
(01:06):
That added a lot of complexity.
It added a lot of cost wherethere wasn't.
So I mean, that's really thebiggest thing for us is figuring
out, you know, how to becompetitive in these categories
where you have especially whenyou have Chinese manufacturers
that are selling direct andbringing the price points down.
(01:27):
Just protecting margins reallyis the biggest thing for me in
2024.
Of things that happened thatyou know, you, you, you expect
that to happen on Amazon and atthis stage of the game.
But something that rang truefor for me is this fees and and
how to, how to approach them.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
I think it's interesting on the fee front,
because so we've been seeing Imean, everybody's been seeing a
squeeze, you know, over the lastfew years on that front for
sure.
But I think it's one of thoseareas where if you are, if you
consider yourself to be, anAmazon brand, then those fees
(02:07):
become obviously massivelysignificant and you should, of
course, try and minimize thosefees, try to manage things.
One of the things that Matt wastalking about was the inventory
placement and then, of course,we've got fees for too little
inventory, fees for too muchinventory, you know, fees for
too little inventory, fees fortoo much inventory, you know,
like.
So the one thing that becameclear there and I'm fortunate
(02:28):
that we already had broughtsomebody on to manage that but
if you are the owner of thebusiness and you also are
basically the one managing allof the different aspects of the
business, I think one thingthat's true of Amazon now is,
because it's so much morecomplex than it used to be, that
being a one man or one womanshow is very difficult to really
(02:51):
grow a brand in any significantway.
Because even just being expertenough on and having enough time
to manage the logistics side,you know, and in terms of making
sure that you're addressing allof those fees that Amazon is
charging and shipping inproperly and at the right time,
and all of that sort of thing.
Like you can't just be willynilly about it, it has to be
(03:13):
very you know, regiment, let'ssay, and it's difficult to do as
an individual person.
So if you don't have peoplemanaging some of those different
aspects of your business,you're probably going to have
issues with it.
But the other thing for us wasit just made it crystal clear
that we couldn't any longerreally continue to be an Amazon
(03:34):
business, even though we'vealways focused on trying to
build the brand so thattechnically we weren't just an
Amazon business.
By the same token, virtuallyall of our sales have still been
Amazon-based.
We really haven't done a wholelot off of Amazon in terms of
sales channels, and now we'relooking at it and seeing that
moving into the commercialmarket for us is going to be a
much more profitable market forus, with much better margins
(03:57):
than selling on Amazon is atthis point, and also all of that
work that we're doing offAmazon, I believe, based on
everything that I've seen,should have a positive and
direct impact on our Amazonsales and improve our sales
there as a result of that offchannel stuff.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
So I'm curious how do you guys feel about this?
You know I see a lot of brands.
You guys talk to a number ofbrands along with you know
running your own brands.
How much do you feel like?
Because I think about like, okay, if you look at selling off
your website, you know I thinkwhat gets lost in the
calculation there that a lot ofbrands don't calculate in is is,
you know your marketing coststhere.
(04:35):
So what's my customeracquisition cost if I'm driving,
you know, somebody via aFacebook ad or a Google ad or
something like that,understanding that my website
probably is going to have a lotlower conversion rates?
And then we've had some guestson here earlier this year that
have talked about going reallythe wholesale route, getting
(04:56):
into actual brick and mortarretail stores and some uneven
success there.
So I'm curious from your guys'perspective is the increases in
fees and kind of the squeezingof margins on Amazon, because
brands that were mainly focusedon Amazon probably had it better
than other channels and nowwe're starting to see kind of an
(05:17):
equalization or is it thatAmazon is truly becoming a less
profitable channel than you knowkind of the standard channels
that are out there?
Speaker 3 (05:31):
I think part of it depends on how well you know
what you're doing.
Trying to generate traffic to awebsite and trying to manage
you know conversion rates andwhatnot, so that your customer
acquisition costs are reasonableis not easy, but it's doable,
and I think part of the issue, Iguess, in your question lies an
(05:54):
answer, that is, amazon for along time in many ways, was an
easy enough platform to sell oneffectively that you didn't have
to really understand marketing.
You didn't have to understand alot of those things.
You could literally jump onAmazon, throw up a product and
(06:19):
make money for a lot of years,and I think in that sense, I
would say that it is probablytrue to some degree that it's
really more of a balancing andan equalization of what is
required and necessary to beable to sell effectively and
profitably on Amazon versuswhat's required to sell off of
Amazon as profitably, because todo it off of Amazon requires a
(06:41):
lot of expertise to do it rightand be profitable in it, and so
if you don't have that, thenyeah, you're in a tough spot.
I'm fortunate that Amazon wasn'tmy first game.
You know like I was ine-commerce.
You know I've been there fornearly 30 years.
So I had a lot of e-commerceexperience previous to Amazon,
which made Amazon a breezebecause you know it was nothing.
(07:03):
Now margins are squeezed.
We can still be profitable,we're still doing fine, but
moving off of that channel andtaking advantage of what I know
about off Amazon marketing andwhatnot is, I think, going to be
a big benefit to us.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
I think the biggest thing that you said there, mike,
that I think not a lot of otherAmazon brands.
When they're thinking about offof Amazon, like it doesn't
always have to be Facebook ads,like there's things that ProTuff
, for example let's talk about acouple of the recent things
that we're doing at ProTuff Likewe hired an SEO agency.
When's the last time you heardan Amazon like, not Amazon SEO
(07:37):
or website SEO, and that's notsomething that a lot of Amazon
sellers even think aboutinvesting in.
But so like, that's just it'straditional advertising,
traditional marketing.
That that were that, yes, andactually the agency is helping.
That we found is helping a lotbecause they're a paper
performance agency and that thatwas new to me.
(07:57):
So the initial outlay isn't, youknow, you're not paying three,
four or five grand retainer forhoping to get better keyword
ranks.
Like they don't get paid unlessthey actually increase your
keyword rank, so like.
But then also like a socialmedia agency, like all of these
things that we're doing, wehaven't really paid any.
We're not increasing any adspend right now.
We're just making more contentso that we'll be attractive to
(08:18):
influencers and affiliates thatwe then can use, utilize to, to
kind of stroke the fire a littlebit, so to speak.
So it's not really just dumpinga whole bunch of money out of a
helicopter and Facebook ads.
It's investing in SEO on thewebsite and investing in content
for social media so that we canmake a push, but an organic
push in kind of some sort ofways.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
I think the other thing too and I was thinking
this a moment ago and then kindof forgot about it as I was
talking but that is theconversion rates on Amazon are
terrific.
I mean, if you even know alittle bit about what you're
doing on Amazon, your conversionrates will be significantly
better than they will likely beon your website.
That being said, even if youreally know what you're doing on
(09:02):
Amazon the conversion of aprospect to a customer, but then
also to a person who is now onyour list, which makes them
yours and not Amazon's thatconversion, if you're following
the whole chain, to where do Iget how many of them?
Am I actually getting to thepoint where, if Amazon shuts me
(09:25):
down, I still have a business?
That's way different, becausewe've been doing post-purchase
for a long time and I thinkwe're probably way better at it
than most Amazon sellers are andstill we probably only get I
don't know 25% ish of our Amazoncustomers to actually end up on
our list.
(09:45):
So even though our conversionrate to sale is pretty good on
Amazon, that conversion rate toactual subscriber is not On your
website.
You have a much betteropportunity there because you
have all of their information.
Now, of course, you probablywant to put a tick box Do you
want to subscribe Whatever?
But you're still going to get amuch, much higher rate of
(10:05):
return on that in terms ofpeople who end up on your list
that you can remarket to andwhatnot.
So even though on the front endmaybe you're only getting a 4%
conversion rate on your websiteor something, if you're good
maybe you get a little bit morethan that.
Some people are only gettingtwo to three if you're not very
good, and and Amazon might be 10or 15 or 20 or 30%, depending
on what kind of product you haveyour conversion to list is much
(10:28):
better and that ability toremarket to people is much
better.
So you have to weigh thosethings.
It's important to pay attentionto the whole chain.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
Yeah, and I mean I think you know, I would say over
this year, one thing that I'vebeen thinking about a lot in the
brands that we're working withis the right lever to pull at
the right time.
So brands out there that arelistening, if you're struggling
with top line revenue, thenAmazon is probably a pretty good
place for you to be, because ifyou can't make top line sales,
(10:59):
profit is a different story, butif you can't make top line
sales on Amazon, you're going toreally struggle off of Amazon
because there's something thatneeds to be tuned with your
product market fit.
Yeah, that said, if you're like, hey, you know we're I mean, of
course, we always want morerevenue, but at the same time,
if you're like, hey, we'd reallylike to increase our you know
(11:22):
our net profit margin, how manydollars we have in our pocket at
the end of the day, and you'vebuilt up enough revenue to have
a, you know, a decent businesswhere you're doing, you know, at
least a few hundred thousanddollars a year, if not more, on
Amazon, then, looking at, youknow things like what you're
talking about, mike, which is,hey, let's figure out how to
(11:43):
drive some traffic to our ownsites, make some sales there and
I mean that's a greatopportunity to have, you know,
complimentary products.
I think you know it doesn'thave to be the same products
necessarily.
And then, at the same time,thinking about, I think still
one of the least sexyopportunities that sits out
(12:03):
there is increasing yourconversion rates.
It shocks me every single timethe number of smart brand owners
that I talk to and I say, hey,when was the last time you
updated your listing or tried adifferent main image, a
different title, something toincrease your conversion rate?
And most of the time, somethingto increase your conversion rate
, and most of the time it's sixto 12 months.
(12:26):
Very few brand owners.
And again, I understand that itmay not be possible to do on
every single one of yourproducts, but just take the
80-20 rule and find that top 20%of your products and you really
should, on a regular basis andI would say just as a rule of
thumb and I would say you know,just as a rule of thumb,
probably quarterly be testingmain image or title or some part
(12:48):
of your listing in order toincrease your conversion rates.
Because even if you go from youknow a 12% conversion rate to a
13% conversion rate, not onlydoes that increase your
visibility, because Amazon givesyou more visibility, but then
think about the impact that thathas on ad costs.
I know you know we all talkabout how CPCs and that type of
stuff are going up, which isvery frustrating.
(13:09):
That's one of the easiest waysin order to get more efficient
with your ad spend is byincreasing your conversion rate.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
Well and we talked about this in a previous episode
One of the things that BrianJohnson's been working on with
what is the company called thathe's?
Speaker 2 (13:24):
DeepM.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
Yeah, deepm.
One of the things that he talkedabout when he was with us was
this idea of shelves in Amazon,seo, and that you might have 10
products that are essentiallysitting on a shelf and you're
below that shelf and maybeyou're sitting at this 12%
conversion rate and if you hit13, all of a sudden you don't
(13:45):
jump one slot, you jump 12 slotsbecause you jumped the entire
shelf and you don't know justhow much effect that little
increase in conversion rate canbe.
And so it's easy to look at itand say, well, we've tried
before and we've never reallygotten a decent change.
Maybe we got 1%, or 1% can be alot, and if you don't build
(14:05):
that in and you're not testingthat, you don't know.
And the other thing is, justbecause the changes that you
made before only gave you a 1%increase, it doesn't mean that
the next change that you domight not give you a 5% increase
.
You're going to try somethingnew, you're going to try
something different, and younever know from one test to the
next just how much of a changeit could be.
But if you're not doing it atall, then you know what the
(14:27):
change is going to be and that'snothing.
You're muted, I think, matt.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
In the spirit of the things that were hit or bust in
2024, one of the things that isall the rage and everyone talks
about is AI.
Everyone's talking about is AI.
But what's true about Amazonrecently, in the past year, is
that they've given us toolswhere there's really no excuse
(14:53):
now to not have like videos onyour listing, for example, like
there's built in tools in juston on the, in the backend, that
you can make videos in on incampaign manager, just with
static photos of your product.
So anything is better than nothaving a video at all, and now
you can make one for free insideof inside of campaign manager.
(15:14):
So AI is making it easier.
It's leveling the field, so tospeak, in terms of being able to
change out your imagery andthen split test your main, your
hero images and split test yourtitles.
You don't have to spend as muchtime as you used to because of
the prevalence of AI, andAmazon's now kind of starting to
weave it into the backend ofSeller Central to where it makes
(15:37):
it easy for you to make thingslike that now too.
So I think that's somethingthat in 2024 kind of changed the
game for Amazon sellers, bothon Amazon and off of Amazon in
terms of the tools that you canuse.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Yeah, I'll steel man that a little bit, matt, in the
sense of I think that you know,obviously, ai, a lot of the off
platform tools you know, whenyou start looking at how do you
write better listings and thattype of stuff.
I think there's a lot of greattools out there now for those
types of things that can kind ofget you 80% there and then you
know, spend again.
It makes it.
It's not perfect, but it makesit a lot easier for a human to
(16:12):
bring it all the way 100% home,to get those increases in
conversion or create a new asset, whether it be an image or a
video.
So I think those things aregreat.
That said, I am still woefullydisappointed in Amazon's AI
listing tool.
It is amazing at how not goodthat tool is.
(16:34):
Now.
Does that mean that youshouldn't use it under any
circumstances?
Absolutely not.
I would say.
One of the most interestingthings that we like to use it
for and I think we've talkedabout a couple of times on the
podcast is hey, if you have atitle or an image for your
product, especially if it's anew product, I really encourage
people to put it into thatlisting builder because it tells
(16:56):
you what based on the image,especially what Amazon thinks
that product is, which is reallyvaluable data.
When we talk about one of theother trends in 2024, which is
introduction of Rufus, that hasnow been, you know, much more
rolled out.
I think it's to everybody inthe U?
S now and I think they'restarting to expand that as well,
(17:16):
and I don't know if either oneof you guys have tried that as a
shopping experience, but it issignificantly different from
kind of the current standard of,you know, searching for
products based on keywords.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
I haven't used Rufus, to be honest, and honestly to
my detriment, because, even if Ididn't care about it from an
actual shopping perspective, Ithink that one of the things
that sellers should be doing,including myself, is using it so
that you understand how itoperates and how it thinks and
what it's doing, so that you cancraft your Amazon presence a
(17:51):
little better to line up withthe way that Rufus actually
operates.
And I would say, john, that inmy opinion, that listing tool
that Amazon provides, I amcompletely in agreement with you
that its most valuable useright now is to let Amazon tell
you what they think your productis, and I will tell you there
(18:12):
are a lot of products out therethat Amazon thinks it is
something very different thanyou think Amazon thinks it is.
And you know, like even ourproduct, you know, like Full
Tools, amazon, there's a lot ofconfusion over a lot of
different keywords in ourcategory in terms of what it
actually represents, and so it'sinteresting, you know,
depending on the title that youput on or depending on the image
(18:33):
that you give it, it's veryinteresting to see what Amazon
comes back with in terms of, youknow, bullet points and things
like that, because oftentimes itis nothing related to the
product that we're actuallytrying to sell, and it does help
you get a better understandingof just where the fault lines
are and how you might be able toyou know sidestep some of those
and make sure that you'reactually getting the placement
(18:53):
you want.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
Well, I think to that point, you know I would also
and again, I know we've talkedabout this a couple of times
this year on the podcast and Ithink you know we also have
Vanessa hung on that if you wantto listen to a in-depth episode
on this, talking about allthose different, you know,
frankly little items within yourlisting that got the most of
(19:15):
them got ignored for a long time, yeah, and now they're.
You know, productspecifications and all those
little nitpicky things arebecoming more and more important
.
As you know, rufus is usingthose in order to decide what to
show to shoppers, because it it, and again, I, you know I just
(19:36):
started using it a couple times,probably about a month ago, as
we are into the holiday season,looking for gifts and that type
of stuff, and what I noticedabout it is is that it
essentially bypasses a lot ofthe ads that we rely on in
Amazon at this point.
So there's no video ads.
Speaker 3 (19:55):
Amazon did just send me a message just the other day
talking about how they're goingto begin injecting ads into
Rufus.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
Oh, I'm sure they are .
I mean, I'm sure it's coming,but there will be no place that
Amazon does not inject an ad.
Yes, I'm sure.
That said, I think that justbeing aware of how those ads
display in there for example,you know, are they going to have
video ads Is it going to bethat, you know, or sponsor brand
ads, at least from what, whatit is right now and again it's
(20:24):
going to probably, you know,evolve over the next couple of
years is my guess is that adwill probably look more like a
sponsor product ad.
So it may not have.
You know, you're, frankly, mostof our listeners out there and
our brands that we like to workwith are premium level brands
that have a brand story to tellas to why their product is
(20:47):
significantly more than someproduct that's made at the
lowest possible price from anoverseas seller, and so when you
start looking at those brands,then it's okay making sure that
you have all the pieces that youneed within that what would
typically be a sponsored productad, in order to give those
buying signals in a way that canbe hard to do compared to or
(21:12):
sponsored brand placement, whereyou can tell a much more
detailed and in-depth story.
Speaker 3 (21:20):
Well, I think too, what's interesting about Rufus
is that it will give some ofthat nuance, right.
Because if anybody who's lookedat the reviews, their review
profile, lately, you notice thatat the top of that it lists a
lot of the things that customerssaid this about the product and
it's kind of these little.
It lists a lot of the thingsthat you know customers said
this about the product and it'skind of these little bullets
that are positive or negative orwhatever, which is also part of
(21:42):
that.
You know, rufus AI kind of asystem, and so what's
interesting about Rufus is thatit takes all that into account.
So if somebody, let's saysomebody was searching for let's
just go back to ProTel, they'researching for commercial grade,
you know, pool cleaning toolsor a commercial grade pool poll,
let's say you could put in yourlisting commercial grade and in
(22:06):
the past that keyword, then Imean, if you were doing your job
right, you should be showing upfairly prominently for
commercial grade pool poll,right.
But if the reviews for yourproduct all say this product
sucks, it's not, you know, itlasted a week, you know whatever
, then in the past you wouldn'tknow that until you got to the
listing and actually wentthrough the reviews to discover
(22:26):
they say it's commercial grade,but clearly it's not.
The reviews say it's not Rufus.
If I search for commercialgrade pool pool, it isn't going
to show me the pool pool thatsays it's commercial grade, but
all of the reviews tell Rufus,this is the cheapest pool on the
planet.
It is clearly not commercialgrade.
That customer won't even seethat product in Rufus.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
Yeah, and again, I'm sure the experience is going to
change, but based on myexperience with Rufus is you
only see a maximum of like twoto three products at a time.
So it's very different alsofrom, again, that search
experience where there's 15 to20 products if you count the ads
(23:08):
on the search results page.
So there's even less realestate and, like you said, Mike,
getting you know, getting Rufusto essentially recommend your
product, is going to be a verydifferent game than the search
results that we're used to.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
So one of the things we were talking about before we
jumped on here too so whilewe're maybe somewhat on the
topic of the things where peoplewere like, oh, the sky is
falling, you know, this is goingto happen, this is going to
happen.
So you know, we talked AI alittle bit, we talked about
Amazon fees and kind of gettingsqueezed on the profit margin
side.
But another one that was reallybig early on in 2024 was this
(23:49):
whole idea that Temu or Timu orhowever it is that you say it I
still don't know was going to bethe thing that kind of knocked
Amazon off their pedestal, so tospeak.
Matt, what do you think aboutthat in terms of whether it's
actually had an impact, whetherit's been significant or not,
whether it's changed how Amazonis doing things.
(24:09):
What do you think about thatsituation?
Speaker 2 (24:13):
I'm just not a Timu shopper.
It's very similar to buyingthings off of a Facebook ad
where you're pretty confidentthat it's going to come from
overseas and you're not going toget it.
For four weeks I did make apurchase on Temu I'm pretty sure
the Super Bowl commercial gotme and it was some incredible
promotion and I ended up withlike 30 products.
(24:33):
It was addicting the way thatthe platform was to actually
shop and add all these thingsthat were like 32 cents to your
basket, like I mean it was.
It was.
It got me to buy more than Iwould have, most of it's junk
that I ended up throwing away.
Like I got one thing out of itthat I still use.
I just thought that kind of ashopper so like and for me, I
(24:58):
sell and I'm involved withcategories where I'm the top end
of the price point as opposedto the bottom end of the price
point, which is more kind ofwhat Temu.
Now, amazon definitely took themserious, that's for sure,
because they have their own Idon't remember what Amazon's is
called, but that I think willhave an effect on sellers who
sell at the opposite end of theprice, the ones that are trying
to get into that race to thebottom with the Chinese sellers.
I think they're going to have amore difficult time.
You know, yes, the Chinesemanufacturers and the other
(25:22):
sellers playing that game aregoing to steal market share from
the ones that are higher pricepoint.
But I think that, like, takeagain, take ProTuff, that we
always use as an example, like,instead of racing to the bottom
in terms of price point, well,there is a another skew that
we're launching that is going toallow us to compete a little
bit better on price.
But like we're going otherplaces, like into the commercial
(25:44):
market, where they're payingmore for tools than they are on
Amazon.
So, you know, like I think thatTemu and Sheen and I don't know
how to say that, one Sheen butlike there are people that shop
on it, but like I, for me andthe brands that I'm involved in,
it's it's the opposite of wherewe're headed as a brand, as
opposed to some of the otherones who have to because they
(26:05):
sell the lower price point.
Speaker 3 (26:07):
It.
It's interesting to me that Ithink you know, as you mentioned
it and again I don't rememberwhat Amazon is calling it either
but as far as I understand it,they are rolling out, or maybe
have rolled out to some degree,this kind of competitor to Tem
products, because a lot of thoselow end, super low price
(26:40):
products depending on how Amazonactually does this may filter
out of the results that we'recompeting against.
Like you've got two differentshoppers essentially one in this
store and one in this store andmaybe we're no longer having to
sift through all of theseshoppers that probably never
would have bought our productanyways and are looking for
these low price products andwhat's left is the shopper that
(27:02):
we really want anyway.
You know, I don't know whatAmazon's going to do with that,
but for me I looked at it fromthe beginning as maybe it's an
opportunity, you know, for forhigher price products to
actually have somewhat of acomeback on Amazon as many of
those products maybe filter outof those listings, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
Well, yeah, I don't know Amazon haul.
It's called by the way Amazonhaul.
Actually, people commenting Mirhas told us in the comments
Amazon haul and he said it'salready out, there's already,
you can already purchase.
So I'm going to go check it out.
I want to go look.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
Yeah, I think it'd be well and what's interesting to
me and I don't want to make, youknow, too aggressive prediction
for 2025, but you know,understand that you know Temu
and Sheen and these types ofcompanies, and probably even
Amazon haul, is really dependenton kind of this weird loophole
in you know customs law withinthe United States, combined with
(27:54):
subsidies from the Chinesegovernment for shipping, that
allows these companies to exist,and so, again, it's no idea
what's going to happen in 2025as far as that scene is
concerned.
There's a lot of talks, sowe'll see.
Wait until there's some actionthere.
However, I think you do have totake into account of.
(28:15):
You know it's a pretty easywhat if, if you know that
loophole gets closed, that meansa lot of these lower end
products essentially no longerbecome viable in the current
process that Temu and Sheen andthese companies are using, and
probably Amazon haul as well.
Speaker 3 (28:33):
Yeah, agreed, it's.
In fact, it's one of those I'vehad a number of conversations
with people about.
You know, concerns overpotential tariffs and you know
what.
What is, you know, trump andhis administration going to do
when they get in?
And okay, you know like I mean.
We manufacture in China.
We've we've tried on a numberof occasions to to onshore our
manufacturing and just couldn'tdo it.
You know, maybe we end up in ascenario where we end up having
(28:55):
to, but at the moment thebiggest thing is because we are
a premium price product.
Even if those tariffs go intoeffect, they affect us far less
on a profit margin perspectivethan those products that are at
the low end of that pricingpoint, that have very slim
margins and especially, as yousaid, many of those actual
(29:19):
Chinese sellers who have a lotof these breaks.
Let's say that allow them topull that off as soon as that
rug gets pulled out from underthem and I'm not so sure that it
won't be, we'll see.
But if it does, again, samething, just like I was talking
about with the differentiationof the two platforms, maybe on
(29:42):
Amazon, is that there's a lot ofproducts that end up overnight,
potentially not even being inthe listings and all of a sudden
a product that was number 30,because there were all these
other cheap products ahead ofthem, now becomes number five.
Who knows exactly what mighthappen with that, but I see it
far more as an opportunity thanI do as a possible problem for
our company.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
Yeah.
So I'd like to pivot a littlebit towards speaking of premium
brands, since I know that's mostof our listeners and one of the
topics that we were talkingabout before we hit record here,
and we've talked about it a fewtimes this year on the podcast
which is Amazon CreatorsConnections and Mike, if Mike,
if you want to share kind ofhigh level your experience with
(30:20):
it this year, and then you know,we want to give credit where
credit is due, and I think itwas Josh Hadley who kind of
talked about how to go kind ofbeyond the basics of it in order
to get a lot more value out ofit.
If you can give kind of a quickversion of that, since I know
we've talked about it onprevious episodes.
Speaker 3 (30:37):
Yeah, for sure.
I mean looking at it from thestandpoint of, you know, benefit
or bust, you know, did ithappen or didn't happen?
Creator Connections is it'sbeen a good opportunity for our
company.
I think there is maybe anargument to be made for, you
know, the smaller your companyis, maybe the less potential
opportunity there is maybe anargument to be made for the
smaller your company is, maybethe less potential opportunity
(30:58):
there is there.
So take that into account.
But we did through.
Well, let me look at the dateson it so I can give you more of
a timeframe of how long it took.
We have so far we did onecampaign.
Well, I take that back.
We've done two campaigns.
The first campaign that we didwas horrible.
It produced virtually no result.
(31:20):
The second campaign, after weimplemented Josh Hadley's
strategy and, to be clear, hisstrategy not only helps you with
the actual performance of thecampaign itself in terms of the
number of creators that sign upand actually sell product on
Amazon, so it increases thenumber of sales that you get.
It also helps you on the backend of that you know, to create
(31:41):
kind of this list of creatorsthat you can work with off
platform.
So it's incredibly useful, butwe did a total of $115,000 in
sales from this one campaign.
Now it's a long-term campaign.
We started the campaign inmid-April, so basically it's
been eight months and itessentially ends at the end of
(32:04):
this month.
So we're almost done with thecampaign and we will absolutely
rerun it.
Without question, we will rerunit, and the nice thing about
the rerun is everything'salready set up.
We already know the template.
We don't have to change it.
We already know it works.
We are still, even to this day,eight months later after we
started the campaign, we stillhave creators that are signing
(32:26):
up to promote our product, andnot just signing up through
Amazon as a creator on thecampaign, but also they are
following the link to our Googleform, signing up to our
spreadsheet, which is just alist of creators for us to work
with, and then we get to vetthem, because we get a whole lot
more information about them onwhat other platforms they're on,
(32:47):
how many followers they have,how many video views they've got
, and so there's been a massivebenefit to us of that campaign,
because I probably only investedabout two hours in setting up
that campaign and now that Ihave done it, it will literally
take me two minutes.
(33:08):
The next time I set it upbecause I'm going to use the
exact same template, I'm goingto send them to the exact same
Google form.
All of it's already set up.
So whatever benefit we get outof the next campaign is all
based on what's going to beliterally a few minutes worth of
effort to produce.
Whatever we get out of it and Ican almost guarantee at a
minimum, we're going to continueto sign up creators and add
them to that list that we canuse off platform for getting
(33:30):
content.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
So you're offering a 15% commission and you've
generated 115K in sales.
You said, or 105K in sales 115.
Speaker 3 (33:41):
$113,408.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
So I mean, let's compare that to your ACOS on
Amazon advertising.
What do you like?
25% to 30%, 28% to 30% ACOS.
Speaker 3 (33:54):
Yeah, our ACOS right now is up in the 30% range.
We feel like we're doingrelatively decent if we can keep
it under 30%.
Fortunately, our tacos isbetter than that, but ACOS is
about 30% at the moment and so,yeah, it's a much better
performance track record forCreator Connections in terms of
(34:15):
our profit, let's say per sale,but then also we get the creator
on the back end that we canwork with our platform.
So it's difficult, quite frankly, to quantify just how much
benefit that is, but certainlywe're getting a lot of sales at
less cost than if we wereactually just advertising.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
Yeah, and that's the piece that I really want to just
double click on, because Iwe've done this with a number of
brands and, quite frankly, hadmixed success, and I think a lot
of it has to do with whatcategory that brand is in and
kind of some seasonality andsome other things, and so it
also size.
You know, typically what we seekind of depending on the brand
(34:52):
is, you know, this can be anadditional, you know, 5% bump or
so in revenue from based onwhat they're already doing.
So if you're only doing, youknow, 10 grand a month, it's
probably not going to be movethe needle in a huge way for
your brand.
But I would say you know, whatyou mentioned there, which is
connecting with those creators,is really where 80% of that
(35:16):
value is in this process,because that allows you to
really work on building arelationship with them, getting
them involved in your communityand having them as, essentially,
an ambassador for your brandlong-term, creating content and
doing all those other thingsthat we want influencers and
(35:37):
creators to do, and this is agreat way for them to discover
you without having to pay a tonof money, because there is
plenty of brands out there thatthey'll pay hundreds, if not
thousands, of dollars to findgood creators like this, and
essentially, they're coming toyou and working for you.
Like you said, matt, what boilsdown to a 15% ACoS for you.
Speaker 3 (35:57):
Yeah, no, it's, it's been, it's been terrific, and I
would say that the even for asmaller brand.
Well, let me ask you a question, John, because I'm curious
because, like I said, we ran a.
We ran a campaign previous tothis one and it was dismal.
I mean it literally was.
I wrote creator connectionscompletely off.
I was like this is worthless.
(36:18):
You know, in that there is a biglesson, because I think all too
often as sellers, we testsomething, we try some new
methods, some new advertisingopportunity, whatever, and if it
doesn't work, our answer tothat is well, this method sucks,
(36:41):
or this new service sucks orwhatever sucks, you know, or
this new service sucks orwhatever, instead of taking a
step back and, at least briefly,being a little bit
introspective about it andsaying what might have gone
wrong, what maybe did I do wrongthat made this not work and
maybe how could I make it workbetter?
You know, doing a quick searchon, you know on Google or
(37:01):
YouTube, or you know throughChatGPT or something, perplexity
and say, hey, this is what Idid.
The results were horrible.
What did I do wrong?
And see if anybody's out therethat has information for you to
help you correct it better yetlook for that information before
you do it the first time.
But but but I think you know inthat, just try to learn a
(37:21):
lesson out of it.
That isn't just this method orthis service or whatever sucks
because I didn't get a goodresult from it and I think
oftentimes we lose opportunitiesbecause we do that.
But to get back to CreatorConnections, I want to say three
or four months after we triedthe initial campaign is when I
saw Josh Hadley's presentationon how to properly use Creator
Connections.
I saw Josh Hadley'spresentation on how to properly
(37:44):
use creator connections, rightaway implemented it and it was a
spectacular success for us.
And so one of the things I'mcurious about because there were
two things there's a lot ofthings that Josh recommended and
I don't want to give it allaway.
I want to send people hisdirection.
But one of the things that hewas very keen on making sure
(38:07):
that people understood was ifI'm a creator, if I'm an
affiliate, you know, or of somesort, and I'm looking at
multiple potential campaignsthat I could contribute to
different brands that I couldconnect myself with, if I see a
brand that has set up a campaignand they're going to pay me 5%
commission and they have devoteda thousand dollars to the
(38:28):
campaign.
From my perspective, that isnot a serious brand that I want
to deal with.
I'm going to go find some otherbrand because, one, they're
paying me squat and two, thecampaign is capped at a thousand
dollars.
So even if I'm the onlyaffiliate that know affiliate
that signs up for this thingright which is likely not true,
(38:48):
but let's say I am then I do allthis work to create all this
content and all this stuff.
I maybe buy the product becausetechnically, creator connections
is not a, you know, we'll giveit to you for free, right?
And that's part of the thing islike go fill out our form and
we'll.
We'll let you know whether youqualify for a free sample, right
?
If you give us some information.
So that's how we give you alittle form.
(39:10):
But that's not the way that itworks in Creator Connections.
They have to buy the product.
So if you create a campaign andthey have to buy the product,
they have to create all thecontent, they have to get it all
listed on Amazon and thenyou're only going to pay out X
amount of dollars total for thecampaign and they don't know if
maybe you might run another oneor whatever, then that's a lot
of time, effort and money thatthey've wasted on that, so
(39:31):
they're not going to do it.
So one of the big things thatJosh was talking about was give
them a reasonable commissionrate.
You're not paying for Amazonadvertising, so at least give
them something close to what youmight reasonably spend on
Amazon advertising that youthink would be profitable for
you.
Give that percentage so it'sreasonably high, and then set
(39:53):
the campaign limit in terms ofhow much you're willing to spend
really, really high.
You'll never spend it all.
We set our campaign limit as$50,000,.
I think Well, we only sold$100,000 worth of product.
At 15%, that means we spent$15,000,.
I think right, well, we onlysold $100,000 worth of product
at 15%, that means we spent$15,000, which isn't pocket
change, but it's well worth it.
It's way less than we wouldhave spent if we paid for Amazon
(40:14):
advertising dollars.
Speaker 2 (40:15):
But even if you did spend it all, the most that you
will ever spend is 15%.
Speaker 3 (40:20):
Exactly, why not?
Speaker 2 (40:22):
I'll spend a million dollars.
Speaker 3 (40:24):
Yeah exactly.
So I'm curious on the campaignsthat you guys ran that ended up
being kind of a flop, Was yourcommission percentage a
reasonable percentage and wasthe cap that you placed on it in
terms of the amount of moneythat you were willing to put
into that campaign?
How high was that relative tothe frame?
Speaker 1 (40:41):
Yeah, I think those are great questions.
So I'd have to look to see, youknow, each one of the campaigns
, but kind of a ballpark likethe lowest we'll go is 10% and,
again, based on Josh'srecommendations, we generally
stick between a 10 to 20%commission.
That again, you got to putyourself in the creator shoes.
(41:03):
It's not worth their time.
And I mean to be quite frank.
I mean we've done a lot oftesting with, you know, creator
and influencer sales and thattype of stuff outside of Amazon
as well, and you know, one ofthe things that we've ran into
is is that in understandably so,is that a lot of these
influencers, they don't want apercentage of sales for a lot of
(41:23):
the micro influencers, theyjust want to get paid 50 or a
hundred bucks a video becausethey just they don't know what's
going to sell Right.
So for them it's just, you know, they'd rather have the
guaranteed cash.
So you're already kind of at alittle bit of a disadvantage
there.
Now I will say the one thingthat we were very aggressive
about is is is the budget pieceof it.
I don't think we launched one ofthose with less than a budget
(41:44):
of 10 grand and I think most ofthem were about $50,000.
Now, the hypothesis based on youknow kind of actually our
conversation today that I didn'tthink about as much, as if I
think about it, looking at someof those campaigns, I think the
ones that struggled and I'd haveto go back and look at the data
were generally products thatwere, let's say, less than $30,
(42:07):
which could make a lot of senseif you think about it, like,
okay, let's say, you have a 15%commission If it's a $20 product
, well, you know that's not awhole lot of meat on the bone
for that influencer and you know, honestly, for them it's
probably just as much work totry and sell a $20 or $30
(42:30):
product as it is to sell a $50,$70, $100 product.
So if they're looking at it andat least the influencers that
came through that we saw a lotof them were fairly savvy at how
these processes work and ifthey're looking at their ROI,
those higher price products makea lot more sense.
So I think that's another thingto keep in mind as far as and I
(42:52):
think this is again kind ofcomes full circle to what we
talked about at the beginning ofthis, of lessons learned in
2024, of man, if you're playingin that you know, kind of $20
product space.
Everything is hard if you'retrying to do it profitably,
whereas if you've got higherprice products that have higher
margins, it just allows you todo a lot more things.
Speaker 3 (43:15):
For sure.
I remember what other topicsdid we say we wanted to cover?
Was there anything else thatwe've not gotten to?
Speaker 1 (43:23):
I think you know, before we wrap up, the one that
I would consider a bust for 2024that has had a lot of kind of
buzz around it that I don't feellike ever really lived up to
its potential is Amazon posts.
You know, I feel like if you'vegot a massive brand you know say
they're 10 million or somethinglike that, you might get a 1%
(43:43):
bump from you know million orsomething like that.
You might get a 1% bump fromhaving somebody on your team put
up Amazon posts every day.
But I really think that,especially once they started
running ads, what we saw forsome brands that we were helping
put up posts on a regular basiswas a lot of that traffic.
Once there became an adcomponent to it, a lot of the
(44:04):
unpaid traffic essentially felloff, which is, you know, frankly
, what we see with a lot ofsocial media sites.
So I would say at this point itmight make sense to put up 10
or 20 posts just so that wayyou've got some posts if anybody
ever looks there.
But beyond that I don't thinkthat there's a lot of value in
doing.
For most brands that are, youknow, up to probably 10 million,
(44:24):
it probably doesn't make a lotof sense in order to do Amazon
posts on a regular basis.
Speaker 2 (44:29):
I mean, you can automate a good portion of it,
but even then, even automatingit, now that organic visibility
isn't really what it used to be,you're right.
I mean, I think, mike, you'veput together a process where you
create images and the copy forthem in the span of a couple of
clicks of your mouse, so thenyou know if you have the
(44:52):
resources internally to putsomething like that together and
then implement it.
I mean, you're you're talkingmaybe 20 seconds of actual work
to get that up at that point.
So not not really a whole lotof work, but still with the
decrease in visibility, likedoes that even make sense?
Does even 20 seconds per postmake sense anymore?
You know?
Speaker 3 (45:12):
Well, I think I mean you can do it quickly, and for a
while we were pushing on thatlever, trying to see what we
could do with it.
Briefly it looked like it wasgoing to be something and then
and then it really wasn't.
But I would say I would look atit from more of an opportunity
cost perspective.
I would not take somebody onyour team and have them do that
(45:34):
if there's other things thatthey could be doing with their
time.
There's way more things that Ithink would have a much better
result for the time investment.
If, on the other hand, youwanted to bring on some you know
a Filipino at three bucks anhour, you know, and you and you
give them your automated processand you're just like hey, go to
town.
Like the cost to you is goingto be negligible.
There's no opportunity lossbecause you don't have, you're
(45:56):
not soaking up time of one ofyour you know other employees or
something.
Maybe it's worth giving it ashot, but I really don't think
there's a whole lot of meat onthe bone there to really worry
about.
Speaker 1 (46:13):
There's far more things that you probably could
put your emphasis on and do muchbetter with.
So I guess, guys, as we kind ofwrap here and think about 2024,
what is, maybe you know, onepiece of advice that you guys
would have for listeners as wethink about lessons learned from
2024?
Speaker 2 (46:25):
I think, social selling platforms like TikTok.
Who knows what's going tohappen to TikTok in a couple of
weeks, but I think that it'sbeen proven now that people will
buy in those types ofenvironments.
Amazon tried to launch it.
It didn't work, but I rememberwhat theirs was called,
spotlight or whatever.
Whenever they tried to calltheir Spark, what did they call
(46:46):
theirs?
What was it called?
Do you remember?
Amazon had one?
Speaker 3 (46:50):
Either way either way , it didn't do it.
Speaker 2 (46:53):
Yeah, it lasted that long, but I, you know, I think
that I think for where.
I think that focus in 2025 islike if you before it was like
figure out a way to get peopleon your list and your audience
and we're still doing thosethings and that's important.
But I also think that findingcontent creators and influencers
like you know, I still see nowwhere brands find that one
(47:15):
influencer who, for whateverreason, made a video that looked
really ridiculous when she sentit to us but then popped off
and went viral and sold hundredsand hundreds of units Like
that's happening on those typesof platforms.
So I think, building out yourand Mike, you have a really good
system in place now to takethose creator connection
applicants and put them on aspreadsheet that then you know
(47:37):
like you can reach out to themlater on and use their content
on other platforms.
I think that's important Goingforward.
You know, back five years ago,when you said influencer, you
would see like Kim Kardashian inyour head, but it's not like
that anymore.
I mean micro-influencers.
Having an army ofmicro-influencers could really
do really good things for yourbrand and they're not really
hard to find.
(47:57):
There's one on every streetcorner nowadays.
So I think putting effort intobuilding out your kind of brand
ambassador program, I think isis, you know, is gold, no matter
what platform rolls outtomorrow or which platform gets
banned.
Speaker 3 (48:11):
Yeah, I think probably the thing that I would
say is to come back to thecomment that I made earlier,
which was be a little bit moreintrospective about your
failures and try to determinewhether that failure was was
something that you could.
You could iterate on and turnit into a success, rather than
just writing it off.
Social is one of those.
(48:31):
There are a lot of sellers whohave tried social and it didn't
really do anything for them andso they've written it off and
said that's not for me, myproduct doesn't work there,
whatever.
I would say that at this point,social, if it's proven anything
, it's that there is no productout there for which social could
not be a channel that you coulddo well with.
(48:52):
The question is how creativecan you be about it and how much
effort are you willing to putinto it, to make it produce and
to use it in a way that's bestfor your product?
So don't write things off justbecause you weren't successful
with them before.
Do some more research.
Look to the people who have hadsuccess and hopefully maybe
(49:14):
have had success with a productthat at least in some ways is
similar to yours same category,same whatever.
How were they successful?
How could you be moresuccessful with it and pay very
close attention to how you canuse those things to affect your
Amazon presence?
Because, again, I mean mostlywe're speaking to Amazon sellers
(49:35):
here.
Obviously, we've got otherpeople who are just e-commerce
and whatnot, but many of ourlisteners are Amazon sellers and
so if you're not looking offplatform and paying attention to
the things that you can do tobuild your brand off platform, I
promise you there are notenough levers that you can pull
on Amazon that the other sellersin your category can't pull
just as well as you for you tosucceed there the way that you
(49:57):
want to.
If you're not pulling those offplatform levers, you are
failing already, even if youdon't see it.
Speaker 1 (50:04):
Yeah, and I'll just kind of wrap up with this, which
is to build off what you said,mike.
I mean, I think that in orderto be a successful brand coming
up in 2025 and beyond, I thinkyou have to.
It's not a Amazon or somewhereelse, I think it's an and, and
so you did a good job of summingup.
Hey, if you've tried otherchannels social, whatever it
(50:26):
happens to be and it wasn'tsuccessful for you, be
introspective about why thatdidn't work and what you could
do differently in order to besuccessful next time.
And then what I would add tothat is, especially if you've
already got traction on Amazon,is the and there is.
What do you need to be testingon Amazon?
Is that conversion rate on yourlistings?
(50:48):
Is that a different approach toyour ads?
And thinking about how you canoptimize your revenue and your
profits from the business thatyou're already doing on Amazon
even more than you are right now.
I think you need to do both ofthose things in order to
continue to be successful in2025 and beyond.
Speaker 3 (51:07):
One of the things that I would add to that, too,
is don't be afraid to considerwhether the avatar that you're
chasing is no longer the avataryou should be chasing, or
whether the avatar that you'recurrently chasing is still good.
But there's another avatar outthere, or multiple avatars out
there, that you could be chasing, with different listings, with
(51:29):
different content, for even thesame product you know to, to
increase your chances of successthere.
I can't tell you the number oftimes I have heard the story of
a seller who took a product andstarted selling it under, you
know, a different kind of a nameor a different keyword that was
in a somewhat slightlydifferent category or something
(51:52):
that was now to a differentcustomer avatar, and doubled
their money or more, sometimessold more in that category into
that avatar than they werecurrently selling to the one
that they've been selling to forfive years avatar than they
were currently selling to theone that they've been selling to
for five years.
So really take stock of atleast the hero products in your
(52:14):
list, and maybe even some ofthose that aren't hero products,
and decide is there maybeanother avatar that I could
attempt to sell this to withouta whole lot of extra effort and
at least test it and see whetherthere's another channel of
opportunity there for us, evenon Amazon, to sell that product
in higher quantities, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (52:29):
Well, I think those are some great action items for
our listeners.
I would just encourage anybodywho's listening pick out the one
that makes the most sense toyou as you think about growing
in 2025, run with it.
We'd love to hear what yourresults are from it, and thank
you everybody so much forlistening.
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