July 8, 2025 • 44 mins
Ever feel like your Amazon business is walking a tightrope without a safety net? You're not alone. In this eye-opening episode of Brand Fortress HQ, we pull back the curtain on the five most devastating mistakes that can silently kill your Amazon brand—mistakes we've painfully witnessed both with our clients and in our own businesses.
The first deadly sin might surprise you: changing your brand name on Amazon. We share horror stories of brands forced to choose between keeping misaligned brand identities or losing years of hard-earned reviews and rankings. One particularly painful case involved a client unable to use their actual brand name in product titles because they'd registered under a different name, thinking trademark issues prevented them from using their real one. The solution came too late, leaving them with an agonizing choice.
When it comes to reviews, we reveal why preventing one negative review is worth far more than gaining multiple five-star ratings. Amazon's algorithm now weighs negative reviews more heavily, making reputation management crucial to your success. We share practical strategies for preventing negative reviews through better product design, clearer instructions, and thoughtful post-purchase communication—without violating Amazon's terms of service.
The remaining sins—going out of stock, not knowing your numbers, and lacking an after-purchase program—can be equally devastating. We share a sobering account of watching a seller's sales chart resemble a "ski slope" after inventory problems, and why maintaining at least 90 days of inventory in the U.S. is essential for business continuity. We also explain which metrics matter most (hint: it's more than just ACOS) and why building your own customer list is your ultimate insurance policy against Amazon account suspension.
Each of these mistakes represents a potential business killer, but they're all avoidable with the right knowledge and systems. Tune in to discover how to protect your brand from these common but devastating Amazon selling mistakes. Your brand's survival may depend on it. Have you encountered any of these challenges? Join us live most Tuesdays at 2:15 PM Central on LinkedIn to get your specific questions answered!
🚀 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
⭐️ Want to help our show grow so we can continue bringing you the very best of guests and actionable content for your Amazon FBA business? We'd greatly appreciate if you took two minutes to give us a five star rating and review. Thank you!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome everyone to another episode of Brand
Fortress HQ and our TacticsTuesday.
We're excited to be back liveagain on LinkedIn.
So, if you're listening outthere, this is one of the things
that we've done in the past andwe're getting in the habit of
doing is being live on LinkedIn.
So if you have questions everyTuesday at about 2.15 Central
Time, we're working on beinglive on LinkedIn so that way we
(00:22):
can answer those questions liveas we talk about different
topics.
Today, what we're going to betalking about are the five
deadly sins for brands on Amazon, and this is something that,
off mic, we've been talkingquite a bit about as far as kind
of those mistakes that, bothshort-term and long-term, that
we've seen brands making thatwe're working with, and then
(00:43):
also in our own brands, thattype of stuff over the history
of, you know, really growingboth on and off Amazon.
So you know, with that, I think,the first one I want to start
out with because I think Mattand I have actually gone through
quite a bit of pain with acouple of clients around this is
, you know, changing your brandname on Amazon.
You know we've run into acouple of different situations
(01:05):
where, for various reasons,people have needed to change
their brand name, and I wantedto talk real quick about this
because I think this is one ofthose things where it really
pays off in order to get thatbrand name right up front and
talk today a little bit aboutwhat why it's such a big deal
and why it is so painful inorder to change your brand name
(01:27):
later on.
So with that, actually, I'mgoing to hand it over to you,
matt, if you kind of walkthrough kind of your perspective
on this.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Yeah, I mean I think there's a couple of different
reasons that someone, a seller,would have to go and change
their brand name after the factand I can think of a couple of
reasons that I've helped brandswith that were unavoidable.
There were some, and actually Iwas a victim actually a
self-created victim of one thatcaused lots of pain down the
(01:56):
road.
So the first one that I didn'treally think through and I think
it was my either first orsecond brand is I had an LLC
name, that it was a previous LLCthat was tangentially relevant
to the brand that we werelaunching on Amazon.
But I just used the LLC namejust for ease of use when
creating the account, whichcaused a lot of problems later
(02:17):
on.
The other thing, the other bestpractice that I didn't follow
back then, was that I wasactually using my actual
personal Amazon login when Icreated that account, so I used
that same email address, whichagain caused all kinds of issues
down the road.
So that I did it didn't makesense how having the LLC as my
seller name on the listing andit became a blinking red light.
(02:41):
That really annoyed me foreverand ever, and that was the first
time that I went through abrand changeover.
So I think really the point ofthis being one of the deadly
sins and alerting and putting ittop of mind for people is, when
you create your seller account,think of it like what we teach
our new students.
Coming through the program isthink with the end in mind.
(03:02):
So, even if your plan isn't tosell the business anytime soon,
going through the process ofsetting things up like as if you
were and one of those is isyour brand name and making sure
that it matches the LLC and bankaccount and all that kind of
good stuff and for us it didn't.
And, like John said at thebeginning, you know changing the
brand name is such a painfulprocess.
On, on Amazon, we're walkingthrough the process with the
(03:26):
brand that we work with and Idon't know it's about two and a
half month long process.
I mean they do have a lot ofskews, a lot of different
variations, so I think thatcertainly adds to the complexity
and actually the reason whythat brand is changing the brand
name is one of thoseunavoidable reasons.
So it wasn't something thatcould have been thought of in
the beginning, but it certainlyhighlights the complexity of
(03:48):
what it looks like to changeyour brand name on Amazon, so so
yeah, that's the kind of recentexperience that we've been
dealing with here.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Yeah, and I just so a couple of things that I want to
make sure that we cover here,cause I think it's really
important for our brands thatare listening.
So a couple of things to keepin mind here.
The first one is is that againnot legal advice, that said,
when we're looking at just therequirements for brand registry
is to either have a name,trademark or an image mark.
So in this case, or one of thecases with the brands that we
(04:16):
worked with, you know they hadtold us like, hey, basically you
know, our, their product isfairly popular off of Amazon,
but nobody can find it on Amazonbecause they're not ranking for
their brand name and they'restruggling for the brand name to
be put into their title.
And the reason was because theyhad opened their store or they
had registered under a differentbrand name because they didn't
(04:38):
think they could get A trademark.
Lawyer had told them like, hey,this is too similar to another
brand name.
What they didn't realize wasthat they could actually use an
image mark to at least meet therequirements for Amazon.
Well, they kind of worked outwith the lawyers as far as what
the trademark implications werethere, and so solving that
problem helped kind of realigntheir brand, but then, as Matt
(05:01):
was talking about, having tochange their SKUs for one brand
or another essentially meantthat we had to recreate those
SKUs and lose a lot of thehistory that they had for
selling over a couple of yearson those SKUs.
So that means losing yourreviews, that means losing your
sales momentum, that meanslosing your keyword rank.
So, especially if you've been onAmazon for a few years and
(05:22):
you've built up a pretty goodsales volume with the products
that you have, you're kind ofstuck with either having to do
something where you've got tochoose between hey, my brand
name is not in my title, or Ihave to pick a different brand
name that is harder for peopleto find or may not even index
(05:43):
for my own brand, which is notideal or essentially restarting
with those listings on Amazon,and both of those options really
suck, which is why this is oneof the first things that I know
that it may not apply to 80% ofthe people that are listening,
but for that 20% that are inthat boat, really the faster you
can make that switch, thebetter.
(06:04):
When you start looking at along-term investment and then
for the other brands out there,if you're looking at launching
another brand or you're lookingat buying another brand, this is
definitely one of the thingsthat I would look into as far as
making sure that that brandname is brand registered and you
have that aligned witheverything both on and off
Amazon, in order to get all thebenefits that we talk about on
(06:25):
the podcast all the time aboutbeing a brand for long-term
success.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
Yeah, honestly, in a lot of ways, it's all about
avoiding pain.
There's a lot of other benefitsto making sure that you flesh
this out early on, but there's alot of painful results if you
don't and I guess I would say,but there's a lot of painful
results if you don't, and Iguess I would say definitely
dial in on the trademark, makingsure that you can effectively
(06:50):
trademark the name and thatyou're not going to be in a
position where that'sproblematic.
Also, I think, in thatconversation, if what we're
saying is make sure that yousolidify that brand early on and
that you can get it trademarked, and that you can get it
trademarked and that you can getit brand registered, and that
you can, you know, do all thesethings, well then the question
(07:11):
becomes well, okay, what do Ineed to pay attention to in
order to actually decide whatthat brand name is going to be?
You know how do I make thatdetermination, and I don't know
that there's one set answer forevery company, like every
product line, it's different.
However, I would say this Ithink it will help if you take a
step back, like if you alreadyknow, like there's a lot of
(07:33):
things in play here, right, likedo you already know what the
product is that you're selling?
Do you already know, like, doyou have some of those things
lined up?
If you do and I assume ifyou're watching this podcast,
there's a decent chance you kindof already know what you might
want to sell or you're alreadyselling it.
Then the question becomes who isyour ideal avatar?
And then from there you knowand really nailing that down
(07:55):
right, like not just I sell tomen, or not just I sell to
people who hike, or you know,like really, you know we've
talked about this before butmaking sure that you nail down
the details of who that avataris that you're going to sell to,
and then use that to determinewhat that brand name should be,
because it should be a brandname that's going to resonate
with that customer, and I alsobelieve that it should resonate
(08:18):
in a way that taps into whateveryour primary USP is going to be
within your business.
Like, what is your brand goingto be about?
And although, like, let's say,you sell hiking gear, like you
could do something that's hikingrelated.
But you could also step backout of that a little bit and
I'll give you an example likefor our company, you know Proto
(08:41):
Products not that that's like anamazing brand name, but I made
that decision kind of early onwith the thought that we might
break out of the pool categoryat some point.
Now the reality is that wehaven't.
We've stayed in that poolcategory because it was where we
were comfortable and you knowwe're trying to kind of break
out of that at this point.
(09:01):
But the good news is, with thatbrand name I can sell in pretty
much any category I want.
Protel products does not limitme in terms of what category,
but what it does dial in on isthe durability of the product
and because we offer this kindof unlimited, unconditional, you
know, lifetime replacementwarranty, it all kind of ties
together in that and so thebrand name makes sense.
(09:22):
So just kind of look at it fromthat perspective what do you
want to be as a brand?
Not just what are you going tosell, but what are you going to
be, and then what aspect of thatis going to resonate most with
your customer avatar, and leaninto that as you decide on a
brand name.
Also, these days don't beafraid to use ChatGPT, because
it is really helpful in thiskind of an area where you're
(09:43):
trying to be creative aboutsomething, but there's certain
aspects you want to beconsistent with.
It can be really helpful inthat and giving you some ideas
as to what direction to go.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
Yeah, absolutely.
I think, transitioning into oursecond deadliest, and then I
want to make sure that we coverhere, which is mismanaging
reviews.
So I think a part of this thatyou know kind of I see a lot and
I think is really misunderstoodby brands on Amazon is how
important it is.
Yes, we all want five-starreviews, but actually it's 10
(10:14):
times more important to look athow you can prevent one-star
reviews really seeing yourproduct and your brand from your
customer's perspective andeliminating any of those
roadblocks that they have aroundusing your product in order to
get the result that they want.
And so if you sell enough onAmazon, you're going to get
(10:37):
one-star reviews.
It's just going to happen.
That said, I think, rather thanBecause I've talked to We've had
a number of clients where theyget a one-star review and
they're angry and upset, and Ican understand that initial
response and in some of them itjust sucks.
The feedback that they give isnot accurate.
That said, I have seen some ofthose where, if you take a half
(11:02):
step back, the customer has atleast a semi-legitimate point,
and in those cases, what I wouldstrongly encourage people to do
is you know, sometimes it's aproduct issue and sometimes it's
a messaging issue, and see whatyou can do in order to, you
know, make either your messagingor your product better based on
(11:22):
those negative reviews, andthen also just communicating
with customers and do anythingyou can within terms of service
in order to prevent thoseone-star reviews.
Because, especially, I think,what a lot of brands don't
realize now is that Amazon nolonger has a straight formula
for how they calculate ratingsfor products.
So those one-star reviewsactually from at least what I've
(11:46):
seen, is that they actuallywait more on pulling down a
product's rating than five-starreviews.
So it's not a straight.
Hey, if you have 100 reviewsand X number of percent are
five-star and Y percent areone-star, that whatever that you
know mathematically works outto that's the rating Amazon gets
, it gives you doesn't work likethat anymore.
(12:08):
Amazon kind of puts their thumbon the scale and, at least from
what I've seen, anecdotally isis that you know they tend to
give more weight to negativereviews than they do to positive
reviews.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
Yeah, I think that's probably a fair assessment.
That seems to be my alsoanecdotal evidence would suggest
that One of the things that Ithink is important to point out
is to kind of take a step backfrom that and to really dial in
on.
Yes, negative reviews aredefinitely more disadvantageous
(12:42):
to your brand than five-starreviews are advantageous.
So it is one obvious reason tofocus in on dealing with those
negative reviews and I agreewith you, john, that you know
one of the best ways to do thatis to really think through the
entire process, your entiresales process and also your
post-purchase process, whichhopefully you have, you know
from start to finish.
So, in other words, like yourimages and your title and your
(13:04):
you know your listing yourA-plus content, like your FAQs
within your A-plus content, theinformation that you're feeding
Rufus about your product, sothat people are receiving that
information on the front endwhen they're asking questions
about the product to head offthose one-star reviews and give
customers the information thatthey need to make an informed
decision, first of all, whetheryour product is the right
(13:27):
product to buy, because a lot oftimes you end up with a
one-star review because thecustomer bought your product
thinking it was one thing, whenin reality it's something not
quite that, and then they'reupset because they feel like
they were deceived when inreality maybe they just didn't
read it quite close enough orwhatever.
But if you had been moreconscious about making that
statement known early on, maybeyou could have avoided that.
(13:47):
You know, making sure in yourproduct packaging that you've
got the information that needsto be there and also that
customers actually see it andinteract with it.
You know, just because you'vegot an instructional pamphlet in
your product does not mean thatthe customer actually engages
with that instructional pamphletor even notices that it's there
.
So you know, don't assume thatyou've checked the box because
you put instructions in there.
(14:08):
Make sure that you've done itin such a way that it's nearly
impossible for the customer tointeract with the product
without interacting with theinstructions.
But backing up from that, Ialso want to point out and this
is a very psychological thingbut just to pay attention to and
that is just because Amazon nowlists like it is good that they
do this, but it still isn't thewhole thing Like it used to be.
(14:32):
You know, you had the, you hadthe star rating visual but,
until you actually clicked in tosee the reviews, you couldn't
see like it was 4.7 or 4.3 orwhatever, like you wouldn't know
that.
Now Amazon does show that, atleast in some categories I think
maybe it's all categories nowbut they actually do list that
on the, even in the searchresults.
It'll say 4.7 versus 4.8 orsomething which helps, but still
(14:54):
that visual is there.
And if you're at a 4.8, soyou've got a five-star visual
and you get one negative reviewyou could easily move to a 4.7,
which now has you at a 4.5visual.
That's very different,especially if you're in a
category where many products aresitting in that 4.5 visual.
Right, if you also are a 4.5visual, then you don't look any
(15:17):
better than them, even iftechnically, because they can
have a 4.3 and be a 4.5 starvisual and you're a 4.7 and have
a 4.5 star visual, well,there's a big difference between
those two products.
But visually customers don'tsee that necessarily.
So really paying attention tothose negative reviews and just
how big that differential can beis very important.
(15:38):
So don't ignore that.
But on the flip side of that,as much as you need to deal with
those negative reviews, I alsothink that in your post-purchase
process.
Doing everything that you can totake advantage of opportunities
to encourage your customers toactually give you five-star
reviews is, I think, alsocritical.
Also, take advantage ofopportunities to where you know,
(16:02):
psychologically you can createadvantages that encourage your
customers to decide to leave youthat five star review, even if
you don't ask for it.
Right, like when you do thingsthat they don't expect you to do
.
Like that you wow them with.
Right when you correct mistakesthat they didn't even know that
you made.
You know, I don't know ifanybody's seen these videos, but
(16:24):
where the husband walks aroundthe house and like unscrews
light bulbs and, just, you know,disconnects things.
She's like, hey, I need thisfixed.
And the husband walks in andlike two seconds later he's got
fixed, right, so there is, thereare ways that you can kind of
build that into your processwhere there are mistakes that
happen that you get to correctthat maybe the customer didn't
even notice was a mistake, butyou get to send them an email
(16:46):
and say, hey, you know, by theway, we missed this thing.
You know, don't, don't ignoreopportunities like that where
you can create good feelings inyour customers.
You know that that will resultin those five-star reviews
because they are important.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
I realized that right out of the gate.
One of the things that youmentioned, john, was that you're
going to get five-star reviews,and I definitely, or one-star
reviews, and I definitelysympathize with the pain that
the brand owners that we'recurrently working with.
Every time a one-star review,whether or not it's useful or
even warranted, they hurt, butevery one of them is an
(17:21):
opportunity and, for an example,I have one of the products that
I sold is.
It was a meat injector that wasmuch better than the meat
injectors that are currently onthe market, but I kept getting
one-star reviews and I couldn'tfigure out what it was.
But because we had an audience,because I could actually talk
to people, it was actuallybecause they were putting it
together incorrectly aftercleaning it.
(17:43):
It wasn't an issue with theproduct, although the negative
reviews came through.
As it's, the product is crap.
I had used it once and I had tothrow it away, but it was
actually.
They didn't know how to put itback together properly after
they cleaned it, so it actuallybecame our secondary image.
It became the reason why we hada QR code on the packaging to
kind of walk them through in avideo.
So not only did we figure out away to reverse or go around,
(18:11):
get them before they received aone-star or they received a
one-star experience by lettingthem know how to do it.
But it also increased ouropt-in rate because they saw
like, oh, now I have to watchthis video in order to see how
to do it correctly.
So it made more peopleinterested in scanning the QR
codes that they could watch thatvideo.
But not only did it haltone-star reviews, but I think it
helped our five-star reviewprofile too, just getting it out
(18:32):
in front of them with theanswers to questions that they
didn't even know that theyshould have yet.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
So I think paying attention to the one-star
reviews, no matter howridiculous you think that they
are, and figuring out creativesolutions to minimize them out
of the gate before they happenand in our case it was a
secondary image and a QR codewith the video that had other
effects besides just skirtingaround one-star reviews- yeah,
(18:58):
and I want to make sure that wetouch on something that you know
we talked about before we hitrecord here, which is and I
think you know kind of findingthat you know that that
Goldilocks zone, if you will of,on one hand, you want to make
sure that you're followingAmazon's terms of service,
especially when it comes around,you know, to incentivizing
reviews, and that really meansthat Amazon doesn't allow
incentivizing reviews anymore.
So you know that's somethingthat you want to pay attention
(19:21):
to.
But on the other end, you knowand, mike, I know you brought
this up is that making sure thatyou have a process in place
that works for your brand of,you know, reaching out and
asking for reviews.
And there's, you know it can besomething as simple as Amazon
now has a built in to where,after you know a certain number
of days I think helium 10, andI'm sure there's a bunch of
other plugins that do this aswell where you literally can
(19:42):
push a button and it sends out areview request to somebody and
it just shows them one throughfive stars and then they click
on it and then it takes themover to Amazon for their order
and then they can write whatthat review looks like, and
correct me if I'm wrong on this,but I still think Amazon also
allows either that or you tosend out kind of you know one
(20:05):
customer message around reviews,and of course you have to
there's you know rules aroundwhat you can say in that message
and that type of stuff.
That I don't think we need todive deep into for this
particular episode, but just tohave you know some sort of
system in place that you'reusing on a regular basis to ask
for those reviews.
Because even when you're askingreviews, I think the average
(20:26):
review rate is somewhere between1% to 2%, and I imagine it's a
lot less if you don't have anysort of system in place in order
to ask for reviews.
Speaker 3 (20:35):
Yeah, I think that's really the biggest thing is just
if you're not asking, you'renot getting.
People are not going to leave areview if you don't ask.
The vast majority of people areonly leaving a review because
they had a negative experience.
If you want the people who hada positive experience to leave a
review, then you need to ask.
But also, you know, just goingback to that point, don't expect
(20:56):
a five-star review if youdidn't give them a five-star
experience.
Right, a four-star experienceprobably isn't going to generate
any review at all.
Like, yeah, you'll get some,you know, but it's that
five-star experience that reallygives that.
It puts it over the top.
And that's, I think, the thingyou know.
Make it over the top, make surethat the experience is way
better than they expected it tobe.
(21:16):
And then don't forget to ask,because too many sellers forget
to ask, because too many sellersremember that asking is not the
same as incentivizing.
Those two things are different.
And if you're too afraid to askbecause you're afraid Amazon's
going to see that, think thatyou're incentivizing, then you
are not going to get thosereviews and you're never going
to get the sales that you wantto get.
And so being too afraid ofAmazon is going to hurt your
(21:38):
sales.
And there's a lot of categoriesin which that's true.
You know you can't be so timidand so afraid that you don't
implement some of the thingsthat are truly just good
business and good brand building.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
Yeah, so I do want to move on to our third deadliest
in here, which is, I think, verytimely for everything that's
happening right now tariffs andall that type of stuff.
But also really applies, Ithink, for a lot of brands when
they hit their high season stuff.
But also really applies, Ithink, for a lot of brands when
they hit their high season,which is going out of stock.
(22:11):
And this one seems.
It always surprises me that Ifeel like this is one that,
whether it's because ofmanufacturers or a variety of
issues that I see more than Iwould anticipate that I would
see, and just to understand howpainful this is.
I mean we were just on an officehours with a newer seller that
we were helping out and I meanhis account looks like a ski
slope because you know he hadgood inventory and he was using
(22:31):
ads and optimize listing anddoing all those things right,
and you know sales were allmoving in the right direction,
where you know he doubled andtripled sales in a couple of
months and then he wasn't payingattention to his stock and all
of a sudden his product is closeto out of stock.
So then he pauses ads for three,four weeks because he's like
well, it doesn't make sense toadvertise so that way I can go
(22:53):
out of stock faster, whichthere's a whole discussion about
.
What should you do if you knowyou're going to go out of stock?
That I think we'll probablyhave to save for another episode
.
But just how painful that isand you know, and and I would
also say you know there'slong-term damage that can be
done from that too and just howmuch time and money and effort
(23:14):
it takes to get back to whereyou were from a momentum
standpoint because at the end ofthe day, amazon is very much
momentum platform and we startlooking at that sales velocity.
It can be very expensive, ifnot impossible, to get back to
that sales velocity where youwere before.
So, mike, I know you've hadsome experience with this as
well.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
Yeah, way too much, quite frankly, over the last 10
years.
And every season we think thatwe've kind of got it nailed, and
then there's some new thing youknow COVID, or you know.
It's just been very strange.
But the one thing that I can sayis that you know, if there is
one thing in our business thathas hampered us the most, it's
(23:55):
probably out of stocks quitefrankly, Now it's definitely
harder for a seasonal item,especially if you're a seasonal
item and a brand that is on anupward trajectory, as overall,
but you're seeing these kind ofseasonal transitions,
forecasting can be really tough,and so that's one thing.
(24:15):
So if you have a seasonalproduct, just know, look, even
experienced sellers have troublewith forecasting that.
So, but I would say that one ofthe things that I guess I'm
learning as much as it hurts tohave extra inventory that you're
paying for storage on but youcan't sell yet there is there is
(24:39):
a line that you should cross,let's say, in having that extra
inventory at warehouses that arenot Amazon, because Amazon is
going to charge you a fortune tostore that inventory, even just
on a daily basis, butabsolutely if you go over and
you get long-term storage feesor things like that.
So too much inventory at Amazonis a problem, but if you don't
have some sort of a stagingwarehouse someplace, then that's
(25:02):
problematic, because then youdon't have a way to address
those issues when products startselling faster than you
expected or whatever, and youdon't have any backup.
It's got to come from China,because if it's coming from
China, well, even if it's comingfrom a US manufacturer.
But let's face it, most of us,even with the tariffs, we're
still going to be shipping fromChina for a while.
So if you're coming from China,you've got production time,
(25:26):
maybe even lead time beforeproduction time.
Then, once the production timeis finished, then you got to
wait for a ship, then you got toget on the ship, Then you got
at least two weeks to get overto the US.
You got to get through the port.
You might have two, three, fourweeks to get into Amazon,
because sometimes it's not thatfast.
So just imagine how much time,how much leeway you've got there
that you could be out of stockfor.
You need to have that extrainventory in the States.
(25:48):
And I guess that's where I wouldcome back to the thing that
I've always said and it'sprobably the only thing that has
kept our business afloat as aresult of the mistake that
happened for us with the agencythat we hired and they messed up
our inventory and then thetariffs hit and so it just
became this massive snowball.
We would for sure be out ofbusiness if our margins weren't
(26:09):
relatively good.
Now our margins aren't nearly asgood as they used to be, you
know, with Chinese sellerscoming in and Amazon ads, fees
going up and all that sort ofthing, but they're still decent
and so that's the only thingthat kept us, you know, in a
position where we're going to beable to weather the storm.
So, but if you keep your marginshigh enough, you have room to
store extra inventory to beready, like if you have a
(26:31):
product that's selling well andyou know that it's going well
and there's no reason to assumethat, as long as you keep doing
the things the right way, thatyour sales aren't going to
continue on that trajectory,then make sure you've got
inventory ahead.
You know, I would say make sureyou have at least 90 days of
inventory in the States.
You know, you may not keep 90days at Amazon, but I would keep
(26:51):
90 days of inventory in theStates, maybe even a little more
than that, you know.
So you've got some extra leewaythere to where you, when you
order more product, you've gottime, you know, before, before
it gets there and gets in theAmazon.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
Yeah, and I think that segues really well into you
know, knowing your numbers.
I know that's one thing that wetalked about in kind of the
fourth kind of deadly mistakethat we see brands.
See, Matt, I'm really curiousyou know, from your perspective,
what are a couple of thebiggest numbers that you feel
like Amazon sellers should knowon a regular basis?
Speaker 2 (27:25):
Well, one of them I think that is a sneaky one If
you're not paying a lot ofattention to is our Amazon fees.
I think there's a lot of ways.
I mean, I have another exampleof a product that we did an
analysis on and we're able toreduce fees by a couple of
dollars just by folding theproduct and putting it into a
vacuum sealed bag.
So I think, paying attention tothe tier that you're in, the
(27:47):
size tier that you're in, andconstantly keeping up to date on
that, it was actually an Amazonremeasurement that increased
our fees and it was the way thatthey remeasured.
That was the reason for theincreased fees.
So I think paying attention toyour Amazon fees is one of them
that can be sneaky, but alsojust it's again, it's surprising
(28:09):
to me as we talk to new brandowners and even seasoned brand
owners that that don't reallyunderstand the their
profitability on Amazon.
You know it's easy to calculateyour ACOS and it's easy to
calculate fees onceOS and it'seasy to calculate fees once
they're set in stone, butthere's so many other fees
involved that I think that mostAmazon brand owners don't take
(28:31):
into account or at least aren'tlooking at them on a regular
basis.
As we went through the processwith tariffs and that kind of
stuff.
I think one of the things that Imarked down on my task list to
do on a more regular basis washave conversations with our
manufacturers and, whether it becan we get better terms or we
(28:51):
found another manufacturer as wewere trying to find a backup
that had a little bit betterpricing.
I think constantly looking atand optimizing your supply chain
and asking manufacturers I meana lot of sellers that we talked
to haven't negotiated withtheir manufacturers since they
found them on Alibaba two and ahalf years ago and there's just
a lot of money that's being lefton the table.
(29:13):
But I think, overall, reallyunderstanding all of the fees
that go into selling on Amazonthe new inbound placement fees
and things like that that happenall the time I mean Amazon's
changing things so frequentlythat paying attention to your
numbers on a very regular basislike you know most other types
of businesses, you know sixevery six months or once a year,
(29:34):
but I think on Amazon, I thinkit's important to to be
calculating your contributionmargin and your profitability on
even a monthly basis to makesure that things are in line.
It's just you have to payattention to them more
frequently because of howfrequently Amazon changes.
Speaker 3 (29:47):
In my opinion, yeah, I think that's a fair point is
that the Amazon business is verydifferent in that regard,
because you are at Amazon'smercy on a lot of fronts.
You're advertising thefulfillment fees you know.
I mean storage fees, placementfees, all of those various areas
where Amazon is making, youknow, money.
In fact, I was calculating ittoday and I just it didn't occur
(30:11):
to me previously, which amazesme, but I'm pretty sure Amazon's
making more money per sale thanI'm making per sale.
So that's, that was actually alittle bit demoralizing, but but
but you, you know, you need toknow the numbers, like, for
instance, I know, before westarted the call, you know the
the one that that, john, youwere mentioning was was your,
your cogs and keeping tabs onthat, because obviously tariffs
(30:35):
come into play.
That's part of your cogs,landed cogs.
What are the fees of seacontainers?
Because running a 40-footcontainer, even just in a normal
year, those numbers can runfrom $2,500 for a 40-foot up to
$5,000 or $6,000 for a 40-foot,depending on what time of year
you're trying to ship, and thatobviously is part of your landed
(30:57):
COGS.
And for some products thefreight might be one of the
largest expenses.
Maybe the product itself isfairly inexpensive to produce,
but maybe it's large in volume,say, so it takes up a lot of
space in a container on a perunit basis, and so in that case
your international shippingcosts and maybe even your
(31:18):
domestic inbound shipping costscan be one of the larger
expenses.
So if you're not payingattention to the fluctuations in
that, if you calculated yourcosts in, say, january and then
you don't even look at thoseagain until June, there's a good
chance that those costs are waydifferent now than they were in
January.
And if you're not accountingfor that, you could technically
(31:39):
be selling your product at aloss and not even know,
especially if your margins aretight, and in some markets it's
hard to have a wide margin.
So just really knowing thosenumbers and calculating them
regularly, actually taking thetime to better understand what
those numbers are and how theyshould be calculated.
I think it's not uncommon forsellers to have a
(32:00):
misunderstanding about what anactual say what your COGS is.
They'd be like oh yeah, well,my manufacturing costs right.
Well, yeah, but okay, but youstill got to pay to get it here
and you got to pay the tariffand you got to pay domestic, you
know, to get it in and maybeyou got to pay inbound placement
fees to get into Amazon and allof those things add up to where
maybe you got a $3 item, but bythe time you get it to Amazon
(32:22):
it's a $5 item.
You know CM2, cm3 to get an ideafor how healthy your business
is.
Like Matt mentioned early on inthis conversation that you know
you should really be, even ifyou're not thinking about an
exit, right, you know within thenext year or two, right, you
(32:46):
should be building your businessin such a way that if that
opportunity arises, you're readyfor it.
Right, or if at some point youdecide that it's time, you're
ready for it.
And one of those things is youknow the health of your business
and anybody who's purchasingyour business.
They're not just going to belooking at EBITDA Like.
They're going to pay attentionto what's your CM1, what's your
CM2, what's your CM3.
You know, are you hitting thetargets that you probably should
(33:19):
be hitting?
You know in terms of benchmarks.
So if you don't know what thoseare, what those contribution
margins are, first look up thedefinition of those and what
expenses are calculated in eachone of those and then kind of
ask you know Chad, gbt orsomething like okay, what are
some good benchmark numbers thatI should be shooting for?
Because one of the things thatit does for you is it gives you
a better target for where tostart trying to save money.
Because if your CM1 looks goodbut your CM2 looks bad, well
then your CM3 is probably goingto look bad too.
(33:40):
But if the only thing you lookat it is that end you know CM3
number, you might think, well,I've got to rein in my ad spend
because that's where that'scalculated is in your CM3.
But maybe it's actually CM2.
That's the problem.
You know, and you've got roomto move there, but you don't
even know it because you're notlooking at that number.
So just be careful that youunderstand at each level of your
business.
You know what those numbers areand how you're comparing
(34:02):
against good benchmarks.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
Well, I think that's, you know, a good reason why
this.
Also, you know you need to takesome time to think.
Look at it at a SKU level aswell and think about so this is
something that we like to thinkabout, especially for brands
that have a number of SKUs islooking at, okay, what is the
mission of that product?
Some products are essentiallywhat we call tripwire products
(34:25):
or entry-level products, whereit's just it's something that
gets somebody in the brain, andI think probably the easiest
example I can use this is youknow, one of our clients has a,
has a one pack, a three pack anda 10 pack of you know these.
You know decorative post capsthat they use for decks.
Well, okay, somebody, you know,obviously they get a lot more
(34:45):
clicks and you know a lot moresales on a one pack because the
price is a lot lower.
But usually somebody comes inthey're not going to.
You know, it's pretty rare thatsomebody is like, oh, I just
need one of these.
They usually need, you know,somewhere between five to 15 of
them.
And so you know, if you startlooking at that kind of tripwire
product, you may break even onthat tripwire product.
(35:07):
But then when you start lookingat hey, I'm making really good
margins on my 10 pack because Ihave an optimized you know that
bigger size for a much higherprofit margin, then you know you
really have to look at what'sthe mission of each one of those
products and advertiseaccordingly.
Because we might look at youknow success for that tripwire
(35:27):
product of being breakeven,whereas you know for your more
expensive products where youreally want to drive margin with
them, you may want to see.
You know for your moreexpensive products, where you
really want to drive margin withthem, you may want to see.
You know 20, 30, 40 percentmargin on that product and
you're very selective about whatthat ad strategy would look
like.
So I think that's why it'sreally important to look at, to
know your numbers, not only fromyou know big picture, company
(35:48):
wise, but then also looking atthat even at the skew level.
Let's say, you know what is themission of the SKU in my
business.
Sometimes that also means youlook at it and say, hmm, the SKU
is not doing its job or it'supside down and it might be time
for us to retire that SKU.
Speaker 3 (36:07):
Or it might be time to just change the mission of
the SKU.
But I think that's a reallyimportant point though is
recognizing what is the missionof the SKU, you know.
But I think that's a reallyimportant point though is
recognizing what is the missionof the SKU.
I think it's easy, especiallyfor sellers early on, to assume
that the that the mission, and Idid that, you know.
I'm like, just being honest,you know, like I did that for a
long time, you know, not reallyrecognizing that each product in
my line had a different missionand could have a different
(36:29):
mission other than it shouldhave a big profit, you know.
And if it doesn't have a bigprofit, well then maybe I need
to stop selling it.
Well, not necessarily, you know, like maybe it just needs a
different mission and maybe itwould really perform extremely
well, you know, as a as a lossleader kind of a product or a
tripwire product.
You know it's not performingwell as a profitability driver,
but it may serve another purposeand maybe maybe you can
(36:52):
repurpose it in that way.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
Yeah.
So, moving on to our last ofthe five kind of deadly mistakes
on Amazon is not having anafter-purchase program, and I
think this is one that we'vetalked about quite a bit.
In fact, we even put effortinto and we built a free course
that we offer for this becausewe think it's so important.
When you look at, yes, there'sa lot of things that I like
about Amazon in the sense of Ithink, if you're under $10
million a year in revenue as abrand, I think Amazon is still a
(37:21):
great place to be in the senseof over half the e-commerce
transactions happen there.
When you look at Amazon, 10% to20% conversion rates are very
common and possible, whereas ifyou look at a website, they
might be 1% to 2%, and sothere's a lot of traffic and
Amazon has done a lot of goodthings in order to obviously
make those transactions as easyas possible and to help brands
(37:44):
At the same time.
We've talked about a little bitalready in this episode and I
think, just overall, part of ourmission of Brand Fortress is,
yes, amazon is a great place forgrowth.
It still is in 2025.
That said, you never want tohave all your eggs in one basket
and, at the end of the day, youwant to be the person that has
control over your brand, andthat really means having a way
(38:05):
to contact your customersoutside of Amazon if they decide
to shut down your account forany reason in the future.
So that's the one that I thinkis really important, that I know
we've all kind of talkedoffline about Anything else that
, matt, that you want to add tothat.
Speaker 2 (38:21):
We just got off a phone call just a couple of days
ago with a very high levelseller very successful.
He's in a high level mastermindwith me.
He has a product that isconsumable and people repurchase
on a regular basis and weoffered him a partnership to
where we would offer his productto the audience of a different
(38:45):
brand and then at the end of it,give him the emails from the
partnership every email thatopted in and got his product for
free.
We would give him the emailaddress.
And I was so surprised to hearthat he didn't even really have
any sort of post-purchaseprogram for his products.
I mean, his brand is the exacttype of brand that you would
(39:06):
want this type of an audiencefor in order to leverage.
It's one that people have to goback and repurchase and it's
the type of brand and the typeof category that people want to
be loyal to a brand.
And he didn't have any sort ofprocess in place and it was very
surprising and it re-solidifiedin my mind how important of a
(39:28):
topic this is.
Even though in this podcast weharp on it over and over again,
there are still a lot of sellersout there who aren't putting an
effort into it and it reallydoesn't require that much work.
It does require some upfrontwork, but the benefits I mean I
feel like I'd be beating a deadhorse and when we talk about the
(39:49):
benefits of having thisaudience, but we just
experienced a guy who needs onedesperately, who is experienced
of enough of a seller to knowthat he needs one, but didn't
really have anything in place.
Speaker 3 (40:00):
Well, and I think again, a lot of it comes back to
you know, there's very much afear factor around that.
A lot of sellers are afraid ofwhat Amazon might do if they
have some sort of post-purchaseprocess.
Are they going to find?
Speaker 1 (40:13):
out about it.
Are they going to like?
Speaker 3 (40:15):
it, and, in fairness, if you're a fairly large brand
that's making some really goodmoney on Amazon, then you have a
lot to lose, right?
I mean, if Amazon decides thatthey don't like your
post-purchase.
I think the key there, though,is what you should be more
afraid of is the possibilitythat Amazon finds something else
in your business that theydon't like, or some competitor
(40:35):
files some claim against you.
That may be completely bogus,but all of a sudden turns your
account off at the drop of a hat, and we have all heard horror
stories of companies that were$5, $10, $20 million plus,
companies that got shut downovernight, and it took months
for them to reopen that accountand get it running again.
(40:56):
What do you do in thatsituation if you don't have a
post-purchase process and youdon't have a list?
When this mistake happened withthis agency over our inventory
and the tariff thing came in,and I was looking at our numbers
(41:17):
and realizing there was a veryreal possibility, and, I'll be
frank, that possibility hasn'tcompletely been resolved.
It's still possible.
This goes sideways, but I thinkwe're in a much better position
, but I was really nervous thatour brand might fall, that we
might go bankrupt, but here'sthe thing.
I have 45,000 people on anemail list that trust me and I
(41:43):
can email them anytime I wantand sell them anything I want,
reasonably, and if they can useit, they would buy it because
they trust me.
So I could literally start anew brand overnight and it
wouldn't take a massive amountof capital because I already
have an audience to sell to.
Now maybe I'm not going toimmediately build a business
that is the same size as what Ihave now, you know, in the same
(42:05):
volume of sale, but it wouldcertainly be enough that I can
make a good living on it, andthat honestly, gave me a lot of
comfort knowing that okay, yeah,this thing could go belly up,
but I have the skills that Ihave and I also have this list
that I could go back to and Iknow they would buy from me, you
know, and, and so that's.
There's just a lot of comfortin that.
(42:25):
And if you don't have that, I'mtelling you, man, like you're,
you're in a space where thewaters are rough and you might
not even know it.
Speaker 1 (42:31):
Yeah Well, I think again for listeners out there,
kind of these five deadly sins.
Just going through them againon Amazon is changing your brand
name and all the pain that'sinvolved in that mismanaging
reviews, going out of stock, notknowing your numbers and then
not having an after-purchaseprogram.
The nice thing and I'll put ashameless plug in here is that
(42:52):
we offer an after-purchaseprogram completely for free.
So if you don't have one andyou're like, hey, I don't know
how to start one, I mean wereally run through everything
from how to create that offerwithout violating Amazon's terms
of service to how do I startbuilding that email list?
And I think a lot of brandswhen they start out.
Yeah, you may only get 5% ofyour customers to opt into your
(43:12):
email list, but that'sinfinitely better than what you
have if you don't have an afterpurchase program, which is zero.
So I would just reallyencourage listeners out there,
whether you're using our freecourse or you find something
else out there.
This is one of the ones that Ifeel like a lot of brands have
slept on for way too long and Ireally would encourage you.
Out of these five things, ifone in particular speaks to you,
(43:37):
that's probably the biggest onethat would encourage listeners
to take action on All right Wellguys, fantastic episode and
thank you everybody forlistening and we'll see you next
time.
Welcome everyone to another episode of Brand
Fortress HQ and our TacticsTuesday.
We're excited to be back liveagain on LinkedIn.
So, if you're listening outthere, this is one of the things
that we've done in the past andwe're getting in the habit of
doing is being live on LinkedIn.
So if you have questions everyTuesday at about 2.15 Central
Time, we're working on beinglive on LinkedIn so that way we
(00:22):
can answer those questions liveas we talk about different
topics.
Today, what we're going to betalking about are the five
deadly sins for brands on Amazon, and this is something that,
off mic, we've been talkingquite a bit about as far as kind
of those mistakes that, bothshort-term and long-term, that
we've seen brands making thatwe're working with, and then
(00:43):
also in our own brands, thattype of stuff over the history
of, you know, really growingboth on and off Amazon.
So you know, with that, I think,the first one I want to start
out with because I think Mattand I have actually gone through
quite a bit of pain with acouple of clients around this is
, you know, changing your brandname on Amazon.
You know we've run into acouple of different situations
(01:05):
where, for various reasons,people have needed to change
their brand name, and I wantedto talk real quick about this
because I think this is one ofthose things where it really
pays off in order to get thatbrand name right up front and
talk today a little bit aboutwhat why it's such a big deal
and why it is so painful inorder to change your brand name
(01:27):
later on.
So with that, actually, I'mgoing to hand it over to you,
matt, if you kind of walkthrough kind of your perspective
on this.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Yeah, I mean I think there's a couple of different
reasons that someone, a seller,would have to go and change
their brand name after the factand I can think of a couple of
reasons that I've helped brandswith that were unavoidable.
There were some, and actually Iwas a victim actually a
self-created victim of one thatcaused lots of pain down the
(01:56):
road.
So the first one that I didn'treally think through and I think
it was my either first orsecond brand is I had an LLC
name, that it was a previous LLCthat was tangentially relevant
to the brand that we werelaunching on Amazon.
But I just used the LLC namejust for ease of use when
creating the account, whichcaused a lot of problems later
(02:17):
on.
The other thing, the other bestpractice that I didn't follow
back then, was that I wasactually using my actual
personal Amazon login when Icreated that account, so I used
that same email address, whichagain caused all kinds of issues
down the road.
So that I did it didn't makesense how having the LLC as my
seller name on the listing andit became a blinking red light.
(02:41):
That really annoyed me foreverand ever, and that was the first
time that I went through abrand changeover.
So I think really the point ofthis being one of the deadly
sins and alerting and putting ittop of mind for people is, when
you create your seller account,think of it like what we teach
our new students.
Coming through the program isthink with the end in mind.
(03:02):
So, even if your plan isn't tosell the business anytime soon,
going through the process ofsetting things up like as if you
were and one of those is isyour brand name and making sure
that it matches the LLC and bankaccount and all that kind of
good stuff and for us it didn't.
And, like John said at thebeginning, you know changing the
brand name is such a painfulprocess.
On, on Amazon, we're walkingthrough the process with the
(03:26):
brand that we work with and Idon't know it's about two and a
half month long process.
I mean they do have a lot ofskews, a lot of different
variations, so I think thatcertainly adds to the complexity
and actually the reason whythat brand is changing the brand
name is one of thoseunavoidable reasons.
So it wasn't something thatcould have been thought of in
the beginning, but it certainlyhighlights the complexity of
(03:48):
what it looks like to changeyour brand name on Amazon, so so
yeah, that's the kind of recentexperience that we've been
dealing with here.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Yeah, and I just so a couple of things that I want to
make sure that we cover here,cause I think it's really
important for our brands thatare listening.
So a couple of things to keepin mind here.
The first one is is that againnot legal advice, that said,
when we're looking at just therequirements for brand registry
is to either have a name,trademark or an image mark.
So in this case, or one of thecases with the brands that we
(04:16):
worked with, you know they hadtold us like, hey, basically you
know, our, their product isfairly popular off of Amazon,
but nobody can find it on Amazonbecause they're not ranking for
their brand name and they'restruggling for the brand name to
be put into their title.
And the reason was because theyhad opened their store or they
had registered under a differentbrand name because they didn't
(04:38):
think they could get A trademark.
Lawyer had told them like, hey,this is too similar to another
brand name.
What they didn't realize wasthat they could actually use an
image mark to at least meet therequirements for Amazon.
Well, they kind of worked outwith the lawyers as far as what
the trademark implications werethere, and so solving that
problem helped kind of realigntheir brand, but then, as Matt
(05:01):
was talking about, having tochange their SKUs for one brand
or another essentially meantthat we had to recreate those
SKUs and lose a lot of thehistory that they had for
selling over a couple of yearson those SKUs.
So that means losing yourreviews, that means losing your
sales momentum, that meanslosing your keyword rank.
So, especially if you've been onAmazon for a few years and
(05:22):
you've built up a pretty goodsales volume with the products
that you have, you're kind ofstuck with either having to do
something where you've got tochoose between hey, my brand
name is not in my title, or Ihave to pick a different brand
name that is harder for peopleto find or may not even index
(05:43):
for my own brand, which is notideal or essentially restarting
with those listings on Amazon,and both of those options really
suck, which is why this is oneof the first things that I know
that it may not apply to 80% ofthe people that are listening,
but for that 20% that are inthat boat, really the faster you
can make that switch, thebetter.
(06:04):
When you start looking at along-term investment and then
for the other brands out there,if you're looking at launching
another brand or you're lookingat buying another brand, this is
definitely one of the thingsthat I would look into as far as
making sure that that brandname is brand registered and you
have that aligned witheverything both on and off
Amazon, in order to get all thebenefits that we talk about on
(06:25):
the podcast all the time aboutbeing a brand for long-term
success.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
Yeah, honestly, in a lot of ways, it's all about
avoiding pain.
There's a lot of other benefitsto making sure that you flesh
this out early on, but there's alot of painful results if you
don't and I guess I would say,but there's a lot of painful
results if you don't, and Iguess I would say definitely
dial in on the trademark, makingsure that you can effectively
(06:50):
trademark the name and thatyou're not going to be in a
position where that'sproblematic.
Also, I think, in thatconversation, if what we're
saying is make sure that yousolidify that brand early on and
that you can get it trademarked, and that you can get it
trademarked and that you can getit brand registered, and that
you can, you know, do all thesethings, well then the question
(07:11):
becomes well, okay, what do Ineed to pay attention to in
order to actually decide whatthat brand name is going to be?
You know how do I make thatdetermination, and I don't know
that there's one set answer forevery company, like every
product line, it's different.
However, I would say this Ithink it will help if you take a
step back, like if you alreadyknow, like there's a lot of
(07:33):
things in play here, right, likedo you already know what the
product is that you're selling?
Do you already know, like, doyou have some of those things
lined up?
If you do and I assume ifyou're watching this podcast,
there's a decent chance you kindof already know what you might
want to sell or you're alreadyselling it.
Then the question becomes who isyour ideal avatar?
And then from there you knowand really nailing that down
(07:55):
right, like not just I sell tomen, or not just I sell to
people who hike, or you know,like really, you know we've
talked about this before butmaking sure that you nail down
the details of who that avataris that you're going to sell to,
and then use that to determinewhat that brand name should be,
because it should be a brandname that's going to resonate
with that customer, and I alsobelieve that it should resonate
(08:18):
in a way that taps into whateveryour primary USP is going to be
within your business.
Like, what is your brand goingto be about?
And although, like, let's say,you sell hiking gear, like you
could do something that's hikingrelated.
But you could also step backout of that a little bit and
I'll give you an example likefor our company, you know Proto
(08:41):
Products not that that's like anamazing brand name, but I made
that decision kind of early onwith the thought that we might
break out of the pool categoryat some point.
Now the reality is that wehaven't.
We've stayed in that poolcategory because it was where we
were comfortable and you knowwe're trying to kind of break
out of that at this point.
(09:01):
But the good news is, with thatbrand name I can sell in pretty
much any category I want.
Protel products does not limitme in terms of what category,
but what it does dial in on isthe durability of the product
and because we offer this kindof unlimited, unconditional, you
know, lifetime replacementwarranty, it all kind of ties
together in that and so thebrand name makes sense.
(09:22):
So just kind of look at it fromthat perspective what do you
want to be as a brand?
Not just what are you going tosell, but what are you going to
be, and then what aspect of thatis going to resonate most with
your customer avatar, and leaninto that as you decide on a
brand name.
Also, these days don't beafraid to use ChatGPT, because
it is really helpful in thiskind of an area where you're
(09:43):
trying to be creative aboutsomething, but there's certain
aspects you want to beconsistent with.
It can be really helpful inthat and giving you some ideas
as to what direction to go.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
Yeah, absolutely.
I think, transitioning into oursecond deadliest, and then I
want to make sure that we coverhere, which is mismanaging
reviews.
So I think a part of this thatyou know kind of I see a lot and
I think is really misunderstoodby brands on Amazon is how
important it is.
Yes, we all want five-starreviews, but actually it's 10
(10:14):
times more important to look athow you can prevent one-star
reviews really seeing yourproduct and your brand from your
customer's perspective andeliminating any of those
roadblocks that they have aroundusing your product in order to
get the result that they want.
And so if you sell enough onAmazon, you're going to get
(10:37):
one-star reviews.
It's just going to happen.
That said, I think, rather thanBecause I've talked to We've had
a number of clients where theyget a one-star review and
they're angry and upset, and Ican understand that initial
response and in some of them itjust sucks.
The feedback that they give isnot accurate.
That said, I have seen some ofthose where, if you take a half
(11:02):
step back, the customer has atleast a semi-legitimate point,
and in those cases, what I wouldstrongly encourage people to do
is you know, sometimes it's aproduct issue and sometimes it's
a messaging issue, and see whatyou can do in order to, you
know, make either your messagingor your product better based on
(11:22):
those negative reviews, andthen also just communicating
with customers and do anythingyou can within terms of service
in order to prevent thoseone-star reviews.
Because, especially, I think,what a lot of brands don't
realize now is that Amazon nolonger has a straight formula
for how they calculate ratingsfor products.
So those one-star reviewsactually from at least what I've
(11:46):
seen, is that they actuallywait more on pulling down a
product's rating than five-starreviews.
So it's not a straight.
Hey, if you have 100 reviewsand X number of percent are
five-star and Y percent areone-star, that whatever that you
know mathematically works outto that's the rating Amazon gets
, it gives you doesn't work likethat anymore.
(12:08):
Amazon kind of puts their thumbon the scale and, at least from
what I've seen, anecdotally isis that you know they tend to
give more weight to negativereviews than they do to positive
reviews.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
Yeah, I think that's probably a fair assessment.
That seems to be my alsoanecdotal evidence would suggest
that One of the things that Ithink is important to point out
is to kind of take a step backfrom that and to really dial in
on.
Yes, negative reviews aredefinitely more disadvantageous
(12:42):
to your brand than five-starreviews are advantageous.
So it is one obvious reason tofocus in on dealing with those
negative reviews and I agreewith you, john, that you know
one of the best ways to do thatis to really think through the
entire process, your entiresales process and also your
post-purchase process, whichhopefully you have, you know
from start to finish.
So, in other words, like yourimages and your title and your
(13:04):
you know your listing yourA-plus content, like your FAQs
within your A-plus content, theinformation that you're feeding
Rufus about your product, sothat people are receiving that
information on the front endwhen they're asking questions
about the product to head offthose one-star reviews and give
customers the information thatthey need to make an informed
decision, first of all, whetheryour product is the right
(13:27):
product to buy, because a lot oftimes you end up with a
one-star review because thecustomer bought your product
thinking it was one thing, whenin reality it's something not
quite that, and then they'reupset because they feel like
they were deceived when inreality maybe they just didn't
read it quite close enough orwhatever.
But if you had been moreconscious about making that
statement known early on, maybeyou could have avoided that.
(13:47):
You know, making sure in yourproduct packaging that you've
got the information that needsto be there and also that
customers actually see it andinteract with it.
You know, just because you'vegot an instructional pamphlet in
your product does not mean thatthe customer actually engages
with that instructional pamphletor even notices that it's there
.
So you know, don't assume thatyou've checked the box because
you put instructions in there.
(14:08):
Make sure that you've done itin such a way that it's nearly
impossible for the customer tointeract with the product
without interacting with theinstructions.
But backing up from that, Ialso want to point out and this
is a very psychological thingbut just to pay attention to and
that is just because Amazon nowlists like it is good that they
do this, but it still isn't thewhole thing Like it used to be.
(14:32):
You know, you had the, you hadthe star rating visual but,
until you actually clicked in tosee the reviews, you couldn't
see like it was 4.7 or 4.3 orwhatever, like you wouldn't know
that.
Now Amazon does show that, atleast in some categories I think
maybe it's all categories nowbut they actually do list that
on the, even in the searchresults.
It'll say 4.7 versus 4.8 orsomething which helps, but still
(14:54):
that visual is there.
And if you're at a 4.8, soyou've got a five-star visual
and you get one negative reviewyou could easily move to a 4.7,
which now has you at a 4.5visual.
That's very different,especially if you're in a
category where many products aresitting in that 4.5 visual.
Right, if you also are a 4.5visual, then you don't look any
(15:17):
better than them, even iftechnically, because they can
have a 4.3 and be a 4.5 starvisual and you're a 4.7 and have
a 4.5 star visual, well,there's a big difference between
those two products.
But visually customers don'tsee that necessarily.
So really paying attention tothose negative reviews and just
how big that differential can beis very important.
(15:38):
So don't ignore that.
But on the flip side of that,as much as you need to deal with
those negative reviews, I alsothink that in your post-purchase
process.
Doing everything that you can totake advantage of opportunities
to encourage your customers toactually give you five-star
reviews is, I think, alsocritical.
Also, take advantage ofopportunities to where you know,
(16:02):
psychologically you can createadvantages that encourage your
customers to decide to leave youthat five star review, even if
you don't ask for it.
Right, like when you do thingsthat they don't expect you to do
.
Like that you wow them with.
Right when you correct mistakesthat they didn't even know that
you made.
You know, I don't know ifanybody's seen these videos, but
(16:24):
where the husband walks aroundthe house and like unscrews
light bulbs and, just, you know,disconnects things.
She's like, hey, I need thisfixed.
And the husband walks in andlike two seconds later he's got
fixed, right, so there is, thereare ways that you can kind of
build that into your processwhere there are mistakes that
happen that you get to correctthat maybe the customer didn't
even notice was a mistake, butyou get to send them an email
(16:46):
and say, hey, you know, by theway, we missed this thing.
You know, don't, don't ignoreopportunities like that where
you can create good feelings inyour customers.
You know that that will resultin those five-star reviews
because they are important.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
I realized that right out of the gate.
One of the things that youmentioned, john, was that you're
going to get five-star reviews,and I definitely, or one-star
reviews, and I definitelysympathize with the pain that
the brand owners that we'recurrently working with.
Every time a one-star review,whether or not it's useful or
even warranted, they hurt, butevery one of them is an
(17:21):
opportunity and, for an example,I have one of the products that
I sold is.
It was a meat injector that wasmuch better than the meat
injectors that are currently onthe market, but I kept getting
one-star reviews and I couldn'tfigure out what it was.
But because we had an audience,because I could actually talk
to people, it was actuallybecause they were putting it
together incorrectly aftercleaning it.
(17:43):
It wasn't an issue with theproduct, although the negative
reviews came through.
As it's, the product is crap.
I had used it once and I had tothrow it away, but it was
actually.
They didn't know how to put itback together properly after
they cleaned it, so it actuallybecame our secondary image.
It became the reason why we hada QR code on the packaging to
kind of walk them through in avideo.
So not only did we figure out away to reverse or go around,
(18:11):
get them before they received aone-star or they received a
one-star experience by lettingthem know how to do it.
But it also increased ouropt-in rate because they saw
like, oh, now I have to watchthis video in order to see how
to do it correctly.
So it made more peopleinterested in scanning the QR
codes that they could watch thatvideo.
But not only did it haltone-star reviews, but I think it
helped our five-star reviewprofile too, just getting it out
(18:32):
in front of them with theanswers to questions that they
didn't even know that theyshould have yet.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
So I think paying attention to the one-star
reviews, no matter howridiculous you think that they
are, and figuring out creativesolutions to minimize them out
of the gate before they happenand in our case it was a
secondary image and a QR codewith the video that had other
effects besides just skirtingaround one-star reviews- yeah,
(18:58):
and I want to make sure that wetouch on something that you know
we talked about before we hitrecord here, which is and I
think you know kind of findingthat you know that that
Goldilocks zone, if you will of,on one hand, you want to make
sure that you're followingAmazon's terms of service,
especially when it comes around,you know, to incentivizing
reviews, and that really meansthat Amazon doesn't allow
incentivizing reviews anymore.
So you know that's somethingthat you want to pay attention
(19:21):
to.
But on the other end, you knowand, mike, I know you brought
this up is that making sure thatyou have a process in place
that works for your brand of,you know, reaching out and
asking for reviews.
And there's, you know it can besomething as simple as Amazon
now has a built in to where,after you know a certain number
of days I think helium 10, andI'm sure there's a bunch of
other plugins that do this aswell where you literally can
(19:42):
push a button and it sends out areview request to somebody and
it just shows them one throughfive stars and then they click
on it and then it takes themover to Amazon for their order
and then they can write whatthat review looks like, and
correct me if I'm wrong on this,but I still think Amazon also
allows either that or you tosend out kind of you know one
(20:05):
customer message around reviews,and of course you have to
there's you know rules aroundwhat you can say in that message
and that type of stuff.
That I don't think we need todive deep into for this
particular episode, but just tohave you know some sort of
system in place that you'reusing on a regular basis to ask
for those reviews.
Because even when you're askingreviews, I think the average
(20:26):
review rate is somewhere between1% to 2%, and I imagine it's a
lot less if you don't have anysort of system in place in order
to ask for reviews.
Speaker 3 (20:35):
Yeah, I think that's really the biggest thing is just
if you're not asking, you'renot getting.
People are not going to leave areview if you don't ask.
The vast majority of people areonly leaving a review because
they had a negative experience.
If you want the people who hada positive experience to leave a
review, then you need to ask.
But also, you know, just goingback to that point, don't expect
(20:56):
a five-star review if youdidn't give them a five-star
experience.
Right, a four-star experienceprobably isn't going to generate
any review at all.
Like, yeah, you'll get some,you know, but it's that
five-star experience that reallygives that.
It puts it over the top.
And that's, I think, the thingyou know.
Make it over the top, make surethat the experience is way
better than they expected it tobe.
(21:16):
And then don't forget to ask,because too many sellers forget
to ask, because too many sellersremember that asking is not the
same as incentivizing.
Those two things are different.
And if you're too afraid to askbecause you're afraid Amazon's
going to see that, think thatyou're incentivizing, then you
are not going to get thosereviews and you're never going
to get the sales that you wantto get.
And so being too afraid ofAmazon is going to hurt your
(21:38):
sales.
And there's a lot of categoriesin which that's true.
You know you can't be so timidand so afraid that you don't
implement some of the thingsthat are truly just good
business and good brand building.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
Yeah, so I do want to move on to our third deadliest
in here, which is, I think, verytimely for everything that's
happening right now tariffs andall that type of stuff.
But also really applies, Ithink, for a lot of brands when
they hit their high season stuff.
But also really applies, Ithink, for a lot of brands when
they hit their high season,which is going out of stock.
(22:11):
And this one seems.
It always surprises me that Ifeel like this is one that,
whether it's because ofmanufacturers or a variety of
issues that I see more than Iwould anticipate that I would
see, and just to understand howpainful this is.
I mean we were just on an officehours with a newer seller that
we were helping out and I meanhis account looks like a ski
slope because you know he hadgood inventory and he was using
(22:31):
ads and optimize listing anddoing all those things right,
and you know sales were allmoving in the right direction,
where you know he doubled andtripled sales in a couple of
months and then he wasn't payingattention to his stock and all
of a sudden his product is closeto out of stock.
So then he pauses ads for three,four weeks because he's like
well, it doesn't make sense toadvertise so that way I can go
(22:53):
out of stock faster, whichthere's a whole discussion about
.
What should you do if you knowyou're going to go out of stock?
That I think we'll probablyhave to save for another episode
.
But just how painful that isand you know, and and I would
also say you know there'slong-term damage that can be
done from that too and just howmuch time and money and effort
(23:14):
it takes to get back to whereyou were from a momentum
standpoint because at the end ofthe day, amazon is very much
momentum platform and we startlooking at that sales velocity.
It can be very expensive, ifnot impossible, to get back to
that sales velocity where youwere before.
So, mike, I know you've hadsome experience with this as
well.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
Yeah, way too much, quite frankly, over the last 10
years.
And every season we think thatwe've kind of got it nailed, and
then there's some new thing youknow COVID, or you know.
It's just been very strange.
But the one thing that I can sayis that you know, if there is
one thing in our business thathas hampered us the most, it's
(23:55):
probably out of stocks quitefrankly, Now it's definitely
harder for a seasonal item,especially if you're a seasonal
item and a brand that is on anupward trajectory, as overall,
but you're seeing these kind ofseasonal transitions,
forecasting can be really tough,and so that's one thing.
(24:15):
So if you have a seasonalproduct, just know, look, even
experienced sellers have troublewith forecasting that.
So, but I would say that one ofthe things that I guess I'm
learning as much as it hurts tohave extra inventory that you're
paying for storage on but youcan't sell yet there is there is
(24:39):
a line that you should cross,let's say, in having that extra
inventory at warehouses that arenot Amazon, because Amazon is
going to charge you a fortune tostore that inventory, even just
on a daily basis, butabsolutely if you go over and
you get long-term storage feesor things like that.
So too much inventory at Amazonis a problem, but if you don't
have some sort of a stagingwarehouse someplace, then that's
(25:02):
problematic, because then youdon't have a way to address
those issues when products startselling faster than you
expected or whatever, and youdon't have any backup.
It's got to come from China,because if it's coming from
China, well, even if it's comingfrom a US manufacturer.
But let's face it, most of us,even with the tariffs, we're
still going to be shipping fromChina for a while.
So if you're coming from China,you've got production time,
(25:26):
maybe even lead time beforeproduction time.
Then, once the production timeis finished, then you got to
wait for a ship, then you got toget on the ship, Then you got
at least two weeks to get overto the US.
You got to get through the port.
You might have two, three, fourweeks to get into Amazon,
because sometimes it's not thatfast.
So just imagine how much time,how much leeway you've got there
that you could be out of stockfor.
You need to have that extrainventory in the States.
(25:48):
And I guess that's where I wouldcome back to the thing that
I've always said and it'sprobably the only thing that has
kept our business afloat as aresult of the mistake that
happened for us with the agencythat we hired and they messed up
our inventory and then thetariffs hit and so it just
became this massive snowball.
We would for sure be out ofbusiness if our margins weren't
(26:09):
relatively good.
Now our margins aren't nearly asgood as they used to be, you
know, with Chinese sellerscoming in and Amazon ads, fees
going up and all that sort ofthing, but they're still decent
and so that's the only thingthat kept us, you know, in a
position where we're going to beable to weather the storm.
So, but if you keep your marginshigh enough, you have room to
store extra inventory to beready, like if you have a
(26:31):
product that's selling well andyou know that it's going well
and there's no reason to assumethat, as long as you keep doing
the things the right way, thatyour sales aren't going to
continue on that trajectory,then make sure you've got
inventory ahead.
You know, I would say make sureyou have at least 90 days of
inventory in the States.
You know, you may not keep 90days at Amazon, but I would keep
(26:51):
90 days of inventory in theStates, maybe even a little more
than that, you know.
So you've got some extra leewaythere to where you, when you
order more product, you've gottime, you know, before, before
it gets there and gets in theAmazon.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
Yeah, and I think that segues really well into you
know, knowing your numbers.
I know that's one thing that wetalked about in kind of the
fourth kind of deadly mistakethat we see brands.
See, Matt, I'm really curiousyou know, from your perspective,
what are a couple of thebiggest numbers that you feel
like Amazon sellers should knowon a regular basis?
Speaker 2 (27:25):
Well, one of them I think that is a sneaky one If
you're not paying a lot ofattention to is our Amazon fees.
I think there's a lot of ways.
I mean, I have another exampleof a product that we did an
analysis on and we're able toreduce fees by a couple of
dollars just by folding theproduct and putting it into a
vacuum sealed bag.
So I think, paying attention tothe tier that you're in, the
(27:47):
size tier that you're in, andconstantly keeping up to date on
that, it was actually an Amazonremeasurement that increased
our fees and it was the way thatthey remeasured.
That was the reason for theincreased fees.
So I think paying attention toyour Amazon fees is one of them
that can be sneaky, but alsojust it's again, it's surprising
(28:09):
to me as we talk to new brandowners and even seasoned brand
owners that that don't reallyunderstand the their
profitability on Amazon.
You know it's easy to calculateyour ACOS and it's easy to
calculate fees onceOS and it'seasy to calculate fees once
they're set in stone, butthere's so many other fees
involved that I think that mostAmazon brand owners don't take
(28:31):
into account or at least aren'tlooking at them on a regular
basis.
As we went through the processwith tariffs and that kind of
stuff.
I think one of the things that Imarked down on my task list to
do on a more regular basis washave conversations with our
manufacturers and, whether it becan we get better terms or we
(28:51):
found another manufacturer as wewere trying to find a backup
that had a little bit betterpricing.
I think constantly looking atand optimizing your supply chain
and asking manufacturers I meana lot of sellers that we talked
to haven't negotiated withtheir manufacturers since they
found them on Alibaba two and ahalf years ago and there's just
a lot of money that's being lefton the table.
(29:13):
But I think, overall, reallyunderstanding all of the fees
that go into selling on Amazonthe new inbound placement fees
and things like that that happenall the time I mean Amazon's
changing things so frequentlythat paying attention to your
numbers on a very regular basislike you know most other types
of businesses, you know sixevery six months or once a year,
(29:34):
but I think on Amazon, I thinkit's important to to be
calculating your contributionmargin and your profitability on
even a monthly basis to makesure that things are in line.
It's just you have to payattention to them more
frequently because of howfrequently Amazon changes.
Speaker 3 (29:47):
In my opinion, yeah, I think that's a fair point is
that the Amazon business is verydifferent in that regard,
because you are at Amazon'smercy on a lot of fronts.
You're advertising thefulfillment fees you know.
I mean storage fees, placementfees, all of those various areas
where Amazon is making, youknow, money.
In fact, I was calculating ittoday and I just it didn't occur
(30:11):
to me previously, which amazesme, but I'm pretty sure Amazon's
making more money per sale thanI'm making per sale.
So that's, that was actually alittle bit demoralizing, but but
but you, you know, you need toknow the numbers, like, for
instance, I know, before westarted the call, you know the
the one that that, john, youwere mentioning was was your,
your cogs and keeping tabs onthat, because obviously tariffs
(30:35):
come into play.
That's part of your cogs,landed cogs.
What are the fees of seacontainers?
Because running a 40-footcontainer, even just in a normal
year, those numbers can runfrom $2,500 for a 40-foot up to
$5,000 or $6,000 for a 40-foot,depending on what time of year
you're trying to ship, and thatobviously is part of your landed
(30:57):
COGS.
And for some products thefreight might be one of the
largest expenses.
Maybe the product itself isfairly inexpensive to produce,
but maybe it's large in volume,say, so it takes up a lot of
space in a container on a perunit basis, and so in that case
your international shippingcosts and maybe even your
(31:18):
domestic inbound shipping costscan be one of the larger
expenses.
So if you're not payingattention to the fluctuations in
that, if you calculated yourcosts in, say, january and then
you don't even look at thoseagain until June, there's a good
chance that those costs are waydifferent now than they were in
January.
And if you're not accountingfor that, you could technically
(31:39):
be selling your product at aloss and not even know,
especially if your margins aretight, and in some markets it's
hard to have a wide margin.
So just really knowing thosenumbers and calculating them
regularly, actually taking thetime to better understand what
those numbers are and how theyshould be calculated.
I think it's not uncommon forsellers to have a
(32:00):
misunderstanding about what anactual say what your COGS is.
They'd be like oh yeah, well,my manufacturing costs right.
Well, yeah, but okay, but youstill got to pay to get it here
and you got to pay the tariffand you got to pay domestic, you
know, to get it in and maybeyou got to pay inbound placement
fees to get into Amazon and allof those things add up to where
maybe you got a $3 item, but bythe time you get it to Amazon
(32:22):
it's a $5 item.
You know CM2, cm3 to get an ideafor how healthy your business
is.
Like Matt mentioned early on inthis conversation that you know
you should really be, even ifyou're not thinking about an
exit, right, you know within thenext year or two, right, you
(32:46):
should be building your businessin such a way that if that
opportunity arises, you're readyfor it.
Right, or if at some point youdecide that it's time, you're
ready for it.
And one of those things is youknow the health of your business
and anybody who's purchasingyour business.
They're not just going to belooking at EBITDA Like.
They're going to pay attentionto what's your CM1, what's your
CM2, what's your CM3.
You know, are you hitting thetargets that you probably should
(33:19):
be hitting?
You know in terms of benchmarks.
So if you don't know what thoseare, what those contribution
margins are, first look up thedefinition of those and what
expenses are calculated in eachone of those and then kind of
ask you know Chad, gbt orsomething like okay, what are
some good benchmark numbers thatI should be shooting for?
Because one of the things thatit does for you is it gives you
a better target for where tostart trying to save money.
Because if your CM1 looks goodbut your CM2 looks bad, well
then your CM3 is probably goingto look bad too.
(33:40):
But if the only thing you lookat it is that end you know CM3
number, you might think, well,I've got to rein in my ad spend
because that's where that'scalculated is in your CM3.
But maybe it's actually CM2.
That's the problem.
You know, and you've got roomto move there, but you don't
even know it because you're notlooking at that number.
So just be careful that youunderstand at each level of your
business.
You know what those numbers areand how you're comparing
(34:02):
against good benchmarks.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
Well, I think that's, you know, a good reason why
this.
Also, you know you need to takesome time to think.
Look at it at a SKU level aswell and think about so this is
something that we like to thinkabout, especially for brands
that have a number of SKUs islooking at, okay, what is the
mission of that product?
Some products are essentiallywhat we call tripwire products
(34:25):
or entry-level products, whereit's just it's something that
gets somebody in the brain, andI think probably the easiest
example I can use this is youknow, one of our clients has a,
has a one pack, a three pack anda 10 pack of you know these.
You know decorative post capsthat they use for decks.
Well, okay, somebody, you know,obviously they get a lot more
(34:45):
clicks and you know a lot moresales on a one pack because the
price is a lot lower.
But usually somebody comes inthey're not going to.
You know, it's pretty rare thatsomebody is like, oh, I just
need one of these.
They usually need, you know,somewhere between five to 15 of
them.
And so you know, if you startlooking at that kind of tripwire
product, you may break even onthat tripwire product.
(35:07):
But then when you start lookingat hey, I'm making really good
margins on my 10 pack because Ihave an optimized you know that
bigger size for a much higherprofit margin, then you know you
really have to look at what'sthe mission of each one of those
products and advertiseaccordingly.
Because we might look at youknow success for that tripwire
(35:27):
product of being breakeven,whereas you know for your more
expensive products where youreally want to drive margin with
them, you may want to see.
You know for your moreexpensive products, where you
really want to drive margin withthem, you may want to see.
You know 20, 30, 40 percentmargin on that product and
you're very selective about whatthat ad strategy would look
like.
So I think that's why it'sreally important to look at, to
know your numbers, not only fromyou know big picture, company
(35:48):
wise, but then also looking atthat even at the skew level.
Let's say, you know what is themission of the SKU in my
business.
Sometimes that also means youlook at it and say, hmm, the SKU
is not doing its job or it'supside down and it might be time
for us to retire that SKU.
Speaker 3 (36:07):
Or it might be time to just change the mission of
the SKU.
But I think that's a reallyimportant point though is
recognizing what is the missionof the SKU, you know.
But I think that's a reallyimportant point though is
recognizing what is the missionof the SKU.
I think it's easy, especiallyfor sellers early on, to assume
that the that the mission, and Idid that, you know.
I'm like, just being honest,you know, like I did that for a
long time, you know, not reallyrecognizing that each product in
my line had a different missionand could have a different
(36:29):
mission other than it shouldhave a big profit, you know.
And if it doesn't have a bigprofit, well then maybe I need
to stop selling it.
Well, not necessarily, you know, like maybe it just needs a
different mission and maybe itwould really perform extremely
well, you know, as a as a lossleader kind of a product or a
tripwire product.
You know it's not performingwell as a profitability driver,
but it may serve another purposeand maybe maybe you can
(36:52):
repurpose it in that way.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
Yeah.
So, moving on to our last ofthe five kind of deadly mistakes
on Amazon is not having anafter-purchase program, and I
think this is one that we'vetalked about quite a bit.
In fact, we even put effortinto and we built a free course
that we offer for this becausewe think it's so important.
When you look at, yes, there'sa lot of things that I like
about Amazon in the sense of Ithink, if you're under $10
million a year in revenue as abrand, I think Amazon is still a
(37:21):
great place to be in the senseof over half the e-commerce
transactions happen there.
When you look at Amazon, 10% to20% conversion rates are very
common and possible, whereas ifyou look at a website, they
might be 1% to 2%, and sothere's a lot of traffic and
Amazon has done a lot of goodthings in order to obviously
make those transactions as easyas possible and to help brands
(37:44):
At the same time.
We've talked about a little bitalready in this episode and I
think, just overall, part of ourmission of Brand Fortress is,
yes, amazon is a great place forgrowth.
It still is in 2025.
That said, you never want tohave all your eggs in one basket
and, at the end of the day, youwant to be the person that has
control over your brand, andthat really means having a way
(38:05):
to contact your customersoutside of Amazon if they decide
to shut down your account forany reason in the future.
So that's the one that I thinkis really important, that I know
we've all kind of talkedoffline about Anything else that
, matt, that you want to add tothat.
Speaker 2 (38:21):
We just got off a phone call just a couple of days
ago with a very high levelseller very successful.
He's in a high level mastermindwith me.
He has a product that isconsumable and people repurchase
on a regular basis and weoffered him a partnership to
where we would offer his productto the audience of a different
(38:45):
brand and then at the end of it,give him the emails from the
partnership every email thatopted in and got his product for
free.
We would give him the emailaddress.
And I was so surprised to hearthat he didn't even really have
any sort of post-purchaseprogram for his products.
I mean, his brand is the exacttype of brand that you would
(39:06):
want this type of an audiencefor in order to leverage.
It's one that people have to goback and repurchase and it's
the type of brand and the typeof category that people want to
be loyal to a brand.
And he didn't have any sort ofprocess in place and it was very
surprising and it re-solidifiedin my mind how important of a
(39:28):
topic this is.
Even though in this podcast weharp on it over and over again,
there are still a lot of sellersout there who aren't putting an
effort into it and it reallydoesn't require that much work.
It does require some upfrontwork, but the benefits I mean I
feel like I'd be beating a deadhorse and when we talk about the
(39:49):
benefits of having thisaudience, but we just
experienced a guy who needs onedesperately, who is experienced
of enough of a seller to knowthat he needs one, but didn't
really have anything in place.
Speaker 3 (40:00):
Well, and I think again, a lot of it comes back to
you know, there's very much afear factor around that.
A lot of sellers are afraid ofwhat Amazon might do if they
have some sort of post-purchaseprocess.
Are they going to find?
Speaker 1 (40:13):
out about it.
Are they going to like?
Speaker 3 (40:15):
it, and, in fairness, if you're a fairly large brand
that's making some really goodmoney on Amazon, then you have a
lot to lose, right?
I mean, if Amazon decides thatthey don't like your
post-purchase.
I think the key there, though,is what you should be more
afraid of is the possibilitythat Amazon finds something else
in your business that theydon't like, or some competitor
(40:35):
files some claim against you.
That may be completely bogus,but all of a sudden turns your
account off at the drop of a hat, and we have all heard horror
stories of companies that were$5, $10, $20 million plus,
companies that got shut downovernight, and it took months
for them to reopen that accountand get it running again.
(40:56):
What do you do in thatsituation if you don't have a
post-purchase process and youdon't have a list?
When this mistake happened withthis agency over our inventory
and the tariff thing came in,and I was looking at our numbers
(41:17):
and realizing there was a veryreal possibility, and, I'll be
frank, that possibility hasn'tcompletely been resolved.
It's still possible.
This goes sideways, but I thinkwe're in a much better position
, but I was really nervous thatour brand might fall, that we
might go bankrupt, but here'sthe thing.
I have 45,000 people on anemail list that trust me and I
(41:43):
can email them anytime I wantand sell them anything I want,
reasonably, and if they can useit, they would buy it because
they trust me.
So I could literally start anew brand overnight and it
wouldn't take a massive amountof capital because I already
have an audience to sell to.
Now maybe I'm not going toimmediately build a business
that is the same size as what Ihave now, you know, in the same
(42:05):
volume of sale, but it wouldcertainly be enough that I can
make a good living on it, andthat honestly, gave me a lot of
comfort knowing that okay, yeah,this thing could go belly up,
but I have the skills that Ihave and I also have this list
that I could go back to and Iknow they would buy from me, you
know, and, and so that's.
There's just a lot of comfortin that.
(42:25):
And if you don't have that, I'mtelling you, man, like you're,
you're in a space where thewaters are rough and you might
not even know it.
Speaker 1 (42:31):
Yeah Well, I think again for listeners out there,
kind of these five deadly sins.
Just going through them againon Amazon is changing your brand
name and all the pain that'sinvolved in that mismanaging
reviews, going out of stock, notknowing your numbers and then
not having an after-purchaseprogram.
The nice thing and I'll put ashameless plug in here is that
(42:52):
we offer an after-purchaseprogram completely for free.
So if you don't have one andyou're like, hey, I don't know
how to start one, I mean wereally run through everything
from how to create that offerwithout violating Amazon's terms
of service to how do I startbuilding that email list?
And I think a lot of brandswhen they start out.
Yeah, you may only get 5% ofyour customers to opt into your
(43:12):
email list, but that'sinfinitely better than what you
have if you don't have an afterpurchase program, which is zero.
So I would just reallyencourage listeners out there,
whether you're using our freecourse or you find something
else out there.
This is one of the ones that Ifeel like a lot of brands have
slept on for way too long and Ireally would encourage you.
Out of these five things, ifone in particular speaks to you,
(43:37):
that's probably the biggest onethat would encourage listeners
to take action on All right Wellguys, fantastic episode and
thank you everybody forlistening and we'll see you next
time.
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