July 22, 2024 • 46 mins
Join us as we host Steven Pope, the visionary founder of My Amazon Guy, who has revolutionized the Amazon agency landscape by managing over $800 million in sales. Discover how Steven’s multifaceted background as a reporter, marketer, and educator has equipped him with the skills to navigate the complexities of the Amazon marketplace. Through his inspiring journey, including the launch of his soap brand Age of Sage, Stephen shares invaluable insights on the unique nature of Amazon branding and why he prefers U.S. manufacturing over outsourcing to China.
Steven reveals practical strategies for optimizing your product images for maximum impact. He explains how incorporating keywords directly into your main image can dramatically boost your click-through rates and conversions. Using real-life examples, he describes how visually showcasing all aspects of a product can lead to significant sales increases. From the importance of secondary images to leveraging A-plus content, Steven breaks down the essentials of creating a compelling image stack that resonates with customers and drives engagement.
Advertising on Amazon doesn't have to be a mystery. Steven walks us through the intricacies of Amazon PPC campaigns and the importance of advertising every product, no matter its performance. With tips on setting up auto catch-all campaigns and the strategy of never negating successful keywords, you’ll learn how to optimize your advertising efforts for the best returns. He also discusses defensive spending on branded keywords and the potential of TikTok for brand promotion, understanding Amazon's strategic moves in response to emerging platforms like TikTok and Shopify. Don’t miss out on these actionable insights to supercharge your Amazon strategy!
You can learn more about Steve and My Amazon Guy in the following links:
https://myamazonguy.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/steven-pope/
https://youtube.com/myamazonguy
Want to chat with us about this podcast? Send us a text message here
The Planet Amazon podcast, brought to you by Phelps United, addresses all things Amazon and other eCommerce marketplaces. In each episode, we talk with Brands, Agencies, and Sellers about Amazon news, new features, policies, brand policies, logistics, marketing, issues, and challenges, among other topics.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Announcement (00:00):
Welcome to the Planet Amazon podcast with Adam
Shaffer, where we explore theworld of Amazon and other
e-commerce marketplaces.
Join us as we delve into thelatest strategies and tactics
for successful selling on theworld's largest online
marketplace.
Adam Shaffer (00:17):
Hello everybody, I'm Adam Shaffer and welcome to
Planet Amazon, where we talkabout all things Amazon and
e-commerce.
Today, we have a very specialguest joining us, someone who
has made a significant impact inthe Amazon FBA community.
We're thrilled to welcomeSteven Pope, the founder of My
Amazon Guy.
Steven Pope is a visionaryentrepreneur and the driving
(00:40):
force behind My Amazon Guy, anAmazon agency renowned for its
ability to get products seen andsold.
They have a proven track record, and My Amazon Guy helps brands
unlock their full salespotential by optimizing listings
, managing PPC and SEO and theircatalogs.
Steven is also the host of avery popular podcast that I
(01:05):
listen to and a YouTube channelcalled My Amazon Guy, where he
shares his wealth of knowledgeand insights with a wide
audience.
Please join me in welcomingSteven Pope to Planet Amazon.
Welcome, Steven, hello.
Thanks for having me.
So how are you today?
And thanks for joining.
What is up?
Steven Pope (01:24):
How are you today and thanks for joining.
What is up Well, other than hotAtlanta weather.
Over here I'm having a goodtime getting my tan on.
Just got back from the Bahamaswith my five kids and ready to
roll.
Adam Shaffer (01:33):
I'm glad you're back and I'm glad you had no
hurricanes.
That's always a bummer.
I had a friend that was on hisway to Belize and the night
before he had to flip that tripand move it somewhere else
because of the hurricane coming.
So I'm glad you had a goodholiday.
So I've been following you fora while.
I listened to your show when Iwas getting into the biz and you
(01:55):
know you taught me a lot andyou know you bring it on with
attitude.
So I really do enjoy listeningto you.
So you have a great personality.
You'll talk yeah, yeah, forsure, listening to you.
So you have a great personality.
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
And so you know why don't westart with just telling us a
little bit more about yourbackground, because you've been
doing this for a while and howyou got this my Amazon Guy thing
going Well.
Steven Pope (02:17):
I have been a reporter, I've been a marketer,
I've been an educator, and todayI highly focus on trying to
drive behavior right.
So now I run an HR companycalled my Amazon guy, this 548
person agency, and so it's beena journey of new skills.
(02:38):
I learned how to build a brandon Amazon.
I learned how to build anagency.
I learned how to start a salesoutbound process for the first
time a couple of years ago, andso today we gross more than $20
million as an agency.
We help manage over $800million on the Amazon platform,
and what really gets me up everysingle day is that I just love
(03:00):
leveling up life and I playvideo games and just like life,
life is a video game and if youdon't go to that next level, it
just it doesn't feel right,right, Like you gotta.
Every single day, it's gotta besomething smaller, bigger,
better, even if it's anincremental game, and and my
whole goal is to accelerateprosperity to everything around
me.
Adam Shaffer (03:21):
Well, hallelujah, that sounds great.
The video games.
I stopped playing video gamesafter Intellivision.
I don't know if you rememberthat I might be a little older
than you, but it was like Atarithen Intellivision and then I
stopped.
Steven Pope (03:33):
But you mentioned-.
That's old school old schooland I'm an old man, I'm an old
man man.
Your business must be yourvideo game or your two daughters
no, it's the daughters.
Adam Shaffer (03:51):
keep me going.
Hey, so you've mentionedbranding on Amazon and you
learned that magic, but howimportant really is branding on
Amazon and how do you build astrong brand?
I mean, everybody wants to havea great brand on Amazon, but
how do you do it, man Well?
Steven Pope (04:00):
I think one of my favorite questions to ask when I
get asked this question.
To turn around on you for asecond what was the last item
you bought on Amazon?
Adam Shaffer (04:10):
Oh, I'll show it to you.
It's like a screwdriver, it's amini screwdriver.
A screwdriver.
Steven Pope (04:14):
What was the name of the brand?
I don't know Exactly.
Amazon killed brands and everytime I've ever asked this
question, nobody can answer whatthe item that they last bought.
Now we have a brand name there.
You can't even see it when ohno, I couldn't pronounce it.
Yeah, it could be some Chinesebrand, for all we know.
(04:35):
And the point is that to have astrong brand on Amazon doesn't
necessarily mean people rememberyour brand.
They might remember theexperience, but they don't
remember your brand, and so,because of that, a lot of the
things that you might have readin a business book over time or
heard from somebody on stagetalking about how important
(04:57):
branding is, it's a totallydifferent thing today.
So I launched a soap brand onAmazon called Age of Sage.
Now this is after one of mykids.
This is my daughter.
She's five.
You can see the avatar isbasically just like her.
It's made after her, and so Iwas trying to figure out how to
manufacture stuff in the States,because I hated working in
(05:19):
China.
I visited China.
I went to the Canton Fair.
It was a miserable experience.
The Chinese people aremiserable over there.
When I visited them, they mademe feel miserable while I was
there.
I was like, why am I doing thisto myself?
So I was really trying tofigure out how can I manufacture
stuff in the States, and I'dalready tried to launch a hot
sauce and that was a failure,because when I shipped it into
(05:39):
Amazon, I paid Amazon to do theprep work.
And this was before I was bigand well-known.
This was seven years, eightyears ago, and I was doing this
out of my garage and I shippedin a thousand of these and I
paid Amazon to do the prep work.
So they put the bubble wraparound it, they slap on the F
and skew and then they shippedit out in padded envelopes and I
(06:00):
started getting my brother andmy family and everybody that was
buying it on launch day, andthere was hot sauce shards
everywhere.
This is a five pound glassbottle, and so I've experienced
a lot of you know problemsselling on Amazon, and I've
asked myself the question likeis Amazon dumb Right?
(06:21):
Does Jeff Bezos not know how toset up a system?
And clearly he does, because hewouldn't be the billionaire he
wasn't today If that wasn't thecase.
Amazon Prime and logistics andall the FBA facilities they
speak for themselves, but whenit comes to the selling
experience as an Amazon seller,they don't give a shit about us.
(06:42):
They don't care at all.
They haven't done anything tohelp sellers.
And so while I discovered this,before I even started my agency
, I started to have panicattacks about what was going to
happen next.
Is Amazon going to suspend myaccount?
Am I going to have my listingyanked and on Black Friday, know
(07:02):
my?
On Black Friday last year,amazon took down all of my
tumblers all of them.
They delisted you Delisted theentire subcategory, right.
So parody tumblers does notexist on Amazon anymore.
I wasn't the only one affected.
I just happened to be theindustry leader, so obviously it
was like a giant middle fingerto me.
But I lost a quarter milliondollars on that problem, right,
(07:26):
and I want to be very clear Ithink Amazon is worth doing, but
the reason why I talk aboutthese challenges is because it's
not passive income and I havefound that when I start talking
about these challenges, otherpeople have also experienced
them and you know we need alittle bit of business therapy
to go around to deal with allthis.
And you know we need a littlebit of business therapy to go
around to deal with all this.
So I know that was a longanswer to your branding question
(07:47):
, but bottom line is, yes, Ihave a brand, I have Age of Sage
, and I put it on the logo andit looks cool, but nobody goes
on Amazon and says I want to buyAge of Sage.
Now, a thousand people a monthdo to be clear.
But that's not generating mostof my income, right.
Most of my income is beinggenerated off of non-brand
keywords like artisan soap orsoap for men, and those are the
(08:10):
keywords that drive the business, and so, because of that, when
somebody is trying to debatewhether I'm going to buy an Age
of Sage product or Dr Squatch orthe 20 other lookalikes,
they're making the decisionbased off, not the brand,
typically.
Adam Shaffer (08:24):
So, outside of like Apple or DJI for drones or
cameras, you get to all theseother brands, and there's
millions of three-piece sellersout there selling on Amazon.
Is the brand, then, theexperience the customer gets
when they buy your product withthe hopes that they continue to
buy it?
Steven Pope (08:44):
Maybe because I think a lot of times you
associate the experience toAmazon and that's the brand
right.
So, like, amazon has usurpedour direct correlation, our
direct relationship with theconsumer, and so your focal
points as a business owner, as abrand owner on Amazon have to
(09:05):
align or shift with thatunderstanding.
So, instead of trying to hyperfocus on brand and all that,
instead you need to focus onoptimization and how your main
image looks Right.
So I'm very outspoken about howyou need to put as much stuff
as you can in the main image aspossible.
Some people start throwingyellow flags immediately when I
(09:28):
bring this up.
They're like terms of service.
Your listing is going to getsuspended.
I've never had a listingsuspended for a main image.
I've had an image suppressionwhich you can clear in about
five to 10 minutes.
But the things that I advocatefor which will increase your CTR
and if you want to know my, mynumber one hack, the number one
way to grow sales fastest onAmazon with the least amount of
(09:48):
effort, without a question, it'sthe main image right.
If you, if you add a keyword tothe main image, you are going
to increase your CTR, yourclick-through rate, if you
include, if you increase yourclick-through rate, you're going
to increase your traffic.
You increase your traffickingand increase your sales.
And, by the way, ctr is alsodirectly correlated to
conversion rates, which throwspeople off usually.
(10:10):
But if people are more likelyto click on your product,
they're more likely to buy ittoo.
So, adding a keyword to themain image, making sure that you
showcase all of the ingredientsIf you sell a supplement, show
me the pills.
If you have packaging or reallynice packaged goods, make sure
you show the package next to theitem and the item itself.
You don't want to just show oneor the other.
(10:32):
You got to show both.
If you got an accessory, yougot like a plug.
If you're selling electronic,show the accessory.
If you have eight differentcolor variations, you might want
to put that in the side or thebottom of your image, like Zulay
Kitchen does, to showcase allof that as well.
So there's a lot of things thatI advocate for.
Instead of branding, you needto go focus on metrics, ctr,
(10:55):
traffic, conversion.
Without a doubt, those are yourpower.
Three metrics.
Adam Shaffer (10:59):
Explain I'm not sure I completely understand.
Explain the keyword with themain image.
There's an actual text in thatmain image.
Steven Pope (11:06):
Yeah, so this is a very visual demonstration.
So if you will humor me, we'lldo a little demo live.
So I just shared my screen, ifyou want to pull that up on.
So, zulet Kitchen.
This is a very well-known brand.
We've got hundreds of thousandsof reviews.
If you look at 219 000 reviews,they have a best seller.
(11:27):
Uh, all the things that wetalked about are present in
their main image.
It's a very busy main image.
So they have milk frother withstam as their keyword.
They don't make it as front andcenter, as large as I typically
advocate.
This is probably the weakestthing in the main image.
But they do everything elsevery, very well.
(11:48):
So they've got the red bow,which makes it look giftable.
That one's a little bit over thetop, I'd say.
You know, if we're going totalk gray or black or whatever,
that's getting closer to thedark gray and then but you can
still get away with it and thenshowing all the variations and
the colors showcasing what youcan do with it.
So it's a milk frother, itmakes this nice little coffee
(12:09):
cup and it shows even thespinning action, so what it does
to the milk.
It has every one of theseelements.
When somebody looks at this,they know exactly what they're
getting.
The fact that they have alittle starburst here to show
that it comes in 80 colors.
They do all of that.
So over on my website I've gotsome good examples.
Adam Shaffer (12:31):
So I'm going to showcase a few of these.
So, stephen, that was the mainimage.
That's the main image.
Steven Pope (12:37):
Okay, right.
And so when you scroll here,that is a very powerful main
image.
So I'll go back to the searchpage, right?
So if we were going to do,let's just type in the root
keyword milk frother, right?
I don't even know if that's howyou spell it.
So when we scroll through here,you see four ads followed by
Zulay Kitchen showing up inorganic slot number one.
Okay, so we see milk splash, wesee coffee beans, we see the
(13:02):
device in all of thesecompetitor images.
But zulay kitchen has organicslots one, three, four, that
might even be.
There's number two, unlessthat's like a close.
Look, it's got to be.
There's peach tree storeliterally copied everything.
Yeah, right, I mean what aripoff.
Adam Shaffer (13:22):
Holy cow, yeah like literally a T.
Steven Pope (13:23):
There might be some copyright there, but if you
look at, like Bonsai Kitchen orwhatever, all they show us is
the item and that's it, right,and so it's probably the same
quality, it's probably made bythe same Chinese manufacturer.
But which one are you going toclick on?
Are you going to click on ZulayKitchen over here on the left,
(13:44):
or are you going to click on?
You're going to click on ZulayKitchen over here on the left or
you're going to click on BonzenKitchen on the right?
It's a no-brainer which oneyou're going to click on.
Right.
This Zulay Kitchen sells 20,000of them.
Bonzen sells 4,000.
Right, and the only thing thatBonzen can do to out-compete
Zulay Kitchen is win on price.
And if you win on price todayyou're gonna lose on price
(14:05):
tomorrow.
There's just no question.
But just to showcase, like someof the easy keyword additions
that you could do.
So I've got some of theseexamples that my Amazon got a
com slash IMG if anybody wantsto look at it.
But the smudge sticks here.
Take a commodity item on theleft, now it's branded on the
right and we show case thekeyword with smudge sticks
(14:26):
Cooking, baking sheets.
This is my all-time favoriteexample.
Adam Shaffer (14:30):
So those are the keywords that you're saying.
It's an image of keywords.
Steven Pope (14:34):
Well, I mean yes, so this doesn't ship in that box
.
That box doesn't have thatkeyword on it.
It's all Photoshopped.
Consumers never complain aboutthat, by the way.
No, no, I get it.
I get it.
And but, like, when we look atOn the left, here we have a
cooking baking sheet right, buton the right, here we're now
selling grandma's baking andwhen you see this, you
(14:56):
immediately smell chocolate chipcookies from the kitchen that
grandma made when you visitedright.
Which of these two invokes amemory?
Which of these two invokes yoursenses, your smell sense that
you didn't even think aboutright, so your eye triggers the
nose?
On the left, it's like oh, it'sanother drawer of junk right.
(15:17):
On the right, it's oh my gosh,I wanted some of those cookies
and so you can Photoshop on alittle sticker here.
It looks like it's on theproduct.
By the way, once you do thisand you prove it works on your
product, what should you do?
You should go to yourmanufacturer and add this to the
item, but to prove the concepts, Photoshop is sufficient to get
(15:37):
you off and running.
And to any of the pedanticfollowers that are like TUS and
the comments and the haters I'mgoing to get, my answer to you
is this If you just do what thecustomer is looking for, if you
help customers, TOS won't matterand people don't get in trouble
for this.
Amazon doesn't enforce it andI'll prove it today if you're
(16:00):
interested, but let me show onemore example, and this is the
Happy Me Journal.
And so on the left, we have ayellow journal, and if I asked
you, Adam, why would you buythis item and you only had the
information on the left, You'dbe like because it's yellow.
Right Now, the same question onthe right, though why would you
buy the journal on the right,Adam?
Adam Shaffer (16:22):
Well, I mean I see the content and I see this
kid's word really big and I wantto get stuff for my kids and
the age is huge.
I mean I'm always looking forage, age ranges for the things I
buy my kids, so this is areally well done.
I love that you can see theoutput.
Steven Pope (16:40):
So this was one of my friends over in the UK that
sells the happy me journal.
I did this image for free forhim and it tripled his sales in
seven days.
He didn't even have a pluscontent up.
His secondary images weren'tthat great.
He didn't even have A-pluscontent up.
His secondary images weren'tthat great.
I don't even know how much adshe was spending at the time.
All we did was switch the mainimage from the left to the right
(17:04):
, right here, and it made a 3xsales difference.
So when we talk aboutclick-through rates, it converts
at major dividends.
It pays out really, really big.
So this is the future ofbranding on Amazon and it's
about click-through rate control.
Ctr is on every individualkeyword and whatever keyword is
(17:35):
showing at the top of your SQP,your brand analytics, that is
most likely a good candidate toadd to the main image product
packaging.
I'll show one more example.
This time we'll go over to thebankrupt aggregator called
Thrasio's original success story, and that is the Angry Orange
yes, angry Orange.
That product original successstory, and that is the angry
orange yes, angry orange petproduct.
And so what we can see here isthat they're doing everything we
(17:57):
just talked about with thekeyword odor eliminator, smack
dab on the packaging right here,gigantic.
Can you even find the brandname?
You can, but it's difficult,it's.
It's even you know, one, fourth, the-fourth the size, one-third
the size, here at the very topthere, and you can see Angry
Orange when we zoom in.
All Thrasio did when theybought this brand was two things
(18:19):
One, they watered down theproduct to make a higher margin
and two, they changed thepackaging to make it with a
giant keyword, and that 7x thesales in less than a year.
So everybody is doing this.
Everybody needs to know abouthow to improve their sales here.
Now, if we type into Googlehousehold brand names and we get
(18:43):
a list of household brand names, usually when I do this search
I get like Clorox or whatever,so I'll do it off memory.
But if, but if we type inColgate, for example, and we
scroll down, we'll see a brownbox right there, pack of four,
right.
By the way, that doesn't comewith the brown box that says
pack of four on it.
(19:04):
When you buy that, it's in abag, right?
Yeah, another one of myfavorite examples is HP printer,
right?
So there's another householdbrand name and theirs is a
little bit more egregious.
They don't do it on everysingle product, but when we get
down to it, here we go sixmonths of ink included, and they
just put it on the printed page.
(19:24):
Right, this doesn't come with apurple piece of paper that says
six months of ink included.
Adam Shaffer (19:28):
Right right, this is the product.
Steven Pope (19:31):
Yeah, so I'll pause there.
Adam Shaffer (19:34):
I just think that's that's amazing
walkthrough and thanks for that,and I I do think that there's
plenty of people out there gonnasay no, they said you just have
to have the image, no words orthis or that.
And if you're doing it and it'sworking, man, that's great
advice for everybody.
Steven Pope (19:51):
So thank you for that and I guarantee yeah,
anybody that's listening to thisif you go to the best sellers
list in your subcategory, unlessyou're selling something that
sells less than 20, the bestsellers got less than $20,000 in
monthly sales.
They may not be adhering to thebest practices we just
advocated for, but anybodythat's in a big category, you're
(20:13):
gonna see the best seller doingthese things.
Adam Shaffer (20:15):
It's just gonna happen, and so you gotta nail
that main image.
I got it.
What about the other images?
How important are they?
Because you do see people thatthey don't have brand registry,
they don't have A plus content.
They have one or two images inthe gallery.
But I mean, what happens whenyou start doing it right and
adding more?
Does it really help or not?
Steven Pope (20:34):
It's a massive difference, like if you look at
the conversion rate before andafter an optimized page, it can
be anywhere from 2X to 5Ximprovements.
Right now Amazon by and large,has made the default conversion
rate on Amazon somewhere betweeneight and 10% right Just for
showing up.
Now when you optimize thelisting, you can get it up to
(20:55):
15% or 20% and that can make avery big difference.
Now a listing with one or twoimages is no way it's going to
be an 8% conversion.
It's probably going to be morelike 3% or 4% points, unless
it's like a big box retail storeproduct that's in every mall
and every 13-year-old teenageris buying this lip gloss, for
example.
I've seen some really badbeauty product pages in my day,
(21:20):
but those are typically drivenby omni-channel while somebody's
at the store or they're buyingit in the store because they can
get it off Amazon for 50 centscheaper or whatever.
So I think that the secondaryimage stack, the A-plus content,
the brand story, will pay majordividends.
But if you can't get the mainimage right, start there first
(21:40):
and spend 10 hours on the mainimage.
Spend a couple hours on thesecondary images.
Maybe you need to get aninfographic.
Maybe you need to have somebodyusing your product looking
directly at the camera with eyecontact, right?
Maybe there's things that youneed to do and all kinds of ways
or mechanisms you can improvethe image stack, whether it's
lifestyle images, infographics,informational text images you
(22:04):
comparing against yourcompetitor product why they
should buy your product.
Maybe you have a high returnrate that you see in the
customer comments.
You need to sell them into someobjections in the secondary
image stack.
It's a great place to do that.
Here's my framework, and I loveto take all of the theory and
boil everything down to a simpleframework, because then it
becomes so easy for you toadvocate and teach the people
(22:26):
around you and make sure yourvirtual assistants are following
all the things you talk about.
Text is for robots, images isfor people and when you
understand this, that means youcan go run the runway with as
much SEO keyword stuffing asyou'd like in the text why?
(22:46):
Because that's for robots.
But the images you need to behyper-focused on.
You need to run A B tests, youneed to be understanding what
the consumer is looking for andyou need to have everything
built into those images toaffect the consumer, to make
them want to buy your product.
Give them the banana for scale.
Give me the emotionalconnection.
If you sell a pet product anddon't show me dogs, you're crazy
(23:10):
.
Right Like you're just crazy.
If you sell a baby product anddon't put babies in 80% of your
image stack, you're bonkers.
Crazy because that is whatdrives consumers right.
If you don't have a customeravatar and nobody knows what you
sell or who you are, that's aproblem.
People need to understand whatyou do, what you sell and who
(23:32):
you are.
Customer avatars, image stacksthose are what drive consumers
to understand what your productis, what it does and if it's
right for them.
Adam Shaffer (23:42):
You just mentioned the testing.
Are you been doing, or have youbeen doing, a lot of A-B
testing or the PickFu stuff?
Steven Pope (23:49):
Yeah, tons of it.
So you know we use a lot of apick food and AB testing on that
I think.
I think there's a lot of goodabilities to understand how
you're doing versus a competitor.
So if you've never run an ABtest before, the very first
easiest AB test for you to run,just take your products and do
(24:09):
it against your number onecompetitor.
If you're not sure who yournumber one competitor is, put
your product in against six ofthem and just see what consumers
say, because it will promptsome interesting thoughts.
And then my second favorite A-Btest is to change one element
of the main image and make anaddition or a subtraction and
run an A-B test like that to seekind of a meaningful difference
(24:31):
.
So that Happy Me journal that Ishowed you, that won 98 to 2.
Adam Shaffer (24:36):
Of course, so you actually A-B tested that one,
you didn't just upload one.
Steven Pope (24:40):
Okay, yeah, because I wanted to show, I wanted to
prove the case.
I wanted to make sure that theyactually used the main image
when I built it for them,because sometimes when you give
gold to somebody that doesn'tknow what gold is, they're like
eh, it's a shiny object, I'llput it in my copper pile.
So you have to use an A-B testsometimes to persuade people.
(25:01):
Sometimes, even when you givedata to somebody, it's still not
persuasive, and that is likethe epitome of the human mind,
like psychology 101.
How do you persuade people?
When I was in college, I was onthe college debate circuit.
I was on scholarship.
I beat Harvard at a nationaltournament one time.
But I'm here to tell you that.
(25:23):
You know, even though I couldgo AFNEG on any topic you could
pick any issue right now onAmazon AFNEG I'll argue the
topic.
No problem, would love it,would probably win that debate.
But I'll tell you one otherthing that's way more important.
It didn't persuade anybody.
You know, like the people thatheard me debate, I didn't
persuade a single person.
So what's the freaking point ofwinning the debate, right?
(25:44):
So so I love using data to tryand persuade people, but
sometimes data is not enough.
Sometimes you have to figureout what persuades the
individual, and so there's a lotof psychology behind that.
We could tie that into how youpersuade somebody to click on
your image.
You tie that into how topersuade your team to take
behavioral action, your team totake behavioral action.
(26:08):
But since I'm now a CEO of over500 employees, me trying to
figure out how to persuadepeople other than just cracking
my whip or throwing money at theproblem has been a lifelong
mission that I've tried toovercome the last five or six
years.
Adam Shaffer (26:17):
Yeah, I mean, but if you show them that their
sales are going, how could theynot buy in, even if it's data
but it's money?
So I'm so scared.
Steven Pope (26:26):
Amazon's going to take down my listing.
Oh, you can't do that.
Adam Shaffer (26:29):
Oh, okay, okay, I hear you.
Steven Pope (26:33):
Or I don't want to cheat the system, and if my
product is so good, people willbuy it, despite oh no.
You'll hear all kinds of hubris, all kinds of pedantics.
I've seen it all.
Man, Like the gauntlet thatpops up.
Adam Shaffer (26:53):
Wow, so that I'm sold man, that I I'm going to do
it, so thank you.
So so, changing the topic alittle bit, from awesome,
optimized content and and the,the branding on the content or
the or the products, howimportant, and what's your
approach to advertising and PPC,and all this on Amazon, off
Amazon.
What are your thoughts on thisPretty big topic?
Steven Pope (27:11):
So with advertising I have a couple of frameworks
that I like to use Always beadvertising.
That's the easiest one.
That's like a default one.
Anybody that does ads is goingto understand that comment very
deeply.
But I think the sub point ofalways be advertising is
sometimes lost.
Always advertise every singleproduct.
And some people are choosing notto advertise some products.
(27:33):
Maybe they don't advertiseevery SKU, maybe they don't
advertise every color variationor whatever it might be, or
maybe they got a weak seller andthe ads have a higher rate cost
.
But I have found time and timeagain that if, let's say, I take
on a new account and there's athousand SKUs and today they
only advertise 17 of them, thefastest way to grow that account
(27:53):
would be to create an autocatch-all PPC campaign, put a 5
cent bid and make a dedicated adgroup to every single SKU.
So a thousand SKU, a thousandad groups, one campaign and I'm
here to tell you that that cangenerate thousands of dollars at
ridiculous 20 to one ROAS,sometimes 5% ACoS, just by
(28:17):
having a catch-all 5 cent autobid campaign.
Adam Shaffer (28:19):
So I like to use that as an example.
That's a great example, Steve.
I mean we meet brands and theyadvertise five of a hundred or
five of a thousand, and it'sbecause that's where 80% of my
sales come from.
But we did the catch all samething.
That is brilliant.
So thanks for bringing that up.
Keep on going.
Steven Pope (28:40):
So that's my main framework.
My next one is never negate agood keyword.
So you can hear all kinds ofPPC experts, gurus.
They all make this mistake.
They're like oh, you set up anauto campaign and then you
promote it over to exact match.
Well, the problem with that isthat the auto campaign will
often, more often than not, havea lower ACoS than an exact
(29:02):
match campaign.
So you, by and large, bypromoting a good keyword from
auto and you negate it off autoand put it in exact, for some
reason you are throwing awayfive, 10 percentage points of
ACOS.
And so people still today makethat mistake.
So I like to use the mantranever negate a good keyword.
Adam Shaffer (29:22):
So leave it in the auto.
Leave it in the auto.
Steven Pope (29:24):
Leave it in the auto, never turn something off
that is working under anycondition.
There's no reason to do that.
It's okay to have the samekeyword of multiple campaigns.
It's okay to have threecampaigns with the same keyword.
There's no cannibalizationrisks by having those multiple
touch points at multipledifferent bids.
So if you want to get reallysophisticated, just to go the
(29:46):
most advanced strategy, youmight have three campaigns with
different bidding strategies, oreven you can do this at the ad
group level too, technically.
But let's say, three campaigns,each of them had a different
budget and each of them had adifferent bid.
And maybe you want to have theability to never turn off ads
(30:09):
but you want to have a lower bidafter a certain budget
threshold, and so that would bea strategic reason why you don't
want to have the same keywordin multiple campaigns.
So never negate a good keywordbut on the other hand, run
negations weekly.
I'm still flabbergastedsometimes when I see other PPC
campaign structures and theydon't add negations to broad
match or auto campaigns and I'mlike I don't get it.
(30:32):
Why are you wasting money?
I firmly believe that youshould have one keyword target
for every two negations.
Now to get to that it sometimestakes like a year to get to
that threshold.
So if you're listening to thisand you're advertising in a
thousand keywords, you onlynegated 57.
Don't freak out, this is justan opportunity for you.
(30:52):
Let's say your ACOS today is 50percent and you only have 37
negations.
If you add another thousandnegations, I bet you your ACOS
will get down to 35 percentbecause you'll negate all the
things that don't meet yourthreshold.
Now that might cripple yourgrowth, let's be clear.
But if that was important toyou, if margin and getting the
(31:15):
ACOS down was important to you,that would be the easiest way to
do it other than lowering bids,which could also help.
So I believe that auto and broadmatch campaigns are super
underrated.
I personally, on my ownaccounts, put 80% of my
sponsored product campaignbudgets in auto and broad match
campaigns and every time Imention this it usually throws
people off.
You're like that's absurd,that's got to be a waste.
(31:37):
I'm here to tell you I getbetter results on broad and auto
than I do on exact.
Now, exact are super important.
Exact can be very crucial forSEO purposes.
Exact can be very important fordefensive purposes and even
offensive in some cases.
But broad, match and autocampaigns just simply have a
lower bid.
So I want my dollar to gofarther.
Adam Shaffer (31:58):
So that's why I like it.
Do you spend money on you justmentioned defensive?
Do you spend money on your ownbrand?
Steven Pope (32:05):
yeah, absolutely.
You don't have to put a veryhigh bid.
Sometimes you can get away with, you know, 30 or 40 percent of
the bid of the other competitors.
You'll still win the rotationjust because it's more topical,
more relevant of a productcompared to the competitors.
But you know that's not goingto grow your brand per se, but
it's going to prevent yourcompetitors from stealing some
of your customers, and so it's adefensive play.
(32:29):
Most people gain customers todaythrough non-branded keywords.
That's where most of youreffort and time needs to be
spent.
But I'll even run defensiveASIN campaigns.
So if we look at a detail page,there's lots of there's, like
you know, I counted them up onetime there were 997 ads,
clickable ads on my own detailpage.
That's a lot of ads, right,like too many DM ads, period
(32:53):
first of all, and second of all,like on my own website I only
have one ad, my product.
But on Amazon there's rabbitholes everywhere isn't there,
and so sometimes it makes senseto advertise on your own detail
page to prevent that.
Or at least, even if they don'tclick on the defensive ads,
they see your at your productclass or everywhere.
It just reinforces howimportant your brand is and
(33:15):
they're making the rightdecision, so it's like a lot.
Adam Shaffer (33:20):
We had epson and they and they make a bunch of
different products, but it's a.
It's a popular name in thecategories they play and so they
make a bunch of differentproducts, but it's a popular
name in the categories they play.
And so they have a receiptprinter and they're like the
number one receipt printer andit's like more of a B2B product,
it's point of sale, but it'svery popular and I was trying to
.
First of all they were just amess because they had no Amazon
strategy, but I was trying toshow them.
If you type in Epson receiptprinter, there may be a page
(33:45):
beyond the first page, Likethey're the brand and there's
brands you've never heard of,like you mentioned before all
going to school on their brandand it's because people are
looking for Epson in that case,because it's kind of a standard
in the industry.
So I do think you need to dosome defensive.
So I'm glad you agree.
(34:05):
It makes me feel a little bitbetter.
Steven Pope (34:08):
I do.
Adam Shaffer (34:10):
And what about the off Amazon stuff?
Is that happening for you?
You doing Google and all thatand pushing it back to Amazon,
or is that a waste?
Steven Pope (34:18):
This one's a lot harder to debate out.
Right, because any traffic isgood traffic just from a
framework standpoint.
Right, because any traffic isgood traffic just from a
framework standpoint.
The problem that I typicallyfind, though, is that sponsored
products will have a betterreturn on ad spend on the
average category product, by asmuch as five to eight times
better.
So it makes it difficult towant to go off of Amazon to
(34:41):
advertise.
So I'd usually recommend thisafter a certain threshold, after
your $2 million brand, afteryou see diminishing returns.
Because going from, let's say,your ACOS today is 35% and
you're thinking about Google Ads, I'm telling you right now,
there's no way Google Ads isgoing to beat a 35% ACOS,
especially since you can't trackit, you can't optimize it, it's
(35:03):
all a guessing game.
So because of that, until yourACOS is tapped out at 50% let's
say like 50% is like oh my gosh,I can't go a percentage point
over that At that point would Itry Google Ads, tiktok,
influencers and UGC contenttotally different framework for
that Highly recommend it.
(35:24):
When I started doing UGC onTikTok for Age of Sage, I
tripled doing ugc on tick tockfor age of sage.
I tripled my brand searches onthe amazon platform.
I got a lot of great engagementpennies on the dollar for for
clicks and all that good stuff.
Um, I am a fan of running adson as many platforms as possible
if you have an omni channelbrand.
But, to be clear facebook,google and all of these
(35:45):
different platforms right nowit's just incredibly difficult
to optimize and to track resultsinto Amazon.
And there's obviously toolsthat do this and some of them do
them pretty well.
It's just not as good of areturn and it's harder to track,
harder to manage.
So that's why I usually say yougot to be at a certain
threshold before you tap intoexternal traffic strategies.
Adam Shaffer (36:05):
Tell us about tick-tock.
So so what were you doing with?
Did you have influences or youjust running advertising?
Steven Pope (36:11):
so I paid roughly about 150 dollars of video.
We get somebody to make a 60 to300 second video.
One time I had a barista shoota tumblr video inside a
Starbucks with my Starbucks Yodaparody cup, which was
incredible.
I couldn't have paid somebody$1,000 to go out and do that if
(36:31):
I tried.
Just got lucky on the UGCselection and so those videos
will get thousands of plays onTikTok and just incredible
results and it's very low cost.
It's not gonna work in everycategory, to be clear.
If you're selling a B2B product, TikTok is definitely not gonna
help you, but we're seeing alot of people that are.
(36:55):
We're in this TikTok nationright now where we're looking,
everybody's looking down attheir phone and their products
and there's just some leverageto be had here Anytime you have
a new-.
Adam Shaffer (37:06):
Do they click through through TikTok to Amazon
or they have to do somethingelse?
They do.
It's not the TikTok store, theygo to Amazon.
Steven Pope (37:14):
So TikTok shop is making a surge right now and
TikTok is trying to shut downtraffic going to Amazon.
They see themselves ascompetitors.
Amazon is so threatened byTikTok that they created their
own Timu Lite program at Amazon.
I don't even know what Amazonis called.
I'm not going to use it becauseI don't want to shop from the
(37:36):
Chinese directly and wait twoweeks for an item, especially
since it's subsidized by boththe US and the Chinese
government.
You can mail something fromChina to the United States and
Oklahoma City cheaper than youcould from.
Adam Shaffer (37:49):
Atlanta, don't get me going, man, I know.
Steven Pope (37:52):
Yeah.
So the system is corrupt andyou can say this about almost
every new sector.
You can even say this aboutelectric cars Subsidies are
ruining the free market.
Cars Subsidies are ruining thefree market.
So, having said that, amazon ispaying attention to this.
(38:14):
They're so scared of theChinese a la Timu and TikTok
that they turn their last enemy,shopify, into their best friend
.
Now Shopify and Amazon arelinked up.
Facebook and Amazon are linkedup.
Pinterest and Amazon are linkedup, so we're seeing a lot of
changes in behavior.
Your enemy of my enemy is myfriend, I guess, or something
like that.
But having said that, if I wasa brand looking for the two or
(38:38):
three action items to go chasetoday, I would defend main image
to hell and back and I wouldtalk about the customer avatar
and getting all these elementsright on Amazon.
But let's assume for a momentthat my Amazon page is perfect
and my diminishing returns onsponsored brands.
I've hit my threshold and I'vealready hired consultants and
(38:59):
I've hired agencies and I justI'm plateaued.
At that point I would say go doTikTok shop, go spend money on
Google ads, go do these othercrazy external traffic things,
because you'll find some growththere, there's no question, new
customers await you, but makesure you're dialed on Amazon
first.
Adam Shaffer (39:18):
Make sure you got your stuff together there.
Yeah, make sense.
Steven Pope (39:22):
The ROI is just so much better on Amazon just
significantly.
But that's why I chose my namemy Amazon Guy, like you know,
when I was in the laundry roomwith my wife talking about what
we should call the company andwhatever, and she's like well,
how do people normally introduceyou?
And I'm like they neverintroduced me by Stephen Polk,
they don't care who I am or whatmy name is, they just say talk
to my Amazon Guy, he will helpyou on Amazon.
(39:43):
And so that's how I made thecompany name and I think that
there's just a really big impactthat Amazon is.
It's half the economy.
Realistically, amazon is thebehemoth, it's the 800-pound
gorilla.
So if you're not on Amazon,you're irrelevant.
First of all, nike is evencoming back to Amazon after a
(40:04):
beating.
They shrunk the company becausethey left Amazon.
That's how powerful Amazon is.
Adam Shaffer (40:11):
No, it's scary.
It's scary In a way.
Although I don't like theforeign influence, I do like
that there's some competitionthat Amazon needs to keep on
their toes.
It's good in a way.
I might not like the outcome,but they've got to be watching
In a way you know so.
Steven Pope (40:26):
I might not like the outcome, but they got to be
watching.
Yes, I think Amazon is amonopoly.
I think competition at Amazonwould be good for you and be
good for me and be good for thecustomer, but I just really I'm
just praying that it's not theChinese.
I just just don't want it to beTeemu or TikTok.
I wish it was the Canadians inShopify.
That's not going to happen,though.
(40:46):
Nobody has the infrastructurethe logistics.
Adam Shaffer (40:50):
I was going to say the Ukrainians, but okay, no,
okay, I get it.
What are the Ukrainians?
Do they have a marketplace?
No, they're just at war and I'dlove to help them a little bit
more.
Anything to help the country.
And they have great developersand they do great drones.
Don't get me wrong.
Steven Pope (41:08):
These guys are the drone magicians, the only way
you can take out Amazon is tobuild 400 FBA centers equivalent
.
Adam Shaffer (41:16):
Ain't gonna happen and Walmart's not doing it
either.
Steven Pope (41:19):
I mean, we don't even get a part of our Walmart.
They bought Jet and theycouldn't integrate with their
point of system.
Like you just said, what is thestupidest acquisition of the
last 10 years?
I would say it's Jet.
Adam Shaffer (41:32):
But I mean, we try to do Walmart from time to time
with certain products and it'syou know, you put in a lot of
effort and you just don't getthe.
I'm sure people do well on it.
It just, it just doesn't work.
Steven Pope (41:46):
10 times the amount of effort for one 10th of
return, the math just don't getthe.
I'm sure people do well on it.
It just it just doesn't work.
10 times the amount of effortfor one 10th of return, the math
just doesn't add up.
And I'll let you in on thesecret.
Here's why Walmart is not amarketplace.
When I say that, people likeget a little eyebrow raise
sometimes.
But like seriously, Walmart'snot a marketplace.
Why?
Because they cheat.
They put the retail productsabove your product.
(42:07):
You'll never, ever hear about anative-born Walmart brand, but
95% of the brands that I workwith I have 400 brands that pay
me every single month right nowOnly 5% of them are omni-channel
, 95% of them were on amazon.
(42:28):
I've never met a walmartnative-born brand.
Adam Shaffer (42:31):
It'll never happen no, that I believe that's,
that's a great point.
And and so, as we get towardsthe end here, tell me I mean I I
ask this of everybody is it toolate if you're not on Amazon or
ready to get on Amazon?
Steven Pope (42:45):
Yeah, it's harder, but it's not too late.
Like Amazon, is the greatestwealth transfer in my lifetime.
I am a multimillionaire becauseof Amazon.
If I had the money that I hadtoday and I could go back 10
years ago and invest it, I woulddump it into Amazon, no
question.
Even today, though, we'reseeing the ability to launch a
(43:08):
new product and make millions ofdollars.
It's very possible.
Now a lot of people do it thewrong way.
There's probably thousands ofsellers that are going to try
and fail, because the gold rushdoes not reward effort, it
rewards results.
If you go out and buy a plot ofland in them hills back in the
(43:29):
gold rush day in California, youmight have had a chance of
success, but not a guaranteedone.
So, just like selling on Amazon, it's a legitimate business.
You have to put in massiveamounts of effort.
Usually, you need three thingsto run a business finance,
marketing and operations and youhave to have an A in one of
those three and at least a C orbetter in the other two, and
(43:52):
most often than not the brandsthat I work with they're usually
really good at themanufacturing or operations
piece and not so good at eitherfinance or marketing piece and
not so good at either finance ormarketing, and so, if that
describes you, you'd beobviously a great candidate to
work with a marketing agencylike MAG.
But if you don't have somesuccess in at least one of those
(44:17):
three categories, you're goingto go out of business within the
first 12 months.
So, yes, I think Amazon's worthdoing today.
I'm obviously biased to saythat, but I firmly believe it.
I don't think it's passiveincome.
I want to set expectations, butthere's no question Amazon.
You see 50,000 new accountsopened up every single month.
There's a reason it still works.
Adam Shaffer (44:39):
Yeah, I mean, for us it's kind of still a heavy
lift to start somebody up wherewe kind of focus more on brands
that have some run rate, onAmazon or the selling to Amazon.
They hate selling to Amazon.
Amazon's destroying their brandand they're squeezing them for
profit.
Steven Pope (44:54):
Jeff Bigelow is my best friend and I love
everything he does.
It's amazing.
It never lets me down.
Adam Shaffer (45:01):
Yeah Well, when you're vendor central, there's
some horrible nightmare storiesthey can tell you about every
year when they have to gorenegotiate.
Steven Pope (45:10):
Amazon always accepts my fee increases every
year on Vendor Central right.
Like which lie was yourfavorite?
Adam Shaffer (45:17):
Yeah, no, no, they're all good ones.
So I get that and I'm motivatedby this conversation.
I mean, really, you tell it theway it is and I love to to hear
it that way and I'm hopingeverybody likes to hear it that
way.
So thank you for that.
And any final words for theaudience, although I thought
that last pitch was pretty good.
Steven Pope (45:39):
You know, if anybody wants to connect
personally with me, I am veryhyperactive on social media.
My two channels are YouTube andLinkedIn.
If you leave me a comment or DMme, I will personally respond
to you.
I just really have a bigpassion for what I do and I want
to bring, I want to level upthe whole Amazon community.
(45:59):
That's why I do what I do,that's why I share all my trade
secrets.
I want to bring prosperity tothe entire world.
So and this is how I believethat's possible.
Adam Shaffer (46:07):
So thanks for having me on Well, and Steven,
thanks for everything you'redoing for the community and, by
the way, we bought your SOPsabout a year ago, so thank you
for making that available.
Steven Pope (46:18):
Everything on Amazon.
Agencies can buy them, brandscan buy them.
We even have SOPs on how to runan agency.
So glad to thank you.
Adam Shaffer (46:26):
Well, they were super helpful and, with that,
thanks, and I'll see you soon.
All right, thank you.
Announcement (46:34):
Thank you for watching another episode of the
Planet Amazon podcast, where wetalk all things Amazon.
If you want to learn about howto accelerate your sales on
Amazon, visit Phelps United'swebsite at phelpsunitedcom.
Welcome to the Planet Amazon podcast with Adam
Shaffer, where we explore theworld of Amazon and other
e-commerce marketplaces.
Join us as we delve into thelatest strategies and tactics
for successful selling on theworld's largest online
marketplace.
Adam Shaffer (00:17):
Hello everybody, I'm Adam Shaffer and welcome to
Planet Amazon, where we talkabout all things Amazon and
e-commerce.
Today, we have a very specialguest joining us, someone who
has made a significant impact inthe Amazon FBA community.
We're thrilled to welcomeSteven Pope, the founder of My
Amazon Guy.
Steven Pope is a visionaryentrepreneur and the driving
(00:40):
force behind My Amazon Guy, anAmazon agency renowned for its
ability to get products seen andsold.
They have a proven track record, and My Amazon Guy helps brands
unlock their full salespotential by optimizing listings
, managing PPC and SEO and theircatalogs.
Steven is also the host of avery popular podcast that I
(01:05):
listen to and a YouTube channelcalled My Amazon Guy, where he
shares his wealth of knowledgeand insights with a wide
audience.
Please join me in welcomingSteven Pope to Planet Amazon.
Welcome, Steven, hello.
Thanks for having me.
So how are you today?
And thanks for joining.
What is up?
Steven Pope (01:24):
How are you today and thanks for joining.
What is up Well, other than hotAtlanta weather.
Over here I'm having a goodtime getting my tan on.
Just got back from the Bahamaswith my five kids and ready to
roll.
Adam Shaffer (01:33):
I'm glad you're back and I'm glad you had no
hurricanes.
That's always a bummer.
I had a friend that was on hisway to Belize and the night
before he had to flip that tripand move it somewhere else
because of the hurricane coming.
So I'm glad you had a goodholiday.
So I've been following you fora while.
I listened to your show when Iwas getting into the biz and you
(01:55):
know you taught me a lot andyou know you bring it on with
attitude.
So I really do enjoy listeningto you.
So you have a great personality.
You'll talk yeah, yeah, forsure, listening to you.
So you have a great personality.
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
And so you know why don't westart with just telling us a
little bit more about yourbackground, because you've been
doing this for a while and howyou got this my Amazon Guy thing
going Well.
Steven Pope (02:17):
I have been a reporter, I've been a marketer,
I've been an educator, and todayI highly focus on trying to
drive behavior right.
So now I run an HR companycalled my Amazon guy, this 548
person agency, and so it's beena journey of new skills.
(02:38):
I learned how to build a brandon Amazon.
I learned how to build anagency.
I learned how to start a salesoutbound process for the first
time a couple of years ago, andso today we gross more than $20
million as an agency.
We help manage over $800million on the Amazon platform,
and what really gets me up everysingle day is that I just love
(03:00):
leveling up life and I playvideo games and just like life,
life is a video game and if youdon't go to that next level, it
just it doesn't feel right,right, Like you gotta.
Every single day, it's gotta besomething smaller, bigger,
better, even if it's anincremental game, and and my
whole goal is to accelerateprosperity to everything around
me.
Adam Shaffer (03:21):
Well, hallelujah, that sounds great.
The video games.
I stopped playing video gamesafter Intellivision.
I don't know if you rememberthat I might be a little older
than you, but it was like Atarithen Intellivision and then I
stopped.
Steven Pope (03:33):
But you mentioned-.
That's old school old schooland I'm an old man, I'm an old
man man.
Your business must be yourvideo game or your two daughters
no, it's the daughters.
Adam Shaffer (03:51):
keep me going.
Hey, so you've mentionedbranding on Amazon and you
learned that magic, but howimportant really is branding on
Amazon and how do you build astrong brand?
I mean, everybody wants to havea great brand on Amazon, but
how do you do it, man Well?
Steven Pope (04:00):
I think one of my favorite questions to ask when I
get asked this question.
To turn around on you for asecond what was the last item
you bought on Amazon?
Adam Shaffer (04:10):
Oh, I'll show it to you.
It's like a screwdriver, it's amini screwdriver.
A screwdriver.
Steven Pope (04:14):
What was the name of the brand?
I don't know Exactly.
Amazon killed brands and everytime I've ever asked this
question, nobody can answer whatthe item that they last bought.
Now we have a brand name there.
You can't even see it when ohno, I couldn't pronounce it.
Yeah, it could be some Chinesebrand, for all we know.
(04:35):
And the point is that to have astrong brand on Amazon doesn't
necessarily mean people rememberyour brand.
They might remember theexperience, but they don't
remember your brand, and so,because of that, a lot of the
things that you might have readin a business book over time or
heard from somebody on stagetalking about how important
(04:57):
branding is, it's a totallydifferent thing today.
So I launched a soap brand onAmazon called Age of Sage.
Now this is after one of mykids.
This is my daughter.
She's five.
You can see the avatar isbasically just like her.
It's made after her, and so Iwas trying to figure out how to
manufacture stuff in the States,because I hated working in
(05:19):
China.
I visited China.
I went to the Canton Fair.
It was a miserable experience.
The Chinese people aremiserable over there.
When I visited them, they mademe feel miserable while I was
there.
I was like, why am I doing thisto myself?
So I was really trying tofigure out how can I manufacture
stuff in the States, and I'dalready tried to launch a hot
sauce and that was a failure,because when I shipped it into
(05:39):
Amazon, I paid Amazon to do theprep work.
And this was before I was bigand well-known.
This was seven years, eightyears ago, and I was doing this
out of my garage and I shippedin a thousand of these and I
paid Amazon to do the prep work.
So they put the bubble wraparound it, they slap on the F
and skew and then they shippedit out in padded envelopes and I
(06:00):
started getting my brother andmy family and everybody that was
buying it on launch day, andthere was hot sauce shards
everywhere.
This is a five pound glassbottle, and so I've experienced
a lot of you know problemsselling on Amazon, and I've
asked myself the question likeis Amazon dumb Right?
(06:21):
Does Jeff Bezos not know how toset up a system?
And clearly he does, because hewouldn't be the billionaire he
wasn't today If that wasn't thecase.
Amazon Prime and logistics andall the FBA facilities they
speak for themselves, but whenit comes to the selling
experience as an Amazon seller,they don't give a shit about us.
(06:42):
They don't care at all.
They haven't done anything tohelp sellers.
And so while I discovered this,before I even started my agency
, I started to have panicattacks about what was going to
happen next.
Is Amazon going to suspend myaccount?
Am I going to have my listingyanked and on Black Friday, know
(07:02):
my?
On Black Friday last year,amazon took down all of my
tumblers all of them.
They delisted you Delisted theentire subcategory, right.
So parody tumblers does notexist on Amazon anymore.
I wasn't the only one affected.
I just happened to be theindustry leader, so obviously it
was like a giant middle fingerto me.
But I lost a quarter milliondollars on that problem, right,
(07:26):
and I want to be very clear Ithink Amazon is worth doing, but
the reason why I talk aboutthese challenges is because it's
not passive income and I havefound that when I start talking
about these challenges, otherpeople have also experienced
them and you know we need alittle bit of business therapy
to go around to deal with allthis.
And you know we need a littlebit of business therapy to go
around to deal with all this.
So I know that was a longanswer to your branding question
(07:47):
, but bottom line is, yes, Ihave a brand, I have Age of Sage
, and I put it on the logo andit looks cool, but nobody goes
on Amazon and says I want to buyAge of Sage.
Now, a thousand people a monthdo to be clear.
But that's not generating mostof my income, right.
Most of my income is beinggenerated off of non-brand
keywords like artisan soap orsoap for men, and those are the
(08:10):
keywords that drive the business, and so, because of that, when
somebody is trying to debatewhether I'm going to buy an Age
of Sage product or Dr Squatch orthe 20 other lookalikes,
they're making the decisionbased off, not the brand,
typically.
Adam Shaffer (08:24):
So, outside of like Apple or DJI for drones or
cameras, you get to all theseother brands, and there's
millions of three-piece sellersout there selling on Amazon.
Is the brand, then, theexperience the customer gets
when they buy your product withthe hopes that they continue to
buy it?
Steven Pope (08:44):
Maybe because I think a lot of times you
associate the experience toAmazon and that's the brand
right.
So, like, amazon has usurpedour direct correlation, our
direct relationship with theconsumer, and so your focal
points as a business owner, as abrand owner on Amazon have to
(09:05):
align or shift with thatunderstanding.
So, instead of trying to hyperfocus on brand and all that,
instead you need to focus onoptimization and how your main
image looks Right.
So I'm very outspoken about howyou need to put as much stuff
as you can in the main image aspossible.
Some people start throwingyellow flags immediately when I
(09:28):
bring this up.
They're like terms of service.
Your listing is going to getsuspended.
I've never had a listingsuspended for a main image.
I've had an image suppressionwhich you can clear in about
five to 10 minutes.
But the things that I advocatefor which will increase your CTR
and if you want to know my, mynumber one hack, the number one
way to grow sales fastest onAmazon with the least amount of
(09:48):
effort, without a question, it'sthe main image right.
If you, if you add a keyword tothe main image, you are going
to increase your CTR, yourclick-through rate, if you
include, if you increase yourclick-through rate, you're going
to increase your traffic.
You increase your traffickingand increase your sales.
And, by the way, ctr is alsodirectly correlated to
conversion rates, which throwspeople off usually.
(10:10):
But if people are more likelyto click on your product,
they're more likely to buy ittoo.
So, adding a keyword to themain image, making sure that you
showcase all of the ingredientsIf you sell a supplement, show
me the pills.
If you have packaging or reallynice packaged goods, make sure
you show the package next to theitem and the item itself.
You don't want to just show oneor the other.
(10:32):
You got to show both.
If you got an accessory, yougot like a plug.
If you're selling electronic,show the accessory.
If you have eight differentcolor variations, you might want
to put that in the side or thebottom of your image, like Zulay
Kitchen does, to showcase allof that as well.
So there's a lot of things thatI advocate for.
Instead of branding, you needto go focus on metrics, ctr,
(10:55):
traffic, conversion.
Without a doubt, those are yourpower.
Three metrics.
Adam Shaffer (10:59):
Explain I'm not sure I completely understand.
Explain the keyword with themain image.
There's an actual text in thatmain image.
Steven Pope (11:06):
Yeah, so this is a very visual demonstration.
So if you will humor me, we'lldo a little demo live.
So I just shared my screen, ifyou want to pull that up on.
So, zulet Kitchen.
This is a very well-known brand.
We've got hundreds of thousandsof reviews.
If you look at 219 000 reviews,they have a best seller.
(11:27):
Uh, all the things that wetalked about are present in
their main image.
It's a very busy main image.
So they have milk frother withstam as their keyword.
They don't make it as front andcenter, as large as I typically
advocate.
This is probably the weakestthing in the main image.
But they do everything elsevery, very well.
(11:48):
So they've got the red bow,which makes it look giftable.
That one's a little bit over thetop, I'd say.
You know, if we're going totalk gray or black or whatever,
that's getting closer to thedark gray and then but you can
still get away with it and thenshowing all the variations and
the colors showcasing what youcan do with it.
So it's a milk frother, itmakes this nice little coffee
(12:09):
cup and it shows even thespinning action, so what it does
to the milk.
It has every one of theseelements.
When somebody looks at this,they know exactly what they're
getting.
The fact that they have alittle starburst here to show
that it comes in 80 colors.
They do all of that.
So over on my website I've gotsome good examples.
Adam Shaffer (12:31):
So I'm going to showcase a few of these.
So, stephen, that was the mainimage.
That's the main image.
Steven Pope (12:37):
Okay, right.
And so when you scroll here,that is a very powerful main
image.
So I'll go back to the searchpage, right?
So if we were going to do,let's just type in the root
keyword milk frother, right?
I don't even know if that's howyou spell it.
So when we scroll through here,you see four ads followed by
Zulay Kitchen showing up inorganic slot number one.
Okay, so we see milk splash, wesee coffee beans, we see the
(13:02):
device in all of thesecompetitor images.
But zulay kitchen has organicslots one, three, four, that
might even be.
There's number two, unlessthat's like a close.
Look, it's got to be.
There's peach tree storeliterally copied everything.
Yeah, right, I mean what aripoff.
Adam Shaffer (13:22):
Holy cow, yeah like literally a T.
Steven Pope (13:23):
There might be some copyright there, but if you
look at, like Bonsai Kitchen orwhatever, all they show us is
the item and that's it, right,and so it's probably the same
quality, it's probably made bythe same Chinese manufacturer.
But which one are you going toclick on?
Are you going to click on ZulayKitchen over here on the left,
(13:44):
or are you going to click on?
You're going to click on ZulayKitchen over here on the left or
you're going to click on BonzenKitchen on the right?
It's a no-brainer which oneyou're going to click on.
Right.
This Zulay Kitchen sells 20,000of them.
Bonzen sells 4,000.
Right, and the only thing thatBonzen can do to out-compete
Zulay Kitchen is win on price.
And if you win on price todayyou're gonna lose on price
(14:05):
tomorrow.
There's just no question.
But just to showcase, like someof the easy keyword additions
that you could do.
So I've got some of theseexamples that my Amazon got a
com slash IMG if anybody wantsto look at it.
But the smudge sticks here.
Take a commodity item on theleft, now it's branded on the
right and we show case thekeyword with smudge sticks
(14:26):
Cooking, baking sheets.
This is my all-time favoriteexample.
Adam Shaffer (14:30):
So those are the keywords that you're saying.
It's an image of keywords.
Steven Pope (14:34):
Well, I mean yes, so this doesn't ship in that box
.
That box doesn't have thatkeyword on it.
It's all Photoshopped.
Consumers never complain aboutthat, by the way.
No, no, I get it.
I get it.
And but, like, when we look atOn the left, here we have a
cooking baking sheet right, buton the right, here we're now
selling grandma's baking andwhen you see this, you
(14:56):
immediately smell chocolate chipcookies from the kitchen that
grandma made when you visitedright.
Which of these two invokes amemory?
Which of these two invokes yoursenses, your smell sense that
you didn't even think aboutright, so your eye triggers the
nose?
On the left, it's like oh, it'sanother drawer of junk right.
(15:17):
On the right, it's oh my gosh,I wanted some of those cookies
and so you can Photoshop on alittle sticker here.
It looks like it's on theproduct.
By the way, once you do thisand you prove it works on your
product, what should you do?
You should go to yourmanufacturer and add this to the
item, but to prove the concepts, Photoshop is sufficient to get
(15:37):
you off and running.
And to any of the pedanticfollowers that are like TUS and
the comments and the haters I'mgoing to get, my answer to you
is this If you just do what thecustomer is looking for, if you
help customers, TOS won't matterand people don't get in trouble
for this.
Amazon doesn't enforce it andI'll prove it today if you're
(16:00):
interested, but let me show onemore example, and this is the
Happy Me Journal.
And so on the left, we have ayellow journal, and if I asked
you, Adam, why would you buythis item and you only had the
information on the left, You'dbe like because it's yellow.
Right Now, the same question onthe right, though why would you
buy the journal on the right,Adam?
Adam Shaffer (16:22):
Well, I mean I see the content and I see this
kid's word really big and I wantto get stuff for my kids and
the age is huge.
I mean I'm always looking forage, age ranges for the things I
buy my kids, so this is areally well done.
I love that you can see theoutput.
Steven Pope (16:40):
So this was one of my friends over in the UK that
sells the happy me journal.
I did this image for free forhim and it tripled his sales in
seven days.
He didn't even have a pluscontent up.
His secondary images weren'tthat great.
He didn't even have A-pluscontent up.
His secondary images weren'tthat great.
I don't even know how much adshe was spending at the time.
All we did was switch the mainimage from the left to the right
(17:04):
, right here, and it made a 3xsales difference.
So when we talk aboutclick-through rates, it converts
at major dividends.
It pays out really, really big.
So this is the future ofbranding on Amazon and it's
about click-through rate control.
Ctr is on every individualkeyword and whatever keyword is
(17:35):
showing at the top of your SQP,your brand analytics, that is
most likely a good candidate toadd to the main image product
packaging.
I'll show one more example.
This time we'll go over to thebankrupt aggregator called
Thrasio's original success story, and that is the Angry Orange
yes, angry Orange.
That product original successstory, and that is the angry
orange yes, angry orange petproduct.
And so what we can see here isthat they're doing everything we
(17:57):
just talked about with thekeyword odor eliminator, smack
dab on the packaging right here,gigantic.
Can you even find the brandname?
You can, but it's difficult,it's.
It's even you know, one, fourth, the-fourth the size, one-third
the size, here at the very topthere, and you can see Angry
Orange when we zoom in.
All Thrasio did when theybought this brand was two things
(18:19):
One, they watered down theproduct to make a higher margin
and two, they changed thepackaging to make it with a
giant keyword, and that 7x thesales in less than a year.
So everybody is doing this.
Everybody needs to know abouthow to improve their sales here.
Now, if we type into Googlehousehold brand names and we get
(18:43):
a list of household brand names, usually when I do this search
I get like Clorox or whatever,so I'll do it off memory.
But if, but if we type inColgate, for example, and we
scroll down, we'll see a brownbox right there, pack of four,
right.
By the way, that doesn't comewith the brown box that says
pack of four on it.
(19:04):
When you buy that, it's in abag, right?
Yeah, another one of myfavorite examples is HP printer,
right?
So there's another householdbrand name and theirs is a
little bit more egregious.
They don't do it on everysingle product, but when we get
down to it, here we go sixmonths of ink included, and they
just put it on the printed page.
(19:24):
Right, this doesn't come with apurple piece of paper that says
six months of ink included.
Adam Shaffer (19:28):
Right right, this is the product.
Steven Pope (19:31):
Yeah, so I'll pause there.
Adam Shaffer (19:34):
I just think that's that's amazing
walkthrough and thanks for that,and I I do think that there's
plenty of people out there gonnasay no, they said you just have
to have the image, no words orthis or that.
And if you're doing it and it'sworking, man, that's great
advice for everybody.
Steven Pope (19:51):
So thank you for that and I guarantee yeah,
anybody that's listening to thisif you go to the best sellers
list in your subcategory, unlessyou're selling something that
sells less than 20, the bestsellers got less than $20,000 in
monthly sales.
They may not be adhering to thebest practices we just
advocated for, but anybodythat's in a big category, you're
(20:13):
gonna see the best seller doingthese things.
Adam Shaffer (20:15):
It's just gonna happen, and so you gotta nail
that main image.
I got it.
What about the other images?
How important are they?
Because you do see people thatthey don't have brand registry,
they don't have A plus content.
They have one or two images inthe gallery.
But I mean, what happens whenyou start doing it right and
adding more?
Does it really help or not?
Steven Pope (20:34):
It's a massive difference, like if you look at
the conversion rate before andafter an optimized page, it can
be anywhere from 2X to 5Ximprovements.
Right now Amazon by and large,has made the default conversion
rate on Amazon somewhere betweeneight and 10% right Just for
showing up.
Now when you optimize thelisting, you can get it up to
(20:55):
15% or 20% and that can make avery big difference.
Now a listing with one or twoimages is no way it's going to
be an 8% conversion.
It's probably going to be morelike 3% or 4% points, unless
it's like a big box retail storeproduct that's in every mall
and every 13-year-old teenageris buying this lip gloss, for
example.
I've seen some really badbeauty product pages in my day,
(21:20):
but those are typically drivenby omni-channel while somebody's
at the store or they're buyingit in the store because they can
get it off Amazon for 50 centscheaper or whatever.
So I think that the secondaryimage stack, the A-plus content,
the brand story, will pay majordividends.
But if you can't get the mainimage right, start there first
(21:40):
and spend 10 hours on the mainimage.
Spend a couple hours on thesecondary images.
Maybe you need to get aninfographic.
Maybe you need to have somebodyusing your product looking
directly at the camera with eyecontact, right?
Maybe there's things that youneed to do and all kinds of ways
or mechanisms you can improvethe image stack, whether it's
lifestyle images, infographics,informational text images you
(22:04):
comparing against yourcompetitor product why they
should buy your product.
Maybe you have a high returnrate that you see in the
customer comments.
You need to sell them into someobjections in the secondary
image stack.
It's a great place to do that.
Here's my framework, and I loveto take all of the theory and
boil everything down to a simpleframework, because then it
becomes so easy for you toadvocate and teach the people
(22:26):
around you and make sure yourvirtual assistants are following
all the things you talk about.
Text is for robots, images isfor people and when you
understand this, that means youcan go run the runway with as
much SEO keyword stuffing asyou'd like in the text why?
(22:46):
Because that's for robots.
But the images you need to behyper-focused on.
You need to run A B tests, youneed to be understanding what
the consumer is looking for andyou need to have everything
built into those images toaffect the consumer, to make
them want to buy your product.
Give them the banana for scale.
Give me the emotionalconnection.
If you sell a pet product anddon't show me dogs, you're crazy
(23:10):
.
Right Like you're just crazy.
If you sell a baby product anddon't put babies in 80% of your
image stack, you're bonkers.
Crazy because that is whatdrives consumers right.
If you don't have a customeravatar and nobody knows what you
sell or who you are, that's aproblem.
People need to understand whatyou do, what you sell and who
(23:32):
you are.
Customer avatars, image stacksthose are what drive consumers
to understand what your productis, what it does and if it's
right for them.
Adam Shaffer (23:42):
You just mentioned the testing.
Are you been doing, or have youbeen doing, a lot of A-B
testing or the PickFu stuff?
Steven Pope (23:49):
Yeah, tons of it.
So you know we use a lot of apick food and AB testing on that
I think.
I think there's a lot of goodabilities to understand how
you're doing versus a competitor.
So if you've never run an ABtest before, the very first
easiest AB test for you to run,just take your products and do
(24:09):
it against your number onecompetitor.
If you're not sure who yournumber one competitor is, put
your product in against six ofthem and just see what consumers
say, because it will promptsome interesting thoughts.
And then my second favorite A-Btest is to change one element
of the main image and make anaddition or a subtraction and
run an A-B test like that to seekind of a meaningful difference
(24:31):
.
So that Happy Me journal that Ishowed you, that won 98 to 2.
Adam Shaffer (24:36):
Of course, so you actually A-B tested that one,
you didn't just upload one.
Steven Pope (24:40):
Okay, yeah, because I wanted to show, I wanted to
prove the case.
I wanted to make sure that theyactually used the main image
when I built it for them,because sometimes when you give
gold to somebody that doesn'tknow what gold is, they're like
eh, it's a shiny object, I'llput it in my copper pile.
So you have to use an A-B testsometimes to persuade people.
(25:01):
Sometimes, even when you givedata to somebody, it's still not
persuasive, and that is likethe epitome of the human mind,
like psychology 101.
How do you persuade people?
When I was in college, I was onthe college debate circuit.
I was on scholarship.
I beat Harvard at a nationaltournament one time.
But I'm here to tell you that.
(25:23):
You know, even though I couldgo AFNEG on any topic you could
pick any issue right now onAmazon AFNEG I'll argue the
topic.
No problem, would love it,would probably win that debate.
But I'll tell you one otherthing that's way more important.
It didn't persuade anybody.
You know, like the people thatheard me debate, I didn't
persuade a single person.
So what's the freaking point ofwinning the debate, right?
(25:44):
So so I love using data to tryand persuade people, but
sometimes data is not enough.
Sometimes you have to figureout what persuades the
individual, and so there's a lotof psychology behind that.
We could tie that into how youpersuade somebody to click on
your image.
You tie that into how topersuade your team to take
behavioral action, your team totake behavioral action.
(26:08):
But since I'm now a CEO of over500 employees, me trying to
figure out how to persuadepeople other than just cracking
my whip or throwing money at theproblem has been a lifelong
mission that I've tried toovercome the last five or six
years.
Adam Shaffer (26:17):
Yeah, I mean, but if you show them that their
sales are going, how could theynot buy in, even if it's data
but it's money?
So I'm so scared.
Steven Pope (26:26):
Amazon's going to take down my listing.
Oh, you can't do that.
Adam Shaffer (26:29):
Oh, okay, okay, I hear you.
Steven Pope (26:33):
Or I don't want to cheat the system, and if my
product is so good, people willbuy it, despite oh no.
You'll hear all kinds of hubris, all kinds of pedantics.
I've seen it all.
Man, Like the gauntlet thatpops up.
Adam Shaffer (26:53):
Wow, so that I'm sold man, that I I'm going to do
it, so thank you.
So so, changing the topic alittle bit, from awesome,
optimized content and and the,the branding on the content or
the or the products, howimportant, and what's your
approach to advertising and PPC,and all this on Amazon, off
Amazon.
What are your thoughts on thisPretty big topic?
Steven Pope (27:11):
So with advertising I have a couple of frameworks
that I like to use Always beadvertising.
That's the easiest one.
That's like a default one.
Anybody that does ads is goingto understand that comment very
deeply.
But I think the sub point ofalways be advertising is
sometimes lost.
Always advertise every singleproduct.
And some people are choosing notto advertise some products.
(27:33):
Maybe they don't advertiseevery SKU, maybe they don't
advertise every color variationor whatever it might be, or
maybe they got a weak seller andthe ads have a higher rate cost
.
But I have found time and timeagain that if, let's say, I take
on a new account and there's athousand SKUs and today they
only advertise 17 of them, thefastest way to grow that account
(27:53):
would be to create an autocatch-all PPC campaign, put a 5
cent bid and make a dedicated adgroup to every single SKU.
So a thousand SKU, a thousandad groups, one campaign and I'm
here to tell you that that cangenerate thousands of dollars at
ridiculous 20 to one ROAS,sometimes 5% ACoS, just by
(28:17):
having a catch-all 5 cent autobid campaign.
Adam Shaffer (28:19):
So I like to use that as an example.
That's a great example, Steve.
I mean we meet brands and theyadvertise five of a hundred or
five of a thousand, and it'sbecause that's where 80% of my
sales come from.
But we did the catch all samething.
That is brilliant.
So thanks for bringing that up.
Keep on going.
Steven Pope (28:40):
So that's my main framework.
My next one is never negate agood keyword.
So you can hear all kinds ofPPC experts, gurus.
They all make this mistake.
They're like oh, you set up anauto campaign and then you
promote it over to exact match.
Well, the problem with that isthat the auto campaign will
often, more often than not, havea lower ACoS than an exact
(29:02):
match campaign.
So you, by and large, bypromoting a good keyword from
auto and you negate it off autoand put it in exact, for some
reason you are throwing awayfive, 10 percentage points of
ACOS.
And so people still today makethat mistake.
So I like to use the mantranever negate a good keyword.
Adam Shaffer (29:22):
So leave it in the auto.
Leave it in the auto.
Steven Pope (29:24):
Leave it in the auto, never turn something off
that is working under anycondition.
There's no reason to do that.
It's okay to have the samekeyword of multiple campaigns.
It's okay to have threecampaigns with the same keyword.
There's no cannibalizationrisks by having those multiple
touch points at multipledifferent bids.
So if you want to get reallysophisticated, just to go the
(29:46):
most advanced strategy, youmight have three campaigns with
different bidding strategies, oreven you can do this at the ad
group level too, technically.
But let's say, three campaigns,each of them had a different
budget and each of them had adifferent bid.
And maybe you want to have theability to never turn off ads
(30:09):
but you want to have a lower bidafter a certain budget
threshold, and so that would bea strategic reason why you don't
want to have the same keywordin multiple campaigns.
So never negate a good keywordbut on the other hand, run
negations weekly.
I'm still flabbergastedsometimes when I see other PPC
campaign structures and theydon't add negations to broad
match or auto campaigns and I'mlike I don't get it.
(30:32):
Why are you wasting money?
I firmly believe that youshould have one keyword target
for every two negations.
Now to get to that it sometimestakes like a year to get to
that threshold.
So if you're listening to thisand you're advertising in a
thousand keywords, you onlynegated 57.
Don't freak out, this is justan opportunity for you.
(30:52):
Let's say your ACOS today is 50percent and you only have 37
negations.
If you add another thousandnegations, I bet you your ACOS
will get down to 35 percentbecause you'll negate all the
things that don't meet yourthreshold.
Now that might cripple yourgrowth, let's be clear.
But if that was important toyou, if margin and getting the
(31:15):
ACOS down was important to you,that would be the easiest way to
do it other than lowering bids,which could also help.
So I believe that auto and broadmatch campaigns are super
underrated.
I personally, on my ownaccounts, put 80% of my
sponsored product campaignbudgets in auto and broad match
campaigns and every time Imention this it usually throws
people off.
You're like that's absurd,that's got to be a waste.
(31:37):
I'm here to tell you I getbetter results on broad and auto
than I do on exact.
Now, exact are super important.
Exact can be very crucial forSEO purposes.
Exact can be very important fordefensive purposes and even
offensive in some cases.
But broad, match and autocampaigns just simply have a
lower bid.
So I want my dollar to gofarther.
Adam Shaffer (31:58):
So that's why I like it.
Do you spend money on you justmentioned defensive?
Do you spend money on your ownbrand?
Steven Pope (32:05):
yeah, absolutely.
You don't have to put a veryhigh bid.
Sometimes you can get away with, you know, 30 or 40 percent of
the bid of the other competitors.
You'll still win the rotationjust because it's more topical,
more relevant of a productcompared to the competitors.
But you know that's not goingto grow your brand per se, but
it's going to prevent yourcompetitors from stealing some
of your customers, and so it's adefensive play.
(32:29):
Most people gain customers todaythrough non-branded keywords.
That's where most of youreffort and time needs to be
spent.
But I'll even run defensiveASIN campaigns.
So if we look at a detail page,there's lots of there's, like
you know, I counted them up onetime there were 997 ads,
clickable ads on my own detailpage.
That's a lot of ads, right,like too many DM ads, period
(32:53):
first of all, and second of all,like on my own website I only
have one ad, my product.
But on Amazon there's rabbitholes everywhere isn't there,
and so sometimes it makes senseto advertise on your own detail
page to prevent that.
Or at least, even if they don'tclick on the defensive ads,
they see your at your productclass or everywhere.
It just reinforces howimportant your brand is and
(33:15):
they're making the rightdecision, so it's like a lot.
Adam Shaffer (33:20):
We had epson and they and they make a bunch of
different products, but it's a.
It's a popular name in thecategories they play and so they
make a bunch of differentproducts, but it's a popular
name in the categories they play.
And so they have a receiptprinter and they're like the
number one receipt printer andit's like more of a B2B product,
it's point of sale, but it'svery popular and I was trying to
.
First of all they were just amess because they had no Amazon
strategy, but I was trying toshow them.
If you type in Epson receiptprinter, there may be a page
(33:45):
beyond the first page, Likethey're the brand and there's
brands you've never heard of,like you mentioned before all
going to school on their brandand it's because people are
looking for Epson in that case,because it's kind of a standard
in the industry.
So I do think you need to dosome defensive.
So I'm glad you agree.
(34:05):
It makes me feel a little bitbetter.
Steven Pope (34:08):
I do.
Adam Shaffer (34:10):
And what about the off Amazon stuff?
Is that happening for you?
You doing Google and all thatand pushing it back to Amazon,
or is that a waste?
Steven Pope (34:18):
This one's a lot harder to debate out.
Right, because any traffic isgood traffic just from a
framework standpoint.
Right, because any traffic isgood traffic just from a
framework standpoint.
The problem that I typicallyfind, though, is that sponsored
products will have a betterreturn on ad spend on the
average category product, by asmuch as five to eight times
better.
So it makes it difficult towant to go off of Amazon to
(34:41):
advertise.
So I'd usually recommend thisafter a certain threshold, after
your $2 million brand, afteryou see diminishing returns.
Because going from, let's say,your ACOS today is 35% and
you're thinking about Google Ads, I'm telling you right now,
there's no way Google Ads isgoing to beat a 35% ACOS,
especially since you can't trackit, you can't optimize it, it's
(35:03):
all a guessing game.
So because of that, until yourACOS is tapped out at 50% let's
say like 50% is like oh my gosh,I can't go a percentage point
over that At that point would Itry Google Ads, tiktok,
influencers and UGC contenttotally different framework for
that Highly recommend it.
(35:24):
When I started doing UGC onTikTok for Age of Sage, I
tripled doing ugc on tick tockfor age of sage.
I tripled my brand searches onthe amazon platform.
I got a lot of great engagementpennies on the dollar for for
clicks and all that good stuff.
Um, I am a fan of running adson as many platforms as possible
if you have an omni channelbrand.
But, to be clear facebook,google and all of these
(35:45):
different platforms right nowit's just incredibly difficult
to optimize and to track resultsinto Amazon.
And there's obviously toolsthat do this and some of them do
them pretty well.
It's just not as good of areturn and it's harder to track,
harder to manage.
So that's why I usually say yougot to be at a certain
threshold before you tap intoexternal traffic strategies.
Adam Shaffer (36:05):
Tell us about tick-tock.
So so what were you doing with?
Did you have influences or youjust running advertising?
Steven Pope (36:11):
so I paid roughly about 150 dollars of video.
We get somebody to make a 60 to300 second video.
One time I had a barista shoota tumblr video inside a
Starbucks with my Starbucks Yodaparody cup, which was
incredible.
I couldn't have paid somebody$1,000 to go out and do that if
(36:31):
I tried.
Just got lucky on the UGCselection and so those videos
will get thousands of plays onTikTok and just incredible
results and it's very low cost.
It's not gonna work in everycategory, to be clear.
If you're selling a B2B product, TikTok is definitely not gonna
help you, but we're seeing alot of people that are.
(36:55):
We're in this TikTok nationright now where we're looking,
everybody's looking down attheir phone and their products
and there's just some leverageto be had here Anytime you have
a new-.
Adam Shaffer (37:06):
Do they click through through TikTok to Amazon
or they have to do somethingelse?
They do.
It's not the TikTok store, theygo to Amazon.
Steven Pope (37:14):
So TikTok shop is making a surge right now and
TikTok is trying to shut downtraffic going to Amazon.
They see themselves ascompetitors.
Amazon is so threatened byTikTok that they created their
own Timu Lite program at Amazon.
I don't even know what Amazonis called.
I'm not going to use it becauseI don't want to shop from the
(37:36):
Chinese directly and wait twoweeks for an item, especially
since it's subsidized by boththe US and the Chinese
government.
You can mail something fromChina to the United States and
Oklahoma City cheaper than youcould from.
Adam Shaffer (37:49):
Atlanta, don't get me going, man, I know.
Steven Pope (37:52):
Yeah.
So the system is corrupt andyou can say this about almost
every new sector.
You can even say this aboutelectric cars Subsidies are
ruining the free market.
Cars Subsidies are ruining thefree market.
So, having said that, amazon ispaying attention to this.
(38:14):
They're so scared of theChinese a la Timu and TikTok
that they turn their last enemy,shopify, into their best friend
.
Now Shopify and Amazon arelinked up.
Facebook and Amazon are linkedup.
Pinterest and Amazon are linkedup, so we're seeing a lot of
changes in behavior.
Your enemy of my enemy is myfriend, I guess, or something
like that.
But having said that, if I wasa brand looking for the two or
(38:38):
three action items to go chasetoday, I would defend main image
to hell and back and I wouldtalk about the customer avatar
and getting all these elementsright on Amazon.
But let's assume for a momentthat my Amazon page is perfect
and my diminishing returns onsponsored brands.
I've hit my threshold and I'vealready hired consultants and
(38:59):
I've hired agencies and I justI'm plateaued.
At that point I would say go doTikTok shop, go spend money on
Google ads, go do these othercrazy external traffic things,
because you'll find some growththere, there's no question, new
customers await you, but makesure you're dialed on Amazon
first.
Adam Shaffer (39:18):
Make sure you got your stuff together there.
Yeah, make sense.
Steven Pope (39:22):
The ROI is just so much better on Amazon just
significantly.
But that's why I chose my namemy Amazon Guy, like you know,
when I was in the laundry roomwith my wife talking about what
we should call the company andwhatever, and she's like well,
how do people normally introduceyou?
And I'm like they neverintroduced me by Stephen Polk,
they don't care who I am or whatmy name is, they just say talk
to my Amazon Guy, he will helpyou on Amazon.
(39:43):
And so that's how I made thecompany name and I think that
there's just a really big impactthat Amazon is.
It's half the economy.
Realistically, amazon is thebehemoth, it's the 800-pound
gorilla.
So if you're not on Amazon,you're irrelevant.
First of all, nike is evencoming back to Amazon after a
(40:04):
beating.
They shrunk the company becausethey left Amazon.
That's how powerful Amazon is.
Adam Shaffer (40:11):
No, it's scary.
It's scary In a way.
Although I don't like theforeign influence, I do like
that there's some competitionthat Amazon needs to keep on
their toes.
It's good in a way.
I might not like the outcome,but they've got to be watching
In a way you know so.
Steven Pope (40:26):
I might not like the outcome, but they got to be
watching.
Yes, I think Amazon is amonopoly.
I think competition at Amazonwould be good for you and be
good for me and be good for thecustomer, but I just really I'm
just praying that it's not theChinese.
I just just don't want it to beTeemu or TikTok.
I wish it was the Canadians inShopify.
That's not going to happen,though.
(40:46):
Nobody has the infrastructurethe logistics.
Adam Shaffer (40:50):
I was going to say the Ukrainians, but okay, no,
okay, I get it.
What are the Ukrainians?
Do they have a marketplace?
No, they're just at war and I'dlove to help them a little bit
more.
Anything to help the country.
And they have great developersand they do great drones.
Don't get me wrong.
Steven Pope (41:08):
These guys are the drone magicians, the only way
you can take out Amazon is tobuild 400 FBA centers equivalent
.
Adam Shaffer (41:16):
Ain't gonna happen and Walmart's not doing it
either.
Steven Pope (41:19):
I mean, we don't even get a part of our Walmart.
They bought Jet and theycouldn't integrate with their
point of system.
Like you just said, what is thestupidest acquisition of the
last 10 years?
I would say it's Jet.
Adam Shaffer (41:32):
But I mean, we try to do Walmart from time to time
with certain products and it'syou know, you put in a lot of
effort and you just don't getthe.
I'm sure people do well on it.
It just, it just doesn't work.
Steven Pope (41:46):
10 times the amount of effort for one 10th of
return, the math just don't getthe.
I'm sure people do well on it.
It just it just doesn't work.
10 times the amount of effortfor one 10th of return, the math
just doesn't add up.
And I'll let you in on thesecret.
Here's why Walmart is not amarketplace.
When I say that, people likeget a little eyebrow raise
sometimes.
But like seriously, Walmart'snot a marketplace.
Why?
Because they cheat.
They put the retail productsabove your product.
(42:07):
You'll never, ever hear about anative-born Walmart brand, but
95% of the brands that I workwith I have 400 brands that pay
me every single month right nowOnly 5% of them are omni-channel
, 95% of them were on amazon.
(42:28):
I've never met a walmartnative-born brand.
Adam Shaffer (42:31):
It'll never happen no, that I believe that's,
that's a great point.
And and so, as we get towardsthe end here, tell me I mean I I
ask this of everybody is it toolate if you're not on Amazon or
ready to get on Amazon?
Steven Pope (42:45):
Yeah, it's harder, but it's not too late.
Like Amazon, is the greatestwealth transfer in my lifetime.
I am a multimillionaire becauseof Amazon.
If I had the money that I hadtoday and I could go back 10
years ago and invest it, I woulddump it into Amazon, no
question.
Even today, though, we'reseeing the ability to launch a
(43:08):
new product and make millions ofdollars.
It's very possible.
Now a lot of people do it thewrong way.
There's probably thousands ofsellers that are going to try
and fail, because the gold rushdoes not reward effort, it
rewards results.
If you go out and buy a plot ofland in them hills back in the
(43:29):
gold rush day in California, youmight have had a chance of
success, but not a guaranteedone.
So, just like selling on Amazon, it's a legitimate business.
You have to put in massiveamounts of effort.
Usually, you need three thingsto run a business finance,
marketing and operations and youhave to have an A in one of
those three and at least a C orbetter in the other two, and
(43:52):
most often than not the brandsthat I work with they're usually
really good at themanufacturing or operations
piece and not so good at eitherfinance or marketing piece and
not so good at either finance ormarketing, and so, if that
describes you, you'd beobviously a great candidate to
work with a marketing agencylike MAG.
But if you don't have somesuccess in at least one of those
(44:17):
three categories, you're goingto go out of business within the
first 12 months.
So, yes, I think Amazon's worthdoing today.
I'm obviously biased to saythat, but I firmly believe it.
I don't think it's passiveincome.
I want to set expectations, butthere's no question Amazon.
You see 50,000 new accountsopened up every single month.
There's a reason it still works.
Adam Shaffer (44:39):
Yeah, I mean, for us it's kind of still a heavy
lift to start somebody up wherewe kind of focus more on brands
that have some run rate, onAmazon or the selling to Amazon.
They hate selling to Amazon.
Amazon's destroying their brandand they're squeezing them for
profit.
Steven Pope (44:54):
Jeff Bigelow is my best friend and I love
everything he does.
It's amazing.
It never lets me down.
Adam Shaffer (45:01):
Yeah Well, when you're vendor central, there's
some horrible nightmare storiesthey can tell you about every
year when they have to gorenegotiate.
Steven Pope (45:10):
Amazon always accepts my fee increases every
year on Vendor Central right.
Like which lie was yourfavorite?
Adam Shaffer (45:17):
Yeah, no, no, they're all good ones.
So I get that and I'm motivatedby this conversation.
I mean, really, you tell it theway it is and I love to to hear
it that way and I'm hopingeverybody likes to hear it that
way.
So thank you for that.
And any final words for theaudience, although I thought
that last pitch was pretty good.
Steven Pope (45:39):
You know, if anybody wants to connect
personally with me, I am veryhyperactive on social media.
My two channels are YouTube andLinkedIn.
If you leave me a comment or DMme, I will personally respond
to you.
I just really have a bigpassion for what I do and I want
to bring, I want to level upthe whole Amazon community.
(45:59):
That's why I do what I do,that's why I share all my trade
secrets.
I want to bring prosperity tothe entire world.
So and this is how I believethat's possible.
Adam Shaffer (46:07):
So thanks for having me on Well, and Steven,
thanks for everything you'redoing for the community and, by
the way, we bought your SOPsabout a year ago, so thank you
for making that available.
Steven Pope (46:18):
Everything on Amazon.
Agencies can buy them, brandscan buy them.
We even have SOPs on how to runan agency.
So glad to thank you.
Adam Shaffer (46:26):
Well, they were super helpful and, with that,
thanks, and I'll see you soon.
All right, thank you.
Announcement (46:34):
Thank you for watching another episode of the
Planet Amazon podcast, where wetalk all things Amazon.
If you want to learn about howto accelerate your sales on
Amazon, visit Phelps United'swebsite at phelpsunitedcom.
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