The E-commerce Leader

[00:00:00] JM: you’ll get people to believe that because they’re disgusted with the current solutions
[00:00:04] MV: Hey folks, welcome back to the eCommerce Leader. Today we are in part five of our mini marathon here about starting your own Amazon brand in five simple steps or five quite big steps, it’s got to be said, but still five very doable steps. The first step was finding a profitable niche, starting with yourself, probably, Step two is about product design and validation and especially trying to make sure you get some input from potential people who might buy it one day.
[00:00:29] Step three was branding and packaging. Step four was the old sourcing, which is quite a big job getting things made. And we’re finally at the point where we’re going to talk about how to launch your product, which is the exciting bit when you get validation for all that months. Or at least many weeks of work and, also people might give you cash and profit and cashflow starts showing up.
[00:00:51] That’s sort of good stuff. Jason, you ready to rock and roll on this
[00:00:54] JM: one? Yeah, this is a great topic. I’m really looking forward to it. I love this one.
[00:00:58] MV: Excellent. So you’re fresh off a plane here. I know you say you’re, you’re adjusting time zones from Africa, which is kind of amazing. I’m over here in good old London time zone.
[00:01:06] So, Let’s get cracking. So I’ve, I’ve split this down into four pieces. be interested to hear your take on this stuff pre launch, which I think is optional, but desirable. that’s really where you probably shine more than, than me. It’s good old Amazon focus guy here. The next step is, listing optimization that is optimized for humans, trying to get persuade people to buy.
[00:01:25] The next step is. On Amazon traffic, which those two things are my sort of comfort zone. And then the other one is off Amazon traffic, which is known in Amazon world as external traffic. But you Jason would think with your nine mantas of traffic is just traffic. And again, that’s where you, you are the expert.
[00:01:40] So, between us, I think we can come up with a really great plan. so first up, any thoughts, Jason, about the general thing of launching a new product? What, what do we need to get in place before we launch into these details?
[00:01:52] JM: Yeah. So you’ve got pre launch activities on the list here, optional, but desirable.
[00:01:56] I, I don’t know if it’s optional. I think it’s highly required. It’s a, it’s a big part of the process. And I think just at the macro level, what you have to remember is that this is the moment in time where all of your preparatory work is going to actually produce a result or not. I mean, you know, prior to the pre launch activities, you basically created a.
[00:02:20] Product with a thesis would win in the marketplace for some specific reasons that you’ve, you know, you’ve seen a need, you’ve improved something that’s already existing, you know, you’ve made it cheaper. You’ve made it faster. You’ve made it better. You’ve made it something different. That’s not out there currently.
[00:02:36] And, so that’s all theory, you know, I mean, that’s a lot of. Pre work to prove that you’re going to be able to sell this thing, whatever it is, and the pre launch, phase of, you know, just before you put it out, there is really your opportunity to, document those, ideas and to really, really lean into them with your ideal user community.
[00:02:58] And I, I think that’s the point at which you would say, how do you get in front of your ideal user community? Now, you know, many Amazon advocates sort of purists would say you do that when you launch a product because Amazon, you know, knows everything and has all of the info and then, you know, either through organic or through paid Amazon activities, you will put it and they will put it in front of the right people for you.
[00:03:22] I would always, always, always encourage people to think. Beyond what Amazon will do for you and ask the question. What can you do directly for yourself in terms of pre launch? A community building, and I’ll just say this, the better you do at pre launch, the bigger splash you’re going to make, it will amplify and, exponentially.
[00:03:43] You know, improve what you can do on Amazon by itself and so we can talk about some tactics here for a couple minutes about how to do the pre launch stuff. But I would just say added at the high level. it is. And if you want the most important steps to getting a product launch done, right?
[00:03:59] MV: Yeah, that’s interesting.
[00:04:00] I mean, I guess I wouldn’t say I’m an Amazon purist so much as lazy enough to have focused on Amazon or just about wise enough to know my ignorance. I don’t know, but certainly laziness comes into it. Amazon does so much for you. that you get into the mentality of depending on Amazon on, I think you’re right.
[00:04:14] It’s a good corrective from a person who’s always built a business outside of Amazon. I guess you used eBay But only for a year, I think, and or, or less. So, you’re right. I I’m being lazy rather than advocating, skipping this. I’ve just done a couple of interviews, back to back with a couple of guys who, have really.
[00:04:32] You know, proving your thesis that you need to do the prelaunch really, really well. And one is Samantha Kazuch, who sells a physical product, but it’s kind of got a big mindset component, which is a journaling product, which has done fantastically well. And her background is social media. She was sort of social media presence before she then launched this brand and they started on Shopify.
[00:04:51] So by the time they got to Amazon, you know, they’re all about community. And that that was a reminder just of how powerful that can be. So I absolutely endorse this, even though it’s not really my skillset. So since it is not my skillset, let me ask you, what are the tactical points we need to do then?
[00:05:06] What are the essential things we’ve got to hit in this prelaunch phase?
[00:05:10] JM: Yeah, well, I think there’s such a monumental, I guess you could say, thought leadership, piece that came out many, many years ago on this whole idea. And it’s the 1000 true fans article, by Kevin Kelly and you can just Google that and find it 1000 true fans.
[00:05:27] And the idea here is that, you know, to in his thesis, what he says in that article, is that you only need 1000. Fans or, you know, buyers, to earn a 100, 000 dollar a year business or create a 100, 000 dollar a year business, depending on what you’re doing or whatever. But the thesis, the 1000 true fans is the 1st pursuit of any person who’s marketing a brand building, you know, a new.
[00:05:53] Business or whatever. And I would totally agree with that. And the options today are broader and more amazing than ever. You know, it’s amazing because, you know, 20 years ago, the thinking was, well, those have to be on an email list. and then, you know, the world progressed and it was like, well, now you can have a Facebook fan page or now you can have a Facebook group and, and the world continues to progress.
[00:06:17] Now, you can put a YouTube channel or a tick tock account or Instagram, you know, you can find your thousand true fans in many, many, many places. What you cannot do is launch a good brand without out a thousand true fans in my view. And it’s kind of like that. So you, you’ve got to figure out how do you communicate with your ideal.
[00:06:33] Customer base. Where are they currently right now? Most easily found. And what kind of stuff do you want to say to them that will actually get them engaged? obviously, you’ve created a new product with the thinking that it was going to be special, different or unique in some way. And, So you want to get the word out and you want to do that in a way that’s interesting to them.
[00:06:56] you want to announce yourself or explain yourself to the, those thousand true fans, try to begin to aggregate them. I would say that the more places you have them bonded to you in terms of like an email list, a social media account, on and on, a group, whatever, the better off you are, you know. and so I think that’s where you start is just asking the question, how could I get a thousand people to really, really buy into this?
[00:07:20] with me, this new product that I’m launching and, go after him in one of those venues. Yeah,
[00:07:26] MV: interesting. the thousand two fans thing is one of those sort of pieces of internet wisdom that, that’s, it’s interesting because it’s a, it’s well, it’s an evergreen theory. I mean, I just think, it’s, it’s not an easy one to achieve.
[00:07:35] I’m not arguing with the desirability of it. I mean, I, this sort of ties in with a thought from Ben Leonard, who, wrote the book, very good book, which I keep mentioning because I think I, because yeah. It’s a good book, but particularly Ben is good people. Like I know him pretty well. That’s why I keep talking about him because I trust his wisdom.
[00:07:51] But he talks about three layers, which I think is very helpful. One is just people who are aware of your existence. the second layer is possible buyers. And then the third level is maybe. What we’re discussing here with true fans or what he calls super fans now to get a list of a thousand true fans I think is incredibly powerful if you got that you’ve got a really solid core to your business But I think that might be something that might take a few years to develop depending on How great you are at building communities and how long you take to do it and so forth but certainly The point he makes which is I think is very important one is you cannot be a super fan if you haven’t Even bought the product and experienced it or had some kind of taster of it.
[00:08:28] And you can’t be that if you’re not even aware the brand exists. So you have to have these sort of concentric circles. So getting your awareness out there is really, really important. I mean, I would just say play devil’s advocate here is somebody who’s not very great at this. And one of the reasons I’ve say the Bit skeptical about this is if you spend me on an Amazon ad, you generally get some kind of return in terms of, revenue. It may or may not be profitable, but at least you’re getting some kind of ranking and validation of your product to a degree. what I’ve found really hard is to shift people from mere brand awareness to buying.
[00:09:01] So let me ask you the question. How do you deal with getting people to move through that funnel as it were?
[00:09:07] JM: Mhm. Yeah, I mean, I think it’s a good [00:09:10] question. I think the pre launch activities and the focus on what you’re doing has to lean back into the core thesis that you created your product upon. Why is your product different than what else is out there?
[00:09:23] You know, if you find a thousand true. Haters current products who really detest how it’s currently done. There you go. I mean, you know, you’re looking for a hungry market for people who would say, I love whatever it is as a product or as a thing. However, the current. Offers out there are leaving me really dissatisfied for the following technical reasons.
[00:09:47] And so in your pre launch activities, you want to, you want to tie back into, those frustrations, fears, you know, worries, problems, promises, bad, you know, product, technical elements and you want to position yourself as, as something different. Then, and they don’t have to actually test your product.
[00:10:09] You know, I would, I would argue that if they have, for example, disdain for the current product and you come along and say, Hey, guys, you know, those, horrible problems with the current product. Let me list them here for you. We all know what they are. And just so, you know, I’m launching a product next Tuesday that addresses 7 out of the 9 of them or whatever, you know, and it’s going to be a, you know, a great, great step forward for whatever product.
[00:10:31] This is, People will listen to that. I mean, I, it depends on how much they care. I mean, if you’re going into something that’s like, there’s a million other products out there, they all basically will do the same thing. You’re really a commoditized seller trying to push a commoditized, product. Then, you know, are you gonna be successful anyway?
[00:10:50] Probably not. But you actually have a point of view on a product that actually does offer some unique new value. you’ll have fans before you even launch. You know that if they buy into it, if they’re like, oh, this guy’s in the trenches. He knows what he’s doing. You know, he’s, he’s used this product like I have for 10 years and he said, there must be a better way.
[00:11:13] He’s making his product, you’ll get people to believe that because they’re disgusted with the current solutions, you know,
[00:11:19] MV: very interesting. So I like the faith you have in, I guess it just comes down to doing a really thorough job of, you know, having a really strong thesis and then working really, really hard to back that up, with, you know, genuinely different products.
[00:11:30] So to the, to the point that we’ve made earlier, I guess, and if you’ve done that homework, I guess you’ve got to have faith that people will want it. that’s one thing that I’m taking from this, which is great. Love your confidence. And the second thing is. Positioning against it’s really powerful. I hadn’t thought about that enough.
[00:11:46] I mean, I, I guess one of the things I periodically reminded of is how to, get people’s attention and not come across as a sleazy marketer is now actually not to start with a promise, but to start with a problem and say, yeah. You know, for example, the, the classic example in my advertising was the, Microsoft versus apple ads of the what, nineties.
[00:12:05] And they’ve got some boring guy in a suit, with some rubbish computer. And then the Apple guy comes along looking cool and, and solves everything. And I guess that was classic positioning against, like even today somebody sent me a Microsoft file of some description. I said, oh my God, you work in a corporate environment.
[00:12:18] Poor you. You have to deal with Microsoft stuff ’cause it always sucks. And guess what? It sucked. They’re consistent and so positioning against Microsoft was an easy thing to do and still is I would hug you if anyone comes to me and says, Apple’s too expensive and isn’t as good as it was, which I agree with and Microsoft still sucks, which I totally agree with every little brush I have with it.
[00:12:39] And offered me an alternative, you’re right, that, that will get my attention. So really great point. Really, really important point. I think it also has the side effect of making you seem like a genuine human being because most people start with suffering, things that don’t work and going, Oh, not again.
[00:12:53] And that kind of experience rather than starting going, Hey, wow, awesome. Especially in Britain. Like if you’re going, Hey, wow, awesome. Your first contact with the enemy. People tend to get skeptical about that. American culture is a bit different. But even so, I like that. That’s great wisdom there. Well, that we ought to move on to actually launching any of the essentials for prelaunch before we plunge into the next bit.
[00:13:15] JM: no, I mean, I think we covered it. I think that’s good problem. Agitate solution ideas, telling your story, the behind the scenes journey, building your process. All of those elements I think are important.
[00:13:25] MV: Yeah, behind the scenes. Good as well. Yeah. Show them how the sausage is made. It’s one phrase. Yeah.
[00:13:30] Okay. Brilliant. So assuming we’ve done all that, I think the next thing, which is more my comfort zone is, is making sure that you build your listing. So it’s a specific product detail page if you’re in the direct consumer world. and that’s Basically all we have on Amazon. That’s not quite true. We have got a storefront as well.
[00:13:46] I’m not going to get into that today because I think, it’s part of the brand story. We could get into if you like, but we haven’t got very long. So I just want to get to the chase here. So I think the most important thing is to go back over everything we’ve discussed. The thesis, why are you selling, particularly differentiation points and really important as well.
[00:14:04] I think that the absolute. trap of those who spent months of their life creating a physical product with physical features, i. e. things about it, the size, the thickness, the buttons, the widgets, the gizmos, whatever, is we have to, have to, have to translate those into benefits. So as my old, you know, sales managers used to say to me, you know, Mike, features tell, benefits sell.
[00:14:26] So you, for example, This has a blue blah, blah, blah, blah, which means that it will go twice as quickly as the existing market thing. And the twice as quickly thing is what we really want. That’s the promise. And then the feature is just the delivery mechanism. So that’s really critical. And I think the other point is to tie that together with your image work and your words that you don’t do it separately, that you start with a sort of core of the, the, the features time to benefits, and then make sure that the listing as a whole, so the, the images and the words reflect that.
[00:14:57] Really, really with crystal clarity. And I think words for me come first because they help force mental clarity. And then you move to the image work afterwards that for some people who are very, very visual, that might not be the case. That’s been my experience. So in a very, very compressed nutshell, that is, that is, I think the essence of a listing.
[00:15:16] What are your thoughts on that or product detail page, if you will.
[00:15:18] JM: I was going to ask you a few things about this. really curious to hear your thoughts, on tools that you might use. Now, AI would be the biggest of the tools, but let me mention a few others before we talk about AI. are there specific technical tools you like to use, like Grammarly or even research tools, like, Ubersuggest or keysearch.
[00:15:36] co? That you help you get the phrasing and the word choices dialed in. Or are there others like, I don’t know, what are the ones that would be for like Amazon centric sellers? you know, you know them better than I do. Helium 10, whatever, whatever. And the big, big daddy would be chat GPT. So what
[00:15:54] MV: I believe that your differentiator is going to be about your human understanding, not some tool you’re using for one of the simple reasons is because literally millions of people, probably several million people actually selling on Amazon. So they’ve got to be probably a halo of 10, 20, 30 million people who may be considering and playing with selling on Amazon.
[00:16:13] Most of whom are going to be using the same tools. So I think it’s extremely unwise to depend on tools. I think the irony is this, my take on it is very simple. When you’re first starting out you should do the hard yards and do things manually because you’ll learn so much by doing that. Once you’ve got that correct you can then delegate it to a person or You know, use the machine to automate it because you will have the taste and judgment gradually to tell whether chat GPT is giving you something bland and blah, which is the same as everyone else, or frankly, has just broken copyright law in some way, or is doing a good job.
[00:16:43] And I think until you’ve got into the trenches yourself, you know, you’re not, I don’t sure about that. Now, one caveat is if your grammar stinks, then use Grammarly, of course, and get somebody else to look at it. But that would be my take on it. Now, if you’re going to use tools, I would say Helium 10 is really useful because you can write, I can’t remember which one of the sort of 20 different tools there.
[00:17:02] I’m sure Jungle Scout has something very similar, but it has a tool where you can integrate, you can have a list of keywords you write into the bullets. And as it goes through, as you write the bullets, you write the keywords, it sort of takes them off, which is very useful mechanically, but it’s not doing the hard work of, of creating the sales document for you.
[00:17:19] So there you go. So it’s slightly radical. What about you? This is not for experienced people, but if you’re doing your first one, I’d say leave the tools alone.
[00:17:29] JM: Yeah, no, I mean, I think tools are always helpful in general. I mean, I always think my grammar is great until I put my writing in a grammarly and then I realized it was a 82 out of a hundred and it will make it a 99 out of a hundred if I click a few.
[00:17:41] Good point. So, so, there’s that. I also just remember. When I was in Seattle area, I spoke at a conference once and the other another speaker, the, the guy from Amazon, who’s in charge of the. Product page, like, who was the engineer in charge or whatever kind of crazy and, he 1 of the comments he made to the audience was the most under rated and.
[00:18:07] Important component of the Amazon product page is the bullet points and in his view, many, many people leave that as a wasted space or just a trivial space when in fact, they [00:18:20] should be totally, you know, nerding out and optimizing for the points. So anyway, so I think however you do it, whether you just take your own time and go slow, or, you know, also use tools, it’s vital that it gets, it’s, Well put together and then of course, what’s your thought on a plus content and all that is that somewhere else in the notes here? Or what’s your thought on that in general?
[00:18:42] MV: I haven’t put anything in there. I’d certainly think it’s desirable to use it I’m for sure if you’re starting with your you know, let’s face it anyone who starts with one two or three products It is obsessed with them.
[00:18:52] They’re their baby. So you’re gonna you know obsess about your listing so you might as well To put everything in it. And that definitely includes a plus content, but to your point about bullet points, I do think it’s more critical to optimize the bullet points than have beautiful a plus content, let alone a storefront because they won’t get as much visibility, anything like if somebody’s scrolling down the mobile, the bullet points actually will show up more easily than a lot of the rest of the listing and to the point about bullet points, I’ve seen somebody, I remember one of the members of the mastermind had pretty established business and he got a full time copywriter and he didn’t have a full time copywriter.
[00:19:23] it on the staff, but he hired somebody for the day for several hundred dollars, you know, not cheap labor, British, you know, native English speaker, but he nailed five different listings for them. All he changed was the bullet points, nothing else. And the conversion rate dropped, jumped noticeably, which blew my mind because I always was a bit skeptical about the value of these things.
[00:19:40] But yeah, I agree with the bullet points thing. Once you’ve done that, and only once you’ve done that, then yes, I agree with a plus content. You might as well use it because it’s available. It’s on the product detail page. It’s the second most likely set of content after the title, the bullet points and the, and the pictures, the images to move the needle towards conversion.
[00:19:59] So I’d agree with a plus content. I don’t have a strong feeling about which particular layout is best. I think what’s incredibly important is Kevin King, who’s was he’s been in the Amazon space for several years. There’s a big, big person in the space, but was before that for years in image product masking, very, very experienced.
[00:20:16] And he says, you’re going to be judged on your weakest image, which I think is absolutely true. So I think you should use. Every single space for an image you have on the product detail page with the one caveat that if you got a really amateurish looking image and do not put it in, that’s the only caveat.
[00:20:28] Otherwise use everything you got.
[00:20:31] JM: I like that. That’s wise. Yeah. You’re going to be judged on your weakest image. okay. This is great. Okay. So, so that’s the listing. what, what comes next in our recipe? So
[00:20:42] MV: really the, the listing, the sort of spine of the listing is, is really, I guess, two things, the keywords, which are often features like, I don’t know, blue widget with plastic doodah on it, you know, to put it in very generic terms, you know, whatever it is, you know, plastic mug holder with extra cup or something like that.
[00:20:58] That’s, that’s a very long tail keyword. And that’s often going to be a feature and you put the benefits in. So the keywords that you lose in the listing needs to be the same list that you target in your, advertising. At least I’m experienced with the on Amazon advertising system. That’s really all the only one that I’ve got any particular expertise with.
[00:21:16] I’ve dabbled with Google AdWords over the years. And, I think you need to be very, very thorough about your keyword research and be very, very clear on your hierarchy of which keywords you think are going to move the needle. So there are nuances here, but broadly speaking, if you think somewhere between.
[00:21:31] A massive, search volume and an impossible to fight on like, I don’t know, cup holder, which is probably too generic and, cup holder for car or something, which is probably still pretty competitive and cup holder for Lexus or something, which is maybe too narrow. Somewhere in that sweet spot is going to be the thing that is a blend of volume and win ability.
[00:21:50] And you’re going to put that into a title and then you’re going to have a hierarchy from there downwards, really based on, keywords that are lower search volume. And you’re going to put those probably into your bullets. And then the really low search volume words you’re going to have in your description.
[00:22:03] And then you take those same things and you’re going to create appropriate ad campaigns and we could go into campaign structure all day, but that’s the basic kind of overview of it, in my opinion.
[00:22:13] JM: Okay. So the third step here in our little recipe on Amazon traffic on Amazon advertising. Yeah. Yeah. All right.
[00:22:21] Yeah. So, that’s great. I would just say that, you know, there’s, there’s two types of. On Amazon traffic, just to bifurcate it at the highest level, and that is organic and paid, right? And so people need to really think through both sides of that. Obviously, many, many, you know, Amazon experts and gurus will talk about launching a product on the back of Amazon paid advertising to really jumpstart the, review process and the sales velocity.
[00:22:54] So, I, I would, I would just say that the, the launch process at the highest level. Includes sort of traffic from you could think of it from 4, 4 boxes, 4 grids, for a 4 box grid. And that would be, On Amazon organic, it would be off Amazon organic. It would be on Amazon advertising and be off Amazon advertising and we’ll talk about off Amazon.
[00:23:22] A traffic in a couple minutes here, but but that’s the highest way you can look at this. I think it’s just those ideas. and what you want to do is have each of those absolutely crushing it. and you don’t want to neglect any of them if you want to have your highest potential outcome, right? So the on Amazon traffic, just to get back to that by itself, you know, you want to have good, solid listings.
[00:23:46] We have organic success, and then you also want to have, advertising on Amazon to really boost up your opportunity. is that too simplistic a way to think about it? No,
[00:23:57] MV: I think that’s a very, very good to be clear minded about this. And what I see quite a lot is, gosh, I mean, there’s so many, there’s so much that goes into this, but to simplify it grossly, people neglect the SEO opportunity on Amazon.
[00:24:08] I’m not saying that that’s the only solution. It’s 2023 is competitive, but if you don’t. Maximize that you’re leaving the cheapest or the freest traffic on the table, which is silly, you know, to put it very British. Where’s father city? So you really, really, really should do your homework on that. Now, the flip side of that is not very complicated.
[00:24:27] If you’re going to use the advertising platform on Amazon, I think you. They are two sides of the exact, the same coin. I mean, it’s really not that different. If you’ve got a great keyword list to try and rank organically for, then that will make a great keyword list to advertise for. And if you’ve got a terrible set of keywords, for example, you’re trying to shoot for a very big markets.
[00:24:45] Then you’re going to be invisible. And if you try and, you know, square that circle by advertising, you can advertise your way to the top. If you reduce your price of your products and spend enough on ads, you can, you can get visibility, but it will be crippling financially. So it comes to the same thing, which is if you cannot rank organically for something, then don’t bother going after those keywords anyway.
[00:25:03] And if you can rank organically for them, then you need to kickstart that process with ads. So it’s the same list of keywords, really, to be
[00:25:09] JM: honest. Okay. And let’s talk about the ads for a minute. So basically, if you’re not familiar with the back end of Amazon ads manager, you’ve used it for a long time as it relates to products on Amazon.
[00:25:20] And what I mean, I mean, like consumer products. I’ve used it for a long time as it relates to book marketing on Amazon. And it basically works the same. So, so I would just say at the highest level, when you talk about using the, I call it AMS. That’s the name for Amazon marketing services. But. it’s just called advertising dot Amazon.
[00:25:40] Now, I don’t know, whatever. But when you’re using the advertising tools, the No. 1 thing that you’re doing there is you’re trying to understand whether or not you can advertise your product, or, A break even or better outcome now, this is interesting because it gets very, it’s very interesting and you can really nerd out over this stuff.
[00:26:01] But the question is, can you use the advertising system to actually not waste money? You know, like not lose money. I guess you could say, um, and so if you can use the advertising system inside Amazon to truly break even or to actually make a positive return on ad spend row as, as they call it, then you’re.
[00:26:21] You know, that’s the, that’s the pursuit. That’s the goal. One thing that you have to calculate pretty quickly is what is breakeven for your product. And that means that if you, you know, have 5 cost of goods and, the other costs associated with, you know, getting the product out there, add up to some amount, and then you’ve got to have your ads.
[00:26:41] You know, not only sell the product, let’s say spend 10, make 10, but we had all the cost of goods in calculation. You would be losing money at that point. So you’ve got to figure out what your true, breakeven advertising, costs is, and that’ll look like a number like 1. 3 or, you know, 1. 8 or two or whatever, it’s a, it’s a number it’s real number.
[00:27:06] It means if you spend 10, you have to make 20. Let’s just say in sales. then you’re in a game, you’re a very interesting game and it’s a game. And here’s the cool part. It is a game. It has unlimited upside potential. There is theoretical, obviously, caps. You will be competing for share of wallet. On Amazon against many other competitors, but what you’re basically looking at is what is the total [00:27:30] man for that product on Amazon?
[00:27:32] And how much of it can you get? And can you get it profitably? And so that, you know, the whole world of pursuit and it’s a game. It’s a big game to play. and that’s a fun part of launching a product is figuring out whether that can happen or not. I have, for example, this is 1 little example, then, you know, don’t want to monopolize this.
[00:27:50] Michael want to hear your thoughts. But as 1 little example, when I launched my instagram powerbook in 2019, the 2nd edition with McGraw hill set a set of ads. And, for whatever reason, there was 1 ad. That absolutely works. It just works. I the spend, you know, button on, and I start making positive row as that book, you know, last I looked the other day, it was like number 18 in the social media category.
[00:28:20] It’s four years old, but it works. It’s it’s, it’s still in the bestseller ranks and still doing very well. It has tons of reviews. Why is that? Because I have an ad that I know works now I’ve launched other books and I can’t get ads to work. So it is really sometimes hit and miss, but the advertising component of launching a product, I think is a huge, huge game.
[00:28:40] So what are your thoughts, Michael?
[00:28:45] he fell out, buddy. You’re not in. Sorry.
[00:28:51] MV: The two thoughts, one is the, the Amazon nerds out there will be screaming at the screen. Well, Mike, there’s more than one set of ads and of course there are. So. I would stick if you don’t know what you’re doing, which by definition, if you’re starting, you don’t yet.
[00:29:03] And if you think you do, when you just knew that that’s dangerous territory, when it comes to advertising, cause you will spend a lot of money before you realize, Oh, actually, I don’t know what I’m doing. And now I spent 10, 000. I didn’t have. So I would stick to the simple stuff, which is sponsored product ads.
[00:29:16] And one of the reasons for that is because you don’t have much creative control. And that means. That you can’t do stupid things either very easily. So then it becomes, you don’t have to worry about creative because Amazon deals with that. It’s basically a picture of your product and it looks pretty much the same as an organic listing.
[00:29:30] So that simplifies the game. Then there’s, as you said, knowing your breakeven is absolutely critical. Don’t even think of turning your ads on without knowing your financial numbers, because to your point, it is a financial game. It comes down to a numbers game and there’s various different ways of cracking it.
[00:29:45] Get working your, your ads to, you know, break even. So the sales you make via advertising, which are very closely tracked in all the metrics you get on Amazon, if those are breaking even, that means that any of the other ranking boost that you get, which is the critical thing on the Amazon system, that’s not true in other ad platforms, at least not supposed to be true, that you do get organic ranking boost by having an ad driven sale on a particular keyword.
[00:30:10] And that’s critical because really it’s the organic ranking that is going to be where you. Make your money. And to your point, if you break it on ads, fine, but it is a financially driven game. So therefore I’d stick to sponsored product ads. You can make money with brand ads and all the other different ads.
[00:30:26] They keep introducing every five minutes, but guess why Amazon keeps introducing ads. It’s not for you. And it’s not for the customers because it surely doesn’t make for a better customer experience. It’s to make Amazon money in my opinion. So I would be very slow to adopt the other ones and keep an eagle eye on the ad spend and your profit and loss.
[00:30:44] Don’t know your unit economics, don’t go into the ad spend platform before you know them. That’s all I would say. And then you will spend the rest of your life trying to refine those numbers. Promise you, there’s a lot of discussion in the Mastermind for the last several years on ad spend. How do I reduce my ad spend?
[00:31:00] I my ad spend high like, oh, we’re talking about ad spend again, and that will be a part of your life and that’s part of the game you’ve gotta crack. There you go.
[00:31:09] JM: And I would just say a couple of things about that. There are, in my opinion, there’s sort of two type of types of personalities that approach.
[00:31:15] This one is the horseshoes and hand grenade operator where it’s like, well, that’s close enough. I throw a hand grenade out there and sometimes it blows stuff up, you know? So, that level of, lack of, specific detail is problematic when it comes to advertising. The other type of operator mindset is super detail oriented, where you have to know every single little thing and you take your time, you go slow, but you are maniacal about the details.
[00:31:44] When it comes to the advertising game, you have to have somebody in the mix that is maniacal about the details. and you know, unless you’re just stupid lucky or stupid early, but just I would say you won’t be. So you have to have somebody who really actually nerds out very deeply over these details on the ad platforms.
[00:32:03] And if you’re not that person, just own it. I’m not that person. I know I’m not. I know I can’t do. Detailed, complicated, you know, stuff like that. I’m more big picture. So, so that means if you’re going to do this at scale, you need to find an ad manager who really can do for you by obsessing over the details and testing many, many ads and keywords, key phrases, you know, on and on and on.
[00:32:30] There’s a million things to focus on. And I would just say that that that’s probably a big decision as a managerial level thinker About how to approach advertising is, you’ve got to have the right skill set to, you know,
[00:32:43] MV: I agree entirely with those things. So to, to follow ups to that one is if you’re a horseshoes and hand grenades operator, and I’m, I’m sort of in between, I don’t know, I, I’m kind of nerdy, but I’m not, I’m a bit too careless with Aspen.
[00:32:53] I tend to be a bit too aggressive and that, that normally means you’re giving your money to Amazon. So, that’s another personality trait to be aware of. so. If that’s you, then auto campaigns generally work pretty well. So Amazon’s got this incredible algorithm, which has probably got trillions of data points by now.
[00:33:09] So it’s actually pretty effective. So even doubt using auto campaign, but here’s the nuance, which is really, really important. It’s not about what you spend money on. It’s what you spend, don’t spend money on. So if you have an auto campaign, you download the keywords, you know, CSV file, by the way, that.
[00:33:23] Automatically probably puts you in the nerding category. So get somebody else to help you with that. If you’re not that
[00:33:28] JM: nerds, absolutely.
[00:33:29] MV: But get somebody to do that. But that’s a one negative keywords. Yeah. Negative keywords. Exactly. Put negative keywords in there, which is somewhat nerd zone, but it’s the simplest version.
[00:33:40] If you’re going to run a full on bunch of manual campaigns, that’s mega nerd zone. The other caution I would have for you is this. Do not hope that somebody else is going to solve this problem for you. If you get an agency into manage your ads, unless you have, you know, quite a big catalog and it’s really a managerial drain on your time.
[00:33:57] Like it’s a full time job for somebody. and if you’ve got one or two products, you just started, that’s not you. Do not be naive. Yes. They may reduce your, your total advertising to sales ratio or tacos, whichever metric you want to use. So ad spend divided by sales of a product. But then they’re going to charge you a flat fee.
[00:34:14] Now, if you’ve got a catalog of a hundred products, the flat fee is not that big. And if you have one product, it’s going to wipe out any saving to make, and you will pay them a lot more money than you save. So don’t do this at home. A lot of people have tried it. A lot of people have tried it. Never seen that working in that way.
[00:34:28] So don’t use an ad agency at this stage of the game. It’s too early. Okay. Yeah. That’s it for Amazon ads.
[00:34:37] JM: Just one other little bit there. Yeah. You don’t have to use an agency. You can use an individual who knows their stuff. That 100
[00:34:44] MV: percent that is the way to go. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Right. Yeah. What the way to create the circle to, you know, to square that circle is to use a VA.
[00:34:53] This is one place where people who are not native speakers, you know, doesn’t really matter. It’s more of a math game. Really? get somebody in the Philippines who’s been trained up in this stuff. They’ll be, I don’t know, 10, 15 bucks an hour. But if you get them in for two or three hours a week, that could be really great return on investment as opposed to paying an agency a thousand dollars a month and wondering why you’re not making any money off the boat.
[00:35:13] There you go. So that’s the solution. You’re quite right. So I don’t want to fall down a rabbit hole there. Cause Amazon has to say, there’s a lot to say, but off Amazon traffic, that’s your bag to do that. Let’s get into this. I mean, this is the, I’ve put it as optional, but desirable. Would you agree with that in 2023 discuss.
[00:35:32] JM: Well, I mean, I wouldn’t really frame it as option. I mean, it’s like, is making a lot of money optional or to you or question? Do you hate money? Don’t do this stuff. Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, I is, is it optional? I don’t know. I guess, I guess I would say if you just absolutely brush it and you barely keeping up with the man just because you launch your product on Amazon with just organic, you know.
[00:36:01] Efforts then good for you, you don’t have to do anything else, but obviously, most situations aren’t like that. Most people are trying to do everything they possibly can. So, off Amazon traffic, I think is vital. I would categorize it as the following sources. Number 1 would be. Your own list of email, you know, fans, followers, the thousand raving fans people.
[00:36:23] So build an email as soon as you can. how do you do that? Well, then that it gets complicated because you’ve got to use alternate methods, like a website or social media accounts or something like that. But, but I would, I would say marketing is the number 1 thing that you want to lean into over the long term.
[00:36:39] It will [00:36:40] serve you the best. And I’ll tell you 1 thing. If you kill yourself, trying to build an email list on your 1st product launch, but you do it. The second product you launched, it’s hopefully in an adjacent category or just, you know, very similar, you know, in the same niche. it’ll be much, much easier because you’ll have that list.
[00:36:57] And, the, you know, it’s, it’s one of those assets that you, you know, create that you, you reap the benefits from for years and years to come. Okay. So the email marketing, the second thing I would say is do not underestimate the power of, simple Google text ads. Okay. Google text ads are absolutely fantastic way to generate, you know, supplemental off Amazon traffic and, the, the, they’re not complicated.
[00:37:24] It’s not hard to set up. It’s very straightforward. And I would look into that as a 2nd thing for off Amazon social accounts come into, the mix after that. so that’s kind of how I’d prioritize.
[00:37:39] MV: Like it, I mean, this isn’t my comfort zone. I, I spoke to, again, a couple, couple of sets of my last couple of sets of guests on amazing FBA for a reason.
[00:37:47] the first one, Samantha Kazu, I’m only mentioned from Manuscripting, so she, she does this, you know, sort of manifesting and goal setting journal and stuff. It’s all very kind of Californian and said, of course, there’s tons of Southern Californian women chomping at the bit. And she’s built an incredibly loyal community and she’s, she was a model and she was an Instagram expert, so, you know.
[00:38:06] Of course, she’s got an incredible community, not so easy to emulate, but if you can do that, that’s obviously incredibly powerful. Amazon loves external traffic. Now, the second person, that I had on is, Rob Sharp from levanta. io, and he’s just created a, an affiliate managing, And marketplace, software.
[00:38:25] so basically he’s got, you know, about 2000 people who help you promote your products, specifically for Amazon sellers, which is helpful. Cause a win and impact and all the other affiliate management software doesn’t deal with Amazon. Doesn’t play nice with Amazon. so that’s a great opportunity.
[00:38:38] Affiliate marketing is, I guess, you know, essentially somebody else doing all the stuff that you do using an email list of their own, using social media, you know, organic social media, using paid ads, using Google ads, whatever it may be. But they’re paying for it and you only pay them when you have, you know, got a sale, which is amazing.
[00:38:56] Now, of course, the art then is to persuade people to actually work with you. And if you haven’t got a proven product, that’s not easy. And now again, that comes down to the homework and groundwork you’ve laid, I guess.
[00:39:07] JM: Yeah. I’ll just say a couple of things. yeah, that’s this where. Off Amazon traffic gets so complicated because everybody who you talk to will have a different shiny object that they’ve been lured into.
[00:39:18] And, you know, there’s a concept by, I think it’s Michael Porter who says, all of us get in what’s called methodological fixation, which is 1. we figure out how to pound the nail into the wood, whatever we’ve done to do that. Is the method what we’ve now stuck in our minds, even if you’re using your bare hands by the net into the wood, that’s your method after you’ve gotten it figured out, you know, or if you use a rock or whatever, use a bowling ball, whatever the method is, that’s what you’re going to focus on.
[00:39:51] So I would just say that, there are many, many. Sources of traffic. In fact, my book, nine mountains of traffic is all about that. It breaks down all of them, literally all of the types of internet traffic and categorizes them and explains how to go after them. So yes, there are many things. I will just say this about affiliate marketing and influencers.
[00:40:11] If you’re, if you’re going to do affiliate marketing influencers, I will just say this, the toolkit that you have to use In with that type of work on as an Amazon seller is a, like a 10th of what the toolkit is that you have, if you’re a Shopify seller. So to use influencer marketed, to sell on Amazon to me is, you know, it’s like threading in the eye of a needle when, if you had a Shopify site, you would just be like dumping.
[00:40:41] You know, energy and resources in the traffic because the tool sets are just so much greater. when you sell direct to consumer on your own Shopify site, but it’s not to say that influencers can’t work or affiliates can’t work for Amazon. You know, sellers, but there’s just nuance with all this stuff, you know?
[00:40:58] And so to me, again, that’s why I say priority, priority, priority, email marketing, your own list is the first thing to figure out and then go from there, you know,
[00:41:07] MV: no, no argument in the email list. Absolutely none. I would say a couple of things. So some, some actual evidence from the front lines of what’s working.
[00:41:16] And then the other thing is a more general principle. So the actual evidence in the front lines, Facebook groups seem really powerful. If they’re done well, not set up a Facebook group and then dump a bit of content in it once a week, right? I actually have somebody in charge of nurturing it, which if that’s you, and you’re also launching a product, and maybe you’ve also got a day job, you’re going to be very, very busy, but I’ve seen it really helpful.
[00:41:36] Getting a review rate up from, I think, one in a hundred, which is kind of quite average on Amazon to about four and a hundred, the review rate jumped for those products, which meant they got a lot of reviews. Social proof is incredibly important on Amazon, particularly when you’re launching new products.
[00:41:49] So for launching new products for them, that business, it was really, really, really good. But they worked incredibly hard. They gave discounts that you’ve got to do a lot of work. That’s been a really proven channel. In addition to email, of course, the other thing that strikes me is really kind of a simple general principle, but when we can forget, when we get shiny objects out there, which is the guy who came on the podcast to talk about affiliate marketing for Amazon sellers has been doing affiliate marketing for eight years.
[00:42:13] Samantha Kazuchi came on and shared what she did about community building using Instagram has been on Instagram and was before that a model for, you know, she was on Instagram for 10 years now, I’m not saying anyone. Who’s listening to this isn’t necessarily got that specific skill set, but if you have a natural inclination and background in something, I would lean into that more than anything else.
[00:42:32] at least still enjoy the process, which is half of it, right? What are your thoughts on that?
[00:42:37] JM: Yeah. I mean, you’re totally right. I guess what we’re saying is almost any of the traffic sources could work. The question is who are you as an operator, which is what you just, which is great. So that question is, and I would take it a little further to say, do you like being on camera?
[00:42:51] Yeah. On video. or do you like writing, or you have an administrator and you’re a good team builder and you’re a good, organizer of people, then, you know, you, you kind of can go horses for courses and just use your own skill set and figure out, okay, what social media platform or marketing platform would work with my skill sets?
[00:43:08] I hate being on video. I never want to have to talk to anybody. but I love to write, you know, so there you go. Maybe you’re going to be a blogger. So I would just align your. Okay. A personal skill sets and abilities with the realities of the different platforms. And the beautiful part of it is again, there’s, there’s really strategies that will work for anybody’s style.
[00:43:29] Anybody’s skill set. because there’s so many options now for traffic. So I think that’s a key part of it is to do what you like, you know, don’t if you heard that Instagram is the most amazing thing and therefore you have to do it and you need to do, you know, video reels every day or whatever. And you hate me on video.
[00:43:47] That’s a recipe for failure. You know, you won’t.
[00:43:49] MV: It’s not just a recipe for failure, but a miserable failure. I mean, you know, not all businesses are going to succeed in their first, first stab at a product, but if you enjoy the process and you learn a heck of a lot, then you’re much more likely to succeed your second or third attempt as well.
[00:44:04] So. The other thing I would say is, just another nuance really, as well as being true to who you are, think about who you are after. If you’re a book nerd and you’re selling, I don’t know, reading likes for books or something, chances are that you like writing and other people you’re writing for, if that’s your audience, like reading stuff, if you’re selling video cameras, chances are quite high that you’ve got people that like making videos.
[00:44:25] So, you know, you might want to be oriented towards that and you can’t. Always get that beautiful crossover between the product, your preferences and the audience. But I think I would always be looking for those, you know, overlapping of the Venn diagrams. And then you will automatically be speaking in the medium that your customers want as well.
[00:44:41] You know, one, one neglected channel, which may or may not work for you and your product, is something that’s worth mentioning specifically as well, which haven’t seen in the mastermind, but things people like pluggable, which is P L U one G. Made an absolute killing a while ago using so they have things that connect things to other things electronically, basically, and they made a lot of YouTube videos, which drove a ton of traffic to the Amazon listings because they were very, very helpful at explaining how to use the product in a helpful way.
[00:45:10] And if you have a technical type product, maybe that Pushes me a bit towards YouTube rather than Instagram. And hopefully that means you’re a technical kind of person and your audience is technical. So again, those Venn diagrams overlap naturally, right? If you’re a lifestyle or mentality type person, maybe Instagram or TikTok is more your world and maybe your clients are on there so you get the idea of where I’m going with this.
[00:45:30] JM: Yeah, sure. Wow. No, I totally agree. That’s
[00:45:32] MV: great. This is big stuff man, isn’t it? We, we, we’re in deep waters here, but wow. we ought to wrap this. ’cause otherwise we, we, you could go very, very, very deep on any of these things, but we’ve talked about launching the product. Just to recap the pre-launch, I thought it was optional, but desirable and, in, in your opinion, Jason and I have to say you, I fear that [00:45:50] you’re correct.
[00:45:50] We absolutely have to do, it’s not optional, but it does really, really set you up for success. We want to list, optimize the listing, sorry for humans particularly think about list linking. Benefits to features, i. e. the things about the widget. What does it do for humans? What result do we get? We talked about on Amazon SEO, as in organic traffic and paid traffic.
[00:46:11] And we talked about off Amazon or otherwise known as external traffic. So people with a very Amazon focused mindset. Anything else that you think we should pass on at this point before we all kind of pass out from the mental effort?
[00:46:24] JM: Yes. And I would say it’s the number one, discipline of all of us as entrepreneurs is determination.
[00:46:32] You know, I mean, the, you’re going to prove your thesis about your product or you’re going to disprove it. You know, it’s either going to be a hit or not a hit. It’s going to, you’re going to set some, or you’re not going to sell some and either way you’re learning. And either way, you’re getting better at your craft and either way, you’re becoming closer to your end goal, which is to have a thriving business.
[00:46:54] So I would just say the number 1 thing about going through all of this is if you feel like you launched a product and you did badly at, you know, regroup, determine in your mind that you’re going to do another product and you’re going to get better at it and go from there. Because at the end of the day, everything we do is a learning exercise.
[00:47:16] Whether we won or we lost, we’ve learned and so I would just say that that’s the number 1 thing to remember is that this is a long game and. I just would feel horrible if somebody tried to launch a product, it didn’t work and they just gave up, you know, that’s, that’s like a super sad. That’s like kidding it, quitting your academic, you know, career in kindergarten because you got a C on your art, you know, project instead of an A or something like that, you know, yeah, so that’s,
[00:47:43] MV: well, I think that happens a lot in life, like people have an experience with, say, sport or, you know, piano lessons, the classic, I’m sure I’ve put many people off, off the piano in my career because, or my wife has, because they failed an exam or they couldn’t play a scale and they kind of cried a bit or something, and it’s true, you have to have that grit, there’s a, by the way, very British lesson to end on, I like that, you’ve got to have grit as, as, you’ve Winston Churchill put it when you’re going through hell, keep going.
[00:48:08] So if it’s not working out, keep moving and review the lessons afterwards. And actually, sometimes I think that the most successful entrepreneurs I’ve seen have the ones who, when you dig a bit deeper, they had like 10 years of hell in business and now they’re killing it. And you happen to have met them in the killing it phase.
[00:48:25] Guess what? That’s where they hone their craft and got their determination together. So I agree with that entirely. And, the great thing about this is, I still, I’m very bullish about e commerce in the U S I’m in the UK to a degree for sure, but the U S there’s still such a big percentage of people that buy stuff.
[00:48:41] In brick and mortar stores, but every year there are more and more people coming online. So there is a growing demand. I know so many people who’ve sold their businesses for six, seven, or even in one case, eight figures, like personal acquaintances, not exactly close friends in some cases, but there is so much money to be made in this.
[00:48:56] You just have to be willing to go through those early stages, as you say. So, um, yeah, man, good, good convert. And, thank you for reminding me that you can’t get away without a pre launch. Damn it. I was hoping to be lazy, right? We can’t do that. Okay. we also tell people that the last sort of wrap up stuff, where can people get hold of you and, Kyle, if they want to work with you, Jason.
[00:49:20] JM: Yeah, Omni rocket dot com. Love to have you fill out a conversation application. We’re happy to spend 30 minutes with you talking about your business schools. We focus on shopify site build site management. we also do email marketing and social media management. and so we’re happy to talk to folks who are doing well in their businesses.
[00:49:40] We don’t work with, newbies. If I’m being completely candid, we work with people who have proven If sales and really try to help them leverage the benefits of a Shopify platform, in that process. So maybe, what about you?
[00:49:53] MV: best place is probably still my amazonaudits. com. And again, this is for people in an established Amazon business.
[00:49:58] It could be fairly early stages, I guess. the focus these days is most on the mastermind where people are doing 40, 50, 000 a month upwards. but my amazonaudit. com is the place to go and, Worked with quite a few people recently where I think they got really great value and If you are particularly coming to Amazon from an existing business, maybe brick and mortar, which I’ve had an experience of quite a few times, the mastermind.
[00:50:21] And these days, sometimes from direct to consumer, then that’s particularly something I can really, really help you with, because I can help you take the lessons you got and sort of transmute them over to Amazon, translate them as it were. Well, and that was a big one. We covered a lot of ground today.
[00:50:35] Thank you so much for your time, man. As ever, always, always very, very thought provoking and, listening have found it useful as well.
[00:50:43] JM: Yeah. See you, buddy.
[00:50:44] MV: Bye bye.