Transforming Brands in the Digital Marketplace with Corey Brown

Summary

B2B Breakthrough Podcast: Transforming Brands in the Digital Marketplace with Corey Brown

Episode Release Date: November 6, 2024
Host: Sharon Guy
Guest: Corey Brown, Founder and CEO of Buffa Brand Marketing

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1. Introduction to Corey Brown and Buffa Brand Marketing

Sharon Guy introduces Corey Brown, the founder of Buffa Brand Marketing, a specialized agency focused on e-commerce strategies for platforms like Amazon and Walmart. Buffa Brand Marketing is renowned for its expertise in brand development, marketplace solutions, strategic planning, and implementation, positioning Corey as a distinguished leader in the e-commerce domain.

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2. Corey’s Journey into E-commerce

Corey recounts his entry into e-commerce, highlighting a pivotal moment on Craigslist where he secured a marketing assistant position for an Amazon consultant. Despite initial skepticism from friends, Corey persevered through an extensive 15-step interview process, which ultimately opened doors to the e-commerce world.

Corey Brown [01:29]: "Craigslist was big at the time. I went through a crazy 15-step interview process to get this job."

This role ignited his passion for building online stores and understanding the intricacies of e-commerce platforms.

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3. Building Buffa Brand Marketing: Strategies and Growth

After gaining substantial experience, Corey decided to launch Buffa Brand Marketing. Utilizing platforms like Jungle Market, an offshoot of Jungle Scout and Helium 10, Corey swiftly positioned Buffa Brand among the top three services within the first month by implementing a robust branding strategy.

Corey Brown [08:00]: "I implemented my branding strategy, built all my own graphics, and optimized everything to position Buffa Brand at the forefront."

This strategic approach enabled rapid growth, transforming Buffa Brand into a recognized player in the e-commerce agency space over five years.

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4. Services Offered by Buffa Brand

Buffa Brand Marketing offers comprehensive services tailored to the needs of various e-commerce businesses. Their offerings include:

• Amazon and Walmart Account Management: Handling brand listings, advertising, and strategic planning.
• Visual Creatives: Developing high-quality graphics and content to enhance product listings.
• Advertising Strategies: Driving traffic through both platform-specific and external advertising channels.
• Flexible Collaboration: Partnering with clients to fill gaps without completely taking over their existing teams.

Corey Brown [10:22]: "What differentiates us is our cohesive execution. We handle everything from graphics to advertising, providing flexibility to work alongside our clients' teams."

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5. Case Study: Grill Perfect

Corey shares a detailed example of working with Grill Perfect, a small brand focused on product development. Grill Perfect sought assistance in visually showcasing their products and enhancing their Amazon presence. Buffa Brand delivered by:

• Creating Full Visual Creatives: Reshooting products to produce high-quality images.
• Developing Advertising Strategies: Crafting campaigns to drive visibility and sales across multiple channels.
• Strategic Planning: Building out visual displays that overcome customer objections and enhance brand storytelling.

Corey Brown [11:35]: "We helped Grill Perfect by doing full visual creatives, advertising, and driving all the strategy across Amazon and multiple channels."

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6. Content and Branding in E-commerce

Corey emphasizes the importance of tailored content and brand storytelling in e-commerce. Buffa Brand focuses on:

• Evoking Emotion: Designing content that resonates with the target audience’s aspirations and lifestyle.
• Comprehensive Listings: Building out product listings that convey information clearly without overwhelming the customer.
• Brand Story and A+ Content: Creating narratives that highlight the brand’s origins and product excellence.

Corey Brown [13:09]: "We're building out entire templates for product lines to maximize value, brand alignment, and overall cross-selling and upselling."

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7. Navigating Different Marketplaces: Amazon vs Walmart

Corey discusses the nuances between selling on Amazon and Walmart:

• Amazon: Highly integrated with APIs, extensive data capabilities, and a saturated advertising console, allowing for sophisticated strategies and tactics.
• Walmart: Fewer supporting apps but rapidly growing integrations, requiring different content and production approaches.

Corey Brown [18:03]: "Amazon has a lot of integrations and data capabilities, whereas Walmart is expanding its ecosystem and supporting more apps."

Corey also highlights the emerging Seller Fulfilled Prime (SFP) program, offering alternative fulfillment options beyond FBA.

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8. Emerging Trends: TikTok and Live Streaming

Buffa Brand is expanding into TikTok, recognizing its growing influence in social selling and user-generated content. Corey believes TikTok is becoming a crucial platform for reaching younger demographics and integrating e-commerce with social media.

Corey Brown [19:16]: "We're adding TikTok to our competencies as it's becoming a significant channel for sales and product discovery."

Regarding live streaming, Corey expresses reservations due to his preference for traditional methods over personality-driven sales.

Corey Brown [21:20]: "I'm a little bit of a hermit and not a big social media person, so I shy away from live streaming."

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9. Recent Developments in Amazon: AI and Rufus

Corey discusses Amazon's integration of AI, specifically the Rufus tool, which analyzes listings and reviews to generate customer-facing insights. While AI enhances data processing, it poses challenges like the potential amplification of fake reviews.

Corey Brown [23:47]: "AI is one of the big changes. Rufus helps customers get important facts but can also reinforce fake negative reviews."

This development underscores the importance of actively managing reviews and maintaining quality control to safeguard brand reputation.

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10. Staying Updated in a Rapidly Changing Market

To keep abreast of marketplace changes, Corey employs a multi-faceted approach:

• Monthly Internal Reviews: Curating updates and sharing them through internal newsletters.
• Networking and Events: Attending industry events to gain insights and connect with experts.
• LinkedIn and Professional Networks: Leveraging connections to access up-to-date information.

Corey Brown [26:23]: "We do consistent monthly reviews and rely on our LinkedIn network to stay informed with the latest trends and updates."

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11. Mental Health and Work-Life Balance in E-commerce

Corey addresses the constant demands of the e-commerce landscape, emphasizing the importance of balance:

• Batch Processing: Managing tasks in batches to avoid the stress of 24/7 operations.
• Flexible Work Environment: Encouraging team flexibility to promote a healthy work-life balance.
• Automated Tracking: Utilizing metrics tracking to stay informed without constant oversight.

Corey Brown [28:43]: "No business has to be 24/7. You can solve things in batches and give your team the flexibility to maintain balance."

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12. Future Aspirations and Global Expansion

Buffa Brand Marketing aims to scale globally, with recent hires focused on expanding into Chinese markets. Corey envisions a multilingual approach to serve a broader international clientele, enhancing collaborations with platforms like Alibaba.

Corey Brown [30:15]: "We’re looking to become a more global company, working with sellers around the world and integrating more marketplaces."

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13. Advice for Shopify Entrepreneurs Considering Amazon or Walmart

Corey advises Shopify store owners to diversify their presence by leveraging Amazon and Walmart alongside their existing platforms:

• Build a Dual Strategy: Use marketplaces to attract new customers while nurturing a direct relationship through Shopify.
• Brand Ownership: Simultaneously develop a strong brand presence on Amazon and your own website to maintain control over customer relationships.
• Product Selection: Curate a subset of products suitable for marketplaces to drive traffic and conversions back to your primary platform.

Corey Brown [32:35]: "If you have a successful Shopify store, start a conversation about curating products for marketplaces to drive revenue and customer growth."

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14. Closing Thoughts and Final Advice

Corey emphasizes the importance of strategic flexibility and staying informed in the ever-evolving e-commerce landscape. He encourages businesses to embrace integrations and maintain a balanced approach to growth and operations.

Corey Brown [36:27]: "I'm excited about the integrations between Amazon and Shopify, making things easier for people trying to piece it all together."

He concludes by highlighting the significance of community and continuous learning through events and networking.

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Key Takeaways

• Strategic Branding: Effective branding and visual content are critical for success on e-commerce platforms.
• Platform Nuances: Understanding the differences between marketplaces like Amazon and Walmart can optimize sales strategies.
• Emerging Channels: Platforms like TikTok are becoming essential for reaching new demographics and enhancing social selling.
• AI's Impact: Tools like Amazon’s Rufus offer both opportunities and challenges in managing customer perception.
• Work-Life Balance: Implementing flexible work practices is vital for maintaining team well-being in a demanding industry.
• Global Expansion: Multilingual and international strategies are key to scaling and reaching a wider audience.
• Dual Strategy Advantage: Combining marketplace presence with direct brand ownership on platforms like Shopify can drive comprehensive growth.

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Notable Quotes

• Corey Brown [01:29]: "Craigslist was big at the time. I went through a crazy 15-step interview process to get this job."
• Corey Brown [08:00]: "I implemented my branding strategy, built all my own graphics, and optimized everything to position Buffa Brand at the forefront."
• Corey Brown [10:22]: "What differentiates us is our cohesive execution. We handle everything from graphics to advertising, providing flexibility to work alongside our clients' teams."
• Corey Brown [18:03]: "Amazon has a lot of integrations and data capabilities, whereas Walmart is expanding its ecosystem and supporting more apps."
• Corey Brown [23:47]: "AI is one of the big changes. Rufus helps customers get important facts but can also reinforce fake negative reviews."
• Corey Brown [32:35]: "If you have a successful Shopify store, start a conversation about curating products for marketplaces to drive revenue and customer growth."

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Corey Brown's insights provide invaluable strategies for transforming brands in the digital marketplace. His emphasis on cohesive execution, strategic flexibility, and balanced growth offers a roadmap for e-commerce businesses aiming to achieve their next big breakthrough.

Transcript

[Sharon Guy]

Welcome to the B2B Breakthrough Podcast. We're here to bring you all the best knowledge, insights and strategies from e commerce experts, successful business owners, and the [e-mail] that you'll need to grow your business and achieve your next big breakthrough. I'm your host, Sharon Guy.

[Corey Brown]

Welcome to today's episode where we're joined by Corey Brown, the visionary founder of Buffa Brand Marketing, where he expertly navigates the complex terrain of e commerce, providing specialized services and in Amazon Consulting and Walmart account management. His extensive experience encompasses everything from brand development and marketplace solutions to strategic planning and implementation, making him a distinguished leader and strategist in the e commerce domain. Welcome to our show.

Corey, that was quite the intro. Thank you for having me.

If you want to just intro yourself with what you have been up to, that would be great to kick us off.

Sure. So I am the CEO at Buffett Brand Marketing. We are based in Buffalo, New York and we help people on Amazon and Walmart grow their brand significantly. So that's what I've been doing for the last five years. I can't believe it's already been five years doing this, but I've been in the e commerce space for over 10 in a variety of ways that I'm sure we'll kind of touch on. And yeah, most recently we are working on scaling up Buffer Brand and scaling up a lot of our partners into the new age of ecommerce here. 2024.

Nice. And how did you get into that?

I'm gonna throw that. The real answer is craigslist.com is where it all started. It's where it all started. So I was actually working in an apparel company and I was building websites for local organizations and selling like customized apparel for different teams and things like that. I absolutely loved it. I love the design and kind of building out these different categories and buildings, specifically building stores became one of my passions and kind of making that money while you sleep became something that I was interested in. And so I went on Craigslist and was like, there has to be people doing this because Craigslist was big at the time. I went on there and just looked for anything that had to do with online sales. And I found this really amazing position that was located remotely, but the headquarters was an hour away from where I lived and I couldn't believe it. And then I went through this crazy like 15 step interview process to get this job.

Wow.

And my friends were pretty sure it was fake. I was questioning whether it was a.

Real position that's a little intense for a job listing on Craigslist.

It was. And it was like a marketing assistant job for an Amazon consultant. And they were doing like personality types and, yeah. Typing tests and all sorts of different things. And I just like the approach.

Oh, wow.

And I had to create videos of myself and all of this extra just to get this position. But what it meant was that when I got it and it was real. It was very real.

Yeah.

Thankfully, yes, it unlocked this whole new world for me because I got hired by someone who was a different type of thinker and was working in the Amazon space specifically. And it just was like opening the floodgates for me into this whole E commerce world. And I'm so thankful I kind of took that plunge and stayed with it. They were just looking for a marketing assistant to come in and learn the ropes and help them. A very, very small company, just a couple people. And yeah, it ended up being a perfect position to kind of dip my toes into the E Comm world. And that's what ended up leading me into [e-mail] because there's only so many people with a ton of Amazon experience in the world at that time, and I happen to be one of them. And local to Buffalo, where poolsupplies.com is.

Yeah, those were the days. So I used to work at this company called Pattern. If you've heard of them, they also do Amazon. And before when they said that in the bold old days, it was like you'd list anything on Amazon and it just sells.

Yes, they're huge.

You list like refrigerator magnets, but bowls, chairs, a little tchotchkes and then it just sells.

Yep.

And then things got more and more competitive.

Absolutely.

And then it was like the brands that came out of that and now it's like a whole other world. So how did you go from cool supplies to, I guess, doing their Amazon site?

Yeah, so kind of take a step back there. When I was with, you know, it's called cool supplies.com, but they actually run like five or seven different websites and multiple different marketplaces within ebay, Amazon and Walmart. And so it's interesting that you say, well, it kind of went from you could just sell whatever by putting it up there to you need more of a brand strategy and you have to actually do certain criteria. Kind of around the time where brand registry on Amazon was becoming a thing and there were new opportunities and there were people hijacking. So that's actually what I stepped into at that company was I stepped into a role where it was like, hey, all of this changed and we don't know what to do. And so I was the person to come in and reorganize everything top to bottom in terms of creating brands and organizing those brands and executing branch strategies within the visuals, within the advertising, tracking how that worked. And we're talking at a scale of thousands and thousands of SKUs. So that's really where I kind of cut my teeth. And the branding space was actually doing it in house because we had so many brands there to manage. And at the time that I stepped in, they really weren't managed at all. They existed, but there was no strategy behind them. I came in and put the strategy in and built a team and executed all of that.

Do you have now sort of like a framework that you work with with that strategy, part of managing a brand?

Yeah, I think there's a baseline framework, but there's also, you know, kind of fluidity to that framework because it's ever evolving landscape. Right. Everything in E. Comm is constantly changing. Amazon rolls out updates all the time. So that framework, there's a core to it that's actually remained pretty steadfast, but there's a lot of little layers and sub strategies that have changed. Some have fallen off. We had new ones all the time. And that's really what we work off for our partner success.

And then is that right when you were like, okay, I'm going to step back from this salary type of role because I have enough experience where I'm going to go build out something on my own. It's going to be similar but different.

Yeah. So I was a huge, huge advocate for remote work.

Yeah.

Before remote work was cool. And I just realized that I could do and solve all the problems from home. And at the time I had a very young child who was having some health issues and we had another on the way. And it was right when I was already kind of thinking about, like, what could I do next to get into a more balanced world, a more balanced lifestyle, and could I create that for some other people in my area and do something maybe a little bit bigger? So Covid was really the push that I needed to step out because we were expecting our second child right as Covid hit and we were in kind of a mess like everyone else in the world, just rushing, like going, what are we going to do? I kind of got stuck at home.

But that's when E Commerce took off, is during those kind of years. Yeah.

Oh, it took off huge.

Yeah.

Yes. And in fairness and appreciation to my former boss, you know, he was a very old school guy, very get to your desk, be in the building. That type of mindset and that just never meshed with me.

Did you start with a wait list of customers starting to work with you, or no. Did you go back on Craigslist and create that position? And then now your interview. It's like 20 because you want to one up the. I don't know.

Yeah. So the quick answer to that is there was a Jumbo Scout, Helium 10. They're huge in the space. Right. So, yeah, when I decided to start Buffer Brand, there was a website that they had that was a little offshoot of their company called Jungle Market.

Okay.

And Jungle Market was essentially a little marketplace for connecting sellers to services and services to sellers. And so I quickly, within the first 30 days, was able to become one of the top three people and companies on that platform. And that's actually what jump started. My entire company was utilizing that and giving great service and a lot of long, long hours and lattes and, you know, that's kind of where we started. And here we are five years later.

So you listed your services there?

Yes.

And then people just came and contacted you because you were listed. So, like, you ranked really well on that site.

Yeah, actually less to do with ranking and to do with branding. Quite honestly. I actually came in and implemented my branding strategy that I would apply to a brand on Amazon. I actually applied it to this platform, you know, a little different context, but I essentially built all my own graphics, built all my own visuals, figured out what people needed to see, written optimizations, the whole thing. And I was able to, you know, kind of gamify it in a way, but also back it up with incredible services and immediately Buffer Brand just took off.

Cool. That's very different from the snail pace that sometimes other brands have to go through before they build up this queue of customers waiting to work with them. Okay, so what type of brands are you working with today? Today? Like, what is the perfect type of category or is there a perfect category for you to work with?

There might be a few to avoid, but I don't think there's a particular category that we favor as well. I know that.

What are the ones to avoid?

So anything that you can't advertise can be difficult. So, you know, there's been times where we have kind of avoided books to some degree. Though we do some books, we typically don't work with adult products. Sometimes there are more issues with products that need, like EPA regulation is of that nature. Dangerous goods.

Yeah.

Items that would require additional documentation that sometimes sellers don't have.

Yeah.

So it's more case by case than it is categorically like a hierarchy. So, yeah, we work with pretty much every category at this time.

What would you say was the thing that Buffa Brands is really good at versus all of the other Amazon and Walmart agencies that's out there in the market?

Cohesive execution. By that I mean our team is all in Buffalo, New York. We all sit in the same room a couple times a week anyways, and we work really well together on a partners account. So we are creating all the graphics, driving all the traffic, fixing account issues and doing all of the services that are needed. So I think when it comes down to what differentiates us is I'm able to kind of take the consulting coaching piece and then utilize all of my team skills and kind of plug into a solopreneur or a smaller company, even some mid sized companies that just need an E. Commerce Department where we can fill in any and all voids without having to take it fully over as well. So we have a little bit of flexibility within what we offer and that seems to work really, really well for, you know, a potential partner that may have a graphics team and doesn't need that, but they might need guidance within graphics. Well, we have the flexibility to do that and kind of work with their team, not just take it all over.

Can you give an example of any brand that you've recently worked with where they were experiencing some sort of pain point or why they came to you and what you did with them?

Yeah, so I will give one example. So we work with a brand called Grill Perfect. And the reason I'm choosing this brand is I actually use all their products. So this is real life for me too.

Oh, okay.

But essentially they are a small brand. You know, they have one or two employees, they are looking to grow, they're more product development focused. And so coming to us, it was, hey, I'm developing these amazing products. How do I visually show them? What do I need to do structurally on Amazon and how do I get people's eyeballs on this so that they can know that I've designed a new product that is better than every other product on the market? And so for us, we're coming in, we're doing full visual creatives, we're doing all of their advertising and we're driving all the strategy for everything else that needs to be in place across not just Amazon, but multiple channels.

Say I'm the founder of Grill Perfect and I have my own understanding with, I guess it's like tongs and like spatula.

Tongs, brushes, spatulas. Yep, you're on it.

Yeah. And I came to you in terms of graphics. What are you doing when you're looking at the same set of products and figuring out how this is best displayed on Amazon vs Me as the founder, where I also have a good grasp of how to display products? Or maybe I don't like what is your secret sauce, no pun intended, in the butt pharmacy world. Like, how are you viewing these products differently than the owners?

Yes. So a typical owner knows their product really well, but actually doesn't know each platform intimately. That's generally who we're working with. Or they may understand the platform, you know, more than some others, but they don't have the bandwidth to create the content that's necessary to drive real conversion. So we're looking at it through the context of what's going to work and preparing content that can be repurposed. So we're building out entire templates for product line so that we can maximize value, brand alignment and overall cross selling and upselling. So we're going to look at your images, we're going to look at whether you even have a plus brand story, brand store advertising too, which is becoming even more content heavy recently than ever before. And taking a huge step back, listening to the product development team or the owners in this case, and working to build out a visual display that overcomes objections, actually conveys information cross sells when necessary and creates an ecosystem of sales that works when we send traffic to it through various mediums.

Are you redoing, Are you sometimes reshooting the product?

Oh, absolutely.

Okay.

Yeah, absolutely. So in most cases we are reshooting and creating all brand new content. Of course, we do have some clients that have fantastic content that they start with or some baseline. They have some good graphics and things of that nature. And we're not coming in just to scrap people's work or to try to, you know, upsell them on things they don't need. Of course, we're just looking to put them in the best position possible. So, you know, in some cases people have amazing product on white, but they don't know how to build up the rest of the listing. Yeah, so they have this great photo or two of product on white, which is your typical standard first photo.

Yeah.

But they don't know how to like extrapolate that across all of the different available sections and where to Convey what information and how much information in it, Things of that nature. So based on our abilities that we have and all the knowledge that we have, plus research, we're then taking that and pushing it where it needs to go. So putting a couple of things into those main images and pushing some of that information down. Not throwing too much as it's going to overwhelm that. There's obviously a thousand different directions we could take that. But yes, that's the general overview.

Like, how would you build that A plus brand story, say for perfect growth or how did you build it?

Yeah, so for something like that, we're trying to evoke emotion, right. So we're not selling a tool. So let's take the spatulas. So the spatulas, they have incredibly long, huge, durable spatulas. They work great for fire pits, for really big grills, for serious grillers. So what are you trying to sell there? You're not trying to sell that? It's extra. Sure, it's extra long. We want to get that point across. Well, what are we trying to actually sell? We want to evoke the emotion within that sale. So we want the potential customer to look at that content and see themselves reflected in it. So we're taking that customer avatar that we've worked to build with our seller and we're then taking something as Brand Story and A plus as an example. Brand Story is typically more overall brand based and has some cross selling and promotion within it. It's a little story about the background of why these products exist, why this company exists, what the try to do. And then the 8 Plus is more product driven, it's more spec driven. It's trying to show the guy out in his back with this huge grill, feeding all of his friends, who's flipping steaks and burgers in the summertime, enjoying his domain. Right. That's the seller. So that's what we're trying to show within that concept. So that kind of goes to show like you could shelf that into any medium, any context and kind of go, okay, yeah, let's tell this story and let's help the consumer see this product in their home and see themselves in the product.

And then are you taking that story that you've built for them and then syndicating it across their socials? Like how much are they handing over to you when it comes to that?

Yeah, so that's a good question. And it kind of speaks to where things are going moving forward with the leveraging socials, influencers, social selling, all of these different Platforms that are popping up as well and the change that we're seeing in sell selling and buying dynamics, especially with new generations. So we would partner with either a team that they already have in place or one of our preferred partners and they would work specifically on the socials and the advertising around those. And so we would share assets and build off of there so that we could utilize their assets, they can utilize ours.

How different is it to sell on Walmart vs Amazon?

So all the aspects are very similar and very familiar and others can be quite different. So there's a lesser degree of content that can be pushed. There's less to kind of gamify. I think Amazon, although it's not truly an open system, there's a lot of integrations, there's a lot of API connections, there's a lot of data pushing and pulling. And so there is this level of gamification to it where you can pull a ton of information and then figure out what works best and then do new tactics. Walmart is starting to build that into their ecosystem a bit, but there's also just fewer apps that are supporting Walmart. I think in the last six months this is becoming less true. There are more and more apps that are starting to see Walmart as a serious player added in. But we've been at the forefront of trying to get apps and software to accommodate Walmart. So it's different in that regard. It's different in some content and productions.

Would you say from an E commerce owner's point of view, those are the main channels to focus on and then if you perfected all three, then you've captured the majority of the potential share. Are there things that people could be missing?

Yes. I'm going to cheat a little bit here because this is a channel we've already been looking into adding and is on our roadmap, but we are looking and adding in TikTok. So that's going to be one of our areas of competency moving forward. It's not something we have available right this second, but now that the cross section of social selling and E commerce in general has started to blend, we're seeing the writing on the wall that every platform's gonna absorb that to some degree. So being in TikTok we're seeing a lot of sales shifting there or a lot of supported sales, a lot of sales that are generated on TikTok that are actually moved over to Shopify and other places as well. All of that user generated content, it has become the new way of finding products to some degree certain products, not all.

Which products would work well on TikTok versus others.

I do think, you know, newer products, products that are focused on the younger generation specifically can, can definitely gather. But then again, you know, TikTok has continued to adapt and grow within, you know, different generations at this point. So we are seeing some crossover there as well. But yet the younger people are buying some of the newer products on there.

[Sharon Guy]

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[Corey Brown]

What are your thoughts on live streaming?

Personally?

Yeah, but do you know about the live streaming shopping phenomenon and they do it on TikTok kind of sometimes. If you like flip through some of the videos, there will be a live stream that pops up.

So this is where they say, you know, business takes out in the personality of its CEO. So I am a little bit of a hermit and I'm not a big social media person.

Yeah.

And I'm certainly not in the live streaming world at all. So I would say that I shy away from it to some degree. I think they were trying to blend social media into Amazon, which isn't what they do. Well as a core competency.

What trends in the world of marketplaces would you focus on?

Would you double on Content is still king. So user generated content specifically for me. As much as I hate to even say it, I think influencer marketing is still peak. I think that what we've seen in Amazon is the need because of saturation and because of the way that Amazon has built itself and invited so many sellers in a lot of different ways. The advertising console within Amazon is also now saturated and so there's still success to be had. Don't get me wrong. But when it comes to the I'm just going to put my brand on Amazon and I'm going to do all of my marketing in Amazon's box. That is a difficult sell now and so the focus needs to be having that piece in place, that's very important. It's still a crucial component. However, there needs to be a layering of some component of social advertising or outside advertising and influencers, and potentially even something like a dsp, which is, you know, sending ads out to different websites and things of that nature, kind of redirecting people back into the Amazon ecosystem.

The Amazon link. Okay.

Yeah. So even though Amazon has grown a ton and, you know, the advertising platform itself has slowly reached some limitations, and I think having some layering on top of that would be one of my number one focuses. After all, of your content is perfect.

So having a sort of Google Ads, Facebook, like grabbing traffic from the other platforms and pooling it back into Amazon in that.

Absolutely.

What are the most recent updates in terms of selling on Amazon that people should be aware of?

I would say AI is kind of one of the big changes recently. You have Amazon, Rufus, which is helping people ascertain the most important facts or opinions, I guess, from information. It's gleaning information from the listing, including the reviews. Which is why I say sometimes it's opinions. Because if you go there and you ask, how great is this loofah? Someone's review that says this thing falls apart could be a part of the AI's answer, even if it's a lie. And I think that that's where the trouble may end up being.

Yeah.

So AI, between that, the AI on the pages and AI options for creating content, which is fairly limited at this point, those are some of the big kind of changes across. And again, we'll see a hundred more changes.

Yeah. Is Rufus customer facing like. It's not for the sellers, it's for the customers to see. It's like a chat bot. Try to teach it maybe.

Exactly. So you can ask it different questions. I've seen some of my contemporaries trying to mess with it, trying to break it, and they've been able to, in.

Some cases, try to train it.

Just trying to see, like, yeah, what are the limitations and things of that nature? Like, I was kind of alluding to the biggest issue that's been eyed up so far is if somebody attacks your listing with a bunch of fake, bad reviews, and now you have a bunch of potential customers going to it and then asking Rufus. Exactly. Asking a question about it. They could say, oh, well, this thing, you know, dies after six months of use for an electronic.

Yeah.

It could just be the competitor saying that every single time.

Yeah.

And now Rufus is reinforcing that by telling, hey, customers say that this is what happens. With it, even though those customers aren't real. So right there's potential issues. But that's true for everything so far it's been pretty minimal.

Like you always have to keep an eye on your reviews and review ratings, of course, and report it if it's too far fetched.

We definitely want to be doing that. And yeah, now more than ever now that AI is going to pick up on that. Sometimes you were able to bury it before, but they've come up with more and more things where it kind of aggregates the reviews. Says a lot of people say this is unstable. You know, 20 people said this and so it can hurt you even more. Reviews is a whole area of issues in and of itself. You could do five podcasts just about that.

Yeah. How do you stay on top of all the news that's coming from all these different marketplaces? Like is there a blog site person to follow?

Yeah, so there are a few.

Or your own.

Yeah. So I won't tout ours too much internally. I will say that we do a consistent review every month. We have everything that comes out. We get a lot of information ahead of time or right as it's coming out. We have a review process internally where everything gets posted into our project management and then we curate that. We send it out in a newsletter each month or send it out internally within our project management system. So that's how we mostly how we stay on top of it. I also am very lucky that over the last two years here I've been able to get out of Buffalo and get to a lot of really, really great events and meet some fantastic people in the space. And so as I've been able to do that, I've been able to curate my LinkedIn feed actually to have a significant amount of resources of people who stay really on top of things. And so I rely on that to some degree to continue to feed some good information and learn from others in the space. Because there's always really, really intelligent people in the room that are noticing things that maybe I'm not the full stuff. So that's how I curate that.

Are there certain must go to events, would you say, for people in the industry that you always have on your calendar?

There are a bunch of really great events out there. I think Prosper is usually the number one that gets thrown out there. I've got some really small events and met amazing sellers and amazing opportunities and the event itself hasn't been some big shindig that everybody would say was the best of the best. Best. I would say prosper would be number one because it's the most well known.

Shifting gears a little bit to the amount of anxiety that somebody can have in the e commerce world because all These stores are 24 7, it doesn't close. That means orders can come in anytime. Bad reviews can come in anytime. All these marketplaces are constantly running. Also you talk a lot about bringing your whole self and also your CMO in the office as your dog. Or is that the.

Oh, the director of marketing.

Oh, director of marketing. Oh, okay. So like I heard marketing, but yeah, got it.

She's asleep on the job right over here under a blanket.

How do you navigate the whole mental health crisis, especially with how turned on e commerce is all the time?

Yeah, that's been an ever changing answer for me. So if I kind of look at the five year scope of my business so far and taking into account everything in the e comm world, how we're handling things, how our sellers are staying on, you know, from the start. We started in Covid so I was very apt to tell you, hey everybody, just stay home and do your work and just stay safe. And then it became we need to kind of get together and we need to get out of the house and we need to get together more. And so then we were in the office much more and now I think we've kind of reached what the new normal is. So my biggest item when it comes to kind of the mental health and the e commerce, although e commerce is 24 7. No business has to be. So you can solve things in batches. Yes. You should have trackers on some of your biggest metrics. If you go from getting a thousand sales a day and you're not tracking how many sales you get or if there's a drop off at 8:00 at night. Yeah, you want to know about that. But most of the metrics just forget about them until morning. To some degree. You need to have some ability to break away. And so for my team, you know, we are looking at things somewhat around the clock but we also are trying to give ourselves a break. So when it comes to flexibility of whatever it may be, I want everyone to have as balanced of a life as possible and not feel like they are stuck at all times.

Yeah. What are some of your aspirations for Buffa brand going forward?

We would like to continue to scale, continue to service our partners to a significant degree. I would like to become more global company. So recently we have an awesome, you know, new hire and she's heading up our global expansion into the Chinese markets and working with Chinese sellers specifically. And that has really for me opened up a door where I feel we should be more multilingual and opening more doors to more people, to good people who are selling across the world. We are going to continue to work in more marketplaces with great sellers from around the world and try to become a little more global.

Is that how you're connected to Alibaba, the selling to China part?

Actually, no. The Alibaba connection happened at one of those shows that people might scoff at. That's actually where I was able to make a great connection with the Alibaba tea and kind of show out. So like I said, Fence are all about alignment.

Yeah.

I believe that agencies like Buffer Brand can work as a trifecta to make products work better in the U.S. yeah.

I know that Amazon just had a closed door meeting with certain sellers and that is their exact thing because of the temu, the Sheens that's coming in and the bunch of Chinese sellers are coming into the US ecommerce market making waves that they're going to create something internally that's going to compete against that.

Yeah, that's a huge concern for a lot of sellers in the US who are very much middle manning products and don't have any sort of differentiation and things of that nature. That's a whole can of worms across the board when you talk about manufacturers coming direct and there's a lot of thoughts and a lot of feelings around that from established brands. And I honestly, it all comes down to trusting manufacturers and having good contracts and having, you know, people that do the right thing. I think there's people that don't and there's people that do and it's difficult to discern who's going to be who in the future. So I think part of that is just working again, alignment, finding the right people who you trust and want to work with long term.

As we wrap up, are there any last pieces of advice that you would give someone who maybe somebody who's had a Shopify, ran a Shopify for a really long time considering going into Amazon or Walmart. Any notes or tips to give to them?

Sure. So this is where a lot of people nowadays would. The hot topic would be to say don't, don't go in there. Keep your email list, keep it internal, have your own brand. When you're on Amazon, you lose your brand, you don't own it. Amazon owns your customers, all those types of things. I feel differently about that. I do think you should Build your own brand off of Amazon simultaneously. I do think you should pull customers through a journey that eventually ends out of Shopify or something similar, and that you do have their contact information, whether that be email or phone. But Amazon is still an amazing space to find new people to then matriculate through the system with good quality products and eventually get them to your website, whether they're on a subscription basis for a consumable or they just find one product that opens them to a whole subset of products that you have available. So for a lot of people, what I would say, you know, would be the most important thing is if you have a successful Shopify store, there is no reason not to have a conversation with someone like myself to figure out and curate a smaller list of products. Products that could do really well on a marketplace that could still continue, that could drive revenue and value, but also that align with your end goal of getting people onto your website and keeping people buying from you there. You can do all of those things at once. It's not black or white like a lot of people will try to make it seem.

Do you think FBA is still the route to go or is it better to do your own shipping inventory management?

This is definitely the. I'll give you the good old consultant answer. It depends. Yeah, FBA can be great. It is great when it's great. There are lots of issues with fba, but guess what? There's lots of issues with every third party shipping I've ever utilized.

What do you guys do for your brand? Or do you handle that for them?

So most of our brands are fba. Our clients are typically coming to us with those solutions already at hand, or we are helping guide them through a couple selections that they've already kind of built a list. Sometimes we send that to preferred partners, but we don't have like a one truth, one source. I'm kind of agnostic when it comes to a lot of software and platforms because they're so redundant that in most cases I can't make a really solid argument. Just flip someone from one software to another or one service to another, because they all do 90% the same thing. The one aspect of the FBA that I will say that changes things quite a bit is when they reopened the sfp, which is the seller for Phil Prime. When they reopened that program after years of it being closed, it did allow and does allow for someone to potentially ship out of their own warehouse or use a third party and still have a prime without having to potentially use fba. So there are some solutions out there that can in some cases be quite a bit better than FBA as an option. If you can qualify and execute the SFP metrics, you can have an even better option than utilizing FBA and all of the inventory requirements there. You could have seller fulfilled prime and use that inventory to fulfill Walmart, Shopify, ebay, all from one central point. That to me is the ideal, but that's not realistic for all products and all brands this time.

I see. But that would be managed by a third party, like some sort of version.

Of yes, it is. And sometimes people get a little scared by having another third party, so that's why a lot of people start with fba. But I think that that's a viable option that's out there that not enough people are talking about Cool.

And any other upcoming things in the e commerce industry that you're excited about or dreading.

I am excited about the integrations that Amazon and Shopify have started to create and the ability to work together. For a long time they were definitely considered adversaries, right?

Yeah.

And now they're starting to integrate a lot of what they're doing, which makes things a lot easier on people like me who were trying to piece it all together before. Now there's direct integrations.

Yeah.

So I'm excited about that. And honestly, the biggest thing I'm excited about is event season and kind of the fall and getting out to a ton of great events and meeting all sorts of sellers and peers all throughout the fall and winter.

Thanks so much for coming on.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

[Sharon Guy]

B2B Breakthrough is produced by Alibaba.com to find out how Alibaba.com is empowering its customers with the tools, services and resources they need to grow their businesses. Visit Alibaba.com and then make sure to search for B2B Breakthrough Podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you find your podcast, make sure to follow us so you don't miss future episodes. On behalf of the team [e-mail] thanks for listening.