Loading summary
Transcript93 lines
- [00:00]
Elizabeth
The first thing is going to be how well done are the listings. Now, I know we're already assuming that, but I do want to belabor this point because the best. The ad type that typically makes up most of the budget. I would say at least 75% of the budget if you're really humming. But it's, it's. I would expect 100% of the budget to go here in the beginning is, is something called sponsored product ads.
- [00:28]
Cody McGuffey
Welcome to Built online. I'm Cody McGuffey and this podcast is all about one thing. Building the business of your dreams. Selling art, teaching classes, starting a blog, launching a brand. Whatever your passion is, we show you how to turn it into real income. I created Everbee to help anyone with a dream start and scale a business.
- [00:50]
Elizabeth
Ever be, ever be, ever be, ever be, ever be, ever be.
- [00:54]
Cody McGuffey
We now serve over 800,000 creators all across the globe. On this show, we bring on real entrepreneurs who've done it. They share their secrets, they share their failures. The exact steps that you can take to get started. What if you can get one golden nugget out of today's episode? And it's the breakthrough that takes you from just dreaming to actually living a life on your terms. At Everbee, we believe that every human is a creator, and every creator should own a business. Elizabeth, what's going on?
- [01:21]
Elizabeth
Hello. Thanks for having me.
- [01:23]
Cody McGuffey
Totally happy to have you. We're here. How's your day going so far?
- [01:28]
Elizabeth
It's going good. Today was bonkers. I think this is like my sixth call of the day. What does bonkers?
- [01:34]
Cody McGuffey
What does bonkers mean for you? It's just a lot of calls. Or is it just a lot of.
- [01:37]
Elizabeth
Bonkers for me is a lot of.
- [01:38]
Cody McGuffey
Calls, team calls or typical client calls or what does it look like?
- [01:42]
Elizabeth
All of the above.
- [01:45]
Cody McGuffey
Things on fire or not on fire?
- [01:47]
Elizabeth
No, actually things are great, but, you know, managing all the pieces. Agency life, what are you gonna do?
- [01:54]
Cody McGuffey
Yeah, totally. Speaking of agency life, can you tell everybody what you do and so we can kind of get into the. Get into the goods? What does Elizabeth do?
- [02:02]
Elizabeth
Yeah, excited. So I run and manage an Amazon advertising agency. So essentially what we do is we operate as managing Amazon advertising for brands who are selling on that platform with the goal of helping them grow and scale, which I'm sure we'll talk about here. And then also for context, the brands we typically work with, are we calling more founder led brands? Some people call them like mid sized brands, but it's basically the brands that can't go, hey, let's throw 20 and 30 grand at it and see what happens. Right. It's the brands who are scaling off of their own cash flow. So cash flow and bottom line is also as important. But what we try and do is really help them see what the day to day looks like as well as the long term vision. Because if you get too narrow sided then you know, you sort of lose that long term vision or that opportunity to scale which I will probably touch on in this conversation. But then if all you're looking at is long term, like oh my gosh, I'm going to get there and you miss the day to day, then all of a sudden cash flow dries up, you're in a poor position. And so we really try and like manage those two perspectives and make sure ad strategies built around those.
- [03:13]
Cody McGuffey
I love it. I, I always like to have these conversations around like a Persona and maybe we can do that for fun. Um, I think the last time I last episode and it was really awesome. Uh, it was. I use this Persona of. Her name is Rachel. It's a pretend person and she has like a hairstyle brand. I'm sorry, hairstyle brand. Hair tools brand like hair dryers, combs, things like that. You mind if we use something like that?
- [03:36]
Elizabeth
Go for it.
- [03:37]
Cody McGuffey
Okay. So Rachel is, she sells hair tools and she uses, let's say her flagship product is a hair dryer kind of upper. Upper. I mean you're a woman so you understand this stuff way deep, deeper than I do. But like a hundred dollar hair dryer probably like upper scale. Right. It's not like super, super high.
- [03:57]
Elizabeth
They get, they get more, they get higher. But yeah, I would say that that's actually, it would be upper scale for Amazon but when you're talking Dyson's, you can get into the $500 range easy. Wow.
- [04:08]
Cody McGuffey
Okay. And Rachel is she, she runs her store on her own website for now. Shopify, Wix, something like this. But the point is she's not on Amazon yet. And when should she even think about going on to Amazon from your perspective.
- [04:25]
Elizabeth
That'S a great question. A lot of these questions I answer from more of a business perspective as well as just sensing the opportunity because I really, I fully believe in any sort of strategy opportunity. You need to factor in those both things. So the thing that I would look at on Amazon is one, again, I'm coming at it from an ads perspective but I think that perspective is really helpful when looking to see if there's opportunity is just take a look at the potential search traffic or marketplace available. There's a lot of brands who will come to us and say, like, oh, we have this flagship product and it's doing phenomenally on our E Comm site and we feel like there's immense opportunity to bring this onto the Amazon platform. The first thing that I'm going to do is I'm going to go and look at the search traffic. Because the one thing that Amazon does very well is they essentially aggregate from all corners demand, consumer demand, and it is concentrated heavily on their platform. And so that's essentially what you're doing when you tap into the Amazon ecosystem is you're tapping into that existing demand.
- [05:33]
Cody McGuffey
When you said demand, sorry, to take that one layer deeper is essentially Amazon's really great at. Like, when I'm searching for something, I already know what I'm searching for. When I come to Amazon, I already know what I want to buy versus create versus the opposite is like creating demand would be like, I guess we can go into that. But essentially, as Cody when I'm shopping on Amazon, I have a high intent to buy something. I'm not just going on there to browse and just see what inspires me. And I might just buy something. Maybe not like I'm going in there looking for a hairdryer because my hair dryer broke kind of thing.
- [06:08]
Elizabeth
Exactly, exactly. I mean, because you have the other platforms, which again, is not something we manage. But I'm aware of just as a consumer is you have TikTok shop or Pinterest or Instagram, you're like scrolling through. You're like, oh my gosh, I had no idea that existed. That's like, oh, that looks amazing. Okay, let me go. So it's like interrupting and it might be something you're searching for, it might not be. Oftentimes it isn't. And that's like demand generation. Like, I wasn't aware that, that I needed that product, but now I am aware of it and now I decided that I needed it. Shoppers will go to Amazon to potentially browse, you know, things like gift for mom for Mother's Day. Right. That's kind of a browse keyword. I'm still probably in a purchasing mode, but I don't have maybe as intense consumer demand for something, say like a gift basket versus a spa basket. Right. Like if, if I'm going and typing Mother's Day gifts. Bob asking, okay, so that's super intent. I know exactly what I mean. What I need. And so we find is that we call it, like, that's kind of like, middle of the funnel, really, when it comes to, like, that intense consumer demand. And that's really what you're looking at when you're doing that evaluation is like, okay, what kind of consumer demand is there? And the way that you evaluate that is how many searches are happening for these particular types of.
- [07:29]
Cody McGuffey
What's a good search amount? Like 10,000amonth, 1,000amonth, a hundred thousand a month for Rachel in this case, let's just. And I know we. Without analysis, a deep analysis, we can never know, but what would you say, hypothetically?
- [07:41]
Elizabeth
Yeah, that's a fantastic question. So it does. Highly dependent on category. And then maybe just walk through the way I would approach that. Like, say Rachel comes to me and says, all right, I have this fantastic hair dryer. My first question to her would be like, all right, so what it is about this hair dryer that makes it worth $100? Is it. There's a filter? Is there a specific thing? Maybe you have a really sweet color. That's interesting. Tell me all about the hairdryer. I want to understand it deeply. Like, I had other clients come to us and they have like this particular widget, and I'm like, okay, they're talking. They've developed this, right? Like, she knows her product inside and out and upside down, and she knows the consumers she's attracting. And if you don't have that, you really should know. Like, you should deeply not know any understanding your product. I want to download all of that information, and then I want to go through and I want to say, okay, so what does the search market look like? I know it's a hairdryer. I'm pretty sure that's probably the highest demand. I'm sure that has a really high search intent. But the problem is, I can guarantee when I go into the keyword hair dryer, I'm going to be up against. I haven't looked at it recently. There's probably like, really cheap, crappy $25 products, and there's probably all the way up to like, you know, Dyson, hundreds or maybe even thousands of dollars of products. Right? So that doesn't really tell me the specific search intent for that one category. So I'm going to go look at all of that search demand and say, okay, so this is a very unique product and it fits in the market in this place. Is there specific search behavior around this type of product? So you'll find certain colors pop up often. Maybe it's a wattage that pops up often. I don't know the Ins and outs of hair dryers. But that's what I have, Rachel. So. But I'm just going to take a look from a search perspective, say, okay, what does that search demand look like? And then because I can guarantee you the search demand for certain products on that top keyboard hair dryer, I might have 30, 50, 100,000 searches a month, maybe even more, again, depending on how broad it is.
- [09:37]
Cody McGuffey
And what were you doing? Is you're just sensing the opportunity? Like, is it worth it?
- [09:40]
Elizabeth
I'm sensing opportunity in the market, exactly. Because the thing is, because it's very intense and it's search based. So if I'm going again against, you know, the $10 hair dryers, all the way up to $500 hair dryers, and those $500 search bars have like a very, like, consumers will pay that because they trust the brand, not because they'll go buy a random hair dryer for, you know, $500 they want. Like, if you're spending that much, it's because it's got some, like, really solid branding behind it. So I'm just saying, all right, what is it? What does the search market look like? Is there existing demand? Where does the we fit in the market? Because I can almost guarantee if you come right out, you're probably not going to compete on that main search page. So the one thing I'm looking for is like the intent. And then the other thing that I have found over the years is there are certain spaces where there is high intent, but it's concentrated on one specific search. So the problem with those kinds, you might have like one search where you have 200,000 search or 50,000, 30,000. You're like, oh my gosh, there's so much to me here. This is fantastic. And then you look at the variations of again, very specific high intent searches around that category and you go, there's only one here with any search demand and everything underneath it has, you know, 300 searches a month, 200 searches a month or none. And so I go, okay, if we do not win on that specific search, we're not going to get found at all. So it's like there's times where you have that intention and there's a lot of times where you can go into a category. Cause I'll have brands come to me and they're like, oh, this category is really competitive. I'm like, but look at all of your pages. You can compete on. Like, there's hundreds of searches that we can test all of these different ways and see who has the best intent for your products and, you know, do kind of broaden you out in the market. And then the same brand will come to me, like, oh, my gosh, there's like, nobody in this category. Like, look how much, how much, you know, potential there is. And I'll take a look and go, yeah, you're right. But it's all concentrated here. And even though you only have a couple competitors, they're all dominating and they're driving up the costs, and it's, it's going to be actually a little bit harder.
- [11:54]
Cody McGuffey
Let's say that Rachel is. Let's say that she sold. She went through this process with you or by herself, and she's figured out that, okay, it is worth it for me to go to Amazon. I'm going to do it. She sips, she ships hundreds of her units to fba and she's ready to go now. And let's say that she's. Her listings are live. We kind of got past all those stages and now she's like, okay, Elizabeth, I need help with Amazon ads. Now, I understand that Amazon ads is like a very, very crucial part of ranking and also scaling my sales, all these things. What kind of questions should, should she be asking herself or asking you in order to, like, make sure that her ads are successful?
- [12:39]
Elizabeth
Yeah, the first thing is going to be how well done are the listings. Now, I know we're already assuming that, but I do want to belabor this point because the best, the. The ad type that typically makes up most of the budget, I would say at least 75% of the budget, if you're really humming. But it's, it's. I would expect 100% of the budget to go here. In the beginning is something called sponsored product ads. The reason why these work so well is one, they have a lot more ad inventory, and then two, they look way more native search.
- [13:14]
Cody McGuffey
So, like, for the people that never really sold Amazon, what is this like as a buyer, what are we seeing with a sponsored product?
- [13:22]
Elizabeth
Yep. So if you've, if you've gone to Amazon and you've typed in a search, like, I'm looking for these products, you know, you'll see, like, there's a banner up at the top. It's very obvious. It's that. Right. You know, it's probably a lifestyle image. You'll scroll down and you'll see like a video and you're like, it's kind of obvious it's an ad. Right. Well, these ads will show up. You know, the search grid where you could just see all the products in the grid. These ads show up in that grid.
- [13:45]
Cody McGuffey
It almost looks like an organic.
- [13:47]
Elizabeth
It looks much more like an organic placement. And you know, if you ever scroll down through a listing and you'll see like other products and there's that carousel and you're clicking through, most of those are ads.
- [13:57]
Cody McGuffey
Beautiful. So 75, 75% are those you're saying, okay, continue.
- [14:02]
Elizabeth
Yep. Yeah. So I know that I'm starting there because that is going to give me again, I have the most inventory of those ads. There's way more places I can put it. And those, what we have found have the most impact on organic search page rank. So a little bit, let's go into the algorithm. I'll give you a very brief idea. Amazon's algorithm, super complicated, right? But in a nutshell, Amazon is in the business of making sure that people find the products they want and they have a really good consumer experience. And so one of the factors to sort of understand which products should show up at the top, they were like, okay, so when a shopper types in a search, what do they most frequently purchase? What are they buying? And so they sort of use that now. It's an overtime. It's like a sales velocity or order velocity. And they also factor in things like conversion rates. They also have a relevancy factor in there. Meaning like you're never going to see running stocks show up on high on a running shoes keyword. Like they have those signatures in place. So it doesn't matter how much I spend, if I have socks, I will probably almost never show up on shoes. So they have those kind of things. And so one way to get that velocity is through advertising. So you remember back in the day, like you could, you could pay in Google Ads to get your, your website ranked on their search. That was not within their best interest. Because what they found out is people just like spammed ads and all of a sudden they had a really crappy results. Well, that's not the case on Amazon. It actually doesn't hurt them if they reward ad sales because what happens is we show our ads high up in search on a particular search page, we make sure we show up again. It's native. So there's really high intent. And if somebody clicks and then purchases, well, they got that purchase like it was a legitimate purchase. So that's still factored into that sort of order velocity. So it's, you can't like bang a bunch of orders and like sprint up overnight. Like they, they want to make sure. That it's an actual good consumer experience, but providing you can show that again either through paying for it or getting it. Naturally, as you show up in search, you will start to see your product shift up on those search pages organically, which will create more orders overall. So that's what we're looking to really affect with the advertising.
- [16:33]
Cody McGuffey
Have you found that actually doing the product sponsored ads actually does improve ranking, organic ranking over time? Have you seen that?
- [16:40]
Elizabeth
A hundred percent.
- [16:41]
Cody McGuffey
It does, it does. Can you talk more about that?
- [16:45]
Elizabeth
Yeah. So it, it's honestly, it's just like a recognized fact in our industry because I, I don't know if it's there in Amazon's literature now. I've gone through all their white papers on their algorithm and read everything I can possibly get my hands on and trying to get the factors in really deep dive and get into all the technicals and all the craziness and you walk away with going, okay, it's about order, velocity and conversions really. If I had to sum it up, it's order velocity and conversions get super complex. I don't want to like say it's super simple because it's not.
- [17:21]
Cody McGuffey
But, but at the end of the day it's like they're in the interest of showing people what they want and then getting, getting people to buy what they're looking for essentially. That is. And have a great experience.
- [17:31]
Elizabeth
Right, Right. So I can run an ad all day long and I can get a ton of clicks and I could spend a lot of money. If those clicks don't translate into orders, they're not going to reward me with search page ranking. They're just going to take my money. So you can run less effective ads and you know, not get anything for it, which again is not within the brand's best interest anyways. You want to make sure you're actually getting orders off of things. But you can also again influence that, you know, total sales growth. So which means it in some ways, I guess you can call it a game. It's a game of not just looking at say roas specifically. You also want to factor in. Okay. So I know I have this specific roas which is built off of cost per click, which we can get into the technicalities of that. But it's also how is this affecting my total sales growth as well? So when I was saying that short term vision and that long term vision, that's the things you're balancing is what is my results of my ads that I'm running today. Let's make sure. We're not losing too much crazy money. But then how am I affecting that long term sales goal? Because again, order velocity. So I want to be growing total sales and making sure I'm running effective ads.
- [18:43]
Cody McGuffey
Beautiful. So Rachel should just out of the gate plan on spending a significant amount of her capital on sponsored ads for sure.
- [18:51]
Elizabeth
Yes, I would say absolutely.
- [18:54]
Cody McGuffey
As far as like maybe we can talk, talk about the money aspect of things too, because I read this and I believe you said this and correct me if I'm wrong, but you said ad spend control is crucial for founder led brands to ensure sustainability. Why do you say that again?
- [19:12]
Elizabeth
Because of cash flow. That is, again, that's one thing that we factor in. I've. Anyone. If you're trying to figure out Amazon, you can go into YouTube, you can find 20 different launch strategies, a lot of people telling you how to do it. That's great. I'll give you some hints here as well. And what happens is it honestly frustrates me because a lot of times those ad strategies just say, okay, go here, do this research, find 100 different keywords to launch, launch these 20 different kind of campaigns, kind of go big, go hard, go after ranking, which is fine, but I'm like, what if your budget requires half of that? Like, I've talked to some sellers and they're like, yeah, I followed the launch Strategy. I spent $2,000 within the first two weeks. And you could, you could do it smart. So the way it's, honestly, it's very logical, right? You can go fast or you can go slow. There's not a bad way to do it. It's expectations. So if Rachel goes, I have a ton of stock, I have a Shopify store that's very profitable. I'm doing great money. I really want to stress test this platform and I want to stress test it with X amount of products. And my goal is to figure out is this a viable business for me? I would say, okay, fantastic, tell me. You know, I don't want to say like what you, what you can afford to lose, but in some ways, yes. Okay, so what you can afford to test, right? What is, what is your affordable test budget? All right, what is our affordable inventory as far as that? And then I want to build my ad strategy curated in that. And the question is, how do you do that? I'll tell you. You want to select keywords that you think are viable. So an example of like that really top line hair dryer, she's like, oh my gosh, I want to rank on Hair dryer. I'm like, fantastic, it's going to cost you. I'm pulling a number out of thin air. But I could probably run the I some sort of forecast model and say, yeah, it's going to cost you like 20 grand a month just to try this. And I don't even know if we're competitive enough to do it right.
- [21:16]
Cody McGuffey
In ads. Just specifically an ad. In ad spend. Correct.
- [21:18]
Elizabeth
Just ads. Just ad spend. Again, I'm pulling that number out. We can talk about forecasting, but I'm guessing it's probably something like that. I was like, or there's this. And again I'm pulling out random stuff but like quiet hair dryer something or. And I, I know that that's her type of product or oh, there's some really search around women's bright pink hair dryer or something. So I'm like, okay, here's some subsections of the market. The search volume is not as high. So our, you know, our sales potential maybe isn't as much, but also less people looking, less clicks, less ad spend. So it's picking, it's picking and curating one where we specifically think that we have a competitive advantage. And then it's looking at how much is it going to cost to make the effect that I want. Because again, it's about order velocity. So you can say, well, I think it's most likely. Again, these are forecasts, but I think it's most likely. We're going to need to do five orders a day on this. We're forecasting your conversion rate to be 10. So it's going to take us 10 clicks on average. It costs us a dollar per click forecast. Right. We'll get the actual data when we run the test. But it's going to take us $10 for us to get one order times five. Okay, $50, we think for this one keyword. Right. Just to run that. And that's $50 a day. So can you afford that? Right. So it's just seeing like what part of the, like which piece of the market we feel like we can bite off for the ad spend that you can afford. And then also relaying that just a black and white numbers to the brand and they're saying, okay, I want to do, I'm sure you've seen it before. They're like, oh my gosh, I want to do, you know, 10,000 units in the first month. Fantastic. I can tell you how to do that with ads, but it's going to cost X. Oh my gosh, that's crazy. I agree. That's crazy. Can we go back to the drawing board and. Okay, so you guys can afford this. Okay, that's great. Here's the curated strategy we think we should go after. We think we can get it for x, but FYI, I don't think it's going to get us these 10,000 units. Not because I don't want to get you that. If your conversion rates, again, going back to why I stress conversion rates and listings, there is no creatives associated with sponsored product ads. So they're super easy to run. You don't have to worry about creatives, you don't have to worry about headlines. What they see is your main image in your listing. That's what makes them click. And then your conversion rate is driven. You can think of your listing as like a landing page.
- [23:45]
Cody McGuffey
What is a good conversion rate for Amazon? And I know it depends on the probably category and product and all these things, but what are you kind of seeing just in general?
- [23:53]
Elizabeth
That is a fantastic question, I would say. So if you listen to anyone and then they say averages, they're going to give you about 10%. But it's highly, it's highly selective. So we work in what I found is that in the clothing category or any like high, high price category, high price being like over $100, typically speaking, you're probably looking at like a 2, maybe even a 5% conversion rate is good. So it's much lower than that if you're in supplements and stuff. Oftentimes you can't be competitive unless you're doing like a 15. Some people are running like 20, 25%.
- [24:28]
Cody McGuffey
Oh, interesting. I feel like I did Amazon FBA years ago, years, years ago and I sold a, like a foam roller type of product. Like a fitness foam roller.
- [24:37]
Elizabeth
Yeah.
- [24:38]
Cody McGuffey
And I've, I vaguely remember and I wasn't that successful, but it was like doing probably Little sub under $100,000 in revenue per year for that brand. And if I recall, the conversion rate was like 16%. Does that even sound, does that sound crazy for that type of product?
- [24:58]
Elizabeth
No, actually I would say that sounds good. And the good news is, so what we're talking about is Rachel coming to me and going, hey, I have no data. Can you help me see if this is viable? The good news is if you have a, if you have a brand registered product and you're already up and running, you can check what is a competitive conversion rate. So there's data that Amazon has put out over the last couple years. One of them is brand metrics which you can find in the ad console. That's how does my brand do versus category averages? So it's less, it's less detailed. You can actually get detailed data now with something called a search query performance which you can say on these individual search pages, what is the average conversion rate and what is my conversion rate for this one specific product? Yeah, so I mean like conversion rates are so important because again, just think about it, the higher conversion rate, less ad spend. Because if it takes you three clicks to convert a sale versus 10, you're paying a lot more per order as you can affect more change.
- [25:57]
Cody McGuffey
Do is acos still. You mentioned roas earlier. Is acos still a metric that people look at in Amazon?
- [26:02]
Elizabeth
I know it was years ago, it totally is. The only reason I said roas, Amazon actually added ROAS into the ad console because like they always had ACOs. Very essential. For those of you listening who are familiar with ROAS and wondering what the heck ACOS is, it's just the inverse of roas. So acos is ad spend divided by ad sales. It's very like Amazon advertising centric number. And then roas obviously is the exact opposite of that.
- [26:27]
Cody McGuffey
I want to talk about Jungler a little bit about kind of like what you do because I know we talked about like Amazon ads and things like this. What is like the ideal person? Like is Rachel the best fit for you or is Rachel too early to come to you to for really you to add a lot of value? Like who's that person? Perfect person for you to like really help and then also what is their ideal like outcome? Like I come to you and I'm making $100,000 a month and I take you help me go from this much to this much with Amazon ads. Like can you talk about some of this stuff?
- [26:56]
Elizabeth
Yeah, I would say who comes to us? It depends on the level of support that you're looking for. Meaning. So with Rachel, she's thinking about coming onto the platform. There's more to selling on Amazon than just advertising as much as it's a huge piece of what you do and obviously we've talked about how it can affect sales growth. You're going to need to do things like inventory management. You might have to submit support tickets or some back end technical stuff that you got to deal with. And so if your team is ready to take that on and they're like, look, I've got this, I just, I don't understand the ad piece, I need some help there, then yeah, Rachel could be A good fit for us. But I try and be very transparent about like what we touch, what they touch. Now we have added on conversion rate optimizations. They don't sell it as a separate service. But as I've touched on that not being super important technical, we have the ability to help with that now as well. And as far as like expectations are, it varies because business goals vary. So I like working with brands who want to grow. I think the brands that I the team doesn't get as excited about are the brands that are, well, I need to hold up. I need to only think about profitability. I have no long term vision. I'm not planning on launching additional products. I just need to continuously sort of like suck from the dying animal that is my current products. And I'm just trying hoping that ads are going to be the lever to fix that. Rarely is that the case. Typically is some conversion rate optimization, some other things that need to happen which again we can help with. But it's really hard for a brand who can't see that long term vision because that's how again we would prefer to grow with you. So the brands that do work really well with us are the ones that are like, hey, I have this vision. Me as the founder. I haven't figured out the ad piece yet. I know that that's a huge lever for growth on Amazon and then it really has a lot of ways on personality and mindset of brands we found and I think this is almost kind of cross businesses, but the businesses who see it as a challenge to be overcome and not like things happen, right? Things happen in business that are outside of your control, inside your control. There's all this craziness we're trying to figure out. But the brands who are like, I'm going to rise to the challenge, I'm going to figure this out. You know, we hope we're the ones to help you figure out at least that, you know, piece of growth that you haven't been able to figure out so far. And so a lot of the brands that come to us are like, look, I know ads are like a level for growth, but I'm putting more money into the machine than I'm getting out. I keep trying to increase my ad spend and it's not increasing my scale. I know it's possible. I see what my competitors are doing, I see them outstripping me. Their products are not better than mine. And yet I haven't figured out that thing that need, that switch that I know can be flipped in advertising that's kind of where we come in because we've seen it all, we've done it all, and we can. I can go into almost any ad account like, yep, this is the problem. This is the problem. This is the problem because I've audited thousands of accounts at this point. And I've seen the extremes. So I've seen what happens at the extremes.
- [30:10]
Cody McGuffey
What, what revenue amount on Amazon would an ideal customer already have for. For them to kind of engage with you guys?
- [30:19]
Elizabeth
Yeah. Ideally, we find that there seems to be like a really good solid figuring out of product market fit when you've hit at least a million annual. That seems to be like where the. A lot of brands have sort of, like, really figured out again, the that product market fit. They have their solid products. They already have things running.
- [30:40]
Cody McGuffey
Is that on Amazon specifically or just across?
- [30:43]
Elizabeth
On Amazon specifically. But, like, I wouldn't. If Rachel came to me and she was like, all right, I have this product. We've, we've looked at it. We're like, oh, we think there's real opportunity here. And you obviously have that leg of the business. I think the startup brands that we tend to not work with are the brands that come to us. Say, this is my first product. I've never done business before. So there's like, there's something like when you're running your own Shopify store, like, you understand product development, you understand that. And I'm not saying your first product can't hit it out of the gate, but oftentimes those are the ones. It's like, I've put everything into this one product. If this one product does not work, like, you absolutely have to make it work. And it's not that it's not a product market fit, it's that it's that ads didn't work. And by the way, I need $2 for every dollar you put in from day one. Really good. I think that's impossible. So it's really about, I think, setting clear expectations.
- [31:31]
Cody McGuffey
I get that. I think it's perfect. Time to move over to Rapid Fire. Questions. You ready?
- [31:35]
Elizabeth
Go for it.
- [31:36]
Cody McGuffey
What's your favorite business book?
- [31:38]
Elizabeth
Fix this ness by Mark McAllowitz. He's the author of Profit first and Clockwork.
- [31:45]
Cody McGuffey
Okay, what's one thing that you wish that you knew before starting your business?
- [31:51]
Elizabeth
How important communication was and how that your business will only ever grow to the level at which the leader grows? Like, I knew that, but the longer I go, the more important that is.
- [32:06]
Cody McGuffey
How big is your team now?
- [32:08]
Elizabeth
We have 16 at this point.
- [32:10]
Cody McGuffey
Yeah. Awesome. What's the worst advice you've ever received about business?
- [32:17]
Elizabeth
Not advice specifically, but the thing that I've learned is that if you try and behave in a way that feels inauthentic to who you actually are. Like if you see someone who's successful and you're like, not only do I just take ideas from them, but I must become and function in the way that they function. And you try and do that to sort of enact growth and you just constantly hit your head against the wall because you feel like you have to be someone different. That's a recipe for a really miserable life.
- [32:50]
Cody McGuffey
Almost like a posturing. Right? If you're always trying to posture. Yeah.
- [32:54]
Elizabeth
Yeah.
- [32:55]
Cody McGuffey
Interesting. If your family and your friends and your customers all had to get together without you and they had to get in a room and they had to like write an honest article or a blog or maybe a book or something about you. Right. It was thoughtful characterizing your traits. All the good stuff and also all the bad stuff. What do you think that they would say?
- [33:17]
Elizabeth
I would hope that they would say I was genuine and open and had a self awareness about me and a. A drive to care and. Yeah. Just authenticity. And I don't know if you say like overall goodness but like, you know, like a genuine, A genuine willingness to help or trying to help. I would hope they would say I was smart. I don't think I'm dumb. I know what they would say negatively because it's a thing that I'm actively working on is succinctness and clarity in communication. Not necessarily in communication like this because I can, I can talk on podcasts all day long. But a syncus and clarity around tasks and specific objectives in that more of.
- [34:05]
Cody McGuffey
The personal setting or you think in business setting?
- [34:08]
Elizabeth
Probably both.
- [34:10]
Cody McGuffey
Interesting. How would you define a creator? Like who is a creator in your. From your eyes?
- [34:18]
Elizabeth
I think someone who can see possibilities and connect dots that haven't been connected before. At least that's how I do it.
- [34:27]
Cody McGuffey
I like that. So it's not really necessarily what you didn't say was oh, somebody that creates content or someone that creates a business. It sounds like you more so is like more general like anybody as a creator.
- [34:40]
Elizabeth
Yeah, I think, I think anyone could be a creator. That's how I do it. I. I struggle to bring something from nothing and I thought for the longest time like that made me not creative but what I recognize at least about myself and this is how I create. I'm quite good at understanding unrelated concepts and then Bringing to life something that is a part marriage of multiple ideas. And then it is something new and it can be something authentic because it's a connection point that nobody's ever made before. And I think that's honestly how we collectively improve as a society is not necessarily by somebody having to come up with something novel or brand new, because I think that happens very rarely. But it's the people who are willing to understand different points of view and then use those to sort of bring to life something or a different perspective that's never at least been voiced before.
- [35:39]
Cody McGuffey
Or voiced in a different way. And yeah, I think even the novel things that you mentioned, even those novel things actually are connection points between other things, like of conversations that they were reading about and talking with, like, nothing really comes. I think it's a. It's a myth, right, that we think that just something like just completely comes out of nowhere for the most part. I mean, yeah, no one could really tell, but. Interesting. Do you think that everyone should be a business owner?
- [36:08]
Elizabeth
No.
- [36:10]
Cody McGuffey
Why?
- [36:12]
Elizabeth
Because I don't think everyone would be happy being a business owner. Like, I'm. I'm very happy. I enjoy it. I love it. It's amazing. It's not all amazing. Not everything is in life. But I don't know if everybody would want to live my life. And that's fine. And I think that's fantastic. I think everyone, it's. It's hard to do. But I think real happiness comes when you sit down and you be genuine with your own wants. What are the things that I want out of life? And sometimes what I found is that it's hard to know what you want because sometimes you have to, to see all the possibilities. And you feel like you don't hold all the possibilities in your head. And it's difficult to like, vision that. But I have found that oftentimes you know what you don't want. So that in some ways can sort of shape. This doesn't interest me. Okay. So I can peel off that as an idea or I can peel off this. And I don't think that's going to lead everyone to be a business owner because I think again, sort of like forcing yourself into something because someone got success that way. Or that's how, quote, you should be be. Or that's what everyone is around you is telling you you should be. Because it's hard. It's hard if you're a business owner. And maybe this is just me. What I have found is that it permeates every, every ounce of thought in life, even when you're doing something else, it's sitting there in the back of your brain and it doesn't shut off. And maybe if you are working for someone, you might have that as part of your job, but I think on some aspect and sort of chunk it off. And I think that's very hard if you're a business owner.
- [38:00]
Cody McGuffey
Again, is that good? Is that good to be able to have to chunk it off? Is that a good thing?
- [38:05]
Elizabeth
There is part of me that thinks that would be nice, but then I also recognize that that also means that I wouldn't have all the benefits that I have as a business owner. So the older I get, the more I realize life is just a game of pros and cons. Cons. And I think the, the secret to living a life that you want is just make sure you have more pros than con. Because you're always going to have cons and you're always going to have pros. Just make sure it's pros and cons and pros and cons. Your pros and your cons. Because your pros are not going to be. You're gonna be like, oh, my gosh, I love, I love traveling. I love jet setting. I love it. Fantastic. I'm a homebody. I don't go anywhere. But that's because, like, that's, that's my pro. I like it. It. Someone else may be like, oh, my gosh, this is so boring. Right? Yeah.
- [38:55]
Cody McGuffey
Amazing. Elizabeth, thank you so much. Where can people find you? Where can people follow you? Learn more about you learn more about Jungler, all the good stuff.
- [39:03]
Elizabeth
Absolutely. So if anyone's listening, you're like, oh, that sounds fantastic. I would love to see what you think about Amazon ads. For me, best place is going to be the website jungler.com you can reach out there. There's calendar. You talk to me. Still, we're not big enough that we'll pass you off to somebody else. But if you just want to see what my brain is saying on Amazon ads, I put out the Most content on LinkedIn.
- [39:27]
Cody McGuffey
Beautiful. Elizabeth, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your. Your golden nuggets. Really appreciate it. We'd love to have you on again. It'd be fun.
- [39:34]
Elizabeth
Absolutely. I would love that.
- [39:36]
Cody McGuffey
Awesome. Talk to you soon.
- [39:37]
Elizabeth
Sounds good.