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- [00:00]
A
How are the smartest advertisers thinking about Amazon beyond it being a traffic source?
- [00:06]
B
What mature brands are realizing is talk
- [00:09]
A
to me about how you use Helium 10 to be more efficient.
- [00:12]
B
Data analytics is key. We have by far the largest database of Amazon data out there. Success on Amazon is all about doing all the little stuff, even if it means moving the needle. 1%, 2%. Most people who have never dealt with Amazon, they are just shocked at the amount of data that Amazon gives. They don't know what to do with it. On other platforms they could just guess and just get by by doing whatever they think is best with their own internal teams. But Amazon gives so much data that it is absolutely insane that brands are not leveraging that to make their decisions.
- [00:50]
A
Bradley, welcome to the DTC podcast. I'm excited to jump into this. I was chatting with my Amazon team before. They've at Pilothouse been long time users of Helium 10 across the whole product offering. So cool to catch up with you.
- [01:03]
B
Great, great to be here. Thank you for inviting me.
- [01:05]
A
Let's start a little bit. I'm just curious your perspective on the evolution of Amazon as a platform. How are the smartest advertisers thinking about Amazon beyond it just being maybe a traffic source?
- [01:17]
B
How it's changed is first of all, for years, especially with peaking in Covid, Amazon was a place to launch a brand. If you've never been D2C or anything, just any mom and pop could, could launch on Amazon and technically you still can. I know of people doing that often, but nowhere near the numbers as it was. But now what mature brands are realizing is, is that hey, I, I can't just look at Amazon as oh, it's a nice to have, let me go ahead and have some inventory there and if there's some spillover from people who don't want to convert on my website or, or maybe they bought me in store and they, you know they're going to go search me on Amazon. No, like Amazon is just a behemoth just in retail as is. And so what a lot of huge brands that were ignoring Amazon for years, I think saw starting during COVID was hey, first of all, the world can change at any time and stores, your brick and mortar just closes down. You can't go and the only place to go is, is online. And people only trust Amazon to get stuff, you know, so fast. And it's not just America like in other countries too. There's like two hour delivery in three hours. So, so I think, you know, brands are really looking to it as hey, this is a serious channel, that it's not just a backup plan or let me get some spillover branded search, you know, on Amazon. But it's first of all a place where people are shopping your brand, but also where you can get new to brand customers by advertising. Not on your own branded search, maybe with somebody who's never even heard of you, no matter how big you are. But Amazon, you know, millions of people are searching Amazon. Just generic terms like collagen, powder and this and that. And this is a perfect way to, you know, get some life lifetime customers where I don't think people looked at Amazon, you know, 10 years ago as a place to get, you know, lifelong branded customers.
- [03:03]
A
The other aspect I guess is in this fully omnichannel world where people are testing out CTV and TikTok shop and building these into their growth plans, Amazon becomes that like distribution layer. In a lot of cases where even though people might shop on TikTok, Tik Tok shop, I'm sure a lot of people still see the brand go directly to Amazon because that's where they're comfortable with.
- [03:23]
B
Absolutely. I mean, I mean that, that and that's been the case for a while, but that has just been accentu with the launch of things like TikTok shop and even Walmart, a lot of people didn't want to sell on Walmart.com because of the distribution. They're like, okay, I'll have to fulfill myself or I have to go all in and send to wmf, you know, Walmart's version of fba. And like how do I even know this is going to be successful? I might just have sleeping inventory. But now with like, you know, with MCF multi channel fulfillment, Amazon will fulfill your Etsy orders, Amazon will fulfill your TikTok shop orders. Amazon will fulfill your Walmart orders in non branded packaging. And so it's like if you're already selling on Amazon now you can try out all these other marketplaces without a huge investment in your infrastructure or warehousing or inventory where you try it out and then hey, things start popping off on TikTok, go ahead and use fulfilled by TikTok, things start popping off on Walmart, go ahead and and do the more economical thing and send to wmf. But even in Amazon itself we see that shift because there's something called remote fulfillment. Because Amazon is not just usa, you've got Canada, Mexico and Brazil for like North America. And so let's say you've got inventory in Amazon usa, you Just flip a switch and that remote fulfillment turns on. Somebody's searching in Amazon.br or whatever the URL is and they see, oh, it's Amazon Prime. You don't, you don't even have inventory in Brazil. It's pulling from your Amazon USA inventory now. Now the shipping times are not great obviously to go to Canada from US or to Brazil or Mexico, but it's the same concept where you see which products are really popping off and then the ones that do. Okay, now you can go ahead and send to the actual Brazil FBA so you can get the two day shipping. And so it's really amazing system that Amazon's got going.
- [05:04]
A
You're in a pretty unique position on this podcast because you're a longtime team member, one of the first team members at Helium 10, but you're also an Amazon seller, actively using the product yourself. How does that change the way you look at the growth tools versus your average SaaS operator?
- [05:20]
B
It's important. Like, like Helium 10 founder who, who's no longer in the, in the picture. He exited a while back, but he, he started as an Amazon seller and, and this is how he started Helium 10, making stuff what he needs. Some of the most powerful companies in every space, especially SaaS, usually have founders or key operators who are, you know, who are the customer as well. And that's, that's important. So like me, I'm not, you know, just some like software salesman. Like I live, I live this stuff. And a lot of the tools and things actually came from me. Not because I have some like genius mind or something, but it's just like I'm just in the game, you know, like, so this is what I need. And that's how Helium 10 was built. The founder, Manny, was like, hey, I'm trying to build this million dollar Amazon business. I need this kind of automation or I need this analytics and let me just go ahead and build it. And so then as I'm managing my own e commerce accounts, I'm like, oh shoot, I need this. And so I'll talk to the, the smart people at the company, like the engineers and stuff like, hey, how can we have this metric? Or how can I have this automation? It would make my life so much easier. So I think that's, that's like super important for any there. You could have all the smart people, but you need people who are actually in the game to, to really understand what's going on.
- [06:25]
A
We, I've been talking about, you know, Amazon ads with the Pilothouse Amazon team, you know, for, for six years on this podcast, how is the ad landscape changed? Because I know it's like one of the fastest growing regions of Amazon. Has it gotten more important than it was five, six years ago or has it just sort of always been super important?
- [06:41]
B
It's critical now and Amazon is a genius for, for making it. You know, like, like a seller is dependent on it, but obviously there's a line they can't cross. They can't just make it where you have to spend a ridiculous amount. But, but, you know, some sellers might, might say that it is a ridiculous amount we have to do, but Amazon has this advertising system that in my opinion is unmatched anywhere online. It's just so intricate. There's so many different things. And now Amazon's like even going mainstream with, with, you know, like connected TV and, and you know, you could like advertise your product on Thursday Night Football and Amazon Prime TV and your favorite Korean drama. And just like, it's crazy what has evolved from just like simple product placement ads in search results, you know, and so you really have to be careful as a brand though, because there's so many ways to advertise and Amazon's not going to deny your buddy if you turn on some budgets or auto things, you just let it go. Amazon will gladly take all the money you can and so you really have to have a, a tight hold on it. But it's, it's the only platform in the world where you can just instantly kind of just be shown in front of all your relevant customers instantly.
- [07:49]
A
And unlike other platforms like Meta, every customer you drive through ads is building the organic momentum of, of your product on the platform as Meta. You're just constantly reacquiring the same customers. Maybe it helps in the algorithm a little bit with your quality score or whatever, but you're actively building your profile and it's kind of like if you're launching a new product on Amazon, which I hope to be soon, you need to be very strategic and you need to invest in, in some, some parts to get visibility at all, I guess. Right?
- [08:16]
B
Yeah, absolutely. And this is, this is, you know, like what I always said, like, for true success on Amazon, you've gotta be powerful in organic search results. You know, like, you can't just pay to play for all of your, for all of your sales, you know, with all the other fees that Amazon has. That's just, you know, unless you, you've got some ridiculous, you know, product that's $90 that costs you $1, you just can't you know, have that kind of budget. But here's the thing. The advertising drawback of Amazon until recently, it's a little bit shifting, is that you, first of all, you don't own your customer on Amazon. So, so that's always going to be the advantage of D2C and, and running, you know, Shopify or, or other your own website is, hey, once you have a customer, you've got their, you've got their email, you know, you've got their address, you've got their phone number, you can retarget and all this other stuff. Historically you can't do that. Amazon, Amazon owns a customer. You're not allowed to see their address. You cannot, you know, run lookalike audiences and stuff like that. And they're Amazon's customer, not yours. But now with stuff like AMC that Amazon has come out with and audiences and brand tailored promotions, Amazon still has got the data. You can't just do whatever you want with it. But now you can say like, hey, let me target everybody who has viewed my brand but hasn't taken action. Let me target people who have added to cart and, and never checked out. Or let me target everybody who has been a customer but they haven't bought from me in six months. These are stuff that three, four years ago you could not do it all. So you still don't like own your own customer, you don't own your customer data. But now you're able to do a lot of the stuff that you've been able to do off of Amazon a little bit more. And that's going to be, that's going to be critical because a lot of, you know, brands, they're not willing to invest so much in an advertising thing that they, they have such little control over.
- [10:03]
A
Talk to me about why Helium 10 was originally created and a little bit about how it's evolved over the years as the ad platform has evolved.
- [10:11]
B
The funny thing is, you know, we're on a podcast here. A podcast was created before Helium 10. You know, the founder of Helium 10, he was like, hey, I want, I want to, you know, document my journey of building a million dollar Amazon brand in six months through this podcast. And then he had also developed a lot of apps for like the, you know, Apple App Store and stuff before. So he's like, hey, let me make a couple of apps that are for my Amazon business, but let me offer them for free on the podcast in the hopes of growing the podcast. And it just completely went off and he's like, wait a minute, I'M focused on the wrong thing here. Yeah, let's keep the podcast going. But, but the, the real, the real potential here is, is in the software. And that was the start of helium 10. Just somebody who was developing apps for himself. And, and over the years we have, you know, focused a lot on newer sellers. But then, you know, we went and acquired other, other brands and other software companies out there like packview who are focused on the enterprise, you know, side of things. And so now we're just this behemoth, a company of 800 employees now in multiple countries where we handle all kinds of retail media and we still take care of those brand new mom and pop sellers out there.
- [11:16]
A
And then how, like specifically maybe on your brands, what are some of the aspects of the tool that have really helped you become more efficient? I feel like you mentioned it earlier, like if you're not efficient on Amazon, just like any ad platform, it's set up to take as much of your budget as you're willing to give it. So so many of the efficiencies, you know, that, that I talk about with our, our team come down to just being really efficient in how you, how you target, how you categorize things. Talk to me about how you use Helium 10 to be more efficient.
- [11:45]
B
Data analytics is key. And of course I'm not just talking about the stuff you can get from the Amazon API to, you know, check my profitability and where my spend is going. But, but we, we have the, the by far the largest database of Amazon data out there of stuff that we get ourselves and ingest through the API. So like for example, if I'm or I am launching a product this month, it's like this, I have this weird niche of, of spooky stuff where it's like coffin shaped shelves and stuff and, and I'm launching this bat shaped bath mat and toilet mat, you know, for the spooky people who need it, a little extra spook in their, in their bathroom. But what I can do, you know, those people have been selling these types of products. I can go in and put those products into Helium 10. And anytime in the last two years I could see every single keyword that they've shown up for in the search results, every single keyword that they've advertised for, every single keyword that they've run sponsored video ads for and just basically reverse engineer everything that my competitors who came around long before me and have been doing trial and error, I can just hop in today and see everything they've been doing thanks to Helium 10 and then just double down on what obviously has been working for them and stay away from, from what hasn't been working. I can monitor all my competitors and get notifications, hey, who, who's throwing a coupon up? Oh, I better throw a coupon on my listing during this prime week or something because I don't want to lose market share. And so that's our big differentiators. Number one that the analytics. For once you actually, you know, launch a product, you can just basically see what any competitor is doing, estimate their sal etc Also on the, on the flip side, even before this finding the actual product, you know, we have over 2 billion Amazon products in our database, even the ones that are not in stock. And that's how I came up with this like bat shaped bath mat and some of these other products I launches. I'm looking for these pockets of, of opportunity where I was like, hey, show me where the top sellers are. You know, all have like less than 150 reviews but they're all doing like, you know, over 5,000 units of sales per month or has, you know, they don't have a lot of images in their listing showing that they don't even know what they're doing as Amazon. So it's like I can just hyper focus my, my product research into launching these highly profitable and high opportunity niches where you would, you know, without software you would never just be able to just like browse Amazon and find these things. You know, maybe you could randomly, but I could just you know, find like 10 product opportunities in an hour if I wanted to, if I had unlimited funds, which I wish I did. But, but those are the, some of the things, you know, and then of course the advertising, you know, like I, Helium 10 is my day job. I run my businesses kind of like as a, as a side hustle. So I don't have that, that much time and I don't have many employees. Like I've got my kids working for me in my warehouse. You know, back here they handle all the logistics and stuff, but all the listing building and advertising, that's, that's all me. So I can manage over 300Amazon advertising campaigns in only 30 minutes. You know, using Helium 10 because I use a lot of automation and automated rules and keyword harvesting. So that's the other like the third biggest factor of how I'm using our own tool.
- [14:41]
A
So hypothetically, let's say I'm launching an Electrolytes brand. I'm a big Electrolytes fan. I think there's A big opportunity in Canada because Element is in the States and Element is one of the only brands that offers like, you know, health hackers, the full amount of sodium that you might lose in a workout. So they have a thousand milligrams of sodium, although other ones like Biosteel in Canada here they have got 100, 150 milligrams or something like that. So say I'm coming to market with an electrolytes product, I want to use Amazon fba. This might be too general of a question, but what, what would be your advice to me about using Helium10's tools to launch that campaign properly?
- [15:18]
B
The first thing I would do is, is analyze the demand, you know, and that's the beauty about, about things. It's hard to do that if you're just making your own website, you know, because everything is going to be based on ads. But on Amazon, yeah, of course ads is going to run, but everything has to come from existing demand, you know, and that's the beauty about Amazon. You've got the customers there, you don't have to go out and get the customers, they're already there. So what you would do is, hey, look at the, what you think are the key search terms and then check out the search volume on Amazon usa. Are people searching for this? If they're not, you might need to take a second look at this. You might, you might have the best product in the world that could change people's lives, but if nobody's searching for it, they're never going to find you. That, that, that's a super important aspect, you know, that's different than TikTok. TikTok, you can create demand, you make an interesting video and that, by the way, could be part of the strategy. Maybe they're not searching for it on Amazon yet. That's not a. Oh, let's just forget about this whole idea now. You go to TikTok. Hey, is this like a TikTok thing? Like, like, can I think of hooks and things where there's no demand for it yet? But that's not how TikTok works. TikTok works just on, you know, like, like videos that, that catch people's attention. Is there a campaign that I can create amongst my own brand and amongst creators that I choose that would absolutely make this something that is searched? Then you launch on TikTok before Amazon, but you kind of do it simultaneously where you're not making a big push on Amazon, you get all the inventory there, then you create the demand on TikTok. What do people do? They're just going to go to Amazon and buy it. And now all of a sudden, guess what? Now there's search volume for, for some of these keywords. Because now all of a sudden people have been educated to do things like you can do that on TikTok, you can do that on like a Indiegogo or one of these websites. But that's important thing for all brands to realize when it comes to Amazon. Amazon is not for creating the demand. Nobody's searching for it. Do not go all in on Amazon without some way to funnel in this demand.
- [17:11]
A
I think that's super smart. And I guess when I'm looking for demand, like there's obviously going to be demand for electrolytes, the question is, is there a demand for high sodium grapefruit flavored electrolytes with no sugar or something like that? Right. So I imagine if I were looking, I'd really want to kind of go deep and figure out, you know, what exactly product niche I'm trying to hit and look at the competition and the volume there.
- [17:34]
B
Yeah. So you could just like enter in some of those keywords and see, hey, what are our people searching for? High sodium. What you do is you go in to helium 10 and put those into the existing competition who might not have, you know, some of those metrics of electrolytes. And then you can kind of see what are people converting for because what their search volume, just raw search volume, you know, like a million people search collagen peptides a month. But how many people actually purchase on it? You know, like so maybe it's a hundred thousand people. So that's like a 10% conversion rate or buyer intent, like what I call it. But you might see some other things where it's like, hey, there's only 1% purchase rate. What does that mean? That means that there is demand for it, but people are not finding that in the existing products out there. I did that with one of my coffin shelves where I was looking at my niche and I noticed this keyword that came up, coffin bookshelf, which had people searching for it, but it had like a 0.3 conversion rate. But the regular coffin shelf keywords were like about 5 to 10. And then I looked into, I was like, okay, I see what's exactly what's happening here. There are, there are no coffin bookshelves on Amazon. So when people search this keyword, they're not finding what they're looking for. So then if you see some search volume on some of these like sodium related keywords and things like that. But you see a low buyer intent. That's a great sign that you have an opportunity to jump in and just kind of like take that market. Because people are obviously not finding that in the existing, in the existing products that are out there.
- [18:59]
A
We've mentioned TikTok shop, you mentioned Walmart earlier and I think people maybe if they're familiar with Helium 10, they might think of you as an Amazon tool. But you guys now encompass all the different, you know, major marketplaces out there. Talk to me about how you think about this set of partner opportunities.
- [19:15]
B
This is again something new that I wouldn't have said. I've been doing this for a while and you would never find a video of me five years ago that said, oh you absolutely have to be selling at Walmart. I mean TikTok shop didn't even exist five years ago. But nowadays it's like if you're selling online you've got to do those three Amazon, TikTok, Walmart. The TikTok is not necessarily a profit. There's a lot of people who make profit on TikTok but the TikTok is all about that halo effect. When you get to Amazon, people don't trust TikTok shop yet as a channel or distribution channel or as a place where hey, I'm safe with the money or as a place where hey, I can get this product in two days. You know, like there's longer shipping times and so you create the demand on TikTok and some of it is going to go to your TikTok shop. But the key thing is you're getting all this free traffic now, you know, that's not even going through your ads on Amazon. And so Tik Tok Shop is vital. Walmart is a little bit different. Some products actually sell better on Walmart, very few but, but some actually sell better on Walmart than Amazon. But on average I don't know what the actual number is but you know, from anecdotally people tell me about 10% of their Amazon sales can be done on Walmart and if you can do that without any lift, it's a no brainer. Who doesn't want 10 extra gross sales. But the long term benefit of Walmart is eventually getting into, you know, Walmart vendor where Walmart buys your product to sell online and then the next step is Walmart brick and mortar. Then it's like game over. Like Walmart brick and mortar will, will kill most Amazon sellers or brands. You know, sales like I used to work for this this supplement company before I work at Helium 10. And I remember, you know, being so proud of myself that I grew their sales on Amazon from like 1 million to 2 million. But I also inherited their Walmart store sales. And they only had one SKU in Walmart. We had 20 SKUs that got me that $2 million of sales and one skew for, you know, that Walmart would cut for like two months, would take away the or would be more than the entire year sales of Amazon. That's how mass it is when you think there's over 4,000 stores. And so of course you can get directly into Walmart stores without being on Amazon or without being on Walmart. But it's very hard. You know, you got to, you know, have some good relationships with buyers and have something else working for you. But if you start dominating walmart.com they start buying your product and you start dominating there. Now that gets you like a much exponentially better chance of getting in Walmart brick and mortar. And I've seen this happen countless times where people are just absolutely crushing it because they were able to get into Walmart brick and mortar on Walmart.
- [21:49]
A
Is it similar to Amazon, it sort of requires a bit of a pay to play mindset in the beginning, or is it something that you can more
- [21:55]
B
set and forget very similar, very similar on Walmart than Amazon. SEO is the key, you know, which is why, you know, Helium 10 came in and have our SEO tools that, that tool I mentioned, it's called Cerebro, where you can just get all the keywords for your competitors. So you have to have the right listing. But then you've got 100 people saying the same product. There's only so many spots at the top of page one. You're not, you know, you don't do advertising, you're not going to get seen on Walmart, unless you're just in a niche where you're the only product at all and you get to the top of page one just by launching your listing. But advertising absolutely is the way to go. You know, a lot of Walmart product managers and stuff who started the platform, a lot of them come from Amazon. So you see a lot of similarities there with the structure of how things work. There's a lot of differences too. You know, like you can't just copy your Amazon listing and just bullet point by bullet point, just put it to Walmart. You know, there's different requirements about what makes a good Walmart listing, but in general, yeah, it's like a, it's a Very similar, similar pay to play action.
- [22:50]
A
I think in our pre interview we talked a little bit about the AI Kool Aid that everyone's drinking right now. Obviously it has its place. What are, what are you cautioning sellers around? The use of AI?
- [23:02]
B
AI has, you know, without a doubt changed the game and you've got to make sure your websites and of course are AI friendly and stuff or like you literally disappeared, you know, to some people who are using it. But there's two aspects of AI and the Amazon has an AI called Rufus. Walmart has AI called Sparky. I'm sure TikTok will come out with something as well. But what happens is there's these people out there in LinkedIn who kind of sensationalize these AI things on Amazon. You know, I'm not talking about chat, GBT or perplexity or things like that, but the actual Amazon ones are like, oh yeah, you know what, if you're not optimized for Rufus or Sparky, you're invisible to, to customers. As if all Amazon customers are, are using this to buy their stuff. And that's just not true. It's just end of story. Like Amazon's AI, Walmart's AI have not replaced search and it's going to be a while before that ever happens in any significant way. Just because the, the current search experience on Amazon and Walmart is what makes these platforms great. I can just, if I know I want a 64 ounce water bottle, I just type in 64 ounce insulated water bottle. I can see instantly all the products, the, the images and, and see the prices, I can click a few and compare them and boom, like, like it's going to be hard to replace the ease of that. If I know I want this, I am not going to have a conversation with AI and because anything of that is just going to lessen, you know, the experience, the shopping experience. Where AI is changing things is when you don't know exactly what you want. Like maybe you're like, hey, you know, I, I'm a, I'm a basketball player. I play basketball once a week. I always find myself dehydrated and I have this water bottle and the reason I think I don't drink it is because, you know, it's lukewarm by the time the game is because it's like you might have this whole conversation like in chat, GBT or in the past you might be have typed in stuff to look at vloggers or YouTube videos to kind of see like what do I need to solve this Problem. Oh, what I need is an insulated water bottle. Now let me go buy it. What? Amazon and, and Walmart and you know, I'm, I'm speaking for them like I'm not some all annoying person but I think it doesn't take a rocket scientist to, to come to this conclus that they want to take that experience of where you would go off of Amazon to kind of like find out what you need. Hey, what do I, what's the best gifts for a 50th wedding anniversary? You know, before you actually get to the search bar on Amazon about what to buy, Instead of going off Amazon to do this research, why not just do it on Amazon? And that is where buyer behavior is changing little by little. Where, hey, yeah, maybe I do, you know, type this into Rufus. But, but it, it's not like something that's going to be game changing for how you make your Amazon listings or how you advertise. I mean you never should have just put in your Amazon or Walmart listing just a bunch of keywords and keyword stuff just to get indexed for the algorithm. That's never been the right way to go. You should always be structuring your listings that are designed for the customers and how they would use the product and, and their pain points and stuff like that. And if you've done that for years, even before AI, you're good to go. Because guess what? The AI is going to be able to now, you know, read your listing and do that. The, the, the, the people who are, are seeing big changes in optimizing for AI than before. It means that before they were idiot, you know, sellers and they had no idea what they were doing. They were never optimizing for the, the customer. And so that's just like something that people need to stop with the Kool Aid because people now are only thinking about AI and then now they're just like forgetting about keywords and now they're not even searchable for, for half of their main keywords because they think AI is all that's important. And now their sales are down. They don't know why. Well, it's because they're sipping that Kool Aid a little bit too much.
- [26:40]
A
And Amazon has such a defined use case. You know, I, I Talk Sometimes with SaaS, companies that are building new like shopping experiences where it's where you, you talk to an AI versus browsing an E commerce site. And I just think for experiences that are so ingrained in people they've done thousands of times getting them to Step back and be like, oh, instead, don't just search for what you're looking for. Talk to Rufus. Like, I can see it being impactful over time, but I, it's probably not going to be a game changer.
- [27:06]
B
Yeah, yeah. I mean, over time and, and, and the thing that people don't or forget about AI is AI is built not to completely transform and do something you never would have done, but it's, it's taking stuff that humans do and doing it in lightning speed or in a way more efficient way. And that's why AI should not change this stuff, because it's like, hey, AI can now summarize the reviews of a listing and tell you highlights. Well, again, that's not changing the game. Like, what would you do before a. I would just read the reviews and you know, so when we start thinking about it from that viewpoint now, you can see like, hey, it's not doing new stuff. It's just taking what buyers and your customers were already doing and making it a lot easier or changing the place where they used to do it.
- [27:49]
A
One of the things we talk about on this super nerdy Amazon podcast a lot is overspending on branded key terms and how you sort of have to separate out your branded terms from your rest so that you're not sort of drinking your own Kool Aid and, and you know, you know, over reporting your ACOs or your ROAS, essentially. How do you recommend handling your branded key terms when it comes to bidding?
- [28:12]
B
Absolutely. Keep those in isolation, you know, because a lot of it, and this actually is a little bit controversial. Some people, they, they're like, oh, am I cannibalizing my own ads? Because I'm already top of search organically. Do I even need to be advertising on my own brand and doing brand defense? You know, do I even need to be product targeting ace and targeting my own things? And my personal opinion is yes, because Amazon's all about real estate. You want as much real estate as possible, even on your own branded search now.
- [28:43]
A
And your competitors might be bidding as well, and you don't want them.
- [28:46]
B
Absolutely are bidding.
- [28:47]
A
You get all attacked.
- [28:48]
B
Yeah, you should bid now that now you're. If you're going to bid on other competitors brand names, you're never going to get great conversion rate. But the whole reason people do that is because there is some conversion rate, you know, so of course it, it makes sense. And so if you don't take up those spots, guess what? Your competitors will. And are they going to take a huge chunk of your Sales, probably not, you know, because if I'm, if I'm searching, you know, Neuro, Neurogum, you know, one of my favorite brands here, you know, and I see a copycat brand that's a little bit cheaper. Me personally, I'm not gonna not buy the Neurogum. I have laser focus. I'm only gonna buy the Neurogum whether they're advertising top of search or not. But guess what? Maybe there's somebody who's only had one Neurogum and they thought this was all there was out there for in the whole caffeine gum niche. And then they hop on and they see something that looks completely similar, but instead of 39.99, it's 29.99. Guess what? Neurogum might have lost that sale just because they conceded some top of search on their branded search to another competitor. So it's something that you do have to be mindful for. But what you said is very true. You should not keep all your branded terms inside your regular general search campaigns because now it's going to be off, you know, your branded ACOs and everything is going to be lower, your ROAS, higher by definition on your branded search. And so if you want to be looking accurately at your true ad performance, you've got to keep those segregated.
- [30:08]
A
I want to jump into some of the automation stuff that we talked about on the pre interview, but before that, let's go back to your listing. Talk to me about the key levers that Helium 10 helps sellers optimize on their listing before they crank PPC number
- [30:23]
B
one, that's new is about Rufus again. Just because I don't think Rufus is changing the game doesn't mean you know that I don't think you should optimize for it. Success on Amazon is all about doing all the little stuff, even if it means moving the needle 1%, 2% like Rufus does. And so we have a listing builder that automatically optimizes your listing for visibility. In Rufus it also we talked about other marketplaces like Brazil, you know, Mexico, you know, Japan, etc. You might not speak all those languages. Our AI listening builder will take the keywords because you can research the Spanish keywords for Mexico or Spain or whatever, but you might not know how to put a listing together if you don't speak the language. But so you can take the keywords that we know, convert, and then we'll make a listing in whatever language you need and then you use it to also find the keywords. You can analyze all of your images from your, your competitors to kind of like, you know, we don't make images for you but it kind of like can help you make your sheet for how you tell your designer or your photographer, hey, this is the kind of images we need for our Amazon listing. So pretty much from, from finding the keywords, getting the game plan for your visuals, you like your A plus content, you know we can help you with, to actually making the listing even with AI and then monitoring it afterwards like hey, all right, how is my performance on the keyword level? And then of course the you know, making your first list advertising campaigns and monitoring it, automating the process of keyword harvesting in your bid management. Pretty much the A to Z we handle that.
- [31:50]
A
And then on the PPC side, what are the key automations that you guys enable or what do you think are the highest value automations on Amazon for operators today?
- [31:59]
B
Number one for me is that's unique is the day parting. This is something that for years Amazon sellers wanted to have but there was no data point or no software, no anything that could allow you to do that. Because Amazon didn't open up the data point that takes into consideration the attribution window. Some people thought that they were doing day parting. They would like just look in real time and refresh their Amazon advertising screens. Like oh my goodness, every day when I go into here from 2 to 3pm I see my ACOS is terrible. I'm just going to turn off my spend. But what they don't realize is you could get a hundred clicks from 2 to 3pm and 1 sale and terrible ACOs but maybe 17 of those clicks six days from now actually convert. And so guess what, that 2 to 3pm Click that you thought was terrible ACOS, it's actually 3% ACOS and it was a killer. And you just are turning off your ads from 2 to 3 because you were looking at it from the wrong lens. So what Amazon did about I want to say like four years ago they opened up something called was it Amazon Market? I forgot what the name of it is. This data point where software companies like Helium10 could pull in the information. But looking at it from that, that attribution window, so that's what Helium 10 now can do is hey, you look at your profitable and non profitable days of the week or times and then set up these automations. Like I have some stuff where through from like 1 to 6am it's just brutal. It's probably like people laying in bed just browsing, clicking stuff and have no buyer intent they're just, they just can't sleep, right. And so what I do is I cut all of my budgets on those poor performing campaigns by 50%. And now my a cost, you know, was like 100% during this profit, you know, unprofitable time. Now it's below 50% by, by no other means other than me just cutting my budget. I saw others where I'm like, oh my goodness, like, like in the middle of the day, I'm like 5%. A cost is super profitable. Let me see if I can get some more eyeballs on my stuff. Let me increase my, my, my bids, you know, during, during this time. And so that's a key thing. The other thing is keyword harvesting. I always suggest to all Amazon sellers, regardless if you use software or not to, to not just run exact match campaigns. Those are important, but you need to be doing auto and broad campaigns because Amazon can go and show you for keywords that you're not even indexed for naturally that, that they're just like, hey, I think that this product is relevant for it or that you didn't know were relevant, you know, to you. Like, like one of my coffin shelves. I'll never forget this. An auto campaign, you know, was crushing it for this one keyword is kawaii decor. Kawaii is a Japanese word for cute. I'm like, what part of a coffin shelf is cute? I never would have targeted that keyword. But it's, it's converting like crazy. And so always run auto campaigns. But if you have hundreds and hundreds of campaigns, you got to download the Amazon search term reports and run all these pivot tables. And then once you find the good stuff now you got to go back to Amazon advertising and find which campaign it was and add it. Like it's crazy. But we have automatic harvesting where I just set a rule. I'm like, hey, if any of my auto or broad campaigns finds a converting keyword that sells at least 2 or 3 at under this percent a cost, automatically put it to my manual campaign. Automatically put it to this other campaign. So that's another automation that just saves me hours and hours of time. And then the other thing is just my bid. I, I have this very complex set of rules that I personally do. It's not like the set of rules like hey, everybody has their own rules. Some, you know, optimize around ROAS, some around just impressions, some around ACOS, but I have a whole set of like 20 rules that even when I was running spreadsheets, this is how I manage my advertising. But it's super hard to do that manually. So I just said it where Once a week Helium 10 runs my, my own rules that I gave it through the system and then it gives me a whole list of suggestions. Hey, based on your rules, you should increase this bid, you should decrease this bid, you should pause this. And it just gives me the option to say yes or no, do I want to implement it? And then I just do that. You could just automate it. But, but me, like I'm kind of a control freak when it comes to my advertising. I want to be able to at least, you know, be the last, you know, one. But that just absolutely saves tons and tons of time where as I would have had to have a team to really do what I do now just by myself.
- [36:02]
A
What do you think the biggest mistake that advertisers who maybe undervalue Amazon are making?
- [36:09]
B
The biggest mistake I would say is, is just blindly, blindly doing stuff without the research. Whether it's advertising, whether it's, it's your go to market strategy, whether it's how you set up your listing is just like, hey, I know what my customers search for. This is what I'm going to target. I know you know what makes a good listing. I know what I think make good images and they don't like split tests, you know, and they don't actually look at data. That is the, the biggest thing. You know, most people who have never dealt with Amazon, they are just shocked at the amount of data that Amazon gives. Even not through, you know, I'm not Talking just about Helium 10, just in general. Amazon gives so much data that no other platform does. They don't know what to do with it. And, and on other platforms maybe they, they could just guess and just get, get by by doing whatever they think is best or their own internal teams. But Amazon gives so much data that it is absolutely insane that brands are not leveraging that to make their decisions. So that's like the number one thing I think that, that, that people fail on.
- [37:11]
A
And specifically Helium 10 makes it a lot more manageable for busy founders, I guess. Or, or people operating.
- [37:16]
B
Yeah, I mean a lot of people don't have teams where they can connect to Amazon's API and ingest this data and then crunch it in a way that that's meaningful. And so that's where Helium Helium 10 comes in.
- [37:27]
A
I am going to jump on the team account right now and do some research for my fledgling electrolyte brand. Thank you for coming on the podcast today, Bradley. This is super interesting. Any. Any final words for. For operators out there thinking about getting more serious and intentional about their Amazon scale?
- [37:45]
B
Just hey, it's never, never too late to start. So if you haven't started on Amazon, do it. If you're not even thinking about Tick Tock because you don't think you want your team to be dancing videos, that's not what TikTok is about. Tick Tock is serious in e commerce. Get on Walmart and obviously Helium10 can help you. So go to helium10.com follow my Instagram serious Sellers podcast. I have guests all the time on the actual podcast as well. And get inspired and just take action. It's not too late to really crush it on Amazon.
- [38:13]
A
And if you need coffin shaped shells that are amusing to Japanese, people will know where to look.
- [38:18]
B
Look at Manny's Mysterious Oddities. That's one of my, one of my many brands on Amazon and it's a great Halloween gift or gift for you. Got one of the, you know, some of those teenage nieces and nephews who all have black makeup or anything. Guess what? I got the perfect gift for you.
- [38:34]
A
The goths. I live actually right on one of the nicest, craziest Halloween streets in Victoria. People go all out west, full sized candy bars. I'm sure there's more than, than, than one person who.
- [38:44]
B
All right, we need, we need to collab offline here.
- [38:46]
A
Okay, we'll do, we'll do some, we'll do a, I'll do a man on the street interview style series for you for TikTok to drive sales on your Amazon store.
- [38:53]
B
Let's do it. Let's do it.
- [38:54]
A
Great to meet you, man. This is awesome. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. If you're not a subscriber to our newsletter, you can do that right now at directtoconsumerall. One word co. I'm Eric Dick and this has been the DTC podcast. We'll see you next time.