Loading summary

Transcript38 lines

[00:00]
A
Lots of brands they're invested in building a first party data audience that they can then remarket to over time. Amazon does not give you the data on those customers and that can be a big, big hiccup for brands. When we spend on a keyword, we're spending on it for a reason. We're always going to be spending for value back to the brand. Value back to the brand in its simplest form is profit, like profitable sales that drive incremental contribution margin value back to the brand on Amazon can also be organic rank because you're going to climb the ranks and that's going to pay off in terms of organic volume.
[00:31]
B
Rufus and AI environment. Is there anything you're doing differently with Rufus on the prowl?
[00:36]
A
Yeah. So with Rufus on the prowl, it's.
[00:46]
B
All killer, no filler. I'm Eric, I'm here with Pilothouse's Amazon team lead, Rob. Today we're going to go over some of the core problems that we see in the space as it relates to both Omnichannel and Amazon specifically a little bit. Rob, you've done, you've been, you've been at this four years now, is that right?
[01:06]
A
I've been here six years, six years.
[01:10]
B
Of leading our entire Amazon ecosystem. Been a huge part of our growth at Pilothouse. But talk to me about when brands all have different concerns, questions when it comes to Amazon, everyone comes from a slightly different perspective. To me, like I just, every brand that I see succeeding has, has an Amazon presence. There's few and far between our brands being like protective about it. But there's degrees to which you can go into Amazon based on, on what your, what your problem might be. So why don't you walk me through maybe from this we'll start with the brand perspective. What are some of the core problems that you get approached with about the Amazon Channel?
[01:46]
A
Yeah, I mean one of the big ones off the hop is like lots of brands are, they're invested in building like a first party data audience that they can then remarket to over time. And that's going to be like their golden goose egg that creates profit is like having this audience they can protect and they can sell to and Amazon does not give you the data on those customers. Amazon views them, people who buy on Amazon as Amazon's customer, not your customer. And that can be a big, big hiccup for brands. From a problem standpoint you gotta trust.
[02:15]
B
In a way, right? You gotta sort of trust that your product is good enough at that point that you're gonna reacquire them that you're gonna build a, a ritual with them and they'll come back to Amazon because it's the lowest path to resistance to acquire your product. But that's a lot of faith.
[02:29]
A
Yeah. So this all comes down to like how you approach Amazon as a brand. So if as a brand that's a big concern of yours and you know that first party data audience is what's going to be drive profit over time. You don't have to approach Amazon from like a let's sell all of our products, let's build this massive presence and just let customers convert there. If they want to convert there. You can be more strategic about it and say like how do we actually acquire a net new customer on Amazon? That's going to be through generic terms. Amazon's ultimately a demand capture platform. Customers are going and searching a term, but if they're searching a generic term, they're not necessarily brand aware. They're going to be a new customer to you. And even if they're searching a branded term, they may not have converted on site and they only converting because Amazon has the product and they get free shipping. So then you can look at your product mix and say what products have a high level of generic search volume, what products are a really good entry point for a new customer to the brand and then only bring those products to Amazon because then if we can capture that customer then either naturally they might come back to site because they're going to have like a more diverse catalog, upgrade options, unique colorways, whatever it might be, or you can actually try and drive them back to site via like some value on site. So scan this QR code to register your warranty. Scan this QR code to view our recipe database. Scan this QR code to get a how to guide or the best skincare routine or whatever it might be. But you, there's tons of ways to generate a lead form that brings them back to site, capture the email and now they're in your data. But you acquired that customer on Amazon and that new customer is actually adding to your customer base over time and growing your brand and growing your first party data audience, not just cannibalizing it.
[04:13]
B
What is a realistic, like what's the most you've ever seen? I guess you'd never know because a brand could come to your site after the fact and sign back up fully. But when it comes to actually getting first party data through QR codes, through an app or through things like that, it's probably only been a fraction of the Amazon sales you've been able to recover the data on, is that true?
[04:31]
A
Yeah, I don't imagine it'd be super high. So you are trusting like some of, some of this is trusting in like the customer journey and understanding your customer's journey. But if you know a customer comes in and buys like one product and they typically come back for kind of to expand their product line with your brand, and they can't expand that product line on Amazon because it's not there for purchase. You've already built that brand trust because they've had that first product, they've had a good experience. So now when you're trying to sell them on site, there's not as big of hurdle of like, oh, this is a new brand. Oh, I've got to pay shipping. What if I don't like it? It might be hard to return. That's all. Like, there you have the trust, so then you're less, there's less of a barrier to make that second purchase on site.
[05:12]
B
Regarding brand, how do you address concerns or fears of brands that are like, okay, I've got this prestige product and it's going to show up next to five knockoffs from China or something that are able to like undercut it on price. How do you, how do you assuage those fears about brand?
[05:28]
A
Yeah, so part of this depends on product. So sometimes like, you've got to be realistic with yourself in terms of like, can you compete on Amazon and what terms can you compete on? Because just as a gut check, like if you search, I always use vitamin D as an example, but like vitamin D exact match, the top rated listings are going to be the little white vitamin D pills that you can get like 10,000 for $5. And those, like, that's what people buy. Like the bulk of people are looking for a cheap product and a cheap solution. But if you go to vitamin D gummies, all of a sudden you're not paying $5 for 10,000, you're paying 20 bucks for 60. Because they're like a quality gummy. You search vegan vitamin D gumm, price point goes up. So you can compete on those different lenses. So that's first step is like understanding, like, are we actually a fit for who's searching on Amazon? Can we compete on what terms and what's the potential for actually ranking for those terms from an actual branding standpoint? Yes, it's a marketplace. You're going to be next to the competition. So you can make your listing look a lot more premium. Like we do Have a lot of capabilities from like making beautiful hero images, beautiful listing images, leaning into premium A plus content that's full banner width creative that you can do background videos and scroll banners and you can make something that is truly gorgeous exist on Amazon and then the store built that out. So there are these tools to create that kind of brand experience. Do you have as much control as your website? No. Are you next to competition? Yes. But again, you come back to that. Can we be, are we relevant for particular terms? What's the volume and can we use that to actually acquire that new customer?
[07:02]
B
Then our second category or lens to look at sort of problems or client problems with are people that have concerns around the growth and what kind of growth is possible on Amazon? What, what do you have to say about that?
[07:15]
A
Yeah, so this like these sort of sets of core problems is more so from like a, I would say an execution standpoint. Lots of times brands come to us and they, they understand the Amazon channel has value, they put some listings live, but they haven't really invested in a strategy to grow Amazon. So their, their ad suite might be kind of hit and miss. It's like you've got branded blended with prospecting. You've got like modifiers that aren't being used. There's not this deliberate thought going into like particular keywords. Like, we're very much like an exact match approach. When we spend on a keyword, we're spending on it for a reason. That reason could be I always relate to as value back to the brand. So we're always going to be spending for value back to the brand. Value back to the brand in its simplest form is profit, like profitable sales that drive incremental contribution margin. Value back to the brand on Amazon can also be organic rank because you're going to climb the ranks and that's going to pay off in terms of organic volume. But the point is that every campaign, every placement, every term, you're spending on it for a reason. You've got a target return based on that reason and based on the value it drives back to the brand. And then you can measure that performance based on the goals for each individual term placement, keyword, whatever it might be. So sometimes brands come to us and they're like, we know there's value here, but it's a mess of keywords and we want to make it work, but we're not growing and it's just because they haven't kind of gone through that process of really building the plan, understanding what's the goal, what is it going to take to get there and then exercise some and seeing it as a.
[08:43]
B
Ladder, seeing it not a spray and pray, but seeing each, each strategic choice there as a ladder to more profitability or more growth in the long term.
[08:52]
A
Yeah, and not a set it and forget it platform. Like that's a, that we're kind of, I think moving a little bit away from that mindset. That's a little bit of an older mindset, but it still is there where it's like hey, people are searching on Amazon, all we have to do is list there and we'll get sales. And it's like yeah, you might get some but you're not going to see like true growth and true like that new customer acquisition and actually make it a meaningful channel without some deliberate thought.
[09:16]
B
Back when I was in the gaming space, I was working for a Clash of Clans competitor and I was told through my rep at Meta that at that time this was like 2013 or something. Clash of Clans was acquiring users at over a hundred dollars per new download because they were needed to get a certain amount of new downloads to stay the top 10 list on the homepage, which is where they got 90% of their organic downloads or whatever. Right. So I'm not saying, you know, you should be bidding that aggressively on something like Amazon, but you can see that there is logic to, you know, strategically spending where appropriate, even when it maybe seems over aggressive because of the whole ecosystem that, that we have here.
[09:58]
A
Yeah, really good point. Like sometimes it's worth over investing in or not over investing, but spending aggressively on paid acquisition if you're making that back in organic or elsewhere. So for us we're looking at like tacos metrics, but then we're also looking at individual ranking campaigns and then tracking things like share of impression, share of added cards, share of purchases on our top ranking terms to say like is our investment in or on a particular term at a loss actually paying off in the long run? And then you can kind of build that case and then you're kind of managing the overall account for a tacos target that's hitting or ideally hitting the profit goals for the brand.
[10:33]
B
And so the brands that come in with these problems around growth usually have set things up in a way that isn't laddering properly where they, where they are kind of spending into a black hole a little bit. Whether it's set it and forget it, whether it's through automations that aren't making perfect strategic sense, they're finding that they're putting money in but Their margins being eroded and they're not actually seeing the growth that gets them to plateaus where it makes sense.
[10:58]
A
Yeah, sometimes they just pulled back too far too. Like they made a decision a little while ago to like prioritize profitability, which is totally fair. There's always reasons to do that. But then that's. They didn't see the warning signs in terms of like eroding market share. And then rev started to decline. They didn't want to spend more to prevent it because they want to maintain efficiency. So spend came down. All of a sudden you're in this like spiral that you're like, we got to spend money to get out of this. Like, it's end up in those situations sometimes too.
[11:26]
B
Which leads into the third category of problems we see, which are people coming in concerned about profit and logistics of the channel to the point where like, does it does even make sense when you factor in fees and all of these things? What a brand saying when they, when they say that?
[11:41]
A
Yeah, I mean, Amazon is a mess of fees. There's no. That's the way it is. So it's like you've got fulfillment fees, you've got like your, like your referral fee, then your fulfillment fees, you've got like inventory fees to Amazon. You've got placement fees, you've got fees if you have too much inventory, you have fees if you have too little inventory. And all this becomes like, just like, where's, where's my money? So the first step is just understanding all those. So building out a sheet on a per product basis to understand like, what are all of our costs from a percentage standpoint and how much do we have left from a contribution margin to make this work? Then they're saying like, is there any ways we can actually reduce any of these fees? Sometimes we run to brands who like, they package in a certain package size because it's easy to do for their DTC website. But what they don't realize is that package is like half a centimeter too big or half an inch too big and it puts them into the next size bracket for fba and their product might fit in a slightly smaller package. That drops them down a whole size tier. And then all of a sudden their FBA fee drops considerably. So there's things like this when you think about specific for Amazon, like, are there ways we can actually help from a freeing up margin? Because you kind of. On a $20 product, you drop an FBA fee by a couple bucks. That's meaningful from a margin standpoint, even Though it's only like cents or dollars on it per unit basis. When you start looking at percentages, it actually adds up when you're doing significant sales per month. So first steps, understanding and then building the plan for Amazon. Sometimes that runs into like hey, you know what, we need to build a strategy that actually doesn't necessarily. Or how do I put this? For some brands, single product purchase from an FBA fee relative to price point standpoint and Amazon fee might be very hard to make a profit on. So at that point you might actually have to really understand that that now becomes like a loss leader acquisition product to get product in hand. But then you've got to build some bundles that make sense for customers coming back that they'll buy the bundle because it's a way better deal. And you've actually got much more margin on that sort of like two pack or three pack that you've actually bundled and sent to FBA as a product. And then you're looking at like a blended cogs and a blended Amazon fee across those products to come out ahead. From an, from a contribution margin standpoint.
[13:57]
B
All of this is painting a picture of it just not being a set it and forget it channel. So either working with an agency who really understands the entire landscape and can lay it out or. Or having really dedicated team members who are on top of all of these issues.
[14:10]
A
Yeah, yeah. That's essentially what it boils down to. Like you can't get around the fees but you can build strategy that kind of understands them and builds a plan to sort of like not circum navigate.
[14:21]
B
Them but like navigate them. Yeah. Make sure you're not paying anything extra. Make sure. Yeah, you're right in the Goldilocks zone of too much inventory and not enough for instance. Very cool. So I know a pilot house where an omnichannel like Unified Growth Partner. I know we started as a company in the Meta space and I know Meta is still the, the big dog on the block when it comes to new client acquisition demand generation platforms. How are you envisioning Amazon in the unified growth world when we're talking to potential clients that maybe work with us for Meta but not for Amazon.
[14:57]
A
Yeah. So it is very much part of the marketing mix and anything you do off of Amazon is going to affect your, your Amazon sales. That said, you're going to build a different Amazon strategy depending on kind of the brand and the brand goals. So we touched on at the start that like brand that wants to protect DTC volume, like you might only bring a subset of your products to Amazon. You don't necessarily need to go fully across the board. Other brands, especially brands that are kind of going for that big retail push and they're going for that big distribution push, they're probably going to be more likely to just bring everything across the board and then they're going to spend on a bunch of top of funnel and then a rising tide like grows all channels for brands like that. You do want to look at the impact that off channel spend has to Amazon because I mean it's clear that it's there. So you can then look at like well what's our ecosystem performance? Because you know what, we might sacrifice a little bit on the directly attributed ROAS to say YouTube top of funnel meta top of funnel. Understanding that we're making some of that back on Amazon. You also want to be cognizant of like if you don't want to cannibalize meta, like how do you approach or how do you approach building meta product bundles and sales pages where people aren't just jumping to Amazon to buy something that's a much easier entry point. So in that case is maybe you don't bring your really, really easy entry point to Amazon. You bring something that's a bit higher value, a bit higher eov it sacrifice some sacrifices, some of the net new customer acquisition on Amazon, but you come out ahead on the first customer contribution margin. So it really depends how you think, like the strategy, your strategy on Amazon. It's going to depend on kind of the overall brand strategy, but it's very much part of the marketing mix and I don't think it's right to just treat it fully separately as its own little island because it's not.
[16:46]
B
I've been talking to so many people lately about CTV and streaming being a platform that really punches above its weight when it comes to awareness and consideration generation. How much are we doing? Or like what are your thoughts on Amazon's like top of Funnel DSP video network?
[17:05]
A
Yeah, so this is like the fun little caveat to Amazon that I'm always like, hey, Amazon is a demand capture platform that both generic demand that someone's searching to solve a pain point and brand demand. But then it also has the DSP network which is demand generation. So yeah, we're doing it for a few brands with good results. What's fun is you can pixel the like your DTC site as well as like track those sales back to Amazon so you can understand like is that streaming TV ad driving performance to Amazon to site to both to what level? And you're not going to have a huge directly attributed ROAS on that. But we've actually seen some reasonable numbers that give us the confidence to spend into it. So for the right brand it can be a really good fit. I do say, like I've had a couple brands come to me for DSP that are like, hey, we need like a three attributed roas for example. And I'm like that's not the platform for it. Like it is much more of an awareness. You're going to see like decent view attribution. But how much viewer attribution credit do you give view attribution really? Especially when so easy to do. I mean Amazon's going to claim wild numbers there of course, but you are spending more from that awareness standpoint. So it can be a really good tool.
[18:15]
B
And then I think the way I think about Amazon is just, it's just such amazing distribution whether you're in. We have visibility in retail. When you have visibility on meta ads, you just almost need it as a catch all in a way for, for the people that are just going to buy on Amazon. But what impacts, you know, when we see big, big meta ad spending, how do we see parse, quantify the impact of big meta spends when it comes to that being that catch all layer on Amazon?
[18:41]
A
Yeah. So there's going to be better way, like different ways to do it. Most of that's going to come through from a branded traffic standpoint. So if you've historically been tracking your branded search volume either via like a keyword tracking tool or like in Search Query Performance Dashboard, you can look at that data over time and then look at your meta spend increases over time and start to try and back out like what's the actual sort of increase you see from a volume standpoint there? Because that search query performance dash is going to capture all searches. So that's assuming most of that traffic does come through on branded, which we, we would assume it's not always going to be the case because someone might see a meta ad for like four sigmatic and then they'll search Lion's main coffee for example. So then that's, that wouldn't show up as a branded term because it's a generic term or mushroom coffee for example if they don't remember the brand name. But you can start to kind of discern that out. You can also look at like if, I mean it's super helpful if things were just completely paused on meta and then all of a sudden you Start spending and then you can say, well, Amazon sales were here, now they're here. There's not a perfect way to do it. I would say it is a bit of finagling the data.
[19:49]
B
Last question I have is just on Rufus and the AI environment. Like with when it comes to pilothouse, we're seeing new leads come in for clients every day from ChatGPT and I think having this big network of content that we've created out there is helping with that. But is Amazon like page optimization the same as Rufus optimization or is there anything you're doing differently with Rufus on the prowl?
[20:14]
A
Yeah, so with Rufus on the prowl going back a few months, we went through and really made sure that we put it gave Amazon as much information as possible in like the backend attributes standpoint. Because historically it's like, okay, that's like not super helpful data from a consumer buying standpoint. But now the mindset is like the more data we can feed the AI that we put in there as like concrete fact, the better Rufus can do in terms of like guiding a customer. We also looked at Rufus's frequently asked questions. If you're on a listing and you open Rufus, there'll be some questions that pop up relative that listing. We made sure for products that our listing answered those questions, whether it was in bullets or images or a plus content. Just to be ahead of, like we want to give the again give the ad the information that we give it. Not that like it's getting from other sources so it's less of like a true like saying. Here's how we optimize for Rufus. It's just like how do we give the AI as much information as possible so Rufus can do an educated job at guiding customers towards purchase?
[21:26]
B
Awesome. Well, this was I think a really useful update on on Amazon how we're thinking about Amazon in the entire growth ecosystem. I have nothing else to add except that Jeff Bezos has debuted a gray beard at Passion at Paris Fashion Week. So maybe it's time I finally stop, stop D Bad boy and just go gray like Jeff Rock the gray.
[21:44]
A
I will mention it's Amazon Prime Days right now. I'm sure we'll do a wrap up on it afterwards. But day one was strong. Seen some good performance, clients breaking some records, some clients breaking their July Prime Day numbers. So it's always a fun week when it's Prime Days.
[21:58]
B
It's always fun that when we have content to talk about, that isn't Prime Days. Because I feel like we've done like two or three Prime Day episodes every year. This year we've got so much other stuff to talk about. I think the retrospective is a great idea. Talk about like what we did to maximize it and break some records. That's what everyone loves to hear. Nice. Thanks for coming on today, Rob. This is awesome.
[22:15]
A
Thanks Eric. Appreciate it.
[22:22]
B
Thanks for listening to today's episode. If you're not getting the DTC newsletter, you can subscribe for free at directtoconsumer co. And if you want to learn more about Pilothouse's all killer no filler services, take off to Pilothouse Co. I'm Eric Dick and this has been the DTC podcast. We'll see you next time. Sam.

Summary6 min read

DTC Podcast Ep 552: How to Use Amazon as Part of a Unified Growth Strategy

Date: October 17, 2025
Host: Eric Dick (DTC Newsletter & Podcast)
Guest: Rob (Amazon Team Lead, Pilothouse)

Overview

This episode explores how ecommerce brands can strategically and profitably integrate Amazon into an omnichannel growth framework. Eric and Rob dig deep into the challenges and opportunities of the Amazon channel, from data limitations to fee navigation, and tie Amazon’s role into wider unified growth strategies—covering everything from audience building and ad tactics to leveraging AI like Amazon's Rufus.

Core Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Challenge of First-Party Data on Amazon

Amazon's Customer Data Wall
- Brands striving to build valuable first-party audiences often feel "hiccuped" by Amazon's refusal to share customer data ([00:00], [01:45]).
- Quote (Rob, 01:45):
  “Amazon does not give you the data on those customers. Amazon views them—people who buy on Amazon—as Amazon’s customer, not your customer. And that can be a big, big hiccup for brands.”
Strategies to Capture First-Party Data
- Use Amazon mainly to acquire net-new customers searching generic terms.
- Leverage tactics like QR codes on products to direct buyers to the brand site for things like warranties or recipe databases, thus funneling them into the brand’s data ecosystem ([02:28]).
  
  Quote (Rob, 02:28):
  “You can actually try and drive them back to site via like some value on site... tons of ways to generate a lead form… But you acquired that customer on Amazon and that new customer is actually adding to your customer base…”
Realistic Expectations for Data Capture
- Only a fraction of Amazon customers are recaptured through these tactics; trust in customer journey and secondary site sales matter ([04:13]).

2. Competing on Amazon: Prestige Products vs. Cheaper Knockoffs

Concerns with Brand Integrity
- Fear of being undercut by low-cost knockoffs, especially for prestige products ([05:12]).
Tactical Advice: Segmentation & Presentation
- Carefully select which products (e.g., products with high generic search, strong entry points to the brand) to list.
- Invest in premium content: top-tier imagery, A+ content, and brand stores can elevate perceived value even within a crowded, price-driven marketplace.
- Example (Rob, 05:27):
  - Compete where your differentiated product can win, e.g., “vitamin D gummies” vs. plain “vitamin D.”

3. Executional Pitfalls in Amazon Growth

Mistakes Brands Make
- Brands often list products and rely on passive sales—mistaking Amazon as a ‘set it and forget it’ platform ([08:52]).
- Ad campaigns are often unfocused—mixing branded/prospecting, not matching spend to intent or target outcomes.
Quote (Rob, 07:14):
“We’re very much like an exact match approach. When we spend on a keyword, we’re spending on it for a reason... every campaign, every placement, every term, you’re spending on it for a reason.”
Strategic Correction
- Approach Amazon ads as a ladder—not a spray-and-pray.
- Aggressively invest in ad spend where it will pay back in future organic rank and long-term profit ([09:57]).
- Monitor and manage by granular metrics: TACOS, share of impressions, share of purchase/add-to-carts.

4. Profitability and Amazon's Complex Fee Structure

Fee Complexity
- Amazon involves a “mess of fees”: fulfillment, referral, inventory, placement, overstock/understock penalties ([11:41]).
- First step: Break down true per-product costs and margins in detailed financial models.
- Quote (Rob, 11:41):
  - “First step is just understanding all those... what are all of our costs from a percentage standpoint… how much do we have left from a contribution margin to make this work?”
Optimizations
- Seemingly minor adjustments (e.g., shrinking package size) can drop FBA fees and meaningfully improve margins ([12:17]).
- Consider product bundles to shift from loss-leader single purchases to profitable repeat and multipacks ([13:13]).

5. Amazon’s Role in Unified Growth

Omnichannel Ecosystem
- Off-Amazon activity (Meta ads, YouTube, retail) often drives branded search and sales lift on Amazon ([14:56]).
- Amazon strategy should match brand goals: protect direct site volume (list only select products), or pursue all-channel growth (list entire catalog, invest in awareness).
- Don’t treat Amazon as a standalone island; track ecosystem performance and cross-channel influence for holistic optimization.
Strategic Bundling
- Adjust on-platform product strategy to control channel cannibalization: e.g., don’t list “easy entry” products on Amazon if direct acquisition is a DTC priority ([15:57]).

6. Leveraging Amazon’s Top-of-Funnel Capabilities

Amazon’s DSP & CTV Networks
- Amazon can now serve as both a demand capture and a demand generation platform, with DSP video/CTV ads for awareness ([17:04]).
- Attribution is fuzzier for these top-of-funnel tactics. Brands should realize returns won’t be immediately visible in ROAS, but can show strong view-attribution, which may be valuable long-term.
- Quote (Rob, 17:04):
  - “You’re not going to have a huge directly attributed ROAS on that. But we’ve actually seen some reasonable numbers that give us the confidence to spend into it. So for the right brand it can be a really good fit.”

7. Quantifying Amazon Lift from External Spend

Track branded search volume increase in Amazon’s Search Query Performance Dashboard as a proxy for the impact of Meta or CTV ad spending ([18:40]).
It’s difficult to discern exact overlap, but large swings (e.g., pausing and restarting Meta) can reveal causal links ([18:40]).

8. AI and Amazon's Rufus: Page Optimization

Optimizing for AI Purchase Flows
- Amazon’s Rufus AI leverages product backend data and FAQ answers to guide shoppers.
- Brands should fill in as many backend product attributes and preemptively answer common questions (bullets, images, A+ content) to supply Rufus with high-confidence facts ([20:14]).
- Quote (Rob, 20:14):
  - “Now the mindset is like the more data we can feed the AI... the better Rufus can do in terms of like guiding a customer.”

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On the limitations of trusting Amazon for customer ownership (01:45):

“Amazon views them—people who buy on Amazon—as Amazon’s customer, not your customer. And that can be a big, big hiccup for brands.” — Rob
On strategic spending for long-term value, not just in-channel profit (07:14):

“We’re very much like an exact match approach. When we spend on a keyword, we’re spending on it for a reason… Value back to the brand in its simplest form is profit... [but] can also be organic rank…” — Rob
On the complexity of Amazon fees and packaging (11:41):

“Amazon is a mess of fees…package is half a centimeter too big, it puts them into the next size bracket for FBA…and then all of a sudden their FBA fee drops considerably…” — Rob
On not treating Amazon as an island (14:56):

“It’s very much part of the marketing mix and I don’t think it’s right to just treat it fully separately as its own little island because it’s not.” — Rob
On feeding Amazon's Rufus AI with comprehensive data (20:14):

“The more data we can feed the AI that we put in there as concrete fact, the better Rufus can do in terms of guiding a customer.” — Rob

Segment Timestamps

Customer Data & First-Party Hurdles: 00:00–04:13
Brand Perception, Knockoffs & Listing Strategy: 05:12–07:02
Growth Painpoints & Ad Tactics: 07:14–10:33
Profitability, Fee Management, Bundling: 11:41–14:09
Unified Omnichannel Growth Strategy: 14:56–16:46
Top-of-Funnel Amazon DSP/CTV: 17:04–18:14
Attributing External Channel Impact: 18:40–19:49
AI & Rufus-Driven Optimization: 19:49–21:25
Prime Day Brief Update: 21:43–21:57

Tone & Context

The conversation is fast-paced, tactical, and rooted in real experience—with an emphasis on practical steps for growth-minded DTC brands.
Both Eric and Rob share a transparent, slightly irreverent take on the challenges, emphasizing strategy, realism, and rigorous measurement.
Frequent reminders that the landscape is shifting—from AI enhancements to more complex attribution and the increasing necessity of Amazon in every brand’s toolkit.

This summary offers a step-by-step guide to integrating Amazon into an omnichannel strategy, balancing tactical execution and strategic vision—all in the words and style of DTC's experts.

Loading summary

Transcript38 lines

[00:00]
A
Lots of brands they're invested in building a first party data audience that they can then remarket to over time. Amazon does not give you the data on those customers and that can be a big, big hiccup for brands. When we spend on a keyword, we're spending on it for a reason. We're always going to be spending for value back to the brand. Value back to the brand in its simplest form is profit, like profitable sales that drive incremental contribution margin value back to the brand on Amazon can also be organic rank because you're going to climb the ranks and that's going to pay off in terms of organic volume.
[00:31]
B
Rufus and AI environment. Is there anything you're doing differently with Rufus on the prowl?
[00:36]
A
Yeah. So with Rufus on the prowl, it's.
[00:46]
B
All killer, no filler. I'm Eric, I'm here with Pilothouse's Amazon team lead, Rob. Today we're going to go over some of the core problems that we see in the space as it relates to both Omnichannel and Amazon specifically a little bit. Rob, you've done, you've been, you've been at this four years now, is that right?
[01:06]
A
I've been here six years, six years.
[01:10]
B
Of leading our entire Amazon ecosystem. Been a huge part of our growth at Pilothouse. But talk to me about when brands all have different concerns, questions when it comes to Amazon, everyone comes from a slightly different perspective. To me, like I just, every brand that I see succeeding has, has an Amazon presence. There's few and far between our brands being like protective about it. But there's degrees to which you can go into Amazon based on, on what your, what your problem might be. So why don't you walk me through maybe from this we'll start with the brand perspective. What are some of the core problems that you get approached with about the Amazon Channel?
[01:46]
A
Yeah, I mean one of the big ones off the hop is like lots of brands are, they're invested in building like a first party data audience that they can then remarket to over time. And that's going to be like their golden goose egg that creates profit is like having this audience they can protect and they can sell to and Amazon does not give you the data on those customers. Amazon views them, people who buy on Amazon as Amazon's customer, not your customer. And that can be a big, big hiccup for brands. From a problem standpoint you gotta trust.
[02:15]
B
In a way, right? You gotta sort of trust that your product is good enough at that point that you're gonna reacquire them that you're gonna build a, a ritual with them and they'll come back to Amazon because it's the lowest path to resistance to acquire your product. But that's a lot of faith.
[02:29]
A
Yeah. So this all comes down to like how you approach Amazon as a brand. So if as a brand that's a big concern of yours and you know that first party data audience is what's going to be drive profit over time. You don't have to approach Amazon from like a let's sell all of our products, let's build this massive presence and just let customers convert there. If they want to convert there. You can be more strategic about it and say like how do we actually acquire a net new customer on Amazon? That's going to be through generic terms. Amazon's ultimately a demand capture platform. Customers are going and searching a term, but if they're searching a generic term, they're not necessarily brand aware. They're going to be a new customer to you. And even if they're searching a branded term, they may not have converted on site and they only converting because Amazon has the product and they get free shipping. So then you can look at your product mix and say what products have a high level of generic search volume, what products are a really good entry point for a new customer to the brand and then only bring those products to Amazon because then if we can capture that customer then either naturally they might come back to site because they're going to have like a more diverse catalog, upgrade options, unique colorways, whatever it might be, or you can actually try and drive them back to site via like some value on site. So scan this QR code to register your warranty. Scan this QR code to view our recipe database. Scan this QR code to get a how to guide or the best skincare routine or whatever it might be. But you, there's tons of ways to generate a lead form that brings them back to site, capture the email and now they're in your data. But you acquired that customer on Amazon and that new customer is actually adding to your customer base over time and growing your brand and growing your first party data audience, not just cannibalizing it.
[04:13]
B
What is a realistic, like what's the most you've ever seen? I guess you'd never know because a brand could come to your site after the fact and sign back up fully. But when it comes to actually getting first party data through QR codes, through an app or through things like that, it's probably only been a fraction of the Amazon sales you've been able to recover the data on, is that true?
[04:31]
A
Yeah, I don't imagine it'd be super high. So you are trusting like some of, some of this is trusting in like the customer journey and understanding your customer's journey. But if you know a customer comes in and buys like one product and they typically come back for kind of to expand their product line with your brand, and they can't expand that product line on Amazon because it's not there for purchase. You've already built that brand trust because they've had that first product, they've had a good experience. So now when you're trying to sell them on site, there's not as big of hurdle of like, oh, this is a new brand. Oh, I've got to pay shipping. What if I don't like it? It might be hard to return. That's all. Like, there you have the trust, so then you're less, there's less of a barrier to make that second purchase on site.
[05:12]
B
Regarding brand, how do you address concerns or fears of brands that are like, okay, I've got this prestige product and it's going to show up next to five knockoffs from China or something that are able to like undercut it on price. How do you, how do you assuage those fears about brand?
[05:28]
A
Yeah, so part of this depends on product. So sometimes like, you've got to be realistic with yourself in terms of like, can you compete on Amazon and what terms can you compete on? Because just as a gut check, like if you search, I always use vitamin D as an example, but like vitamin D exact match, the top rated listings are going to be the little white vitamin D pills that you can get like 10,000 for $5. And those, like, that's what people buy. Like the bulk of people are looking for a cheap product and a cheap solution. But if you go to vitamin D gummies, all of a sudden you're not paying $5 for 10,000, you're paying 20 bucks for 60. Because they're like a quality gummy. You search vegan vitamin D gumm, price point goes up. So you can compete on those different lenses. So that's first step is like understanding, like, are we actually a fit for who's searching on Amazon? Can we compete on what terms and what's the potential for actually ranking for those terms from an actual branding standpoint? Yes, it's a marketplace. You're going to be next to the competition. So you can make your listing look a lot more premium. Like we do Have a lot of capabilities from like making beautiful hero images, beautiful listing images, leaning into premium A plus content that's full banner width creative that you can do background videos and scroll banners and you can make something that is truly gorgeous exist on Amazon and then the store built that out. So there are these tools to create that kind of brand experience. Do you have as much control as your website? No. Are you next to competition? Yes. But again, you come back to that. Can we be, are we relevant for particular terms? What's the volume and can we use that to actually acquire that new customer?
[07:02]
B
Then our second category or lens to look at sort of problems or client problems with are people that have concerns around the growth and what kind of growth is possible on Amazon? What, what do you have to say about that?
[07:15]
A
Yeah, so this like these sort of sets of core problems is more so from like a, I would say an execution standpoint. Lots of times brands come to us and they, they understand the Amazon channel has value, they put some listings live, but they haven't really invested in a strategy to grow Amazon. So their, their ad suite might be kind of hit and miss. It's like you've got branded blended with prospecting. You've got like modifiers that aren't being used. There's not this deliberate thought going into like particular keywords. Like, we're very much like an exact match approach. When we spend on a keyword, we're spending on it for a reason. That reason could be I always relate to as value back to the brand. So we're always going to be spending for value back to the brand. Value back to the brand in its simplest form is profit, like profitable sales that drive incremental contribution margin. Value back to the brand on Amazon can also be organic rank because you're going to climb the ranks and that's going to pay off in terms of organic volume. But the point is that every campaign, every placement, every term, you're spending on it for a reason. You've got a target return based on that reason and based on the value it drives back to the brand. And then you can measure that performance based on the goals for each individual term placement, keyword, whatever it might be. So sometimes brands come to us and they're like, we know there's value here, but it's a mess of keywords and we want to make it work, but we're not growing and it's just because they haven't kind of gone through that process of really building the plan, understanding what's the goal, what is it going to take to get there and then exercise some and seeing it as a.
[08:43]
B
Ladder, seeing it not a spray and pray, but seeing each, each strategic choice there as a ladder to more profitability or more growth in the long term.
[08:52]
A
Yeah, and not a set it and forget it platform. Like that's a, that we're kind of, I think moving a little bit away from that mindset. That's a little bit of an older mindset, but it still is there where it's like hey, people are searching on Amazon, all we have to do is list there and we'll get sales. And it's like yeah, you might get some but you're not going to see like true growth and true like that new customer acquisition and actually make it a meaningful channel without some deliberate thought.
[09:16]
B
Back when I was in the gaming space, I was working for a Clash of Clans competitor and I was told through my rep at Meta that at that time this was like 2013 or something. Clash of Clans was acquiring users at over a hundred dollars per new download because they were needed to get a certain amount of new downloads to stay the top 10 list on the homepage, which is where they got 90% of their organic downloads or whatever. Right. So I'm not saying, you know, you should be bidding that aggressively on something like Amazon, but you can see that there is logic to, you know, strategically spending where appropriate, even when it maybe seems over aggressive because of the whole ecosystem that, that we have here.
[09:58]
A
Yeah, really good point. Like sometimes it's worth over investing in or not over investing, but spending aggressively on paid acquisition if you're making that back in organic or elsewhere. So for us we're looking at like tacos metrics, but then we're also looking at individual ranking campaigns and then tracking things like share of impression, share of added cards, share of purchases on our top ranking terms to say like is our investment in or on a particular term at a loss actually paying off in the long run? And then you can kind of build that case and then you're kind of managing the overall account for a tacos target that's hitting or ideally hitting the profit goals for the brand.
[10:33]
B
And so the brands that come in with these problems around growth usually have set things up in a way that isn't laddering properly where they, where they are kind of spending into a black hole a little bit. Whether it's set it and forget it, whether it's through automations that aren't making perfect strategic sense, they're finding that they're putting money in but Their margins being eroded and they're not actually seeing the growth that gets them to plateaus where it makes sense.
[10:58]
A
Yeah, sometimes they just pulled back too far too. Like they made a decision a little while ago to like prioritize profitability, which is totally fair. There's always reasons to do that. But then that's. They didn't see the warning signs in terms of like eroding market share. And then rev started to decline. They didn't want to spend more to prevent it because they want to maintain efficiency. So spend came down. All of a sudden you're in this like spiral that you're like, we got to spend money to get out of this. Like, it's end up in those situations sometimes too.
[11:26]
B
Which leads into the third category of problems we see, which are people coming in concerned about profit and logistics of the channel to the point where like, does it does even make sense when you factor in fees and all of these things? What a brand saying when they, when they say that?
[11:41]
A
Yeah, I mean, Amazon is a mess of fees. There's no. That's the way it is. So it's like you've got fulfillment fees, you've got like your, like your referral fee, then your fulfillment fees, you've got like inventory fees to Amazon. You've got placement fees, you've got fees if you have too much inventory, you have fees if you have too little inventory. And all this becomes like, just like, where's, where's my money? So the first step is just understanding all those. So building out a sheet on a per product basis to understand like, what are all of our costs from a percentage standpoint and how much do we have left from a contribution margin to make this work? Then they're saying like, is there any ways we can actually reduce any of these fees? Sometimes we run to brands who like, they package in a certain package size because it's easy to do for their DTC website. But what they don't realize is that package is like half a centimeter too big or half an inch too big and it puts them into the next size bracket for fba and their product might fit in a slightly smaller package. That drops them down a whole size tier. And then all of a sudden their FBA fee drops considerably. So there's things like this when you think about specific for Amazon, like, are there ways we can actually help from a freeing up margin? Because you kind of. On a $20 product, you drop an FBA fee by a couple bucks. That's meaningful from a margin standpoint, even Though it's only like cents or dollars on it per unit basis. When you start looking at percentages, it actually adds up when you're doing significant sales per month. So first steps, understanding and then building the plan for Amazon. Sometimes that runs into like hey, you know what, we need to build a strategy that actually doesn't necessarily. Or how do I put this? For some brands, single product purchase from an FBA fee relative to price point standpoint and Amazon fee might be very hard to make a profit on. So at that point you might actually have to really understand that that now becomes like a loss leader acquisition product to get product in hand. But then you've got to build some bundles that make sense for customers coming back that they'll buy the bundle because it's a way better deal. And you've actually got much more margin on that sort of like two pack or three pack that you've actually bundled and sent to FBA as a product. And then you're looking at like a blended cogs and a blended Amazon fee across those products to come out ahead. From an, from a contribution margin standpoint.
[13:57]
B
All of this is painting a picture of it just not being a set it and forget it channel. So either working with an agency who really understands the entire landscape and can lay it out or. Or having really dedicated team members who are on top of all of these issues.
[14:10]
A
Yeah, yeah. That's essentially what it boils down to. Like you can't get around the fees but you can build strategy that kind of understands them and builds a plan to sort of like not circum navigate.
[14:21]
B
Them but like navigate them. Yeah. Make sure you're not paying anything extra. Make sure. Yeah, you're right in the Goldilocks zone of too much inventory and not enough for instance. Very cool. So I know a pilot house where an omnichannel like Unified Growth Partner. I know we started as a company in the Meta space and I know Meta is still the, the big dog on the block when it comes to new client acquisition demand generation platforms. How are you envisioning Amazon in the unified growth world when we're talking to potential clients that maybe work with us for Meta but not for Amazon.
[14:57]
A
Yeah. So it is very much part of the marketing mix and anything you do off of Amazon is going to affect your, your Amazon sales. That said, you're going to build a different Amazon strategy depending on kind of the brand and the brand goals. So we touched on at the start that like brand that wants to protect DTC volume, like you might only bring a subset of your products to Amazon. You don't necessarily need to go fully across the board. Other brands, especially brands that are kind of going for that big retail push and they're going for that big distribution push, they're probably going to be more likely to just bring everything across the board and then they're going to spend on a bunch of top of funnel and then a rising tide like grows all channels for brands like that. You do want to look at the impact that off channel spend has to Amazon because I mean it's clear that it's there. So you can then look at like well what's our ecosystem performance? Because you know what, we might sacrifice a little bit on the directly attributed ROAS to say YouTube top of funnel meta top of funnel. Understanding that we're making some of that back on Amazon. You also want to be cognizant of like if you don't want to cannibalize meta, like how do you approach or how do you approach building meta product bundles and sales pages where people aren't just jumping to Amazon to buy something that's a much easier entry point. So in that case is maybe you don't bring your really, really easy entry point to Amazon. You bring something that's a bit higher value, a bit higher eov it sacrifice some sacrifices, some of the net new customer acquisition on Amazon, but you come out ahead on the first customer contribution margin. So it really depends how you think, like the strategy, your strategy on Amazon. It's going to depend on kind of the overall brand strategy, but it's very much part of the marketing mix and I don't think it's right to just treat it fully separately as its own little island because it's not.
[16:46]
B
I've been talking to so many people lately about CTV and streaming being a platform that really punches above its weight when it comes to awareness and consideration generation. How much are we doing? Or like what are your thoughts on Amazon's like top of Funnel DSP video network?
[17:05]
A
Yeah, so this is like the fun little caveat to Amazon that I'm always like, hey, Amazon is a demand capture platform that both generic demand that someone's searching to solve a pain point and brand demand. But then it also has the DSP network which is demand generation. So yeah, we're doing it for a few brands with good results. What's fun is you can pixel the like your DTC site as well as like track those sales back to Amazon so you can understand like is that streaming TV ad driving performance to Amazon to site to both to what level? And you're not going to have a huge directly attributed ROAS on that. But we've actually seen some reasonable numbers that give us the confidence to spend into it. So for the right brand it can be a really good fit. I do say, like I've had a couple brands come to me for DSP that are like, hey, we need like a three attributed roas for example. And I'm like that's not the platform for it. Like it is much more of an awareness. You're going to see like decent view attribution. But how much viewer attribution credit do you give view attribution really? Especially when so easy to do. I mean Amazon's going to claim wild numbers there of course, but you are spending more from that awareness standpoint. So it can be a really good tool.
[18:15]
B
And then I think the way I think about Amazon is just, it's just such amazing distribution whether you're in. We have visibility in retail. When you have visibility on meta ads, you just almost need it as a catch all in a way for, for the people that are just going to buy on Amazon. But what impacts, you know, when we see big, big meta ad spending, how do we see parse, quantify the impact of big meta spends when it comes to that being that catch all layer on Amazon?
[18:41]
A
Yeah. So there's going to be better way, like different ways to do it. Most of that's going to come through from a branded traffic standpoint. So if you've historically been tracking your branded search volume either via like a keyword tracking tool or like in Search Query Performance Dashboard, you can look at that data over time and then look at your meta spend increases over time and start to try and back out like what's the actual sort of increase you see from a volume standpoint there? Because that search query performance dash is going to capture all searches. So that's assuming most of that traffic does come through on branded, which we, we would assume it's not always going to be the case because someone might see a meta ad for like four sigmatic and then they'll search Lion's main coffee for example. So then that's, that wouldn't show up as a branded term because it's a generic term or mushroom coffee for example if they don't remember the brand name. But you can start to kind of discern that out. You can also look at like if, I mean it's super helpful if things were just completely paused on meta and then all of a sudden you Start spending and then you can say, well, Amazon sales were here, now they're here. There's not a perfect way to do it. I would say it is a bit of finagling the data.
[19:49]
B
Last question I have is just on Rufus and the AI environment. Like with when it comes to pilothouse, we're seeing new leads come in for clients every day from ChatGPT and I think having this big network of content that we've created out there is helping with that. But is Amazon like page optimization the same as Rufus optimization or is there anything you're doing differently with Rufus on the prowl?
[20:14]
A
Yeah, so with Rufus on the prowl going back a few months, we went through and really made sure that we put it gave Amazon as much information as possible in like the backend attributes standpoint. Because historically it's like, okay, that's like not super helpful data from a consumer buying standpoint. But now the mindset is like the more data we can feed the AI that we put in there as like concrete fact, the better Rufus can do in terms of like guiding a customer. We also looked at Rufus's frequently asked questions. If you're on a listing and you open Rufus, there'll be some questions that pop up relative that listing. We made sure for products that our listing answered those questions, whether it was in bullets or images or a plus content. Just to be ahead of, like we want to give the again give the ad the information that we give it. Not that like it's getting from other sources so it's less of like a true like saying. Here's how we optimize for Rufus. It's just like how do we give the AI as much information as possible so Rufus can do an educated job at guiding customers towards purchase?
[21:26]
B
Awesome. Well, this was I think a really useful update on on Amazon how we're thinking about Amazon in the entire growth ecosystem. I have nothing else to add except that Jeff Bezos has debuted a gray beard at Passion at Paris Fashion Week. So maybe it's time I finally stop, stop D Bad boy and just go gray like Jeff Rock the gray.
[21:44]
A
I will mention it's Amazon Prime Days right now. I'm sure we'll do a wrap up on it afterwards. But day one was strong. Seen some good performance, clients breaking some records, some clients breaking their July Prime Day numbers. So it's always a fun week when it's Prime Days.
[21:58]
B
It's always fun that when we have content to talk about, that isn't Prime Days. Because I feel like we've done like two or three Prime Day episodes every year. This year we've got so much other stuff to talk about. I think the retrospective is a great idea. Talk about like what we did to maximize it and break some records. That's what everyone loves to hear. Nice. Thanks for coming on today, Rob. This is awesome.
[22:15]
A
Thanks Eric. Appreciate it.
[22:22]
B
Thanks for listening to today's episode. If you're not getting the DTC newsletter, you can subscribe for free at directtoconsumer co. And if you want to learn more about Pilothouse's all killer no filler services, take off to Pilothouse Co. I'm Eric Dick and this has been the DTC podcast. We'll see you next time. Sam.