Estimating Launch Budgets and Risk

In this episode, host Josh interviews Matt Altman, marketplace lead at Right Side Up, about advanced strategies for launching and scaling brands on Amazon. Matt shares actionable insights on budgeting for product launches, optimizing PPC campaigns by focusing on conversion rates, and leveraging Amazon’s internal data tools. He emphasizes the importance of consistently launching new, non-competing products to avoid cannibalization and drive growth. The discussion concludes with practical takeaways for sellers aiming to scale, plus an offer for a free brand audit from Matt’s agency, Right Side Up.

Chapters:

Introduction to Matt Altman and Right Side Up (00:00:00)
Josh introduces Matt Altman, his background, and the success of his agency, Right Side Up.

Current Product Launch Strategies on Amazon (00:00:31)
Matt discusses effective modern tactics for launching new products and the importance of a sufficient launch budget.

Budgeting for Product Launches (00:01:02)
Explanation of current budget requirements, category selection, and why launch budgets have increased.

Estimating Launch Budgets and Pre-Launch Data Collection (00:02:54)
How to estimate launch budgets, use Amazon Ads, and gather pre-launch data using search query reports.

Leveraging Search Query Performance Reports (00:04:14)
Matt explains the value of Amazon’s search query performance reports versus brand analytics.

Keyword Targeting and PPC Campaign Setup (00:05:19)
Details on targeting specific keywords, campaign types, and optimizing for conversion rates over ACOS/TACOS.

ASIN Targeting and Relevancy Building (00:07:44)
Using ASIN targeting campaigns to build relevancy for launch keywords and leveraging historical data.

Scaling to Eight Figures and Beyond (00:08:09)
Advice for established sellers on scaling, focusing on new product launches, and avoiding complacency.

Avoiding Product Cannibalization and Diversifying Product Lines (00:10:41)
Strategies to prevent keyword overlap, expand product lines, and increase brand reach without cannibalizing sales.

Actionable Takeaways for Sellers (00:12:54)
Josh summarizes three main takeaways: aggressive product launches, PPC optimization via conversion rates, and image optimization.

Strategic Delegation and Removing Bottlenecks (00:15:04)
Matt advises stepping back, identifying bottlenecks, and delegating to scale the business effectively.

Conclusion and Free Audit Offer (00:16:20)
Matt shares where listeners can learn more and offers a free audit for podcast listeners.

Links and Mentions:

Tools
Right Side Up
Amazon Search Query Reports
Brand Analytics
Pacvue
Ecom Analytics
Data Dive

Transcript:

Josh 00:00:00  Today, I'm super excited to introduce you to Matt Altman. Matt leads the marketplace at right side up. Matt has over 12 years of selling experience. He's launched and sold multiple personal brands, all starting from a retail arbitrage budget. Four years ago, he started an agency right Side up to help high growth CPG brands focus on dominating the marketplace. They've been able to scale many brands from 0 to 3 million in monthly sales. Welcome to the podcast, Matt.

Matt 00:00:29  Thanks for having me. Josh, how are you doing?

Josh 00:00:31  Doing great. What are some of the key things that you, you advise or recommend when launching a brand new product on Amazon that are working today? Because, as you know, a lot of those black hat tactics, you know, have come and gone. you also have the, you know, the rebates that everybody was doing, and now it's kind of leveled the playing field a little bit more. Tell me what you're doing that's been working for you guys.

Matt 00:00:55  Yeah. So first off, I think that the biggest thing is making sure you have a big enough budget to launch your products.

Matt 00:01:02  like the days of 5 to $10,000 budgets to launch products are just gone in my eyes, at least in the spaces that I work in. so we usually overestimate our budgets by like 20 to 30% of what we actually think it would be just to make sure that we're in a good place in case it doesn't go the way that we want it to. but outside of that, we're looking for a couple of major things. one is we want to see continued growth in the category. Amazon's making that way easier now with like the search query reports, the product Opportunity Explorer. There's so many internal tools that they're giving you access to now that you can really easily find that. And then the other big thing that we're looking for is categories that you've got maybe like 3 or 4 power players in. And by power players they aren't really doing that much. They're still kind of growing, but they're ahead of like the other 20 items there. really it just kind of is showing us that, hey, there's enough sales to go around.

Matt 00:02:01  If these four people can all kind of be around the same and customers really don't care which one they're choosing right now, they're just basically picking whichever ones at the top from what we can see. So yeah, we used to go into very heavy like categories where you would just, I mean, like launches would be half 1 million to $1 million. Wow. and if you could make them work. Yeah. The payback is amazing because of the volume that some of those categories do. But if you lose, like, it absolutely sucks. so for sure, what we're looking at like 50 to $75,000, to launch a product right now and the supplement space that we're kind of going after, and we've seen it, it's kind of the sweet spot for everything. so if we do find a product and we think it's going to cost more than that to actually launch it, we'll hold off for a bit and see if we can find some other ones that are within our kind of thresholds.

Josh 00:02:53  That makes sense.

Josh 00:02:54  So how do you estimate, you know, that budget, right. What's the difference between a half 1 million to $1 million product launch budget versus something that's 50 to $75,000? And how do you estimate that?

Matt 00:03:07  Yeah. So the the biggest thing is ads. I mean, we've really in the last like three months, all of our launches have been almost exclusively on Amazon through Amazon Ads. so we're pulling averages of cost per clicks through the advertising API and really just looking at, okay, what is the conversion rate of the top products? If we wanted to spend to get that conversion rate on that keyword, like what would it cost us per day and working that backwards? the other big thing that I don't know anyone else that's kind of touched on this, but what we what we've been doing here recently is we have a seller account where we'll create the product beforehand. It's not the product that we're actually going to sell. We'll put some items as merchant fulfilled, and then we'll just have ourselves by the products.

Matt 00:03:54  So that way we get all the search query report data for that product before we actually launch it.

Josh 00:03:58  Oh, that's that's fascinating. So you do that in a separate account then? Is that what you're saying?

Matt 00:04:03  We've been doing it in the same account, just like a different brand name. and throw up a listing merchant fulfilled and do a couple buys through it, and then you get all that data.

Josh 00:04:14  Intere...