In this episode, we’ll discuss helpful Amazon advertising strategies, Amazon Marketing Cloud, Search Query Performance, and even some suggestions for the best Ethiopian restaurants.

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Join us as we welcome back George Meressa of ClearAds Agency, to the Serious Sellers Podcast, where we talk about Amazon advertising and e-commerce strategies. We discuss how tightened margins and increased competition from Chinese products are impacting sellers. The conversation covers the role of AI in leveling the playing field for non-native English speakers and the significance of external traffic sources like TikTok and Google Ads. We also examine the rising influence of larger brands on Amazon and the higher entry barriers that are discouraging new sellers. Our transition to using Pacvue for Amazon advertising and the emphasis on improving listings to enhance conversion rates are also key highlights.

In our discussion on Amazon PPC campaign optimization, we focus on strategically reducing wasted ad spend and reallocating resources for better performance. George and Bradley share insights on identifying inefficient ad campaigns and leveraging tools like the Hemingway app and Pacvue to simplify language and automate bid adjustments. We explore the importance of enhancing listings through effective keyword use and optimizing Q&A and reviews, which are crucial for ranking. This conversation emphasizes how strategic budgeting and allocation can uncover easy wins and growth opportunities for Amazon sellers.

Listen in as we explore modern advertising strategies and data utilization on Amazon. George discusses optimizing sales through effective keyword analysis and the benefits of using Amazon Marketing Cloud for insights into new-to-brand sales. We also touch on the value of Amazon's B2B reporting and the challenges of sponsored TV ads for ROI-focused clients. The conversation highlights the enduring effectiveness of sponsored product ads and the importance of maintaining advertising spend on high-ranking keywords. Finally, we share a lighter moment, connecting over a shared appreciation for unique ethnic cuisines, with a particular focus on Ethiopian food.

In episode 622 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and George discuss:

00:00 - Amazon Advertising and E-Commerce Strategies
04:42 - Optimizing Amazon PPC Campaigns
09:48 - Automated Bid Adjustment Strategies for Success
14:41 - Amazon Advertising Strategies and Data Utilization
15:09 - Understanding Amazon Search Query Performance Keywords
19:03 - Advertising Strategies and Best Practices
21:26 - Benefits of the Amazon Bestseller Badge
26:17 - Shifting Focus to Organic Sales
29:55 - Discussing International Cuisine Preferences
30:29 - Exploring Unique Ethiopian Cuisines

Transcript:

Bradley Sutton:

Today we've got George back on the show for the first time in a couple years and we're going to talk about a wide variety of subjects, including general Amazon advertising strategy, AMC, Search Query Performance and even some suggestions for the best Ethiopian restaurants. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I'm your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show. That's a completely BS-free, unscripted and unrehearsed organic conversation about serious strategies for Serious Sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. And we're here in Milan, Italy, at our Avask and Helium 10 workshop, and just fresh off the stage is George. Now I'm going to be asking him a little bit about what he talked about, because I was in here recording another podcast so I didn't get to hear him. But, George, it's been a little bit since you've been on the podcast. Welcome back.

George Meressa:

Thank you so much for having me. It has been a while yeah.

Bradley Sutton:

Yes, yeah. So now you flew in here, you're still based in London.

George Meressa:

I am, yeah, I'm in London.

Bradley Sutton:

Excellent, excellent. So I'm going to need some restaurant advice. I'll be going there two times in the next couple of weeks, so you'll have to give me some great local eats.

George Meressa:

Absolutely, I'll give you my advice. I've been told I have horrible advice, but there's one or two winners, so then I'll get you with them.

Bradley Sutton:

Excellent, excellent. Now we're not just here to talk about culinary things, were here to talk about you know what, what your specialty is, which is, you know, Amazon advertising, just Amazon in general. And so I remember the last time you were on the show. You know you talk a lot about DSP. Dsp obviously has come a long ways, but just in general, what are the biggest things that have changed in the last couple of years that advertisers are dealing with now? Or you know some new feature that they have access to? That wasn't around the last time you were on the show.

George Meressa:

Yeah, it's a good question. So I think the biggest thing we've seen is just how margins are being tightened for sellers. So there's been costs that have increased in so many different areas, like warehouse costs. The cost per click just has increased in general, and not only that, but we've also seen a whole range of competition come within Amazon, so a lot of cheaper products coming directly from China and I think AI has had a massive impact on that where now Chinese sellers are able to have content that matches up with those who speak the native languages, like English in the US and other marketplaces and Temu has been one as well. It's just been a competition where you can find products at such a lower rate.

So there have been a few big components. Outside traffic as well has played a big part too. So getting viral stuff coming through TikTok, people really homing in on Google Ads they've had an impact and also the bigger brand as well. I think a lot more bigger brands are putting their products on Amazon and because they have the awareness, the conversion rates are just naturally better and they're coming in and just sweeping in and taking a considerable amount of market share. So there's a whole sea of things happening. I think one of the biggest things we've noticed, though, is there's less newer sellers, because just the barrier of entry is a little bit higher than it was when we first uh, when we last had the conversation.

Bradley Sutton:

Now you guys, uh, I know, um, in the last couple years you know, switched over to Pacvue, uh, for software, another one of our companies.

So you know Pacvue is not just Amazon, you know, it's a really a lot of multi-channel. So are you guys leveraging advertising now on other platforms at all? Are you strictly still pretty much Amazon advertising?

George Meressa:

So we're mainly Amazon advertising now. I think the biggest change that's happened since we last spoke is, uh, we're now working within the listings too, so leveraging some of the skill set we brought in from outside um, those who've run amazon brands and done really well and they've been able to help us to grow the conversion rate, because ultimately it comes down to the conversion rate and the sales. So and sometimes it's quite straightforward fixes it could be standing out with images, it could be keywords in the back end that most people forget to put in descriptions, titles, and just really working with that, and other times just that product is kind of hitting the end of its life cycle and that's

one thing we've noticed is the life cycle of products are kind of diminishing more and more since last being here.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, I imagine that's kind of a benefit for you guys, because if you're only an advertising agency, you know you can only control the advertising. But if they've got a crap listing or they don't even have the right keywords, it's a little bit hard to change things. But if you're able to go in there and help people from a to z, then it just makes the advertising, I imagine, much more effective too.

George Meressa:

Exactly that. So it's a kind of massive flywheel effect. When you get the listings right and you have a kind of superior product or product that stands out, it just makes everything else flow better. So you could, you know, um? On extreme examples, we've seen exceptional products of high barrier or high barrier to entry products, where they have very basic PPC campaigns, but they just rank, they just do well, and on the opposite side you have other products that are similar to what's out there and it's very difficult to get that edge. I think when I first started doing Amazon pay-per-click, you know you had the auto campaigns. Manual campaigns were just introduced. There wasn't much data. I mean there wasn't much competition, so it was easy to run it. But now I mean the data that we have access to with Amazon is unbelievable. It's unbelievable what information you can get right now and I think that is still probably the biggest edge a lot of people can have against their competitors is actually taking advantage of the data and knowing what to do with it.

Bradley Sutton:

Now what is one of the most common I don't know if I can say mistakes or things that you're changing like now you take on a new client and now you do have the ability to go in and modify some things, both on the advertising side of what they were doing, but both on also on the listing, you know, side or keyword side. What are some things that are like oh my goodness, like we've had so many customers who have done this wrong and this is like the first thing that we check for to change. Does anything stick out in your mind?

George Meressa:

Yeah, it's very simple. So we look at what can we bring down, what can we bring out? I mean, what can we bring down? What can we bring up? They're the two simplest ways of putting it. So what can we bring down?

Where in the campaigns that we're looking at is there wasted budget? Where that, where the resources haven't been allocated well right? So this could be campaigns that are getting a very high amount of clicks but not any sales. So that's a. That's just a more straightforward basic um, um kind of uh example. But on the other hand, you can also have keywords that have a decent a cost, a horrible conversion rate, and that's where most of the budget's been distributed. So the more budget and ad spend a company has when they come to us, the stronger the chances that we will find something to improve. So that's the first thing we do is okay, what can we cut back? If someone's got, you know, you know, 10 000 a month ad spend or 100 hundred thousand a month, and we can reduce it by 10%, 15%. Then we got opportunity with that additional budget to put it in places where it is working, or untapped opportunities. That is going to be an easy win. So where is the easy wins, is the quickest thing, and reducing that spend and cutting the cost is the first place we go. So that's the first thing. And then the second thing is what can we bring up? Where is there potential for growth? And this is where we kind of dig into Search Query Information. Where are certain listings organically positioned well or getting a good proportion of sales that you're just not pushing through PPC right? And when we got that information, we can then create campaigns to then test okay, what would happen if we put some campaigns behind this? Would their positions improve? And most of the time the conversion rates are strong, as strong as they and they are shown on Search Query Data. Then they move and it works well. So, from a PPC side of things, that's where we see the quick wins.

Um, on a listing side of things, it's very basic things that get missing. I mean the amount of companies we look at where they just haven't got back-end keywords and they don't have, uh, their descriptions fleshed out and their, their, um, their bullet points haven't been reviewed since they first launched the products because they've got so many products. Amazon is looking at the listings to look at what is this product relevant to what is. What is the search terms that are most likely to entice a sale. So we go a little bit further as well and kind of work on um Q and A as well. How can we maximize the, the amount of questions that are answered around the products and making sure that the type of answer that's given is what amazon's looking for. So, especially with Rufus so there's a science paper that uh was recently published where amazon actually say they, they give more um, they put more weight in terms of ranking to the questions and answers and the reviews as opposed to the product description. So really making sure that all of the content it works well.

I think one of the things I've just shared downstairs as well is um using simple language, right. So a lot of people things I've just shared downstairs as well is using simple language, right. So a lot of people forget that, just using the US as an example, the average reading age is of a seventh grader, right? So if the average reading age is of a seventh grader, why not use this much more simple language within your listings to really convey the message? Because then, ultimately, you're reaching 100% of your audience as opposed to reaching, you know, 40 or 30%. That in itself could have just tremendous impact and it has, we've seen in our clients in terms of the conversion rates. So I just spoke downstairs a really cool app to use is Hemingway, the Hemingway app. So with that app, you can just put your listing title in there and it will teach you to just use more simple language. Right, there's no, there's no, there's never any issue in doing that, and actually you could reach a much, much larger audience, especially if you're selling a complex product. That is the art. If you sell a complicated product to complicated ingredients, you know, really conveying the um, the benefits.

And just moving back to what you mentioned, Pacvue that's been a game changer. One of the big things that it's allowed us to do is allowed us to put in rules so that we can automatically make bid adjustments that humans just can't do as well, right? So just to give you a few examples, we can put in rules which say, okay, if, uh, the position in organically is X, make X change within the bids, right. So if this and if the conversion rate threshold is above this, increase the bids, right. Doing this is just one layer, right, and that's helped a considerable amount in terms of ensuring that it's done in real time. That's the first one. The second thing is doing um, increasing bids, budgets during certain times of the day and week, right.

So we found out, all of the tools we've used, patfuse being the most superior in terms of getting that right and homing in. You know, you can ask someone, a VA, you can ask a special, a specialist account manager who's been doing it for donkey's years, to manually sit there and do that, but it's not going to meet the human, it's not going to meet, uh, the tool's ability to do it at such a rapid rate. There's so many things that we do within those tools now where we're now focusing more on a strategy and we're allowing the tool to do the mundane clicking and ensuring that the campaigns are given the best possible, uh, chance of succeeding. So, um, that's kind of how we use the tool and I think, is getting to a place now.

If you're not using these tools, you're going to fall behind, like you cannot. It's not like those old days where you could just click and make the budget adjustment. Amazon is checking all of the position and ranking every time a search is made for your products, right? So you want to take advantage of that, especially if you're doing good volumes. You're getting good traffic, getting good impressions. You really want to be on top of it.

Bradley Sutton:

Want to keep up to date with trending topics in the e-commerce world, make sure to subscribe to our blog. We regularly release articles that talk about things such as shipping and logistics, e-commerce in other countries, the latest changes to Amazon Seller Central countries, the latest changes to Amazon Seller Central, how to get set up on new platforms like Newegg, how to write and publish a book on Amazon KDP and much, much more. Check these articles out at h10.me forward slash blog.

Now, one thing you mentioned a couple minutes ago was about the Q&A. So let's say, you know, just organically, nobody has left that many questions and so obviously that means there's not that many answers to. So does this mean that you're just getting like some Amazon customers to write some questions so that the seller or the account manager can answer them, or how do you get the right questions and answers on there?

George Meressa:

Very good question. So I'm going to step a bit back, Bradley. So you can use a tool like AHREF, right, and you can ask a question about a product, right, and it will give you the most asked questions on Google, right. So that's where you can do the research and be more data focused. So I'll give you an example there was some sort of nail varnish that one of our clients sold. When we put that product into AHREF how to remove the nail varnish it was the biggest question I was asked. It was getting like 20,000 to 30,000 searches a month.

So, firstly, it's about finding the right questions. Where is the itch right? What are people asking? Right? And then, when you find a few of these questions, then we encourage friends and family and there are some other ways you can do it. I just would need to speak to a team about how to do it, but in the day-to-day of the business. But what we find is, when you do that and then you answer the question as well, there's Amazon Comprehend. So Amazon Comprehend is a tool that allows you to ensure you answer the question in the right way.

So you're not neutral. So either positive or negative, and it's about being as black and white as possible, and we've noticed that Rufus picks up on this as well. So, um, you want to make sure that you're answering those questions. Um, well too. So, um, don't be vague. Um, try and be yes or no. Um, does it answer the question is this a product that removes? Uh, you know how does this product remove nail varnish easily? Yes, it does it. Does it X, does it X, Y and Z? And actually what we did is, when we actually did the research on some of these tools like AHRef, SEMrush, we found that when you go to the listing, you can actually put some visual aids of showing step-by-step how easy it is to remove it. So there's a whole range of ways you can find it but this has been really, really useful for it.

Bradley Sutton:

Um, you, you also mentioned, you know, Search Query Performance and I think that's just a great data point, that that Amazon. I think none of us really ever could have predicted that Amazon would, would, would give. Um, I think you touched on it. But, like, my main thing is, I'm looking at keywords where I've got a better conversion rate for purchases, that, then the overall and then yeah, you know, checking. Maybe I'm not advertising for it or maybe I'm not ranking high. I need to double down and then maybe the ones I'm not converting as well, maybe I even dial back on the spend because I know, you know, it might not help me much with my organic ranking. Uh, because I'm converting poorly for it. What other uses other than just those, those two that are using the search performance data for?

George Meressa:

That's a good question. So, as well as looking at conversion rates, looking at what is the potential on that keyword, if you're getting three sales a week from that keyword and there's 25 sales, is it gonna be better use of your time to go for another keyword that you may be getting free sales, but there's 400 sales a week, right, so it gives you the potential that keyword has for you to grow in it and make more sales. So that's the first thing. Another thing as well is Amazon doesn't make this clear, but there's two types of keywords that you have within search query, so you have more discovery keywords and you also have more kind of intent based keywords. Right, and you can figure out where these keywords lie by just looking at their kind of um, the click percentage share, and you can also look at it from the add to cart share as well.

So there's going to be certain keywords where people just are more likely to buy quicker, and so they're the keywords really good to really understand as well, because effectively, this is going to be better use of your money. So if you can find those keywords where the conversion rate is higher, then you're likely to kind of do more with that. So there's some of the ways we use search query and I know they've gone a step further with my team as well where you can actually reverse, engineer and figure out, ok, depending on how many sales there are for a certain keyword and how much competition there is. There are for a certain keyword and how much competition there is, if you get X amount of sales for that keyword per day, this is how much it's likely to cost you per click on average to see what it would look like to move you up organically. So that's what search queries can do if it's in the right hands.

Bradley Sutton:

What other new Amazon data points you know, like brand metrics or things like that, are you guys leveraging to help you make decisions?

George Meressa:

Good question. So I think one of the I was just speaking to Ben just last week and I think one of the big things we noticed recently is just the B2B reporting through the child ace and so you can see now how many sales you'll get in from B2B customers. So I think that's been interesting. So I think anyone who uh is sales on amazon and they should just apply to and have b2b pricing. So if people wanted to buy uh larger units we're still quite early on into this, but we started to see certain trends of search terms where it's more targeted towards b2b customers and really taking advantage of those search terms as well and probably spending a bit we spend a bit more on them. So uh tape, some sort of tape for plumbers we kind of saw that. Yoga supplies we saw that. So there's gonna be a lot more we can do with it, but that's kind of one of the latest things that we've seen that we've taken advantage of.

Bradley Sutton:

Are you guys leveraging AMC? I mean, AMC has been around for a while, but now it's kind of more getting a little democratized. It's not just for people with DSP. Have you been leveraging that at all for your clients?

George Meressa:

Yeah, we've been using AMC for some time now with DSP clients, so there's a whole, there's a bunch of really cool things that AMC gives you in terms of data. So the first and most obvious way is you can now start to see how many new to brand sales you get through sponsored product ads. Uh, within the interface, you can only really see that for responsive brand. So it really, especially if you have, um a consumable product, you're able to see, okay, um, which, which keywords are responsible for bringing in new purchases where, um, they've never they've never seen your product I haven't bought within a certain time period. So that's been really useful.

Um, and leveraging that information, um, there's been. How else have we used it? Uh, we created custom audiences as well. So, um, you could exclude. So, within dsp, you can exclude those who may have seen your product 15 times, because they're less likely to buy after 15 times across the whole account as opposed to uh, as opposed to one um. So there's yeah, there's been a few ways, and I think this is going to be really good for uh, e-commerce brands now, the fact that we have it at our disposal within seller central, because before it was, you know, you had to go for an agency.

Bradley Sutton:

So have you guys dabbled at all with any of your clients with a sponsored tv?

George Meressa:

uh well, we haven't seen it work. We have, um, it just seems to waste a lot of money, um. So most of the clients that we deal with they're kind of more ROI focused. They want to grow. We haven't really had anyone yet with us. I know Matt has his previous agency that want brand exposure and are prepared to spend 20, $30,000 a month on that. So we haven't. We haven't. We've tested, we've not seen the results. So we haven't, we haven't, we've tested, we've not seen the results. So we've kind of moved away from it.

Bradley Sutton:

Um, what's maybe the best kind? You know, obviously there's a million kinds of ads now before, back in the day, say, there's auto campaigns, or there's broad campaigns, and then there's ASIN targeting and then now all of a sudden there's, you know, sponsored brand headline ads and video ads and throughout different times, you know different ones have been the most profitable or drive best ROI. It's a general thing to ask, but anything like any type of ad you see nowadays in 2024, 2025, going into 2025, that are just working better than others, that you're like, hey, everybody needs to be making sure they've got a good strategy with this type of campaign.

George Meressa:

I think it's been sponsored product ads from the get go and I think they're still kind of the number one.

If you can get your ads to appear, your products to appear at the top of the search results for the right keywords, that is always going to outperform anything else.

So that's the first place is to kind of find those keywords that you're likely to convert better with, or you have been converting better with, and pushing them top of page placements through sponsored products. We tend to find that 70 of our budget goes to sponsored product ads and then if we start to see, okay, there's common themes across certain keywords where we do convert well through sponsored product ads, then we would take those keywords and put them into sponsored brand ads on exact match to really push them that way. So they tend to and have done so for a while perform the best. Every now and again you get ace in target campaign and category targeting. That works really well, especially if a particular product is superior across the category. So if you have that kind of product where your average rate and count is a lot higher, then that's another option as well to kind of really push and with those kinds of terms, if someone has searched for your competitor and they end up buying your product, then Amazon's gonna favor that a great deal more too.

Bradley Sutton:

So the question I have is kind of like, I'm not sure if there's one right answer, but everybody has differing opinions, so I just want to get yours is a common one that people have is like hey, I'm on a key keyword that's relevant to my niche, but now I'm already ranking high organically. You know, like, like, should I pull back on my, my spend? You know, like, maybe before I was always going for top of search for, for sponsored ads. But you know, like, my philosophy in the past has been I want as much real estate as possible. You know, I want to go ahead and have that sponsored brand headline ad. I want it to be the one of the first sponsored ads. I want the organic rank. You know, maybe I'll have a video on the page just because now it's pushing competitors. But you know, is it, is it possible that I'm maybe cannibalizing some organic sales because they clicked on the sponsored ad when they probably would have bought my product anyways? Where do you sit on this, on this kind of debate, I guess?

George Meressa:

Good question. So, um, if you have the bestseller badge, you want to do everything within your power to keep that velocity of sales up. You want to make sure that you have more sales within that category than anyone else, because when you get that badge, amazon also already knows that you are the best in that category with what you sell. So there's going to be places that Amazon will show your products that you just would not have access to otherwise. So there's a whole range of benefits that you see would not have access to otherwise, right, so there's a whole range of benefits that you see. Not only that, but when you're positioned and you have the best seller badge, you actually have a much higher advantage compared to your competitors in terms of the price you pay per click. So we tend to also find that the cost per click is lower.

So when one of our clients actually cuts back or when they lose that bestseller badge, it's so hard to get it back. It's really, really difficult. Effectively, what you've done is you've created a moat. So if you've got those number of sales in, you're making a profit. You do really want to work hard to keep that momentum of sales. If it's working to cut back, it could be dangerous.

I would probably consider encouraging people to look outside of Amazon. If it's working to cut back, it could be dangerous. I would probably consider encouraging people to look outside of Amazon to kind of compliment what they have. But I mean, there's been just too many horror stories I've heard and seen where people have, like, positioned really well, doing great sales, and then a few people with VC-backed money come in, really push PPC, run their campaigns that are lost for a while, and then, um, they take the best seller badge and they just can't get it back. They don't have the resources like some of the other companies do. So if you're in that fortunate position, you should be doing everything you can, and I think one of the key metrics you should be looking at is how many units of sales are you pushing compared to some of your main competitors? Um, just to make sure that? uh, yeah,

Bradley Sutton:

Somebody's just getting started and they want to start budgeting. Uh, you know, maybe it's tacos or maybe it's like, hey, how much should I put aside? You know, like because the worst thing they can do is just budget for the product, for shipping and getting started, and they have no budget for PPC. But nowadays I think the amount of advertising we kind of have to do is more than ever. But you know you can't do it to the point where you lose money. Is there a number where you're like, hey, you should budget this percent of, like, your initial order or this amount of money weekly or something for somebody so they can really make sure that they've got enough budget where they don't run out and then now they can't run advertising.

George Meressa:

So somebody, so they can really make sure that they've got enough budget where they don't run out and then now they can't run advertising. So what we look at, especially when someone's launching a product, is okay, what terms are you going to want to go for to begin with and work backwards in that way? So if you have a product, strongly encourage you. Well, try and get brand registry from the very, very beginning so you have access to brand analytics. Get the products in. You're doing a variation; it's going to be easier to get this information. But what we tend to do is look backwards and go okay, what are the keywords that we're going to target and what impressions and clicks and conversions do they get a week? What do we need to achieve to begin with? And then how much do we need on average, working on some scenarios, to have more of an educated guess, and we work backwards in that sense.

And then we have phases as. So we might have four or five phases. So at the lower end of the phases, we've got those search volume keywords. I'll get in maybe 5,000 searches a month and we start there and then we kind of go right. Here's five keywords in phase four and what we're going to do with these keywords is start off with that and we're going to have X amount of budget. So we do have a tool in-house where we kind of figure out what we, what we need to spend and then we kind of move up the phases. The moment we start to see movement in organic positioning, um, but at the beginning is going to be, you know, I mean you obviously should probably going to sign up for vine and get those reviews coming in it's going to all factor in at the beginning. If you're getting really good reviews, you're getting really good conversion rate, then then you're going to have to have some budget, additional budget, to just help you with that momentum

Bradley Sutton:

Another question I had was I think in the old days you know, I don't know, maybe six years ago or so a lot of, if not the majority of sellers, when they're trying to optimize their advertising, is like strictly ACoS, like hey, I have a cost goals at the campaign level, at the keyword level, whatever. Nowadays that that's not enough. You've got to be looking at ROAS and different things like that. What is your suggestions out there as far as managing your advertising in a more holistic way, instead of just strictly looking at that one ACoS metric that we did for so many years?

George Meressa:

ACoS is certainly an important metric to look at, but that shouldn't be your key KPI. I think the conversion rate should be ultimately right at the top and TACoS then comes in later, should be prioritized more than ACoS, because there may be some sacrifices you have to make with ACoS for the benefit of organically getting ranked better and start to get more sales. I think the biggest shift that we're seeing is more sales across every. Well, most accounts we're looking at is coming from paid ads compared to organic ads from the past. So trying to reverse engineer that where you're having more coming from organic, is going to be key because that's going to give you a stronger moat compared to your competitors, if you can master that. So and there's been some extreme examples where we've had one or two clients where they have a higher price point when it comes to their product, but the conversion rate has been um, not as good, right. So PPC they have additional margins compared to their competitors where they can rank higher than them, I mean where they can position behind them on paid ad, but organically they're not running the moment. Moment their ads stop running, their listings go down, right. There's no history there organically. So it's heavily reliant on PPC. So, and that's why ACoS can be a dangerous game, if you're constantly measuring ACoS and you're going with the terms with the lowest ACoS and you're pushing them, every ACoS is just going to continue to climb and climb, and climb and climb. And for someone who's a little bit more strategic, um, and using data to their advantage and they're focusing more on the keywords where the conversion rates are higher and they're positioning better, they're going to come in and they're going to take those positions off you. They're the ones that are going to come and start to slowly win.

There's one example of one client where we didn't want the main competitors to even know that we were competing for those terms. So we went for those slightly obscure keywords that get maybe a number like 20 sales a week, 30 sales a week, and we pushed those keywords to get the velocity and we started ranking and we started to understand what kind of keywords relevant to us and then we went for those core keywords that everyone else goes for, right, and then that way we were able to then easily kind of come in and take organic position and rank, and that's how you should be thinking now. So a few years ago ACOS was our main KPI. Now it's just something we look at and it's really difficult actually to share with people. That way of thinking now is such it's so short term it's not going to allow them to kind of really see this for a year good points.

Bradley Sutton:

Now before we get into our last questions. If people want to reach out to you to get more, information on what you do and how you can help them out. How can they find you on the interwebs?

George Meressa:

So clearadsagencycom is the URL. Just search George Meressa on LinkedIn. I've got an obscure last name M-E-R-E-S-S-A. I think there's no one else with that. I'll just say George Meressa, so you'll find me. Connect with me there. But yeah, that's probably the best place.

Bradley Sutton:

Favorite Helium 10 tool of all time.

George Meressa:

Cerebro.

Bradley Sutton:

And something that you know. Maybe you don't know if we have or not, but you're like man, I don't think Helium 10 has this. If I was in charge of Helium 10 or this is the task I would give them that would give me more value.

George Meressa:

I mean, you've got a Genie in there. Now we need the reverse, what helps you get money back. So that's what's, and it's free. So that's probably one I would have suggested, but you've already done it, so that's a box already ticked. I can't really think right now of anything I want. I think you've got the package. I think the data that we found has been, um, it's been so solid over the years. I think you, you're one of the very few companies who've had this data for so many years, and I think that's always been important to us. Um, but yeah,

Bradley Sutton:

As you know, I'm going to Ethiopia for my first time. Obviously, I'm ordering lots of injera, but what's a couple of dishes that you recommend? Maybe even a dessert? I've never had Ethiopian dessert, so what are some things I should be looking for in some uh restaurants? I can call it by name and they'll be impressed that I know.

George Meressa:

Okay so first, what you gotta do is you gotta find those little places where they're making coffee. There's like an old lady wearing all white and she's she doesn't have to be old, she could be young but like, um, like, and they're just making some coffee, the freshly brewed coffee. Get some of that, you're gonna love it. So that's the first place to go. And then, um, when it comes to India, the India is actually quite different to what you get in the uh, in the states and in the UK it's they use that.

It's that really brown sourdough. I don't know if you've had that version. It's usually kind of white flour they use in in your kind of Europe and the western world, but that's quite sour, so it's going to be interesting for you. I mean, you can take spice, right? Yeah, so I love ASAP. That's like the red sauce with the egg and the chicken and that is not my favorite, but, um, yeah, I think that's probably in Jera is like the most common thing to have there. So that's what I recommend.

Bradley Sutton:

Love it, love it. That's the. It's a top three cuisine for me. Like I’m all for Mexican food, Korean food and then Ethiopian food is there, so like it's always been on my bucket list to go and I'm finally going only for a day, but maybe next time I'll be able to go for more.

George Meressa:

That was the most random thing, though, and I think you told me three years ago. I was like George, do you have Ethiopian food? I was like yeah, and he's like I love it. And I was like what it was? Bradley was the last person food. It's like crazy. Anyway. I don't have many people that come up to me and tell me that and this is like an intimate cuisine for me, like I have it at home. I grew up with it, like growing up, and it's just there and um, and now you know you absolutely love it anyway. Crazy.

Bradley Sutton:

Love it, love it. I will people know I march the beat of a different drummer. I don't like to go with what's the norm and that's definitely not the norm and I love it. So if you guys look up, uh, Yelp, if you have an Ethiopian restaurant near you, and give it a try and trust me, you're going to love it.

George Meressa:

Thank you so much for having me, Bradley.

Bradley Sutton:

Thank you for being on here, and we'll bring you back next year to see what you've been up to.

George Meressa:

Sounds good.

15 - Rand Stagen: Becoming a Transformative Presence