Throwback: Unlocking the Secrets to Dominating Amazon Sales - A Live Strategy Audit!

In this episode of the Ecomm Breakthrough Podcast, host Josh Hadley conducts a live strategy audit with eCommerce brand owner Charlie Mckenzie. They discuss advanced Amazon sales strategies, including keyword optimization, targeted PPC and product targeting ads, and leveraging Google Ads to custom Amazon Store pages for higher conversions. Josh emphasizes the importance of product innovation, catalog expansion, and understanding customer intent. Charlie receives actionable advice on improving ad efficiency, refining product listings, and sourcing new product ideas from platforms like Etsy. The episode offers practical tips for boosting Amazon performance and sustainable brand growth.

Chapters:

Introduction and Brand Overview (00:00:00)
Josh introduces Charlie and outlines the brand’s focus on a single main product with size variations.

Keyword Research and Organic Ranking (00:01:05)
Discussion on keyword research, current rankings, and strategies to move up to top organic positions.

Amazon PPC and Product Targeting Ads (00:02:07)
Advice on using PPC, especially exact match campaigns and product targeting ads against same-color competitors.

Leveraging Google Ads and Storefront Landing Pages (00:03:11)
Strategy for using Google Ads to drive traffic to custom Amazon store landing pages to improve conversions.

Reducing Competitor Distraction and Conversion Optimization (00:04:41)
Importance of removing competitor distractions on landing pages to increase conversion rates from external traffic.

Charlie’s Takeaways and Action Items (00:05:40)
Charlie shares his main takeaways, including storefront creation and renewed focus on product targeting campaigns.

Testing and Optimizing Product Targeting (00:06:51)
Guidance on setting rules for product targeting ads and turning off underperforming campaigns.

Product Innovation and Brand Expansion (00:07:34)
Discussion on the importance of ongoing product launches and not relying solely on “home run” products.

Marketplace Research and Arbitrage Opportunities (00:09:49)
Charlie discusses using marketplace research and arbitrage to identify new product opportunities.

Finding Trends Outside Amazon (00:10:48)
Advice to look for trending products on other platforms (Etsy, DTC sites) and bring them to Amazon.

Keyword Research and Listing Optimization (00:12:06)
Charlie emphasizes his focus on keyword analytics and listing optimization for organic ranking.

Focusing on Customer Needs in Sales Copy (00:12:53)
Advice to highlight the root problem the product solves, not just compare features with competitors.

Actionable Strategies Recap (00:13:46)
Summary of key strategies: product innovation, customer-focused sales copy, and price testing for profit.

Closing Remarks (00:15:47)
Final thanks and well wishes as the episode concludes.

Links and Mentions:

Tools and Websites  
Amazon PPC (Pay-Per-Click Advertising)
Google Ads
Amazon Store Builder
Data Dive

Podcast Episodes 
Tyler Gregg of Ampd on LinkedIn 

Transcripts:

Josh 00:00:00  Welcome to the Econ Breakthrough Podcast. I'm your host, Josh Hadley, where I interview the top business leaders in ecommerce. Today I'm speaking with Charlie Mckenzie, and we have recorded a live strategy audit session for you today. Charlie, welcome to the podcast. Thank you very much for having me on, Josh. I'm excited to be here. Awesome. At this point with Charlie Charlie's brand, he's got one skew. Well, he's got multiple skews because he's got some size variations in there, but he's got one product that is generating the sales for this brand. One of the first things that we looked at, for your brand, Charlie, was keyword research. And you're doing a great job of implementing the right search terms in your product title. In fact, you're crushing, you know, the competition in terms of the exact match keywords that you've got implemented in your title, and therefore you're actually ranked on the first page for many of those keywords. However, you're not in the top five positions right on most of those keywords.

Josh 00:01:05  And so we then went through and discussed. All right. So what are some strategies that we can employ to. You've already got traction. You're obviously indexed for some of these big keywords. How do you move them up into that 1 to 5. You know organic ranking position? One of the things that we talked about was PPC. And Charlie, you know, you've started dipping your toes in the PPC waters. Initially we talked actually a couple of months ago, and you were not running ads on Amazon. And, you know, I told you like, hey, you should definitely start running some ads on Amazon because it is going to impact your organic ranking. You've been dabbling a little bit in that. My recommendation to you from our session was that, you know, create some exact match, keyword campaigns for those keywords that you're trying to rank for number one. But then number two, one of the things that we've found a lot of success with in our business is product targeting ads on Amazon.

Josh 00:02:07  And so rather than just throwing it up against because with your particular product, there's there's other competitors that have different design variations, right. And so rather than just saying, hey, mine's beige, I'm going to go advertise on this pink one or this blue one. You the customer that's looking for a pink, product. They have a specific thought in mind. Right. Same thing. If somebody's looking for blue, like there's a reason why they clicked on the blue listing. So when it comes to setting up your product targeting ad campaigns, one of the things I would definitely recommend is only targeting those competitors that have the exact same color that you have, and you're going to get better performance that way. And what Amazon loves to see is if you can steal sales from those competitor listings, you will shoot ahead of them, on the organic ranking side, and that will allow you to increase your ranking a little bit faster there. In addition to that, we talked about some external marketing that you could be using and that is Google Ads.

Josh 00:03:11  I know you've tested this in the past, had about a 200% ACOs there, which isn't great, obviously, but we talked about an additional tactic that you could use that could increase that performance because Amazon is definitely rewarding external traffic, right? in my prior one of the prior podcast episodes, we had Tyler Gregg of Amped on the episode, and he shared some fantastic strategies of how to create Google ads and the best way to maximize, you know, the return on investment on those. One of the big takeaways from that episode is that rather than just driving traffic to your current Amazon detail page, it's going to be better to create a store landing page for yourself. But in that store landing page, you recreate almost the exact way that your detail page looks on Amazon, and there's a specific section on the store builder page that allows you to basically recreate that detail page. That's exactly what you're going to want to do. And the beauty of driving that traffic to your store landing page that is literally identical to your detail page, is that you're able to remove all of your competitors because one of the tips, or I guess, one of the statistics that Tyler shared ...