The Smartest Amazon Seller

I have with me today Mac Schlesinger, CEO and Founder of Best Seller Listers Inc, whose mission is to empower Amazon sellers with the right services, tools, partnerships, and insights for greater success. He gives us some insight into what an A level business would look like, such as needing to be able to get back to the customer with an actual person rather than a bot. Mac suggests laying out the words on your graphic overlays differently than how you do it in your other listings. Customers don’t want to read a page of words and this is why it’s important to focus on EBC, or to make your page look nice and portray your content in a clear and simple way. He tells about using giveaways to boost your brand awareness and get the word out about your products/business. The difference between B level and A level content 2:09 Graphic overlays 12:03 EBC, Enhanced Brand Content 15:26 “Every writer that I hire, every graphic designer that I hire, I usually go through 10 to 15, sometimes more, until I find the right one because it really has to match my style. When I deliver a listing, it has to be unique.” 28:25 Follow his whatsapp at: 845-288-1740 website: https://bestsellerlisters.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/macschlesinger/ Social https://www.instagram.com/smartestseller/ https://www.buyboxer.com/ Send Scott an Email: scottneedham@buyboxer.com

Today I talk with Chris Shipferling, from Global Wired Advisors, a leading Digital Investment Bank focused on optimizing the business sale process. Years ago, selling an Amazon business was a far cry and wasn’t so easy for people to do, but now it’s much more common and Chris’s company makes the whole process a lot smoother. He recommends getting yourself a good bookkeeper and keeping track of your spending, as well as your tax returns in order to raise the value of your business. After financial organization, you need to ask yourself, what is the goal of your company? We discuss the importance of establishing your brand and having your goals set, so that your product doesn’t look like something you just pulled out 20 minutes before launch. We learn some new terms such as average order value, lifetime value, and consumer acquisition cost. Chris tells us it’s better to spend more on a higher quality firm because it can be the difference of millions of dollars in an acquisition. Global Wired Advisors’ focus 2:25 What should people do now to increase the value of their Amazon business? 11:47 AOV, LTV, and CAC 21:19 Agregator 30:40 “Who you choose as your intermediary to take you to market, the firm that you choose to represent you in your transaction and your sale, it matters a lot, so don’t take that lightly. And don’t do it on a bargain basis. Don’t say ‘Well this guy is cheaper than the other guy.’ You’re talking about the difference of millions of dollars at stake. I think I want to put it in the hands of somebody who actually has the acumen, has the experience, and knows what they’re talking about.” 28:43 Get a valuation at GlobalWiredAdvisors.com Social https://www.instagram.com/smartestseller/ https://www.buyboxer.com/ Send Scott an Email: scottneedham@buyboxer.com

In this episode I talk briefly about sponsored brands video, also called video and search, which requires brand registry to obtain, but really allows you to grow your brand. This is a video that will automatically play on the side of your customer’s screen on their phone in order to capture their attention. It has helped my business immensely and I recommend you learn more about it, and then use it for your own business. Sponsored brands video 1:25 Placement 2:47 Why it’s important to use 5:34 How to make these videos 6:41 Scaling this feature 8:50 “I’ve covered Perpetua quite a bit on video and I really enjoy using the software, but its sponsored brands video was actually a value that I didn’t really use until about month three or four. And now that I run it, I’m telling my team we need to be running this all over the place. This is very effective. It really makes our brands look strong 8:19 https://www.instagram.com/smartestseller/ https://www.buyboxer.com/ Send Scott an Email: scottneedham@buyboxer.com

Today I speak with Robert Wright, a private label protection lawyer who has helped hundreds of clients across the globe protect their intellectual property on Amazon, Shopify, and other e-commerce platforms. We discuss how the business of Amazon is a warzone and you need to protect your assets, doing what’s necessary to limit your liability. We talk about bulletproofing your brand, which means choosing a trademark that functions as a trademark and that’s available. We mention domains and that you should see if your name is available as a domain, and then Google your brand name to see if anything pops up there. Copywriting is another important step of protecting your business necessary to keep you from future trouble. I tell a story about when I got sued and ended up just reaching a settlement with the plaintiff because of how much goes into a lawsuit, making that the better option. Robert’s blueprint to help sellers 1:21 First and second steps of the blueprint 7:55 Where to check if a trademark is available 10:40 Third step 11:58 My story of being sued 22:23 “So many people when they launch a business, an Amazon business in particular, they think it’s just a set it and forget it sort of thing. ‘OK, I got the account, I got the trademark. Now I’m just adding products and I don’t need to do anything else.’ Nothing could be farther from the truth. If you’re not always kinda managing and tending your business, making sure that the rights you’ve secured aren’t being infringed upon, aren’t being stepped on by other people, what are you doing? Business is war and it’s death by a thousand razors out there.” 21:40 https://www.privatelabelprotection.com/welcome https://www.facebook.com/groups/830794267074638/ https://www.instagram.com/smartestseller/ https://www.buyboxer.com/ Send Scott an Email: scottneedham@buyboxer.com

In this episode I talk to the founder of marketplacedistri.com, a European company that helps brands reach their potential without investing in infrastructure, Stef Van Boekel. He works in the European market in countries such as the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, and soon they will be in Sweden and Poland. We discuss the advantages of working in the European market place and what Stef does to focus on his market in these various countries. We talk about what this market needs and the different issues that rise up, such as the language barrier between countries and how to tackle that. You also have to have people that understand the different cultures so you can work together more fluidly. The importance of customer experience 7:15 Active buyers in the market 9:52 Some real opportunities for listeners 15:30 “Amazon or Marketplace are not a side project. They require different skill sets. So don’t try to find a European manager or marketplace manager because they won’t be able to understand everything. Next to that you have the translation side of things, etcetera. So my advice is to work with a local experience partner that has already everything for infrastructure and is focused on building brands on marketplaces. Then you are ten steps ahead. Your investments are much more at the end. The chances of succeeding are also higher.” 12:33 www.marketplacedistri.com https://it.linkedin.com/in/stefvanboekel https://www.instagram.com/smartestseller/ https://www.buyboxer.com/ Send Scott an Email: scottneedham@buyboxer.com

Today I talk to John Ghiorso, host of the podcast called E-Commerce Deep Dive and founder and CEO of Orca Pacific. John started his agency in 2008 and has been able to see a lot of changes and see the whole business evolve over time and therefore has a lot of experience with Amazon. We talk a bit about rules that Amazon sets and that ultimately they make the calls, so we have to abide by their rules or deal with suspensions. John explains the differences between larger brands and smaller brands and how some brands can be undervalued, which is where he can come in to help the company grow to the value at which they ought to be. We talk about advertising and what videos should show, avoiding long dialogues that don’t get to the point. We also discuss product placement and the things you have to do in order to get your product ranked at the top of the competition. How John has felt with all the recent Amazon success 1:24 How he helps different sized clients 7:53 Two big issues that John sees with brands 11:37 His favorite advertising placements 14:33 “There’s no hack where you can spend this much and automatically get the first spot. You have to do everything else right, or as well as the competition. So you’re right, you need to have the same engagement rate, conversion rate, add to cart rate, amount of reviews. Amazon still factors all of that into the relevancy ranking, but then if you’re able to sufficiently bump up glance views via paid, assuming everything else is equal and all of the sudden you have more glance views than a competitor, that should put you above them.” 19:59 www.orcapac.com https://www.instagram.com/smartestseller/ https://www.buyboxer.com/ Send Scott an Email: scottneedham@buyboxer.com

In this episode we talk to Matt Wiklund, co-founder and COO of Ad Advance. We talk about how Ad Advance combats other companies coming in on your product page and leaching potential customers from your products by showing and only promoting the same brands for a specific product in order to increase their own sales. We discuss separating your different ad campaigns to test different strategies and see what works best. We talk about substitute products versus complement products, where substitutes are products that can replace the products people are searching for, and complements being products that can go with the product for which customers are looking. Matt tells about the strategy to show lower priced products first, and then to show similar/related products of a slightly higher price and quality to upsell customers. Listing Defense Strategy 2:38 Segmentation 6:10 Example 11:10 Ads vs targets 15:28 Get a hold of Matt or his team 24:24 “We have ads, and then we have targets. Our goal is to have ads for our products, or our other products, which show up on their product detail pages. Choosing which ads are going to be displayed on which product detail pages is an important part of this process. So there’s product grouping. That would be choosing products with similar attributes like the substitute model that I spoke about. And then the targets under a substitute model would be equivalent to your ads essentially. So you got 20 pairs of black sunglasses and you target your 20 pairs of black sunglasses. And they’re very similar, so you tend to see a really high conversion with that approach.” 15:32 https://www.reddit.com/r/FulfillmentByAmazon/comments/hjenkp/listing_defense_cross_promotion_using_product/ https://adadvance.com/ Social https://www.instagram.com/smartestseller/ https://www.buyboxer.com/ Send Scott an Email: scottneedham@buyboxer.com

Today I talk about some of the ideas that can really get the creative juices flowing and about some of the things that I’m implementing and never thought I would have done. There are certain times in business when we say “Wow, I should have been doing this a long time ago.” That’s something you want to be saying often. In past episodes, I go over many things that will help you in your business and one of the words I use is scale, which is something you should be focusing on often. I discuss the three categories for working smarter in your business. 1) Education 2) Technology 3) Delegation. Don’t stop learning and the fact that you’re taking the time to listen to this podcast is a step in that direction, but don’t stop there. Research, google things, watch Youtube, reach out and get connected by networking with people that are educated already in this space. I talk about the different technologies I use to help my business such as Perpetua. Getting the right technology and tools to market and run your business isn’t any less important than education because it can really make things run smoothly and help your business grow. I use a tool called Loom that helps me record and upload trainings for my employees, and I never have to give this training ever again because the recording will always be there. The bigger your company, the more your time is worth, making delegation crucial for the growth and scale of your company. Consider paying other people to do what they do best in order to make your company smarter, so that you can focus on the bigger tasks and portions of your business. 3 categories for working smarter 6:21 Technology 10:15 Delegating 12:01 “I don’t think anyone can argue that this isn’t a form of working smarter, which is doing these three things. Educating yourself, implementing technology, and then delegating. You’ll be able to avoid what I felt in 2014. A fatigue, a lack of focus, because at that time I wasn’t creating value.” 17:36 https://www.instagram.com/smartestseller/ https://www.buyboxer.com/ Send Scott an Email: scottneedham@buyboxer.com

Today I interview Joseph La Selva from Perpetua, an optimization and enablement tool for Amazon advertising. Perpetua tries to combine the power of human intelligence and always-on optimization to drive the best performance in advertisement campaigns. Joseph tells us a bit about how it works, starting with a goals based software, which first will identify some strategic parameters, outline a few constraints, and then allowing the ad engine of the software you’re using to work toward maximizing your sales within the parameters within which you have set. We talk about Perpetua figuring out how to ramp down on your ad campaign spend within the first 48 hours of creating new campaigns. It takes a lot of the pressure and stress off of you because you don’t have to worry about your ad campaign. We discuss bid adjustments and what Perpetua does to adapt and how it optimizes toward your customer base. This system is really algorithmic focused rather than formulaic, which reduces your bid price over time. We talk about keyword boosts allowing you to identify the keywords that are most strategic to you so that you can pluck them out of that broad 30% A-cost bubble and allows you to apply placement multipliers for those specific keywords that you’ve added to the keyword boost. Guest intro 1:06 Perpetua uses a goal oriented approach 3:43 Bid adjustments 11:12 One of the strongest features of Perpetua 16:19 Key word boosts 21:10 Coupon code for 50% off your first two months 24:49 “For the first time I get to stop worrying about the weeds of managing advertising. The idea of creating a new set of campaigns feels enjoyable, whereas with other tools it feels like work. It feels like something I have to check in on, or that when I do I see things that I have left.” 19:19 https://ca.linkedin.com/in/joseph-la-selva-73a12055 https://www.instagram.com/smartestseller/ https://www.buyboxer.com/ Send Scott an Email: scottneedham@buyboxer.com

Today I start off by discussing how important it is to educate yourself and that the purpose of this podcast is to help you learn and be prepared for your own business. I discuss what’s going on right now in our economy. Amazon fulfillment centers are overflowing and products are getting restrictions on what we can send in to Amazon. I talk about how much the centers have grown this year versus how much they have grown in the past. I talk over what you should be doing right now to react to this explosion of growth. I give advice on some things you should be doing, such as checking on your inventory frequently so that you don’t forget what you have and miss opportunities to sell. I discuss the pandemic and that it isn’t going to go away soon, but we at least have a few more months, meaning Amazon likely will continue to grow and E-commerce will continue to do really well. I talk about the buy box and how things have been changing in favor of larger companies. I bring up the issue of how much power Amazon has gained and equality in the marketplace. Recap of how we got where we are with restrictions 2:12 What you should be doing to react to the explosive growth of Amazon 5:12 Larger sellers with larger feedback scores get more of the buy box 10:15 Equal marketplace and the congressional hearing 12:10 “Understand that Amazon this last year has opened up 50% more fulfillment center space in just a year, and it’s already filled it up. I don’t know if that rings a bell to you, because it should. We’re talking about the best logistics network in the world grew by 50% percent in a single year.” 3:58 Social https://www.instagram.com/smartestseller/ https://www.buyboxer.com/ Send Scott an Email: scottneedham@buyboxer.com