Optimize your listing in order to level up your game and continue to compete and thrive on Amazon’s volatile eCommerce playing field.
This is the sixth installment of the #SellerHacks series. These are based on hacks shared by Bradley Sutton at the SellerCon event in Las Vegas.
It seems like it would be pretty straight-forward.
Just follow four simple rules in order to stay on the right side of Amazon’s eCommerce law.
1. Titles must not exceed 200 characters, including spaces.
2. Titles must not contain promotional phrases, such as “free shipping”, “100% quality guaranteed”.
3. Titles must not contain characters for decoration, such as ~ ! * $ ? _ ~ { } # < > | * ; ^ ¬ ¦
4. Titles must contain product-identifying information, such as “hiking boots” or “umbrella”.
As many Amazon sellers have found out, keeping yourself in the online selling giant’s good graces sometimes involves a combination of fancy footwork and old fashioned detective work.
A quick Google search of what constitutes a good Amazon-specific title brings us 390 million results in a little under three-quarters of a second.
I’m going to hazard a guess and say that there are more than a few differing opinions on how to go about slaying this particular listing optimization dragon.
Even some of today’s largest technology companies hedge their bets.
Take a look at the difference between two Amazon product listings from Hewlett Packard who six decades after being founded in a Palo Alto garage, still have a major presence on Amazon’s seller page.
In this first listing, they seem to be taking a little more of a minimalist approach to their title.
Then, two listings later on the same page, they apparently decided that the ranking powers on Amazon might in fact be looking for a more extensive description.
So, if a power player like HP isn’t quite sure what Amazon is looking for, it’s no wonder that we sometimes run afoul of Amazon’s wishes.
That’s where hack number six comes in.
The Hack
A lot of times, after Amazon sellers update their titles in Seller Central, the new version shows up perfectly in the back-end, and in spite of not getting any error messages, the changes never appear on the actual product page.
It’s obvious that something has upset Amazon; but what is it?
Well, here’s how you’re going to find out the keywords you’ve placed in your title that are forbidden by Amazon.
Go to Seller Central and open up a case.
Then, go to Listings → Product Page Issue → Fix Product Page Issue.
Enter your ASIN and hit search.
Now you’ll want to enter your title and this is where the detective work is going to come in.
In this window, Amazon will tell you what they don’t like about your title, and you’ll have an opportunity to make the necessary changes.
As you can see from this imagined title, Amazon is very clear about what they don’t like, which gives sellers ample opportunity to make the changes that will help you optimize your listings, and move your product up the page.
Why This Hack Works
Success on Amazon is almost always a moving target and it rewards a seller’s ability to react to changes in the marketplace as well as the fluctuations of Amazon’s wishes. That’s one of the things that makes it so exhilarating.
Staying agile and leveling up your game by making these needed adjustments to your listings is just one more way that sellers can continue to compete and thrive in Amazon’s volatile eCommerce playing field.
Learn how to prepare for the most important exhibition in a private label seller's business; Canton Fair. Get expert tips from a sourcing veteran.
The Canton Fair located in Guangzhou, China is the biggest import-export exhibition in the world! It takes place over 3 phases with an exhibition space of 1,185,000 square meters and over 200,000 buyers from all over the world and more than 25,000 exhibitors!
It’s my favorite place to source products and very important for Amazon sellers now that there is a much bigger emphasis on products that create a higher barrier to entry for copycats, as well as developing something for the long-term by focusing on brand.
For a full list of the product categories, you can find them on the Canton Fair website however most sellers will find their products in phases 2 and 3.
My first Canton Fair was in November 2010 and I have attended each fair since then apart from one (missed it for my brother’s wedding!) so this will be my 19th Canton Fair.
Here’s 11 quick tips on how to make the most of it:
1. Plan Your Trip – Set your goals for the show before boarding the flight to China – how many products do you want to source, in which categories, how many new products do you want to develop, do you have a backup supplier for your existing product, can you get a 10% price reduction on your current items, etc.
Once you go with these goals in mind it will be much easier to navigate your trip for the outcomes you want to reach!
Email your suppliers in advance and ask them if they will be attending the Canton Fair. If so make a note of their booth number and set up a meeting time and date with them.
This way you can prioritize your urgent and important meetings first and then use the rest of the fair to explore any new items and suppliers.
Furthermore, if you are working on any new items with your supplier and they know you are going to be at the fair, then they can prepare these new items for you in advance so you can have face to face discussions and speed up the development process.
2. Cast The Net Wide – Take advantage of the massive number of suppliers there by talking to as many as you can on Day 1 to build up your knowledge on the products and relationships with those suppliers.
Once you have narrowed down to the suppliers you like you can go back and see them Day 2 to further the relationship. It’s better to see someone 3 times in 3 different days than one long meeting. Depending on the product you could visit 15 suppliers on Day 1, narrow down to 5 on Day 2 and then select your favorite on Day 3.
3. Business Cards – bring plenty of business cards, at least 100. You’ll need cards for the suppliers you intended to meet, plus the new ones, plus for the manufacturers of products which catch your eye at the fair.
Remember it’s much better to come back with excess cards than run out and come back with none.
4. Notebook vs Phone Notes – However you like to take notes you definitely have to take notes, this, in my opinion, is where the game is won and lost. The quality of your notes determines the quality of your results.
I like to write down as much info as possible such as key information like factory location, number of workers, years in business, trading company or factory, MOQ on product you like, price, material of product, samples available, other customers they supply, main markets supplying, 3rd party testing carried out, factory inspected, etc.
These questions and the reasons why you ask them could be its own blog post which I’ll most likely do at a later date!
5. Canton Fair Name Badge – You will need a badge to get in, if you have been before you can bring your previous pass (I’ve had mine for 10 years!). If you haven’t been before and this is your first time you can pre-register for your badge on the Canton Fair website or arrange when you arrive at the show.
6. Samples – Bring samples of your products if you want to show to new suppliers and bring extras if you want to leave your samples with multiple suppliers to take back to their factory for accurate price quotation.
If you don’t want to leave with suppliers at least bring one with you to show them at the fair as it’s MUCH easier to discuss product improvements and prices with samples in hand.
7. Competitor’s Samples – If you feel your competitor’s products are better than yours then buy those and bring with you as well. This will be easier for your supplier as well if they can touch and feel the standard which you want to achieve and fully understand the construction and materials used etc.
Just be quite discreet with it in case your competitor is also looking around the fair, you don’t want to get caught with your pants down!
8. Luggage Space – Allow extra room in your luggage for bringing back samples with you. You’ll see a lot of new items you like at the fair and suppliers are happy to give them away (provided you had a productive conversation) on the last day of the fair so they don’t have to pay for the freight of taking the samples back to their office.
If you leave extra space in your luggage remember it’s much cheaper and faster bringing these samples back with you than waiting for the supplier to arrange when they are back to the office and paying the air freight cost.
9. Specification Sheet – You should have a specification sheet of your item which is one document that has all your product details on there (dimensions, weight, fabrics, materials etc).
They can’t price it up if they don’t know the details! You may find multiple suppliers you like to work with at the fair and if you can’t leave your sample with all of them at least you can send the specification sheet to all of them and because they all have the same information, you know they are all quoting like for like.
To reverse engineer this, if you see a product you like you can also ask the suppler to send you their specification sheet for that item and then you can send that spec sheet to other suppliers after deleting the company info in the header.
10. Small Gift – If you have a pre-existing relationship with your supplier and have either had several conversations via email or phone or even met before you may want to bring them a small gift now that your business relationship has escalated to the next level.
Nothing too big that makes the gift awkward but something nice and thoughtful would be much appreciated such as something from your hometown. Maybe a keyring, notepad, mug or t-shirt of your home city or local sports team.
If you haven’t known your supplier before this fair then a good way to build the relationship is to take some photos together. This way you will both leave with something to remember each other by and the next time you meet you can update your photo collection until you have years of photos together!
11. Alibaba Pre Check – Although I’m not a big fan of finding your supplier on Alibaba, you can use it as a pricing exercise before you come to the fair so you know the market price for your product so you are in a more knowledgeable position to negotiate when you get to the fair.
But if you are collecting pricing information, make sure you are fully aware of the specification for that pricing. For example, you don’t want to get pricing online for a furniture chair which is steel tubing then when you get prices at the fair the product is aluminum tubing and then you’re confused why there is a big difference.
The specification sheet I mentioned before will help prevent this, remember you need to compare apples with apples. ? ?
Those are my top 11 tips, it could have been a lot more but these are some of the most important!
Hope you enjoy the Canton Fair if you are coming and if you see me make sure to say hi!
Kian Golzari is one of the world’s leading product development and sourcing experts. To see how Kian helps Amazon sellers, click here.
Week 4 of Freedom Ticket dives into product research: how to find winning products and niches, and tips on studying your competition using Helium 10 tools.
Where do you even start researching?
Don’t know where to start? Fear not; you’re not alone.
Maybe you have some product ideas in mind. Something you already like, or something you’re already familiar with.
Week 4 of Freedom Ticket will delve into ways you can get started on product research, and from there, narrow down your finds and really analyze which ones have profit potential.
Read on to see just how you’ll accomplish this.
How do you decide on a product?
Well we can’t give away all of our secrets here, but for a bit of an idea …
Start with keyword research! If you have no idea what kind of product to go after, keyword research will reveal what people are already searching for on Amazon. Why not focus on where the demand already is?
When you type your search query into Amazon’s search bar, you usually see a dropdown list with search suggestions, right? That’s because Amazon is predicting what you’re looking for based on what others have searched for recently.
That means there’s a whole wealth of data about search behavior waiting to be tapped. And if you use that data correctly, well, that’s powerful.
Remember, Amazon business is all about data. Week 4 of Freedom Ticket is going to show you how to navigate and read that data to your advantage so you can make strategic business decisions based on hard numbers instead of just guessing.
“One must strive to hold close his allies, but it is of more importance to hold close his enemies…”
Niccolo Machiavelli’s famous (or infamous, depending on who you ask) The Prince had it right–so right, in fact, that most attribute this quote’s origin to The Godfather’s “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.”
Who knew Renaissance writing would be so relevant in the Amazon sphere? (Side note: I’m a historian, so of course I have to make this connection somehow).
Were they both in e-commerce now, Machiavelli and Michael Corleone would know that, to choose a successful product, you need to study your competition.
Sometimes, while researching products, Amazon sellers fall into the tunnel vision trap. You become so focused on the product itself and your ideas and opinions on it that you might forget to step back and look around at what others are doing.
There’s a veritable gold mine of information to be found in your competition’s product listings–information straight from the customers themselves.
With the help of Helium 10’s Chrome extension tools like X-Ray and Review Downloader, learn how to quickly and efficiently identify legitimate competitor product reviews, and parse and analyze data over dozens of competitor listings. Don’t waste your time manually reading through reviews one by one when Freedom Ticket week 4 can teach you how to turn days of tedious work into a couple of hours.
Let Black Box do the heavy lifting
Gone are the days of manual research. Instead of spending hours typing every search term you can think of into Amazon’s search engine, let Helium 10’s invaluable Black Box tool do the heavy lifting for you.
Kevin King will walk you through how to use Black Box to search through thousands of products and narrow down prospective items based on demonstrated statistics like search demand, number and age of competing products, revenue generated within the product’s space, and more.
With these techniques, you’ll be able to optimize your research to your needs and goals, and hone in on product niches you may not even have known existed!
We’ll deep dive into just how detailed Black Box can get with your product and keyword research. Black Box will help you think outside the box (pun intended) so you can get laser-focused on profitable items that have a chance of standing out from the competition.
Sometimes it’s like Minesweeper on steroids
Remember Minesweeper? You’d be clicking along happily, clearing out the field, but then one wrong click and those pixelated spiky mines would take over your screen and that little yellow sun (an emoji during pre-emoji days) would stare sadly at you?
Finding a product niche can sometimes feel like navigating a minefield, where the mines are the shady, unethical black-hat sellers lying in wait.
It’s an unfortunate reality of selling on Amazon, and often the best way to deal with them is to avoid them outright.
Week 4 will cover some strategies that can help you spot these shady characters from miles away, so that you can hopefully avoid investing too much time and money into a product that has the potential to be shot down from unethical sellers who dominate that space.
Nobody wants to see their meticulously-planned strategy collapse just because others refuse to fight fairly.
So avoid that dumpster fire altogether and learn some best practices for sticking to Amazon’s ToS while staying away from those who don’t.
Look forward to Week 4!
Remember, this all-in-one Amazon course is INCLUDED with your Helium 10 Platinum, Diamond, or Elite membership! And even though Class 1 members will gain access to Week 4 soon, new members can start from the beginning of the course and learn at their own pace. Existing AND new Platinum, Diamond, and Elite members will have access to all released Freedom Ticket content for the entirety of their active membership.
This content is so fresh that we’re rolling it out week by week so Freedom Ticket students can have a chance to fully consume and understand the material. If you’re currently caught up, sit tight for the next week’s modules!
Want to learn more about Freedom Ticket and Helium 10? Interested in access to the best in Amazon software tools and education?
Using the grass-roots level information we gather from research and going directly to suppliers on 1688.com to drive a better bargain on Alibaba.
This is the fifth installment of the #SellerHacks series. These are based on hacks shared by Bradley Sutton at the SellerCon event in Las Vegas.
Product.
There’s really no other way to look at it.
You need to start your eCommerce journey with a product to sell.
The big question will always be; how to find that product and where?
In very much the same way that we refer to an expert as “someone from out of town,” in eCommerce there has always been the feeling that the best source for our product will inevitably be on the other side of the world.
That’s still true.
This hack is not about finding your next private label product in that big warehouse that you drive past on your way downtown to pick up those great street tacos from your favorite food truck.
We’re still talking about sourcing from China.
This hack is about the different avenues that exist for wholesale products within China’s own industrial ecosystem.
The Hack
Using 1688.com is a clever way to help you source your next great eCommerce product, but not perhaps in the way you might be thinking.
Alibaba has long been understood to be the place where a significant percentage of Amazon sellers either do their homework, source their products or both.
Well, 1688.com is just like Alibaba.com, but all in Chinese, and for the domestic market in China.
Owned by the Alibaba group, 1688 is a thriving B2B supplier directory where you can find wholesalers, factories, manufacturers, and trading companies, in almost every type of industry.
It is one of the biggest go-to sourcing and wholesale websites for the Chinese themselves.
Importantly, 1688.com requires all of their sellers or suppliers to provide a government business license before they can list their products for sale on its site.
That, along with the fact that they charge sellers a fee to list products, helps 1688.com reduce the amount of fraudulent practices that occur on the site.
Some believe that buyers can find better deals, by going directly to suppliers on 1688.com, instead of Alibaba.com.
But is that really true?
Yes, it is, and for several reasons.
The biggest reason is that 1688.com is almost exclusively designed for domestic trade.
Alibaba was designed to be export-focused for international business trade whereas 1688.com caters exclusively for domestic trade. This is why Alibaba is available in major languages such as English, French, Spanish, German, Korean, Russian, Japanese, and more.
Because 1688.com is almost exclusively a domestic enterprise, there is much less likelihood that the seller will have the proper export permits that allow them to ship their products overseas.
Additionally, wholesalers on 1688.com will be almost certainly be Chinese speaking.
Lastly, 1688.com does its business in Chinese currency exclusively,
For all the above reasons, we’re probably not going to source our next great eCommerce product directly from 1688.com.
But that doesn’t mean we can’t use the grass-roots level information we gather from the research to drive a better bargain on Alibaba.
In business in China as well as all over the world, what often matters is whether or not there’s a sense that you know what you’re talking about.
In the U.S.A. you might be asking about the yield monitor system on the sparkling new John Deere Combine that you just can’t stop thinking about.
In China, you’re discussing with your Alibaba representative how you know that you can source the very same product for less than half the price that they want to charge you.
Why This Hack Works
What you’ve done in both cases is to make yourself something of an expert.
What will follow is a little bit more of a conversation between equals.
It makes it that much easier to say to your product rep, “Hey, I know I can get it for less, but I want to do business with you, let’s split the difference.”
Here’s how the hack works . . .
First, find your product on Alibaba.
Then, go to Google translate and copy the results.
Next, paste the Chinese characters into 1688.com, and locate a very similar product.
The next step is to run the currency conversion and look at the real apples to apples numbers.
Lastly, on Amazon’s web page and using Helium 10’s Chrome extension, you can run both the numbers that you come up with through the Profitability Calculator to get a sense of the differences between the two estimated unit manufacturing costs and also look at the relative ROI (Return On Investment).
These are rough estimates, but as you can see, a small change in the initial unit cost in this case almost doubled the ROI.
One of the most common questions we get at Prestozon is, “what should my ACoS goals be?” The reality is, ACoS goals vary widely from account to account and even from product to product. A realistic ACoS for a campaign is contingent on a lot of different factors. Most notably:
Average Order Value
Conversion Rate
Cost-Per-Click
Before you step onto the Amazon PPC landscape, you need to take a hard look at these factors and ensure that your goals align with the mathematical reality of your account. Not all accounts are built to run hyper efficient PPC campaigns at 3% ACoS. Running Amazon PPC at a loss or break even may be a viable strategy, but it is something you should walk into with eyes wide open.
There are a bunch of useful equations in this post, but don’t worry about memorizing them all. We’ve attached a handy calculator spreadsheet with them all. Download it, follow along with the examples, and try out your own numbers!
Your product price has probably been determined long before you started looking into Amazon PPC advertising. For conversion rates and cost-per-click you’ll have to either estimate or use existing data. For existing Amazon sellers, you may be able to leverage your organic conversion rate to get a good gauge of what your conversion rate may be using Amazon PPC.
Your conversion rate is largely going to be determined by the strength of your ASIN listing, something Amazon calls Retail Readiness. Your product’s star rating, price point in the market, number of reviews, listing information, and pictures are all factors that Amazon uses to determine your organic ranking because they know that these factors drastically affect conversion rate. The fact is, if you aren’t showing up organically because these factors are lacking, you can your ad budget may get you impressions but it’s unlikely that those will convert to clicks or sales.
For reference, late summer 2019 the median CPC in North America was around $0.68 with 80% of clicks ranging between $0.27 and $1.67. In Europe, the median was equivalent to $0.38 with 80% of clicks ranging between $0.15 and $0.90. This varies drastically per search term and product.
Calculating Your Goals
Before we start applying these calculations to your account, let’s take a look at the math. The calculation can be flipped around a few ways depending on what you are trying to determine, but let’s start by calculating ACoS. Before we begin, let’s get our terminology straight:
CPC = Cost Per Click
CVR = Conversion Rate
AOV = Average Order Value
ACoS = Average Cost of Sale
The simplest version of this calculation looks like this:
And you can re-arrange the calculation to solve for any parameter you want:
OR
And, finally
How can I apply this math?
Now let’s look at a real world scenario and how this calculation will help you:
You’re an Amazon agency who just brought on a new client. The client has gone through 5 agencies before you. They expect a 10% ACoS and won’t accept anything higher. You’ve just walked through their account and you’ve been given the current metrics. Their conversion rate is currently at 7% and their product sells for an average of $12.00. They are currently running at $1.25 CPC. Let’s see how realistic their ACoS goal is by calculating their current ACoS first:
Their current ACoS comes in at 149%, well above their goal of 10%.
Now let’s say you’ve already done some industry analysis and have found that the average CPC for this client’s market is $.60. That’s well below what they are currently spending, but let’s see what your CPC would have to be in order to meet the client’s expectations:
The CPC goal for this ACoS would be $.08. That’s about 10% of the industry average! You may be a great agency (you are using Prestozon, after all!), but it may take some expectation management for them.
Or, even better, let’s turn this conversation back to them! We know the North American average is $.68, so let’s go back and say that you reduce that by more than half. You can drop to a $.30 CPC and all they have to do is help on the other end by raising their conversion rate by increasing their star rating, getting more reviews, and revamping their listing. Here’s the type of conversion they’d have to get at half the industry average CPC:
They’ll need to get a conversion rate of 25%, over 250% higher than their current conversion rate. At this point they might see why they’ve gone through all those agencies and they’ll want to stick with the team that really laid out the math: you!
Now they want you to launch one of their new products on Amazon advertising. They give you the sale price ($20), a good sense of the conversion rate from organic sales (5%) and a new , more realistic, ACoS at 30% based on their existing profit margins. You want to know what CPC you need to target in order to set your initial bids. For this, we can use the calculation for CPC:
In this example, your target CPC is going to be $.30.
All of this is done on a single calculation manipulated in different ways. If you aren’t comfortable doing the math on your own, don’t worry! We’ve put together a handy calculator in the download above to do the heavy lifting for you.
How can Prestozon help?
Prestozon is an Amazon PPC automation tool. We’re going to help you analyze, optimize and expand your Amazon PPC advertising. In the context of this important calculation, Prestozon is going to help ensure that you have the lowest CPC based on your account parameters. We’ll also promote search terms with high conversion potential into performance campaigns to help optimize your conversion from a strictly PPC perspective.
It is up to you to ensure your product is priced well, listed properly, and Retail Ready. From there, Prestozon will ensure your PPC structure is optimized for the best results possible.
How much money do you need to start an Amazon FBA business? Find out in Freedom Ticket Week 3, with an intro to PPC, branding, and more.
So you’re all hyped up and ready to start researching products. Maybe you’ve set up your professional seller account on Amazon, scouted some brand ideas, and skimmed Alibaba.
But how much money do you actually need to get started … successfully?
And then, how much more money do you need to keep the business afloat as you wait for it to grow?
Much like a hobbyist who wants to try their hand at growing a patio garden, the project starts with planting the seeds – but it doesn’t end there. You need more than just seeds, soil, and water.
You need the right climate, the right amount of sun, different kinds of plant food or fertilizer, pest control, pruning and other maintenance, larger pots or garden beds to transfer your plants to should they outgrow their pots …
Enough of that cliche analogy, though. Read on to see what else we’ll be covering in Week 3 of Freedom Ticket.
What can you do with $5k?
You need money to make money. But, as you may already know, starting your business is a lot more involved than just buying inventory and throwing it onto Amazon.
In week 3, Kevin King shows you how far $5k will take you, with in-depth analysis of start-up and operational costs year-over-year.
This isn’t just rambling about vague hypotheses over just-as-vague numbers. Week 3’s stats breakdown includes projections that compare different starting capital amounts, different expense models, different sales scenarios, and much more.
You’ll be able to walk away with a crystal clear understanding of how much cash you’ll need on hand to SUCCESSFULLY launch your product. Don’t be one of many failed sellers caught dead in the water because they didn’t do their math homework!
It’s more than just capital
Week 3 won’t just cover how much money you need to get started, though. Even with a significant chunk of change set aside for starting your Amazon business, maintaining your presence as a seller costs money too.
Your business is a bit like a hungry monster (Seymour II from Little Shop of Horrors anyone?); you have to keep feeding it to keep it alive and help it grow.
One of the greatest challenges sellers both new and old face, is successfully managing cashflow.
Vets AND novices need to map their cashflow plan of attack, lest they face business-killing pitfalls like out-of-stock products, over-budgeted ad campaigns, and other cash problems that could have you unwillingly tapping into your personal savings AND leave your rankings and progress plummeting. Keep your expenses lean and your cash where it’s needed.
Week 3 will also delve into the details of costs and fees associated with various aspects of Amazon. Don’t get blindsided by their nickel-and-diming because it does add up. Freedom Ticket will make sure you’re prepared.
How important is branding?
The obvious answer: very.
The not-so-obvious answer: not as much as you might think.
Week 3 delves into the benefits of having a brand, trademarks, and the advantages of getting invited to the hallowed halls of Amazon Brand Registry.
But! Week 3 also tempers expectations about what building a brand can and will do for you on Amazon. Brand building is not a cureall, and to some it may not even be a worthwhile strategy to start with, especially for your first product launch.
There’s a difference between registering a brand and building a true brand with brand recognition. Week 3 discusses what to prioritize and what to save for another day.
The ladder of loyalty
Product marketing is a process: the desired end result is a customer purchasing your product, but how many steps does it take to get there?
Many of you may already be familiar with marketing/sales funnels and loyalty ladders. As an Amazon seller, you have one major advantage over these traditional funnels and ladders: the existing Amazon audience. People on Amazon are there to buy – it’s just a matter of whether they’ll find and buy YOUR product … or someone else’s.
How do you entice them to choose your product? First, you have to put it in front of them so that they even see it.
And assuming they buy, how do you maintain a rapport to get them to come back for more?
These are all facets of the ladder of loyalty concept that Week 3 discusses. We’ll talk about how each “rung” works and how it applies to Amazon.
PPC advertising: a primer
PPC or Pay-Per-Click advertising is Amazon’s in-house advertising and sponsored ads system. Even though it’s “paid,” it’s not optional if you want to succeed in the Amazon Marketplace. Consider it a part of your overall Amazon plan of attack.
PPC will be discussed in-depth throughout the course, but Week 3 will give a primer on how the system works, costs associated with it, how to strategize your ad spend and ad keywords, and more. Expect to gain basic familiarity with PPC so you can build on the fundamentals later on.
Look forward to Week 3!
Remember, this all-in-one Amazon course is INCLUDED with your Helium 10 Platinum, Diamond, or Elite membership! And even though Class 1 members will gain access to Week 3 soon, new members can start from the beginning of the course and learn at their own pace. Existing AND new Platinum, Diamond, and Elite members will have access to all released Freedom Ticket content for the entirety of their active membership.
This content is so fresh that we’re rolling it out week by week so Freedom Ticket students can have a chance to fully consume and understand the material. If you’re currently caught up, sit tight for the next week’s modules!
Want to learn more about Freedom Ticket and Helium 10? Interested in access to the best in Amazon software tools and education?
However, as is often the case, the important truths lie in the details.
Your success is going to come from your ability to interpret these numbers in order to uncover valuable information that will take your eCommerce business to the next level.
One of the things about selling on Amazon that makes it so interesting is the fact that there isn’t an automatic formula for financial gain.
Well, there are a few constants:
Hard work, check.
Attention to detail, check.
Research and understand the market, check.
Otherwise, your success on Amazon will have a great deal to do with your ability to see the patterns buried just under the surface and then take decisive action.
That’s where Helium 10 comes in. Our tools will help you solve the puzzle and keep you one step ahead of the competition.
The Hack
Who doesn’t love a good mystery?
But why?
I think there’s something about spending a little time unsure of an outcome before ultimately uncovering a well obscured plot-line that leads to unimagined happiness and success.
This is what Bradley’s fourth hack is all about.
Helium 10 gives you so much Amazon-intensive data that it allows you to become your own product research detective.
If you are like most sellers, you don’t completely understand how Amazon’s A9 algorithm is indexing for high ranking words and can’t help but wonder if there are keywords out there that are slipping through the cracks?
Here is how you are going to find keywords that are not in your competitor’s listings, yet they have converted for PPC.
After you’ve identified a product on Amazon that is very similar to the product you are interested in, copy the ASIN . . .
Then, press the get keywords button. Once the keywords have downloaded, then filter for Sponsored Results . . .
After you have that new filtered list, you’ll want to go to the top of the screen and copy the list to the clipboard . . .
Next, paste that list to Helium 10’s Index Checker.
Once you’ve pasted the list from Cerebro and added the ASIN, press the Check keywords button . . .
This will bring up a list of the keywords grouped in 4 different ways. What you are interested in for this hack, are the keywords that are present in the Field-ASIN category, but that do not show up in the Traditional Index.
By looking at the next two screenshots you can see two different opportunities to target keywords that a very similar product is ranking for, but is not being by the seller.
Why This Hack Works
Both the phrases “skateboard kit”, and “skateboards for kids 4-6” are keywords that the target product is ranking for, but are effectively “ghost” keywords. They are there and certainly receiving ranking importance from Amazon, but no one, except perhaps for you, are aware of them.
As Amazon’s entire ecosystem has become exponentially competitive, the importance (and expense) of keywords will only increase.
This hack might just give you the edge you are looking for to help you either create an effective launch, or increase your listing’s sales velocity.
Either way, Helium 10 10 and this hack will both give you the tools you need to set yourself apart from your competition on Amazon.
Correctly launching a new product on Amazon can set your product up for a long and profitable lifespan. Advertising is a critical part of each launch. How do you do it quickly and efficiently? Automating keywords and bids as well as setting aside the right budget are all key parts we’ll cover in this post.
Pre-launch
It’s critical to set expectations before launching any campaigns. If your goal is to get to page 1 or 2 in a competitive niche, you may be looking at several hundred thousand dollars of ad spend. It’s important to figure out a good ballpark budget first so that the account is set up to succeed.
One way to do this is to work from estimated CVR, CPC and number of sales. Let’s say you want to hit 250 sales from advertising in the first month. How much should you expect to spend?
If it’s a brand new product, your conversion rate will likely be low until you have a competitive review count and star rating. Let’s use 2.5% for our estimated conversion rate.
Because this is a high competition niche, let’s say CPC is $5.
This equation gets you the Cost per Conversion:
CPC / CVR = Cost per Conversion
$5 / 2.5% = $200 Cost per Conversion
And the budget for these 250 sales =
Cost per Conversion * Target orders = Budget
$200 * 250 Sales = $50,000 budget
Note that we didn’t look at ACoS here. Ranking is about volume, not about profitability. In the research phase, it’s about getting the orders and not about ACoS.
Now that we understand what we’re up against, let’s go through the phases of launching a product with Amazon Advertising.
Three Campaign Structure
At Prestozon, we recommend a minimum structure consisting of three campaigns for most cases
Auto
Auto campaign searching for converting search terms at Amazon’s direction
Research
Manual campaign using broad or phrase keywords to search for converting search terms at the advertiser’s direction
Performance
Manual campaign using exact keywords to maximize control over converting search terms. A mature advertising initiative will have most traffic and sales going through this campaign.
Research
The research phase consists of starting all of the campaigns and systems to manage them.
We want to do research as quickly and efficiently as possible, so use a tool like Prestozon’s Keyword Rules to harvest converting search terms from the beginning. Rules search over the product’s auto and manual research campaigns and promote converting search terms into exact match keywords.
Optimize
Once search terms are isolated to your Performance campaigns, you can start to optimize them through bid. In the beginning, keep your ACoS targets high so that you win most of the auctions and drive as many orders as possible. It’s not uncommon to run 100-300% ACoS during this period.
Throughout all of this, it’s critical to remember that high performance PPC strategies require high performance listings. You can’t set a big budget on top of a bad listing and hope for profitable campaigns. The good news is that because you’re spending aggressively in the beginning you can quickly learn what search terms resonate with your customer base. You’re buying market research data through PPC! Use this to tune your title, bullets, listing text, and back end terms.
To get a list of search terms that resonate with your customers, go to Prestozon’s Search Term Explorer and add a filter for >2 orders. You can further filter this down by looking at high conversion rate terms, but that threshold will change per product. It may be 5% or it may be 15%, or in the beginning it may be 2%.
Scale
As you go up the ranks, get reviews, and tune your listing, your conversion rate should go up. It’s at this point you can set less aggressive ACoS targets and scale up your performance budgets as you scale down your research budgets.
Let’s say you started with $750/day budgets each for your auto and research campaigns and $100/day for your performance campaign. Initially, you’ll find new converting search terms rapidly. Over time, each additional search term takes longer and more money to find. As this happens, you should scale your research budgets down (perhaps as low as $20/day) and your performance budget up as high as you can while maintaining your ACoS.
Sometimes, ACoS doesn’t tell the whole story. For supplements and other continuity products looking at customer lifetime value (LTV) and understanding customer repurchase rates is key vs initial cost per acquisition (CPA). If you expect customers to purchase monthly for the next 6 months, a 60% ACoS for the first sale may come out to a 10% ACoS over the customer lifetime.
Overlapping phases
These phases aren’t executed purely in series. They overlap. The first search term that converts is likely to be both high volume and high conversion rate. You should start scaling that up right away! The research phase may go on for several months, as will the optimize phase. The scale phase will start as soon as week two and become the dominant mode of operation after 3-6 months and for the rest of the product’s lifecycle.
Launching with Prestozon’s 1 Click Campaign Setup in 10 Easy Steps:
Launching campaigns for a new product and scaling them up is easy to do with Prestozon’s 1-Click Setup. Here’s a step by step guide to get you started on the right foot:
Enter the ASIN you are going to advertising. Note: Amazon requires ASINs for Vendors and SKUs for Sellers. Make sure you are entering the correct identifier!
Enter your seed research terms. These are terms you think will help your product sell, but you’re not sure. It’s okay to put “maybe” keywords here.
Enter your performance keywords. These are your known winners. Only put keywords in here if you have advertised these products or very similar products before and you know the keywords are winners and have driven sales for you.
Set your budgets.
Set your ACoS target and default bids. Remember, this is a launch, while you may want to drive ACoS down in the future, at first you want to drive for visibility and impressions. Keep the ACoS target high and make sure your default bid is competitive right from the start. If you find that you’re not getting enough impressions then increase your bid to ensure you’re getting enough impressions to generate clicks (ideally 20-30 clicks minimum).
Check out your preview. The ad groups and keywords about to be created by the tool will appear in real time as you are filling out the parameters. You can use this preview to ensure your rules, naming conventions and ad groups are reflected accurately before you click “Create Structure”.
Review your rules. If you want to make a change, there are other rule options under the Advanced Options in the bottom left. If you don’t see the option you want, you can do even more editing once you’ve created the rules.
8) Branded terms often run significantly lower ACoS and higher conversion rate than non-branded terms. Prestozon allows you to put your brand terms in separate campaigns under the “Special” tab in the 1CS so you can manage these terms independently. This will allow you to manage budget on your branded terms separately and will give you better insight into both your branded and non-branded performance.
9) Set your ACoS and budget preferences for Branded campaigns. Your branded campaigns will almost always with a lower ACoS and higher conversion rate so we suggest more aggressive ACoS targets and higher budgets, even at launch. It’s common to see products with 30% ACoS on non-branded terms achieving lower than 5% ACoS on branded terms. Read more about breaking out branded search here.
10) Review your entire new launch structure. Complete with your SP non-branded campaigns and branded campaigns on the rules that govern them.
You’re all set! Now you’ve got a great campaign structure and have Prestozon set up to manage keywords and bids. Getting the most out of a product launch requires some judgement from the human account manager, so check in on your campaigns using Prestozon Analytics to get the last bit of performance out of them.
Do you know what Amazon Enhanced Brand Content (EBC) is? Do you have it on your listings? Learn why you should and how to use it to raise conversions.
Amazon is an amazing platform and is quickly outranking its competition. In fact, according to their annual report published in 2018, Amazon Prime has more members – and at a higher retention rate – than Costco!
However, with new sellers and products being added every day, it is easy to get lost in the mix.
How you do make your products, brand, and listings stand out from all the rest?
With Enhanced Brand Content (EBC).
The What, Why, and How of EBC
Enhanced Brand Content (now referred to as simply “A+”) is a premium feature that allows you prime retail space on your listing to showcase the value proposition of your products.
Through this feature, you are able to further enrich your listing with visuals and text, answer commonly asked questions not covered in the regular bullet points, and modify the product description field.
This feature gives you a chance to increase conversions and traffic to your products, and may even reduce the likelihood of returns when a customer truly understands what they are purchasing.
The fact is, with more third-party sellers popping up every day on Amazon, you may experience issues with counterfeit sellers attaching your listings, changing your content, or, even worse, stealing your chance at the buy box.
In May 2017, Amazon launched a new Brand Registry program that provides you with powerful tools to protect your trademarks, text, and images. Approximately 60,000 brands worldwide are registered and have seen 99% fewer suspected infringements.
Brand owners who are approved in this program then have the ability to access enhanced brand content features and add them to ASINs in their approved brand catalog. We’ve compiled a list of 5 things to keep in mind as you create your EBC.
Clear, Concise, and Compelling
This extra space allows you to give your customers a clear picture of the value your product offers. Don’t be shy about pointing out what makes your brand stand out from the crowd.
While there are rules about what you can and cannot say in this section, you can mention (for example) that while other hacky sacks may come in a variety of colors, that yours are available in colors that also coordinate with your zodiac sign.
Story Time
Did you love going to the library for storytime as a kid? Do you love to snuggle up with the latest book by your favorite author and get lost in its pages now? There is a reason people love stories- they begin to feel connected to the characters and plot lines and get involved as the story unfolds.
The same is true for your brand. Tell your story! Describe how your brand came into fruition, who created it and why, what the mission and vision of the company is.
List your values, goals and any other details that will help your audience feel connected to you as a brand. EBC gives you the opportunity to tell your story both visually and with content, be more relatable to your audience, and stand out from the crowd.
A prime example of this is Progenex- a recovery supplement for athletes of all levels:
Up Your Keyword Count
As an alternative to alt text uses by other websites, Amazon allows you to add image keywords on the backend of your listing that helps your product appear in more searches. This is a good opportunity for you to add in keywords you didn’t have room for in your bullet points or title, and improve your ranking.
Let’s say you are selling high-quality balloons for special occasions, and one of your images depicts a child’s birthday party. Maybe you didn’t have a chance to mention this in your listing, so your image keywords could be a simple sentence like “party balloon at kids birthday table.”
Whatever you decide to write, make sure your sentences are written for humans, and not bots. Overdoing the keyword stuffing could end up hurting your listing more than helping.
Study Up
We’ve talked in previous blogs about the importance of knowing your product details inside out and backward, but we need to address it again. The better you know your product, the better able you will be to differentiate it from the competition.
Be as specific as possible when you are telling the stories of why your product delivers more value than competitors, and describe what exactly it is that makes it stand out.
Does it come in a variety of flavors, colors, or fabrics not available elsewhere?
Do a portion of your proceeds go to charity so that when customers purchase from you they are also supporting charities?
Touch on benefits your audience will find the most beneficial.
While you are studying up on the value of your products, do some research into competitors as well to see what questions customers are asking most. EBC gives you extra space to address these questions and concerns which helps your customers not only further their understanding of the product, but may also positively impact your return rate.
Mobile Matters
Finally, as you prepare your content, test the template you have chosen to ensure it is mobile friendly. The fact is, more than half of all internet shopping is done from a mobile device.
When you consider that 77% of Americans own a smartphone, and approximately 100 million U.S. consumers own tablets, taking time the ensure your listing is mobile-optimized is well worth the effort.
This last point is so important because statistics show that 40% of consumers will go to a competitor after a bad mobile experience. Taking the time to do this part right could be your opportunity to capitalize on consumer conversion.
Conversion Counts
Is EBC worth the time it takes to create? Let’s consider this example:
You have an item that is listed for $129.
Your conversion rate is typically 12%, so you decide to test it out with EBC and after 25 days you see your conversions rise to 18%.
While this may seem marginal, if you have 1,000 people view your product page with your normal 12% conversion rate you have sold 120 units and made $15,480 in sales.
Not bad, right?
But, when you take the same example and boost the conversions to 18% due to your EBC, you’ve now sold 180 units and made $23,220. The numbers continue to grow from there. If you have 10,000 views at 12% you’ve made $154,800. But at 18% that number jumps to $232,200!
The point is that over the course of a year, those increases in sales – that once felt marginal – begin to really add up and make a huge difference in your bottom line.
Final Thoughts on EBC
We think it’s pretty obvious. If Amazon is giving you the opportunity to take up more real estate – you should take advantage of it!
Izabela Hamilton is the Founder and CEO of RankBell, a brand accelerator that helps Amazon businesses grow to 7 & 8 figures through driving organic keyword ranking and optimization. To learn more about how Izabela helps Amazon sellers, click here.
