Serious Sellers Podcast: Learn How To Sell On Amazon FBA & Walmart

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Helium 10 Buzz 7/4/24: Temu / Shein Crackdown? | TikTok Shop Prime Day | Amazon Brand Tailored Promotion Update Jul 04, 2024

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Will Shein and Temu lose the tariff loophole they take advantage of? TikTok Shop has its own version of Prime Day. Amazon Brand Tailor Promotions has an important update. These buzzing news stories and more in this episode!We’re back with another episode of the Weekly Buzz with Helium 10’s Chief Brand Evangelist, Bradley Sutton. Every week, we cover the latest breaking news in the Amazon, Walmart, and E-commerce space, talk about Helium 10’s newest features, and provide a training tip for the week for serious sellers of any level.EU plan to impose import duty on cheap goods could dent Shein and Temuhttps://www.theguardian.com/business/article/2024/jul/03/eu-plan-to-impose-import-duty-on-cheap-goods-could-dent-shein-and-temuTikTok Shop to discount ‘thousands’ of items during sales eventhttps://www.retaildive.com/news/tiktok-shop-july-sales-event/720155/Walmart+ Subscribers Break the 30% Markhttps://www.pymnts.com/subscription-commerce/2024/walmart-subscribers-break-the-30-mark/Amazon Discontinues Security Robot for Small Businesses After 8 Monthshttps://www.pymnts.com/amazon/2024/amazon-discontinues-security-robot-for-small-businesses-after-8-months/Virtual Stores are now showing up on some Amazon Storefronts. LinkedIn post by Liran HirschkornSave 25% on Amazon Warehousing and Distribution storage costshttps://sell.amazon.com/blog/amazon-warehousing-and-distribution-promotionBut that's not all! Take advantage of our tips on maximizing Prime Day sales using Helium 10's Insights Dashboard. Many sellers are sleeping on these features. This episode is packed with essential updates and strategies to keep you competitive in the ever-evolving e-commerce landscape. ► Instagram: instagram.com/serioussellerspodcast ► Free Amazon Seller Chrome Extension: https://h10.me/extension ► Sign Up For Helium 10: https://h10.me/signup (Use SSP10 To Save 10% For Life) ► Learn How To Sell on Amazon: https://h10.me/ft ► Watch The Podcasts On Youtube: youtube.com/@Helium10/videos In this episode of the Weekly Buzz by Helium 10, Bradley covers: 01:03 - Temu & Shein Crackdown? 04:23 - FBA Shipment Feature 06:05 - TikTok Shop Prime Day? 07:58 - Walmart+ Milestone 08:42 - Brand Tailored Promotion Update 09:49 - Amazon South Africa PPC 10:24 - Amazon Robots 11:38 - Amazon VR Stores 13:06 - AWS Discounts 14:03 - Pro Training Tip: Helium 10 Features You Should Use This Prime Day Transcript Bradley Sutton: Will low-cost marketplaces like Sheen and Temu lose their tariff loophole they take advantage of? TikTok Shop has its own version of Prime Day. Amazon Brand Tailor Promotions has an important update. These news stories and more on this week's Weekly Buzz 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 is our Helium 10 Weekly Buzz, where we give you a rundown of all the news stories that are going on the Amazon, Walmart, TikTok shop and e-commerce world. We also give you training tips of the week that will give you serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. Let's see what's buzzing, all right, well, today is July 4th of July, national holiday in America, but you guys know me, I work 365 days a year, so I know no holidays. You guys need the news and I'm going to bring it to whether it is a holiday or not, so let's go ahead and hop right into it. Bradley Sutton: To start off, we actually have a news article that's not based on USA but actually based in Europe, and it's entitled. It was actually from the Guardian and it's entitled EU plans to impose import duty on cheap goods could dent Sheen and Temu All right, so they're making this move. Now, as you guys know, the reason why you know Temu and Sheen can offer such low prices, regardless of what country they're shipping to, is they take advantage of this kind of like loophole, as it were, like, for example, an EU. The threshold for this tariff is like 150 euros. In UK it's 135. And then there's also some other like threshold at 39 pounds or less. It doesn't involve VAT. So basically, what this means is that you know you can ship from China to the country uh, you know in EU or even America, uh, and the sender nor the recipient are charged like import duties and taxes, as opposed to if you're getting like a you know $200 item or something where you got to, you know fork over 20% or whatever it is, and in addition to that, you know to send from China that they take advantage of like these subsidies where they can get, they can ship things really, really cheap. But the one of the biggest advantages that the Chinese sellers have over European sellers or American sellers is that advantage of shipping things one at a time directly to customers so they can get around that import tax. Bradley Sutton: So what an EU Commission's spokesperson said is hey, what we have proposed is that there's now no exemption anymore for packages valued at below 150 euros. So this is not, like you know for sure, going to happen, but this impacts a lot in Europe, you know. It says imports from online retail retailers have more than doubled year on year to more than 350,000 items in April. Now this is like I said this is still in the preliminary stages. We don't know if this is going to pass or go through or not. But if you're in the US, you know this is impactful, I think, because you know Temo and Sheen are really attacking those low price kind of market there. Mainly it's been in the clothing like for Sheen and stuff like that. But I was just looking the other day on Temo there's coffin shelves all over the place and like a lot of the same products that amazon has and it's like super, super cheap. Now, thank goodness, not as many not nearly as many people shop on that platform as opposed to like TikTok shop or amazon and things. But you know this is something that maybe us sellers might want legislation on. I'm not sure you know like. Would you like the United States to crack down on these no-fee imports, because, remember, it's not just Temu and Shin anymore. What did Kerry talk about in the Weekly Buzz last week? Now Amazon has entered this game where they're going to offer these kind of direct shipments that'll get to buyers in like 11 days at a very low price. That's kind of like exclusively for those shipping from China. So this this will help, you know, maybe alleviate some of those imports if this loophole is kind of closed. So it'll be interesting to watch in the coming months what happens with this legislation. Bradley Sutton: Now the next news article is actually directly from Amazon Seller Central, a cool feature, something that you never see on Amazon. You guys know those announcements that we sometimes get news from, or you see it on your dashboard and you see how there's like a thumbs up or thumbs down. Have you guys ever seen one that had 66 thumbs up and only one thumbs down, like usually? It's like mostly thumbs down not usually, but a lot of times. A lot of sellers are not very happy with the updates that Amazon is giving, but this one is like 99% positive. Bradley Sutton: Now what is it? It's very simple, but it's. It's beneficial for sellers like myself who do similar shipments all the time. So if you've got your own 3PL and you're sending shipments in or you're sending shipments directly from out of the country, this feature is called a send it again feature, replicating previous FBA shipments with one click, all right. So basically, let's say you have this shipment you're selling, you're sending in 10 boxes of five coffin shelves each. Well, if that's usually what you do, like you just do that every two weeks or you do that every four weeks or whatever Now, instead of having to build that whole shipment over and over again from scratch, you can just hit this button and now it's going to duplicate that shipment. Now that doesn't mean you're locked into that SKU. It says you can still manually add or remove SKUs or modify the number of units, but at least you're not having to start from scratch again. So if you want to play around with this and see how it works, hit inventory in Seller Central, then hit FBA inventory, go to the shipments dropdown menu and then select manage shipments under the next steps column select send it again. If you want to see how it is to repeat a certain shipment, all right. The next article is repeat a certain shipment, all right. Bradley Sutton: The next article is from a retail dive. I'm not sure if I've ever quoted them before, but this is a article entitled TikTok shop to discount thousands of items during a sales event. So you know, we know, amazon has Prime Day, Walmart has Walmart plus day or deal or week, I think it's called, and then they actually have another one going on right now on Walmart before Prime Day. But now TikTok shop has its deals for you days that's coming this July it's actually going to be coming on July 9th and there's going to be exclusive discounts that I'll have with some major brands. Doesn't really say that everybody is has access to offer this. But what about you guys who are selling on TikTok shop? Did any of you guys get access to this deal for you days? Let me know in the comments below. Bradley Sutton: Regardless, it could be a way to boost traffic on Amazon. The deal for you days is a week before Amazon Prime, so there's a couple ways you can do it. If you're selling on TikTok shop, maybe you don't even have access to a deal for you days, but maybe you just go ahead and discount your products or do a big push on TikTok shop to influencers around that time. Well, that might boost some of your Amazon rankings before prime day, because you know, if you, the more outside traffic you get, you can get your ranks increase. Another strategy could be, during Amazon prime day, to run certain deals or run influencers on TikTok shop. And, you know, maybe your TikTok shop sales will have a boost, which you probably like, because there's a lot less fees on TikTok shop. But your Amazon sales might get a boost too, because people there's still people who might see something from an influencer on TikTok shop, but then they'll they prefer to go buy it from Amazon, right? So then again, during prime Day, you might be able to have some benefits there by getting that outside traffic from TikTok. So just something to keep in mind with Prime Day coming up. Bradley Sutton: Next article is from payments.com and it's entitled Walmart Plus Subscribers Break the 30% Mark. So they did a survey of about 8,000 different respondents and it said 30% of consumers had a subscription to Walmart Plus account. All right, Walmart+ is getting more market penetration, guys. And then, interestingly though this is the one I found fascinating is that among those subscribers, 87% also had an Amazon Prime account. So it's not just a matter of oh, they have to pick Walmart+ or they're going to pick Amazon Prime. A lot of people, myself included, have both Amazon Prime and Walmart+ accounts. Next article is back to Seller Central Dashboard, something that was announced this week Brand tailor promotions kind of a pretty good update, especially with prime day coming up. Bradley Sutton: All right, now there is an ASIN exclusion feature, all right. So before brand Taylor promotions, you can go to custom audiences. We announced this months ago when it first came out, and you know you can. You can like target all of your cart abandoners, but it's at the brand level. So maybe you have like 30 products in your brand but you don't want to everybody to get this discount that you're trying to do. You just want a few products or you don't want a few products in there. Well, now you know. Before you had no choice. You had to allow everybody who goes to any of your brands page to get access to this discount, but now you can exclude certain ASIN, so that it's almost as if you can just specify this promotion for a single ASIN. If you want to, so go into brand tailored promotions, check that out. Might be something to run during prime day If you have a lot of people who have abandoned the cart or you've got some repeat purchasers. You want to maybe drive some more conversion to keep brand tailored promotions in mind. Bradley Sutton: Next article is going to Amazon advertising and it's as you guys know. A few couple months ago we announced that Amazon is launched Amazon South Africa All right, but now Amazon ads is launched All right. So, believe it or not, there is a marketplace where there is no PVC until now. So now sponsored ads and brand stores have launched in South Africa. So if you're one of the very few I don't know anybody yet selling on the Amazon South Africa marketplace, go ahead and get your PPC up and running. Bradley Sutton: Going back to payments.com, this is kind of an off-topic thing, but I thought it was kind of interesting because I bet you a lot of you don't realize that Amazon made its own robot a few years ago. All right, now one of them they relaunched last year we talked about this in the Weekly Buzz, I think how it was for businesses, where it was kind of like a security guard of sorts, you know, for 24 hours, a 24 hour, uh, you know, like vigilance, like kind of like a ring camera if you were. But Amazon discontinued the robot for small businesses. This is kind of crazy. I'm showing a picture of this robot here for those who are watching on YouTube, but they're going to concentrate their efforts on the household robots. I mean, it's hard to believe there's robots in houses. Now it's called the Amazon Astro, all right. Now the reason I'm bringing this up is there is one person in the whole world who I know has one of this. Who do you guys think it is? Who's on cutting edge of different things? It's Kevin King. So I saw this in Kevin King's house when I went to his house there in Texas and I was like what in the world is this? So he didn't have it set up at the time. I wonder, Kevin, if you're watching out there, let me know how is your Amazon Astro? It's now maybe a collector's item, since Amazon is discontinuing it for the businesses. Bradley Sutton: Anyways, next up, not really an article, but something from LinkedIn. If you look at Liran Hirschkorn, last week he posted about how he saw that Lego had this virtual reality storefront in their Amazon store, where it's like a virtual store, where you can just go in there and walk around the. You can see shelves and you see the different Lego sets and you and it's. It's fake because it's like 3d, but it looks like you were in the Lego aisle in target or something like that, and then you can click on the actual products. It's actually quite wild. I tested it on my phone Um, my Amazon app. I have access to it too. So go to the Lego store. Just go to any Lego product on your phone in the Amazon app and then there'll be a button on there on the storefront that says Lego virtual store or something like that. Click that. It's kind of wild, and we've talked about here on the Weekly Buzz in the past that there's different companies that are moving towards this. Walmart is doing something in the meta, that there's different, you know companies that are moving towards this. Walmart is doing something in the metaverse, right? Who knows, maybe there'll be a day where you can go into the Manny's Mysterious Oddities you know our Helium 10 account, you know store it a…

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#575 - Amazon Prime Day Seller Roundtable Jul 02, 2024

Show notes

Get ready for an insightful episode as we gear up for Amazon Prime Day with strategies from some of the most experienced sellers in the business. We kick things off with Abdul, a seasoned seller who shares his journey of nearly a decade on Amazon. Listen in as Abdul recounts his best and worst Prime Day moments, including how he achieved a 2-3X sales increase last year without relying on costly promotions. Instead, Abdul utilized coupon codes, price adjustments, and leveraged off-Amazon traffic through social media and email campaigns. He also shares his game plan for this year, including starting targeted broadcasts a week before Prime Day to maximize engagement and sales. Next, we shift gears to hear from Abe Chomali who has worked with multiple sellers, including a remarkable success story of a national electronics brand. This brand skyrocketed from $15,000 to $1 million in sales in a single day thanks to a premium deal position and massive advertising push. We also explore common pitfalls, such as internal miscommunications that can sabotage deals, and discuss the latest tactics for Prime Day 2024. Key strategies include leveraging new promotion types and recapturing potential sales from ad spend leading up to and during Prime Day. Finally, we share diverse seller experiences and strategies for Prime Day from Rolando Rosas, Gonzalo Zamora, Carrie Miller, and Huy Nguyen, highlighting both successes and challenges. From managing PPC budgets effectively to the potential pitfalls of overspending on ads, we cover it all. Sellers like Rolando found that turning off PPC on Prime Day didn’t negatively impact sales, saving significant costs. We also explore the use of Amazon Live for increased exposure without extra expenditure and the crucial role of Helium 10 tools in managing campaigns and tracking performance. By leveraging tools like Helium 10’s Cerebro and Market Tracker, sellers can optimize for Prime Day-specific keywords and ensure continued sales momentum. In episode 575 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley, Abdul, Abe, Gonzalo, Rolando, Carrie, and Huy discuss: 00:00 - Amazon Sellers Prime Day Strategy From Experienced Sellers 01:09 - Prime Day Strategy for New Sellers 02:54 - Improving Amazon Sales Strategies Over Time 08:15 - Maximizing Strategies for Prime Day 12:34 - New Strategies for Promotions and Sales 16:55 - Prime Day Sales Strategy Success 18:14 - Prime Day Strategies & Tools 27:19 - Successful Strategies for Prime Day Sales 35:20 - Optimizing Prime Day Sales Strategy ► Instagram: instagram.com/serioussellerspodcast ► Free Amazon Seller Chrome Extension: https://h10.me/extension ► Sign Up For Helium 10: https://h10.me/signup (Use SSP10 To Save 10% For Life) ► Learn How To Sell on Amazon: https://h10.me/ft ► Watch The Podcasts On YouTube: youtube.com/@Helium10/videos Transcript Bradley Sutton: Prime Day is coming up, so to continue in our series of Prime Day readiness episodes, we've invited seasoned Amazon sellers who've sold millions of dollars on the platform to give some of their best and worst stories from previous Prime Days along with what they're planning to do this Prime Day. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Sellers have lost thousands of dollars by not knowing that they were hijacked, perhaps on their Amazon listing, or maybe somebody changed their main image, or Amazon changed their shipping dimensions so they had to pay extra money every order. Helium 10 can actually send you a text message or email if any of these things or other critical events happen to your Amazon account. For more information, go to h10.me forward slash alerts. Bradley Sutton: 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. Prime day was just announced, although, of course, helium 10 serious sellers podcast listeners have been knowing when prime day was going to be since April, since we predicted it but we weren't sure. But now everybody's sure July 16 and 17 is the day, all right. Bradley Sutton: So, if you're a brand-new seller, by definition, this is going to be your first prime day, and so what I wanted to do is not just have me here give you guys a step-by-step tutorial. I wanted to bring different sellers on to ask them what their experience is, whether it's their own accounts or maybe, uh, they have a lot of clients who they've helped with their prime days, and it's funny, because the answer is not always oh, you've got to go all in the answer from some of these sellers. I'm not sure what they're going to say. Some of the sellers might say you know what I don't do extensive discounts on Prime Day, and that's fine too. We want to make sure that we give you guys a complete view of what people are doing and not doing on Prime Day, but just know that, hey, there's not just one size fits all, where there's one strategy and everybody's got to do it or else you're a failure on Prime Day. I think that's going to be, hopefully, the theme that you learn today that there's different strokes for different folks, and it's okay. So, the first seller I'm going to bring on the show with us today he's been on the podcast before is Abdul. Abdul, How's it going? Abdul: Hey, Bradley, good, good and yourself. Bradley Sutton: Pretty good, pretty good Now. You and I have hung out all over the world. You used to come to our Elite workshops and we had it in California. I know at that time you were living in New Jersey. We've also hung out in Lahore, Pakistan. Is that where you're at right now? Are you in Pakistan? Abdul: Yes, I am, and indeed. Bradley Sutton: So, what time is it over there? Abdul: So, we're like 12 hours ahead of you. It's like 11PM. Bradley Sutton: 11PM. Thank you for coming on so late. Now for people who maybe haven't heard your Serious Sellers podcast episodes. How long have you been selling on Amazon? Abdul: So, we're going up to eight, nine years, but the first few years were not so good. I did everything wrong, and just after that it's just been fixing things and it's been a roller coaster. Bradley Sutton: All right, now, eight, nine years you've been there for the prime days and so tell us let me just start off, this is going to be a similar question as what I'm going to ask others what was the best thing you've ever done on a prime day? Like, maybe it could have even been an accident, but what's the best Prime Day result you had where maybe sales were up 50%, sales were up 4X? Whatever the case, what can you remember was your best Prime Day? Abdul: I think 2X, 3X last year was good. Bradley Sutton: Was that coming from a certain strategy, like, did you run Prime exclusive discounts, a lightning deal, or was it just 100% organic extra traffic? Abdul: So, that's something we did not do last year. Last year we did not do exclusive discounts, flash sales, because I think correct me if I'm wrong those are usually 200, 300 per ASIN. They can get very pricey quickly, right, sure? So, we did not do that. Last year we did a lot of. We signed up for whatever free we could find and we ran coupon codes, discounts. We fixed our pricing beforehand to make sure that our prices were just right, leading a month, two months before the Prime Days. Bradley Sutton: Okay, so what was your strategy right before Prime Day? Did you have anything different that you did leading up to Prime Day? Abdul: No PPC ran as usual. We just kept an eye. If anything was running out of budget, we would put more juice into those PPC campaigns. Otherwise, we were just concentrating on coupon codes off Amazon advertisements. We have a large following now, so we send out messages on our social media, on our email distributions, so bringing a lot of off Amazon traffic to our store. Bradley Sutton: Okay, yeah, that's definitely good. And so, what are you doing in that regards for this year? Like, what's your plans leading up to this year's Prime Day? What kind of promotions are you doing for your off Amazon this year? Like, what's your plans leading up to this year's Prime Day? Are you what kind of promotions are you doing for your off-Amazon traffic? Are you like telling them, hey, we're going to have a Prime Day discount, or something like that? Abdul: So yeah, leading now that it's announced because people my customers don't like vague, it's going to happen in June, July. So as soon as it's announced, you start preparing for your broadcast. So roughly a week before anything you do a week before the dates, it's just prepping. You can't. People don't take that seriously. So, say, about seven to 10 days, you start, you hit them with the first message and you have a series of follow-ups A lot of many chats, if you have subscribers in many chats. A lot of emails. My social media if I have Facebook following or Instagram following you just start hitting them with what your deal is, what your products are, where to find them and to remind them. Don't go to my website, have the Amazon logo prominent. So usually, I don't like to drive people to Amazon store my Amazon products. I like them to go from social media to my own website. But this will be an exception. Bradley Sutton: Now, what are you telling them, like, what are you doing? Are you doing prime exclusive discount? Are you just going to have a clippable coupon? Are you just running a discount as a regular discount price offer? What are, what is your plans for this July 16, 17? Abdul: I think it's going to be a visible coupon code this year, clippable discounts or typical clippable coupons. People tend to forget, so if something is right in front of them for everyone to see, as soon as someone lands on my page on my product, I want them to see the discount and I want them to be able to just apply the coupon and you don't want to put any hurdles in front of them. Bradley Sutton: What's your projected sales this year? Just so people have an idea about your level. What do you think you're going to hit for overall Not for Prime Day, but for your year. We're about halfway through the year. What do you think you're going to end up at? Abdul: This year has been a challenge. I have a lot of hijackers Just before Prime Day. I would touch that. We do see a lot of activity where they're using that infamous. There's a new badge, often return badge I'm being hit with that with my best sellers, and there's every year we see that. So that's been a struggle. We have to keep an eye on that and honestly, I struggle with that every year, yeah, so it's hard to say. It's always a surprise. It's hard to put a number on what this year is going to be like. Bradley Sutton: Yeah, but what was your best year? Was it during COVID? Abdul: During COVID, yeah, we were hitting 60,000 sales, 60k a month, so that was our best time. But after that I had some family issues still dealing with sick parents, so I haven't been able to give it much time and attention like I used to. Bradley Sutton: Well, that's the beauty about Amazon. You can be at home in New Jersey pushing it. You can go home to Pakistan to take care of family and still be running your business. That's the beauty about our industry. Well, Abdul, I wish you the best of success for this year's Prime Day. Thank you for sharing your knowledge with us and yeah, we'll definitely connect after to see how it was all right. Abdul: You're welcome. Thank you, take care. Bradley Sutton: Next up, we've got Abe coming on. Your kind of a contrast with Abdul's just working with his own account, but you see many people's accounts because you work with a lot of sellers and so you've got some unique, unique viewpoints as far as selling on Prime Day and what you should do and what you shouldn't do. So, a similar question like amongst you know different accounts you've worked on previous Prime Day, is there something that was sticks out as like the best Prime Day for somebody? Like what's a cool anecdote you could provide us? Abe: Yeah. So, this anecdote is one which really stuck out by itself. It's one which is going to apply to very few sellers, but it was an eye popper. So, I work with a brand that has national distribution, so it's a recognized brand, and I work with them to sell a line of electronics like in the $200 plus price range. Now we were having trouble getting traction because in the electronics category there are lots of foreign competitors that sell the same thing for 40% less. So, the brand said we really want to make a push, we really want to see if it's possible to make Amazon pop. They were able to get a SAS core rep. They were able to work with the SAS core rep and say we want a premium deal position on prime day, something that's not in the dashboard, because there are spots that you can get that are not in the dashboard. When you have a SAS core rep, they vet you and they have to make sure that they think you can sell that amount. And that's part of the key, because they say this spot can sell $4 million for us. If you can't sell and you can't fulfill $4 million, we don't even want to talk to you. That's worth what the spot is. Abe: So, they were vetted, they were checked. They actually they couldn't even send enough inventory because Amazon could not process it. They had to share the information from their warehouses with Amazon and they accepted the information. Well, that day, prime Day, every single thing was turned all the way on. We launched 30 campaigns of every ad type, you know four different autos at different price points, high-priced ranking campaigns like every single type you've ever heard an experiment about. All launched on the same day and in 24 hours, they went from selling $15,000 a day on one on the hero skew. They sold a million dollars in one day of that skew, which is something like. Bradley Sutton: $15,000 to 1 million on that. So that means that there had to be a good number that was fulfilled by merchant too, because no way they had all that inventory in Amazon. Abe: Right yeah. three quarters of it was filled by merchant. yeah, so it can't be reproduced. A lot of people suggest very impressive things like it could be done if you flip the right switch. No, this is not. I would be surprised if I ever am part of a thing like this again. But I had the front row seat for it. Bradley Sutton: I love that. I love that. Now let's talk about the complete opposite. What was a disaster for somebody? Like somebody just did nothing, or maybe somebody screwed up on their discounts or they didn't realize it could stack, or have you ever what's the worst prime day you've ever heard of that happened to somebody? Abe: The worst prime day. It's a thing that keeps happening, but it's just as bad. Every single time it happens you have somebody who is not working with somebody else within the same company. They launch a coupon a week before. The new low price of 30 days is below the price of the submitted deal. Boom, your deal does not run. And every time it happens there's a meltdown because people count on prime day and all of a sudden it didn't work. They can't understand why. They tell me, Hey, why aren't we selling? Where's the volume? Why aren't we even showing for the deal? I said did anybody in your place run any kind of discount or coupon in the last…

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#574 - K-Beauty, K-Food, and Korean E-Commerce Jun 29, 2024

Show notes

Join us as we bring together a group of innovative Amazon sellers from South Korea who share their unique insights and strategies in e-commerce. We introduce James Park, making his debut on an English podcast, who takes us through his fascinating journey from studying food science engineering in Korea and biology in Germany to working in the cosmetics industry. His story unfolds with a transition from traditional employment to launching his own e-commerce business, inspired by watching our other guest, Bopyo Park, on YouTube.Our conversation continues with an exploration of the Seller Kingdom community, a dedicated space for Korean Amazon sellers. We dive into current trends among Korean sellers, such as the increasing preference for sourcing K-beauty and K-food products from Korea. Additionally, we highlight the Korean e-commerce landscape, mentioning platforms like Coupang and Naver Smart Store, which offer promising opportunities for third-party sellers. We also consider the potential and challenges for foreign sellers looking to enter the Korean market, emphasizing cultural differences and pricing strategies. Finally, we explore advanced marketing strategies for Amazon sellers, focusing on optimizing PPC campaigns and enhancing product listings. We discuss the importance of auditing accounts, understanding market trends, and leveraging tools like Helium 10 for deeper insights. Unique approaches such as using search term reports and Google trends to inform listing updates are highlighted. We also introduce the Seller Kingdom Seoul Conference, an event aimed at connecting Amazon service providers with Korean sellers. The episode wraps up with a casual conversation about favorite Korean dramas and recommendations, providing a light-hearted end to a content-rich discussion. In episode 574 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley, Bopyo, and James discuss: 00:00 - Amazon Sellers From South Korea 00:12 - Helium 10 Chrome Extension Demand Analyzer 04:41 - Career Aspirations and Education Paths 07:44 - Korean Amazon Sellers and E-Commerce Growth 13:41 - Finding Korean Amazon Seller Partners 16:54 - Innovative Marketing Strategies for Amazon Sellers 19:11 - Utilizing Trends for Business Growth 24:39 - Amazon PPC and AI Strategies for Amazon Sellers 30:13 - Korean Ramen and Silicone Manufacturing 35:54 - K-Drama Discussion with Bradley and Guests Transcript Bradley Sutton: Today we've got a couple sellers from Korea who are going to talk about a wide range of topics, including what you can look at manufacturing in Korea, Korean marketplaces that you can sell on, and some general PPC and AI strategies for Amazon sellers. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Are you browsing a Shopify, Walmart, ETSY, Alibaba or Pinterest page and maybe you see a cool product that you want to get some more data on. Well, while you're on those pages. You can actually use the Helium 10 Chrome extension demand analyzer to get instant data about what's happening on Amazon for those keywords on these other websites. Or maybe you want to then follow up and get an actual supplier quote from a company on Alibaba.com in order to see if you can get this product produced. You can do that also with the Helium 10 Demand Analyzer. Both of these are part of the Helium 10 Chrome extension, which you can download for free at h10.me/extension. Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the series sellers podcast by Helium 10. I'm your host Bradley Sutton and this is the show that's completely BS free unscripted and unrehearsed. Organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e -commerce world. And we are going to a couple parts of the world. I believe one of our guests is in New York and then we've got another guest in six o'clock in the morning on the other side of the world in Korea, Bopyo James. It's been a while. Bopyo: What’s up Bradley? Bradley Sutton: Hello, welcome, welcome. Now, this is James'. First ever English podcast and he's a little bit nervous, so I like to pick on our guests who are nervous, but there's no reason to be nervous, James. Your English is great and I know you have a lot of knowledge to share with us as well, so it's good to have you both on. Now Bopyo has been on our podcast before. If anybody wants to get a little bit more of his background, go back to episode 429 and you can learn a little bit about Bopyo's background, and he talked a lot about ChatGPT and it's actually funny in that episode some of the things that he mentioned. He would like Helium 10 to have for leveraging AI we actually already have now. So that was kind of a cool episode, so make sure to check that out now. Let's keep with James first, since this is James first time we need to get your background, James, so what city were you born and raised in Korea? James: My city is located in the Uiwang city. And then my town is two hours far from Seoul. Bradley Sutton: Where did you go to university? James: University is Kyunggi University. It's located in Suwon. And then I had experience in living in Germany, had to exchange student and then came back to South Korea and then got a job. Bradley Sutton: What were you studying, both in Korea in Suwon there and also Germany? What was your main focus of study? James: My focus. In South Korea I focused on this. My major was food science engineering, and in Germany I took a lecture regarding biology. Bradley Sutton: Interesting and now you're in the e-commerce world, so almost completely different than what you studied. Now, as Bopyo knows, and you know too about me, I watch just tons of Korean drama. You know, I'm even wearing my reply 1988 shirt right here, I'm wearing my kimchi hat here. But anyways, in Korean drama something that I learn a lot about Korean culture, in Korean drama, sometimes I'm not sure how much is fake and how much is real, but one thing I've learned is it seems like for high school or whatever you call your secondary school parents really like there's a lot of pressure to try and go to like really prestigious universities, and then the parents make you go to like the after-school studies and just like everything is about making a high score so you can qualify. Is that what happened to you, James? Or do you just do whatever you wanted? James: Actually, I did whatever I want. However, in high school. So, I studied like other high school students. I woke up like at six in the morning, I went to high school like half past seven and then did a self-study until like half past eight, and then did self-study until like half past eight, and then from half past eight to 6 pm we got a lecture and then we had a dinner and then come back to the class and then self-study until 11 pm or 12 pm. Bradley Sutton: Oh my goodness gracious. James: Yeah, that was my life. Bradley Sutton: That's exactly what I see in Korean drama. Was that the same for you Bopyo? Did you have to do something like that too? Bopyo: Yes, my parents, they always push to me you have to go good college, you have to get a good job, blah, blah, blah. A lot of things, yeah. Bradley Sutton: So, what is it called the Sky University, where it's the Seoul. Bopyo: Sky University. Yeah right, James. James: Everyone's goals is that in high school well. Bradley Sutton: That's why you know there's a lot of very great Amazon sellers there because they have such amazing education. I guess so, but I want to find the gap. So, James, when you graduated, did you work in biology or in food or anything, or what did you do after graduating university? James: Just after graduated my university. I got it and I got a job regard in the cosmetic field and that I work in a cosmetic manufacturer, so in the global business department. Bradley Sutton: So, you were working in manufacturing and then how in the world do you go from there to the e-commerce world? James: At the time I wanted to do my own business, however. So, you know, I wanted to have a my own brand and then my own product things, and then somehow, I watched the YouTube and the time and then, okay, this Amazon business I could do somehow. So, okay, I let's search my own product and then I use a Helium 10 actually at the time, and then I found something, and then at the time, I create a new design about sculpture and then that sculpture has a function of the photo frame, so this kind of a new thing in the world. However, the problem was the product doesn't have a name, and then my customer couldn't find my product, my own product, in Amazon. So, I had to spend a lot of, a lot of Amazon advertisement fee at the time. So I studied by myself like a one or two years and I spent a lot of money at the time. So I got a lot of know-how. I built up my knowledge at the time by myself, and then many CEOs in company asked me to deliver a PPC lecture in Seoul. So I did it actually for two years and then there were a lot of companies which wanted to give me an offer and I took an offer, so I became somehow PPC agency as well. Bradley Sutton: All because you first learned about the opportunity from Bopyo, and so was it called Seller Kingdom in those days when you found it. Or you just found him just from his YouTube. James: YouTube. Bradley Sutton: Okay. So then, Bopyo, at what point did you start the Seller Kingdom kind of community? Bopyo: Okay, I want to introduce myself a little bit about just a little bit. You know, maybe some people just know me. Bradley Sutton: For those who didn't hear your first episode. Please, please. Bopyo: Yeah, yeah. Hello, my name is Bopyo Park. Yeah, nice to see you guys. Yeah, I started selling on Amazon in 2019 and have been doing so ever since. I've achieved seven figures since and I'm currently preparing for launching a new product. Throughout this journey, I've been sharing my Amazon selling experience on my YouTube channel, so reading to the creation of the Seller Kingdom community, dedicated to helping Korean Amazon sellers. Yeah, that's why Seller Kingdom are today. Yeah, yeah. Bradley Sutton: Okay, so you started selling on Amazon first, and then you're like, hey, let me make some videos about it. And then like, hey, this community is growing bigger. And then that's how Seller Kingdom started. It's kind of similar to how Helium 10 started. You know the founder of Helium 10, Manny Coats. He started selling on Amazon. He started a podcast so not YouTube, but podcast first and then he's like, hey, let's go ahead and start Helium 10 after that. How many people are in your community? Bopyo: I think I just count before I enter this podcast, right? So over 5,000 members in Seller Kingdom right now, yeah. Bradley Sutton: And how much? How many are based in Korea compared to maybe just you know Korean Americans or based in outside of Korea? Bopyo: Maybe 70% people. They are living in South Korea and maybe 30% people, maybe 25% people living in United States and 5% people living in maybe Europe and Japan and different all over the world. Bradley Sutton: Okay, now you know, as many people know and you guys know, you know I've worked with Korean companies for over 20 years and even in the Amazon world, even be way before I was in Helium 10, you know I was working with. You know Korean beauty companies like Innisfree, and skin food and things like that. You know, helping them get their Amazon started. But my partners, who have always been Korean, you know their specialty was not necessarily private label but helping like Korean brands get started in USA. Now for your community. Are most people just doing the traditional method of, hey, let me manufacture a product, maybe China or India, and just private label product? Or are there a lot of also people bringing existing Korean brands to the US and European markets? Bopyo: I think maybe three years ago maybe many people want to sourcing from China to selling United States. But right now the Korean people, they now know Korean K-beauty product is a really good product and that also K-food, a lot of K-food product. I mean grocery product like a Tteokbokki and Kimchi. A lot of things right. Bradley Sutton: You know what, I started wholesaling before Kopiko. Those little coffee candies. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but yeah, it was even wholesale. It's so popular in America now. Bopyo: Yes, so I think that's why a lot of Korean people Korean Amazon sellers right now are trying to sourcing from Korea and to sell United States. So maybe they want to create a new brand, or they just sourcing from some brand to introduce to United Market. Bradley Sutton: Yeah, okay cool. Now, one time I actually last year went out to dinner with you. Guys weren't there, I don't think, but I went with some other people out to some Samgyeopsal restaurant and some of the sellers were there. They sell in US, but then some of them they were also talking about selling in Korean marketplaces, because you know there is no Amazon in Korea as far as Amazon marketplace. So, James, What are some of the top nowadays in 2024? What are some of the top Korean marketplaces that are maybe similar to like Amazon style that are that are in Korea right now? James: That would be definitely Coupang. Bradley Sutton: And can just any buddy sell. Is it like a third-party marketplace where they know or maybe coupon has their own products but then other people can ever can sell on that platform, kind of like third-party sellers, or how does it work? James: The system is really, really similar to Amazon Marketplace. So Coupang has their own product, private brand. However, their Coupang sellers can sell their own brand product as well, and then some of them they buy this cosmetic from, for example, like a Skinfood Innisfree. They bought this kind of product and then they sell like wholesale. Bradley Sutton: Now me as an American citizen, can I sell on Coupang or some of these other marketplaces in Korea? James: As far as I remember. Yeah. I heard that there are many Chinese sellers in Coupang as well. Bradley Sutton: Bopyo, what do a lot of your community, do they sell both on Amazon and in Korean marketplaces like Coupang, or are they mainly just Amazon? Bopyo: I think a lot of people now trying to sell Amazon and then Coupang and then they have a different marketplace also I think they call Naver Smart Store. I think Smart Store is more focused on private label product, for example, like their own brand right, and then Coupang is a more open market. So, if I'm Korean Amazon seller, if I'm making you know good product, maybe they want to trying to sell three different way, like Smart Store and then Coupang. Trying to sell three different ways like Smart Store and then Coupang and then Amazon United States market or Japan, Amazon Japan, because Japan and Korea is so close right now. Bradley Sutton: Is it something that you would suggest that foreign sellers, be it American sellers, European sellers, look into more to be selling in Korean marketplaces, or do you think it's not much of an opportunity due to exchange rate, or what's your thoughts on that? Bopyo: I think the Korean market, e-commerce market, is a really big market. So, if they want to sell some kind of product on the Korean market, I think it's going to be a good idea, but also a little bit difficult to enter the Korean market. Because they think it's going to be a good idea, but also a little bit difficult to into Korean market because they have their own culture and Korean market price is so different than United States or Europe, different world. So if you are not living in South Korea, this is a little bit harder but market price is really good. So, looking for some partner, maybe Korean partner? We have so many Korean sellers. S…

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Helium 10 Buzz 6/27/24: Prime Day Dates Announced | Amazon Becoming Temu-ish | Target Partnering with Shopify Jun 27, 2024

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lk about Helium 10’s newest features, and provide a training tip for the week for serious sellers of any level.Amazon’s 10th Prime Day Event Returns July 16 & 17, With Millions of Exclusive Deals for Prime Membershttps://press.aboutamazon.com/2024/6/amazons-10th-prime-day-event-returns-july-16-17-with-millions-of-exclusive-deals-for-prime-membersWalmart's 'largest deals event ever' to rival Amazon Prime Dayhttps://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/walmarts-largest-deals-event-ever-to-rival-amazon-prime-day--plus-sales-to-shop-now-215140714.htmlAmazon to launch discount section with direct shipping from China, the Information reportshttps://www.reuters.com/technology/amazon-launch-discount-section-with-direct-shipping-china-information-reports-2024-06-26/Target and Shopify Partner to Help Consumers Discover and Shop an Expanded Assortment on Target.comhttps://corporate.target.com/press/release/2024/06/target-and-shopify-partner-to-help-consumers-discover-and-shop-an-expanded-assortment-on-target-comBuy with Prime is helping this rapid hydration brand not only increase shopper conversion, but also bring in new customers.https://buywithprime.amazon.com/customer-stories/case-study-hydralyteAmazon is working on a ChatGPT competitorhttps://qz.com/amazon-generative-ai-chatbot-chatgpt-metis-1851558879Stay ahead of the curve with insights on the latest updates within Adtomic, especially the game-changing brand performance dashboard that offers critical data for making savvy pay-per-click advertising decisions. Our training tip of the week emphasizes the importance of leveraging historical data to boost profits during Prime Day, illustrated vividly with a real-world example of a Tyneco vacuum. Tune in to gain actionable advice that will help you optimize your advertising efforts and dominate search results as Prime Day approaches. In this episode of the Weekly Buzz by Helium 10, Carrie talks about: 00:49 - Prime Day Dates Announced 01:35 - Walmart Summer Deals 02:20 - Amazon Temu-ish Service? 04:49 - Target and Shopify Partner 05:45 - Buy with Prime on Homepage 07:32 - Amazon Version of ChatGPT? 08:48 - Helium 10 New Feature Alerts 09:46 - Pro Training Tip: Leveraging Historical Data to Boost Prime Day Sales ► Instagram: instagram.com/serioussellerspodcast ► Free Amazon Seller Chrome Extension: https://h10.me/extension ► Sign Up For Helium 10: https://h10.me/signup (Use SSP10 To Save 10% For Life) ► Learn How To Sell on Amazon: https://h10.me/ft ► Watch The Podcasts On YouTube: youtube.com/@Helium10/videos Transcript Carrie Miller: Prime Day Dates announced. Is Amazon trying to be like Temu and Amazon's new version of ChatGPT? This and more on this week's episode of the Weekly Buzz. Bradley Sutton: 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 is our Helium 10 Weekly Buzz, where we give you a rundown of all the news stories that are going on in the Amazon, Walmart, e-commerce world. We highlight the latest new feature alerts from Helium 10, and we review a training tip of the week that'll give you serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. Now, today, our host is going to be Keri Miller. So, Keri, take it away and let us know what's buzzing. Carrie Miller: Okay, let's go ahead and get into it. The first thing I want to talk about is the Prime Day dates were just announced. So Amazon officially announced Prime Day 2024 dates, which is going to be July 16th and 17th. And now something interesting about these dates is that Bradley Sutton actually on this very show, he actually predicted that Prime Day would be on these exact dates way back in April. So let's go ahead and go back to that clip and show Bradley's predictions for Prime Day. Bradley Sutton: Amazon hasn't necessarily announced the new Prime Day, but I'm like 95% sure I was able to figure out when it's going to be All right, so bear with me. Here's why I think that and by the way, spoiler alert, I that's just my rough guess. Carrie Miller: So there you have it. Bradley predicted these exact dates for Prime Day, so how cool is that? All right up next we have Walmart. Okay, so Walmart announced their largest deals ever, which is going to be from July 8th to July 11th. Now this is coming off of Walmart Plus week. That was last week, so during these days you can actually expect discounts on pretty much everything. Walmart Plus members are actually going to have early access to shop the best deals of the season by beginning at noon Eastern on July 8th, which is actually five hours before the rest of the public actually gets access, and this, I believe, is probably in competition with Amazon's prime day. So they're doing a lot of great deals over at Walmart. So not only as a consumer, that's gonna be helpful, but for sellers, it helps to attract a lot of people to the site, so really good for everyone all around. Carrie Miller: Okay, next, now this one. This next piece of news is a doozy. Okay, so Amazon plans to launch a section on its shopping site featuring cheap items that ship directly to overseas consumers from warehouses in China. Okay, so this seems to be a response to sites like Temu and Shein, and I actually asked some sellers what they thought about this move and they said they believe that Amazon is being more of a follower and not innovating and creating their own path. So they're basically trying to maybe catch up with Temu and Shein. I'm not really sure. Some other. Some other sellers also said that they think there will be an initial negative reaction, but buyers will probably try it out. So I'm curious to know what you think. Do you think buyers are going to be excited about this? I'm not really sure. Someone else mentioned that they think this could be what puts dollar stores kind of fully out of business. We've seen some of the dollar stores going out of business recently and they think that this would be a kind of a direct competition to more of the dollar store quality, so that that is another interesting perspective. Carrie Miller: The products in this program will be delivered from China directly from China to the consumer between nine and 11 days. So a big question in my mind would be will Amazon allow American third party sellers to drop ship from warehouses in China as well? Some sellers already store their products in China in warehouses, like with SKU Drop, and it's definitely something that they could do. Amazon said they are going to start signing up Chinese sellers in this summer and they're going to begin accepting inventory in the fall. This article also highlights that sellers in this program will be able to produce small batches to test the demand for any new products that they launch. So that's something else that we know that we have questions about. You know, a lot of third party sellers like to do the same thing. Will third party sellers have the same luxuries to be able to do this without losing rank, things like that? So really a lot of questions in my mind with this new development. Carrie Miller: This article also questions if these packages that are coming directly to a consumer from China, if they will be exempt from US customs, since there is a provision that exempts individual packages that are valued at less than $800 from taxation. Now, third-party sellers, you know, if they're not allowed to do this, they still have to pay the taxes that are coming in. You know, when we ship goods in from China. So that kind of defeats the whole purpose of the taxation there. It really is going to hinder, maybe, third party American sellers. So that's something to really think about too. All right, so I'm really curious to know what you all think. What do you think? This is a good thing? This is a bad thing. Are you enraged? Are you happy about it? What do you think? Please let us know in the comments. Carrie Miller: Okay, so that leads me to my next piece of news, and that is that Target and Shopify are partnering to offer a selection of targets Popular merchants, such as their true classic and caden lane, to offer their products on target plus. The new partnership with Shopify will expand target plus and will give consumers more options to purchase from these selected brands. Target will also be the first mass retailer to work with Shopify to bring select merchants products into their physical stores in the months to come. If you want to apply to sell online and target, you can actually go and apply on target plus through the marketplace connect app. I really do believe that, with everything that's happening, all the changes that are going on, I do think it's really important to diversify. So you know, getting on target and starting to sell on target might be a really good option for a lot of third party sellers. So check it out, if you haven't already done that, because it's potentially a good opportunity to not only sell on target but to get in target stores. All right. Carrie Miller: So the next piece of news is a case study out of Amazon and this is for buy with prime. Now, this is a company called Hydralight, and Buy with Prime showed how they actually helped this particular brand increase shopper conversion and bring in new customers. The study highlights and they have it down here a little bit it's highlighting 16% increase in conversion rate, 37% of new customers purchased through Buy with Prime and 90% of the Buy with Prime customers are new orders. So that's not even the most interesting part, though. I know if you haven't added this button to your site, it's probably a good idea to do so. But the most interesting thing is I actually saw a post from Destiny Wishun from Better Media on LinkedIn and she actually showed a screenshot of these buy with prime merchants and their ads on the homepage actually directing straight to their actual site. So they're direct to customer site, which is really interesting. So I think they might be testing this out and I'm not sure if it was actually an ad or if, what the whole situation was, but there is. If you're interested, you can look on her LinkedIn. There is a whole clip of it and she shows how these actual little icons on the homepage are leading customers to the direct to consumer sites. So that could be a really good motivation and reason to participate in Buy with Prime, if you haven't already done it. I think there's a lot of evidence to show that Buy with Prime is really helpful for your conversion rate on your own site. But then if Amazon is going to start promoting your products on actual Amazon and directing them to your website, that is something that could be really amazing. So my question is what do you all think about this, and have you added the Buy With Prime button to your website? Leave comments below on that. Carrie Miller: All right, so let's get into the last piece of news, and that is that Amazon is working on an AI chatbot, internally called Metis, to rival OpenAI's ChatGPT. Okay, the chatbot is going to be accessible through a web browser and it's going to be powered by one of the company's internal AI models called Olympus. Olympus is supposedly even more powerful than Amazon's publicly available AI model, which is called Titan. Now Metis can generate conversational texts and image-based answers, provide source links, suggest follow-up questions and generate images. Amazon also reportedly wants to use retrieval, augmented generation or the RAG method for Metis, meaning the chatbot would be able to reference knowledge outside of its original training data and therefore could provide more up-to-date answers. Metis is reportedly also meant to be an AI agent, I guess, kind of your like personal agent, I guess, capable of completing tasks such as turning on lights and booking flights. Carrie Miller: So the question I have for all of you is with this change, do you think that more people are going to be doing voice search through Alexa? Do you think this kind of AI integration is going to change the way shoppers find products on Amazon and other websites? I do believe it is going to kind of change the context and way people are searching for products, but I'm really curious to know what you all think out there. All right, in our next segment, we are going to be talking about the latest rollout within Atomic and this is really important. Going to be located in Atomic and you're going to go to the dashboard and then scroll all the way to the bottom where it says brand performance. So what is being shown here is brand performance data and what you're going to be able to see is you can see the number of brand searches, you can see the detail page views and you can see the customer conversion rate. You can see the new percent of new to brand customers. You can see the shopper engagement rate. You can see all this great information all in one place and it's just really giving sellers more information that they need to make better data-driven decisions in their pay-per-click advertising. So it's going to allow you to see category comparisons how many clicks are within your category, how many detail page views are within that category and how you actually compare to the average. So I think this is huge in helping you to make better data-driven decisions in your pay-per-click advertising. Carrie Miller: Okay, so let's go ahead and get into this week's training tip of the week Now. I think this is one of the coolest things for Prime Day that you could utilize to help you make lots and lots of money this Prime Day, and it's going into historical data. So what I'm going to do, I'm just gonna go ahead and I'm gonna share my screen and show you how this strategy works and how it can help you to make tons of money this next Prime Day. Okay, so I did an example and I took an ASIN from Amazon and this is the Tyneco vacuum, because I know it does pretty well on Prime Day every year. I know I've purchased one and many people I know have purchased one, so I wanted to use this one as an example, and what we're going to do is I just did a reverse ASIN search on it and then what we're going to do is we're going to go into historical trend. Carrie Miller: Now, once I click on historical trend, you can see all of these months. This goes back 24 months of data and what I want to do is I want to go back to the month of July of 2023, which is last year's prime day. So I'm going to click on that pillar right there with July of 2023. And then I'm going to click on apply filters. Now this is going to show basically all of the keywords that this ASIN was ranking for organic and sponsored and you can also see the search volume. So if we look through here, you can see their organic rank in here for a lot of these different words. Now, one thing that I like to do is okay, I can see these great keywords and where they were ranked and all of that, but I want to look at Prime Day specific keywords. So I look at, I go into the filter phrases containing and I put in Prime and I hit apply filters. Carrie Miller: Now this is going to show you all of the kind of Prime Day related terms that you're going to be able to utilize and maybe do pay-per-click advertising on, and you could even do an evergreen cap campaign on this, maybe even throughout the next year, to make sure that you can kind of start ranking and stay on top of these. But we've got Prime Day vacuum here and that they are organically ranked 230. Okay, they're not even doing any sponsored ads. This has an 8,500 search vol…

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#573 - Amazon Prime Day Prep Checklist Jun 25, 2024

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Want to crush Prime Day 2024? We reveal game-changing strategies to maximize your sales! From prepping your inventory to harnessing the power of influencers and email lists, this episode is packed with actionable strategies. Discover how to optimize your pay-per-click ads by tweaking budgets, targeting your own ASINs, and leveraging the Cerebro Historical Trend Tool to stay ahead of the competition. We'll also guide you on adding last-minute coupons, and provide a Prime Day checklist to ensure your success. Learn how to launch new ASINs effectively, set up a brand website, and improve conversion rates through split-testing. We discuss the importance of fast delivery and the advantages of using FBA and the "Buy with Prime" button for seamless order fulfillment. You'll also get tips on building an email list for future events, and hear recommendations for resources like Bradley Sutton's Maldives Honeymoon podcasts for comprehensive product launch strategies. Tune in now to make Prime Day your biggest sales event ever! In episode 573 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Carrie talks about: 00:00 - Prime Day 2024 Strategies and Tips 03:15 - Driving Traffic for Prime Day 09:33 - Cerebro Historical Trend Tool Overview 14:00 - Download The Checklist Here 14:21 - Building an Email List Strategies 17:12 - Split Testing A+ Content Conversion Factors 17:40 - Launching Strategies and Fulfillment Tips 20:50 - Expanding Into Walmart From Australia ► Instagram: instagram.com/serioussellerspodcast ► Free Amazon Seller Chrome Extension: https://h10.me/extension ► Sign Up For Helium 10: https://h10.me/signup (Use SSP10 To Save 10% For Life) ► Learn How To Sell on Amazon: https://h10.me/ft ► Watch The Podcasts On Youtube: youtube.com/@Helium10/videos Transcript Carrie Miller: Did you know that you can make Prime Day 2024 your biggest Prime Day ever by implementing a few different strategies? That's right. Today, I'm going to be talking about some incredible strategies that can help you to make Prime Day 2024 your biggest Prime Day ever. I'm also going to be doing a live AMA. So stay tuned. Bradley Sutton: 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 is our monthly special training with Ask Me Anything session. And today's host is going to be Carrie and she's going to be going over some Prime Day strategies for you guys like, you know, we got Prime Day coming up, but even if you catch this on the replay, guys, guess what? Prime Day is something that comes kind of like twice a year because there's like a usually special other deal day. So still pay attention to this episode, even if you're watching this or listening to it after Prime Day, she's going to give some good strategies. And then also, you guys came in and gave some pretty good questions for her after that. That we're also airing live. So don't forget to join these sessions every month. These ask me anything sessions. I highly recommend it. Usually, I'm the one on there, sometimes Carrie will be on there, sometimes Shivali will be on there, but get your questions ready for us. It could be about any episode you've had or your Amazon business, and we'll get to those questions live. Bradley Sutton: One more thing, if you want more personalized help and don't want to air out your questions in public, don't forget there's a way to have one-on-ones with the Evangelism Team myself, Carrie, Shivali. Make sure to sign up for Helium 10 Elite h10.me/elite, h10.me/elite. If you've got the Diamond Plan, it's only $99 extra per month. You'll get special trains with Kevin King. You'll get a special trains with me and Carrie, and even one-on-ones once a month you can sign up for. So make sure to do that. But without further ado, let's go ahead and get into Carrie's training. Carrie, take it away. Carrie Miller: All right, thank you all for joining, and today we're gonna talk about Prime Day, and this is our monthly training, where we allow everyone into this, and it's about Prime Day. And Prime Day is coming up, and this could potentially be your biggest day of the year, and I wanna just give you some tactics and some strategies that are gonna help you to basically make it your biggest Prime Day ever. So, before I get started though, I wanted to make sure that you all know that you can put your questions in the comments, and I'm going to do my best to answer all of your questions for Prime Day because I want to make sure that, you know, you guys are all completely prepared for this. Okay, so this is my Prime Day prep strategies. Okay, so I'm going to go through you slowly, but again, if you have any questions, make sure that you drop them into the chat because I'm going to be answering questions at the end as well. If I see something, though, that relates over in the chat box then I'll make sure to answer that as I go. Carrie Miller: But okay, so here are some to do things now. In two days, your inventory should be at the Amazon warehouses, so hopefully you all have kind of prepared extra inventory and you've sent those in to the Amazon warehouses. If not, maybe you can just still try to get them in but it's going to be a lot harder. But just wanted to remind you. That's two days from now, so hopefully that's all done. And here's just some things to kind of think about ways that you can drive more traffic and have this to be a big Prime Day. You can create a discount code within Amazon and you can actually send that to your email list. So if you do have an email list that you want to give a special Prime Day discount to encourage them to purchase your products, then this is a good way to do it to kind of help keep traffic going. It can help with some outside traffic. Another thing is I personally always do this. I actually haven't done Prime Day deals, so Prime Day deals you already had to submit those, but I always add a coupon if I don't have a Prime Day deal going on, and they do very well. So I always make sure to have some sort of discount and coupons on there, on the actual listing itself. Carrie Miller: You can also utilize influencers. If you do work with some influencers, a lot of them really like to showcase products. So if you do have connections like that, then this is a really perfect time to start utilizing influencers. Here's some strategies for your pay-per-click ads. Okay, the first thing is you're going to want to increase your ads budget for the high performing campaigns. Carrie Miller: Now, obviously, if you're not really running any deals, you're not going to really want to do this for those products. This is for products that you're running deals that you know not going to really want to do this for those products. This is for products that you're running deals that, you know, are going to have deals like coupons or a prime day deal on. You want to increase to make sure that you don't run out of budget. And another thing is you want to run Product Targeting Ads against your own ASINS for defense. So you don't want to spend all this money for the clicks to get onto your listing, for then somebody just easily click away. So whatever you can do to kind of, you know, make sure that you are kind of defending your territory with those Product Targeting Ads against your own ASINs is a really good idea. And then you're going to also want to increase your bids for high converting products and then with deals, and then decrease your bids for those that don't have any deals because people are looking for deals on this day. So you don't want to waste a lot of PPC spend for products that you don't have any deals on. So just keep that in mind for just making sure that you stay in budget for Prime Day. Carrie Miller: Another thing is you're going to want to turn on the Sponsored Display Retargeting Campaigns to capture traffic that doesn't actually convert during Prime Day because you can retarget them. You can maybe continue some of your coupons or discounts going on for a few more days and then see if you can capture those sales. And then also you can update your headline copy to, you know, mention deals or you can add different photos based on whatever it is that you want to do for Prime Day. So, you know, I think headline definitely, you know, just headlining that you, you are running a deal is a good idea for your ads. Definitely you know just headlining that you, you are running a deal is a good idea for your ads, okay, so then make sure also that your listing is retail ready. So that means like when you're running all these ads, you want to make sure that it's done so that it's gonna convert. Carrie Miller: And there's a lot of things that you can do to make sure that you do optimize your listing and the first thing is you know if your brand registered, you want to make sure you have you’re A-plus content added with a brand story. I actually did this, I think, like when it came when brand story came out, I started adding my other products in the brand story and I started noticing people buying products that they don't normally buy together and that was pretty amazing. I really think that it's a really good opportunity to make sure that you have, you know those that brand story in there so that you can get those kind of like bundle deals, I guess you could say, without actually doing a virtual bundle. So I think if you aren't doing that, then you're really missing out. So when you do your brand story, you can write, you know, a little blurb about your brand and then you can actually add your products and people can scroll to the right, or is it to the left? They basically can scroll to see the other products that are available within your brand. You can also, once you've got brand, your brand story on all your A-plus content. Then you have access, you unlock access to premium A-plus content and so you can add a comparison chart on there and the comparison chart also allows you another placement to add more products from your line as well. So you can kind of cross sell and make sure to kind of like increase your cart value. Especially, you know, on Prime Day you're spending more on ads and you're spending, you're giving discounts, so you want to kind of increase those, those cart values. Carrie Miller: Also, add virtual bundles. Now I talked before about, you know, making sure that that you're doing those Product Targeting Ads to the ASIN Targeting Ads, to make sure that you're doing those product targeting ads to the ASIN targeting ads, to make sure that you're defending your products. But adding virtual bundles can also really help defend your listing because it takes up a whole row of where advertisements could be. So this is another way to defend your listing. So if you haven't had virtual bundles, definitely put them on. Some people are always like I put a virtual bundles and they didn't really sell. Well, honestly, for this purpose, the purpose is really to take up space and make sure that you're defending your position and your whole page from competitors advertising and getting those clicks away from your actual listing. Also, you're going to want to update your images, if needed. Carrie Miller: This is one of the most incredible tools for optimizing your images. I love that you can actually go on here to this little media comparison tool. So what I did was I put in a bunch of ASINs. You can put your ASIN in there. First, we put my ASIN in here first this is our Mania's Mysterious Oddities and then we put our competitors in here and you can see a bunch of things that are going on. You can even see if they're running coupons. So this is good to kind of keep track of them. Carrie Miller: But my favorite thing is, since you're preparing, is media comparison. So you're going to be able to see where what images your competitors are doing that maybe you're not. So you can see all the images all stacked on top of each other. So maybe some of your competitors have, you know, dimensions and you're like, oh, I didn't even do a dimensions photo, or they have a cool infographic that you want to kind of do a similar one like that, or lifestyle images that you hadn't thought of. That is a great way to kind of continue to optimize your images and you can also see, you know, which listings have videos. It'll show you this one has one video, so you can see okay, my competitors aren't even, they don't even have a video, and you can put up a video. That's another thing. If you haven't added a video to your listing, this actually unlocks for Amazon influencers to be able to post up in the upper carousel actual video reviews of your product and this can really help with your sales. So if you open up this by just adding a video in, I think that can really people that are doing the influencing program can kind of find you a little bit easier and then they can place their products or their review videos on your actual listing. So it's another great way to get more videos for free, basically. Carrie Miller: So the next thing I want to go back to my presentation here. I went all the way back to the beginning here. You want to update your keywords? Okay, so I'm going to show you a little bit about our Cerebro Historical Trend Tool, and I absolutely love the Historical Trend Tool. It's one of the coolest tools that I think we've come out with. You can go back in time and you can find where any, basically, you can go back at 24 months, okay. You can find out where any ASIN was ranking in the organic and the sponsored positions. You can also see the search volume history of any keywords so it’s really, really an amazing tool to, basically, you know, get ahead of the competition. So I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to show you that tool. Okay, so I already I already went into Cerebro and I actually took a product that I know sells super, super well on Prime Day and I put in the ace in here. Carrie Miller: And this is just a single search. When you're doing the Historical Trend, and what you're going to do is you're going to click on the show Historical Trend Tool and I think this is kind of hidden some people don't know where it is. It's literally right in the middle here and you click on this. You click on show historical trend. Last year, Prime Day was July, I believe, of 2023. So I'm gonna click on this July of 2023. You can see that it's highlighted here. So we're gonna click on July 2023 and then I'm gonna click apply filters and this is going to give me all of the keywords that this particular product was ranking for and sponsored and organic positioning. So one thing you could do is you could say, hey, I want to, like, I want to see where they were ranked between you know, in the sponsored position, between one and 20. And you can apply those filters, you can see where their, you know, main targets were for their sponsored ads, so you can kind of get some new keywords that way. Another thing is, once you're in here you can also kind of sort and filter for particular keywords and one of the ones I like to do for Prime Day is just prime. Okay, so I'm just going to see what keyword phrases have prime in it and I'm going to go down here and look okay, so this is kind of incredible because this vacuum literally I think is one of the top sellers for Prime Day and their organic rank for Prime Day vacuum is 230. Carrie Miller: So not…

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#572 - Avoiding Pitfalls In Sourcing & Importing Jun 22, 2024

Show notes

Join us as we explore crucial importing and inventory management strategies with Afolabi Oyerokun, a seasoned Amazon seller with over 20 years of experience. Afolabi takes us through his remarkable journey from Nigeria to the United States, where he transitioned from fashion design to computer animation before making his mark in e-commerce. Discover his insights on avoiding costly pitfalls when importing products from overseas, managing inventory effectively, and ensuring you don't run out or overstock. In this engaging episode, Afolabi shares essential tips on navigating U.S. customs seizures and maintaining effective communication with overseas factories. Learn about the common reasons for customs stopping a container and the importance of accurate documentation to avoid severe penalties. He also highlights the risks of using email for factory communications and suggests using platforms like WeChat to prevent scams. Plus, get the lowdown on labeling requirements for imported goods to ensure compliance with U.S. and Amazon regulations. Listen in as we discuss the critical role of third-party logistics (3PLs) in maintaining a diverse and efficient supply chain, despite Amazon's introduction of its AWD. Afolabi outlines the strategic advantages of using 3PLs for fulfilling orders across multiple marketplaces and offers practical tips for optimizing shipping. Additionally, we emphasize the importance of compliance with Customs and Border Protection (CBP) regulations and introduce a new tool to help track and ensure compliance with U.S. government regulations. Finally, get to know Afolabi a little better as we share contact information for his services and enjoy a light-hearted exchange about Nigerian cuisine. In episode 572 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Afolabi discuss: 00:00 - Importing Products From Overseas 03:54 - From Fashion to Tech 10:17 - Avoiding Customs Seizures in Online Selling 11:20 - Customs Seizure, Communication, and Mold Ownership 22:45 - Factory Confiscates Mold During Dispute 25:27 - Supply Chain Visibility and Customs Compliance 28:52 - Importance of Taking CBP Seriously 31:06 - Online Contact Information for Tariff Services3 ► Instagram: instagram.com/serioussellerspodcast ► Free Amazon Seller Chrome Extension: https://h10.me/extension ► Sign Up For Helium 10: https://h10.me/signup (Use SSP10 To Save 10% For Life) ► Learn How To Sell on Amazon: https://h10.me/ft ► Watch The Podcasts On YouTube: youtube.com/@Helium10/videos Transcript Bradley Sutton: Today's guest has got tons of strategies to help you avoid potential pitfalls that would be extremely costly when importing products from overseas, but he's also got a wealth of experience since he started selling on Amazon over 20 years ago. 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 completely BS-free, unscripted and unrehearsed. Organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. And it's funny for the first time in like 570 episodes, I was recording an episode last week and then noticed that the recording wasn't working, so we're having to start all over again. So thanks to our guests for being accommodating, but at the same time, thanks to my terrible memory, I think I already forgot most of what we had talked about already. So it's going to be still new for me, just as it is for the audience right here. So, Afolabi, welcome to the show. How's it going this morning? Thank you again for coming on for a second time. Afolabi: I'm good. Thank you, Bradley, for having me over. Thanks a lot, I'm excited. Bradley Sutton: Awesome! Now we were talking about where I'm from right before this call, where I'm at right now. Where are you in the United States right now? Afolabi: I'm in Pennsylvania. I'm sitting at a 3PL here in Eastern PA. Bradley Sutton: Ah, so this is not your home, this is like where you work, your office. Afolabi: Correct. This is our office. Bradley Sutton: And where were you born and raised? Afolabi: Born in Nigeria, West Africa. I came into the US this January of 97. Bradley Sutton: Ah, okay, now hold on. This is something new already we didn't talk about last time, because this weekend I was at a church event and I met somebody from Nigeria and maybe I'll throw a picture up of that. But I asked him I'm a foodie, so I ask him if I find a good Nigerian restaurant here, what should I order? And he said something let's see if this is what you suggest too. He said fish, pepper soup. So is that a great cuisine that I should try for Nigerian food? Afolabi: Fish pepper soup is good, beef pepper soup is good and then you can. If you like rice, you can eat jollof rice. I love rice. It's spelled j-o-l-l-o-f. It's a traditional, uh, very nice, uh tasting rice. But I have to caution you on the fish pepper soup. If you don't like hot, spicy food, don't. Bradley Sutton: That's no problem. All right, the rest of the audience, you guys, beware. Me, I don't have to worry about that I love hot spicy food. So that makes it even more. That makes it even more exciting for me to taste it. Afolabi: Good. Bradley Sutton: All right, excellent. Anyways, we're not here to uh to talk about food. Otherwise, yeah, my diet is day one today and I'm already going to lose out on that if I get too hungry here. But let's talk about, let's go back more to your origin story. So did you attend university in the United States or back in Nigeria? Afolabi: Yes, so I had some university in Nigeria and then I transferred and came here to New York at the Fashion Institute of Technology, F.I.T. as everybody knew it, and I majored in fashion design for my first two years and then the final two years was in computer animation and interactive media. Weird right? Bradley Sutton: Yeah, that's a big contrast. Some people say oh, what's your major? Oh, I'm majoring in business and I minor in management or something like that or maybe a language, but your double major was IT and also fashion. So how did you end up like, what was your first dabble in e-commerce and what year, and what did you do? Afolabi: I did some little freelance work here and there, and then I came up with the shoe designs while I was doing freelance for a company in New York. Bradley Sutton: And there's your fashion design coming in already. I like it. Afolabi: Now, bear in mind, I did not do shoe designs, I didn't do footwear designs when I was doing fashion, but I just liked all these Nike shoes and all these really cool shoes. I was just inspired. So, I started designing my own shoes. And now, when I had a computer full of shoe designs, now the next stage is how do I make these shoes? So, I was looking all over. I couldn't find any shoe manufacturer, and then I sent inquiries out. Those were the days Alibaba was just coming up. It wasn't very popular at all. Anyway, I found some Mr. Johnson somewhere in Taiwan that replied to my email and it's like no, you have to come here. We can make your shoes, but you got to come here. I'm like okay, whatever. Afolabi: So I went to Taiwan with the last dollar in my hands. I didn't even have money for the hotel. My host had to pay for my hotel. So I went to and they didn't know I didn't have the hotel. They were just being, you know good host. So I went to Taiwan, met with Mr. Johnston and that was the beginning of me making my shoes. And after I made the shoes, I you know my wife reached out one way or the other. She reached out to Amazon that you know Amazon was just getting out of selling books, only to start it. They just opened up the platform for. Bradley Sutton: When was this? Early 2000s? Afolabi: 2002. Bradley Sutton: 2002. Afolabi: Yes, so that was 2002. And Amazon. You know, some rep in Amazon said oh wow, we like these shoes. You want, would you like, to come on board our platform? Like, yeah, I don't have any other choice. You know how come? You know? So I, uh, I started selling those shoes there and they were doing really good until we realized that they were made too small, they were like a size smaller and uh, by the way, these are some of the things, things I shared in the model, you know, in the Freedom Ticket. For people that are listening, you know, I would say for them to go get that and listen to my full story there. Bradley Sutton: Okay, interesting, all right, so now was that? So then Amazon kind of became your main income in the early two thousands? Or were you also selling online, or how? How did you end up, you know? Cause you're down to your last dollar when, when you got started here. So what happened? Afolabi: So, I was selling on Amazon but it wasn’t, there was no FBA right, so we were fulfilling it by ourselves. It was so hard and I had a side gig which I was doing, you know, graphics and web for people on the side, and I went to a footwear show in New York. It’s called Fanny, F-F-A-N-Y. And I met some people and they were like “How did you make these shoes?” And I told them and they said, oh, can you make us shoes too? So I started doing consulting for other individuals that want to make their own shoes. So that's how I kept on keeping the body and soul together while I was building the brand on Amazon and when the shoes were made small, so we started getting a lot of returns, people saying, oh, I have to return this and buy a higher size. So people were returning it, they'll buy a size eight, They'll return it and buy a size nine. And it was just a nightmare and I couldn't take it. So I found a liquidator or some guy out of Florida and he bought all my inventory and that's how I ended that part to sell off all my inventory. Bradley Sutton: So then, but now you kind of found out that, hey, I've got a thing for this, you know design, I've got a thing for importing. This is maybe something I can help out with. Afolabi: Correct. Bradley Sutton: And then, was that the kind of start of your consulting company? Afolabi: Yes. Bradley Sutton: That you've been doing ever since. Afolabi: Yes, so that's how sourcing and logistics started for me. I started sourcing for a lot of companies providing logistical support and then somehow, in 2014, my friend you know came to me and said, hey, let's sell on Amazon. I'm like I've done that before. You know, it was too hard. He's like no, no, no, it's different now. You know they have something called FBA. I said what's that? He's like no, they'll fulfill the order for you. You just ship it to their warehouse. They'll do the pick and pack and ship them. Oh, that's easy. So we came up. He came up with some cool designs and signs and banners and school supplies. So that's how we went back into Amazon. We were selling craft vinyl, we were selling anything we could lay our hands on. It was so easy to rank, it was so easy to launch. Those were the days that viral launch was also, you know, getting started and stuff. And so we were. We were growing really fast because, you know there was there were no competition. You know people hadn't woken up to Amazon. So selling on Amazon became our main income at that time. Bradley Sutton: OK, all right, interesting. Now you reference that you're in in Freedom Ticket. So, yes, anybody who has a Helium 10 and has a Starter plan, Platinum plan or above has full access to our full Freedom Ticket course, which is more than 20 hour course with every aspect of selling online that you would need and Afolabi 's module is under compliance and risk management. It's called mistakes to avoid when importing products. We're not going to do the whole thing today, but I want to give some highlights from here, just so that people can understand some of your expertise and you can go ahead and help people out with some things. But my first question is one of the things that you mentioned in your module was about custom seizures and how people can avoid that. So, first of all, what is a custom seizure? Sounds very dramatic. And then how can people avoid? Or, you know, nobody can 100% fully make themselves foolproof, but what are the things that people can do to make that less likely of happening? Afolabi: Yes, correct, thanks. So custom seizure is when the US customs just flags your container or flags a container containing your product for examination because they're suspecting something. It could be randomly done, or it might be that your freight forwarder or your broker has been under their watch list and they want to start looking deeper into all the imports that this cheaper or freight forwarder has been doing. So they would stop your container for examination, so they'll bring it to a yard and they will open it up and see what's in it. Now you cannot really protect yourself from being, you know, spotted or from your container being stopped, but when it gets stopped, that's what you can protect. What happens after it gets stopped is what you can protect. You can, you know, can help yourself out. Some of the things that make customs stop a container could be you're importing from a factory that has a forced child laborer. You are importing products under the anti-dumping laws or countervailing laws, whereby it's almost like you're smuggling those products because the quota for those products is already filled out and you're still bringing in those products. They don't want you coming to flood the US market with those products. Above all, the most annoying one is the False Claims Act, which is you're not paying the right duty. You are falsifying your duty classification of your product so that you can pay the lower duty. You are bringing in a pencil and then you're lying in your. It may not be you. Actually it would be your shipper. Unknowingly to you, your shipper may be falsifying your customs form to declare a lower value, or you're declaring a lower value than the amount you ordered the product for. So these are all the things. Afolabi: For me one time that my container was stopped and it was actually destroyed. The problem was that I had been ordering this giant industrial product for a long time and one time it was stopped at the port of Jacksonville and they looked at it. They said there was the power cable. Can you imagine the power cable that has the UL logo on it. They wanted me to prove that the cable came out of a UL certified factory. And then there's another capacitor in that product that has the logo CMA on it, which is a big association. And I went to my factory. I said, hey, you know my container was stopped. Can you send me certification and proof that your factory is a member or is approved by UL and you are also authorized to use the CMA logo and they ran away. They disappeared. Afolabi: So I told the customs can I come and just stick all these things out and I can cut out the cable. I can do this. They're like nope, it's going in the trash. So the whole container about who knows 50,000 worth of product was trashed. On top of all the penalties, examination, demurrage, all manner of fees climbed on top of it. So if I had falsified the document and say, oh, I'm bringing something else that is duty-free, the penalty would have been a lot severe. So those are some of the things you should watch out for as an importer. Make sure that you're using the right HTS code, the right tariff code, to correctly declare your goods, so that they will not penalize you under the False Claims Act. Bradley Sutton: Now, another thing you menti…

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Helium 10 Buzz 6/21/24: Amazon AI Updates | New Walmart Video Tool | SQP Updates Jun 21, 2024

Show notes

We’re back with another episode of the Weekly Buzz with Helium 10’s Chief Brand Evangelist, Bradley Sutton. Every week, we cover the latest breaking news in the Amazon, Walmart, and E-commerce space, talk about Helium 10’s newest features, and provide a training tip for the week for serious sellers of any level.Amazon's new AI-powered toolshttps://www.aboutamazon.com/news/innovation-at-amazon/amazon-ads-image-generator-adds-aspect-ratio-capability https://www.aboutamazon.eu/news/empowering-small-business/amazon-announces-expansion-of-generative-ai-listing-tools-to-sellers-across-europe Amazon Ditching Air Pillows https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/20/amazon-plastic-air-pillows-to-be-replaced-with-paper-filler.htmlImagine saving thousands annually on fulfillment costs by optimizing product dimensions. We explore the financial benefits of Helium 10’s size tier optimization feature and how reducing an item’s length by just one inch can lead to significant savings. Additionally, learn how Helium 10’s Listing Analyzer and media comparison tools can give you an edge over competitors by enhancing product listings. With actionable insights and practical examples, this episode is packed with strategies to help you stay ahead in the e-commerce landscape. Tune in for all these valuable strategies and stay ahead in the e-commerce game! In this episode of the Weekly Buzz by Helium 10, Bradley covers: 00:45 - Amazon AI Power Tools 02:27 - Expansion of AI Tools in Europe 03:34 - Walmart+ Week 04:28 - Walmart Connect Video Module 05:22 - Amazon Air Pillows 06:35 - Affiliate Marketing Example 08:42 - SQP + BTP Updates 12:22 - Follow Serious Sellers Podcast 13:18 - New Feature Alert 16:34 - Training: Listing Analyzer ► Instagram: instagram.com/serioussellerspodcast ► Free Amazon Seller Chrome Extension: https://h10.me/extension ► Sign Up For Helium 10: https://h10.me/signup (Use SSP10 To Save 10% For Life) ► Learn How To Sell on Amazon: https://h10.me/ft ► Watch The Podcasts On Youtube: youtube.com/@Helium10/videos Transcript Bradley Sutton: AI tool expansion from Amazon, a Walmart new video feature, recap of new features in search, career performance and brand tailored promotions this and more on this week's weekly buzz. 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 is our Helium 10 weekly buzz, where we give you a rundown of all the new stories that's going on in the Amazon, Walmart, e-commerce world. We give you training tips of the week and we also let you know what new Helium 10 features were released. That'll give you serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. Let's see what's buzzing Just a couple of news articles of the day, so let's go ahead and hop right in it. Bradley Sutton: The very first one is from Amazon. It's entitled Amazon's new AI powered tools help advertisers easily create engaging and vibrant images. All right, so this is, you know, been out for quite a while now in in sponsored ads how you can upload an image and then create different backgrounds for that image. And now there's a couple of new features. First of all, this kind of cool, this article that we have linked to, probably down below in the comments has some quotes from our very own Melissa, right here from Pacvue, and you know she talks a little bit about it. Now, one thing that's interesting is or a couple of things that I noticed new that they're releasing is, first of all, that I noticed. New that they're releasing is, first of all, instead of you just having to do the prompt in order to let Amazon's AI know what to do for the background, it's gonna start scanning your listing and maybe kind of add some of its own flavor, even without you having to specify every single thing. The other new thing is that you're now able, through Amazon's AI image generation, to do it in different formats. You know like not just one exact. You know 10, 80 by 720 or whatever the heck it is Right. But you can do different formats because obviously there's different ad types, different image sizes for different use cases inside of seller central for ads or other things. Now, obviously, if you've been using Helium 10, or you've been using it or not, you hopefully know that you have access to not only this image generator but also, in Listing, builder is another image generator that you can create images for Amazon post sizes, for different A plus content modules, et cetera. So a lot of new AI stuff that, um, you know can definitely help you from Amazon. Bradley Sutton: Speaking of AI from Amazon, one more update about this topic. Another article here is entitled Amazon announces expansion of generative AI listing tools to sellers across Europe. So you know, months and months ago, we reported how, in Amazon USA, there's like a listing content builder that they had and some other things that have been released to Amazon USA. But now, as of a few weeks ago and through today, they're fully announced or fully launched in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom for those AI listing building tools, amongst some other things. For those AI listing building tools, amongst some other things. Now, you know, the last time I used it, it's not as intuitive, maybe, as you need to really make a great listing because it's not going to include all of your main keywords that you're going to need. But it's a good way to kind of like see, hey, what does Amazon think is important for your listing to have? But to really make your listing, still definitely use the Helium 10 Listing Builder. Make sure you're using all of the keywords in your listing. But now some of those AI features that we, as US sellers have had for a while now it is available in Amazon Europe. Bradley Sutton: Next article not really an article, but just a reminder from Walmart. It's kind of like their version of Prime Day this week. All right, so that has been from June 17th and it's going to go for a couple more days. Walmart+ Week is what it's called, and so I'm just curious have you checked your Walmart sales, those of you selling on Walmart? What kind of bump did you see? And it did your Amazon sales? Maybe those of you who sell on Walmart and Amazon, did you see? Maybe Amazon get a little bit of a bump? I'm also wondering how did you manage now that Walmart+ week is in a different week than prime day? Um, you know, if your listings are tied together, you can't really discount on one site and not on the other. So those of you who did deals on Walmart+, did you go ahead and do those same deals on Amazon? Just curious as to what some of your strategies were. Let me know in the comments below. Bradley Sutton: Another announcement that actually comes from Walmart. This is an email that went out to Walmart sellers. Take a look here. It says Walmart Connect is pleased to announce the launch of a video module, an item and module reordering for brand shop via shop builder. All right. So it says here bring your brand to life like never before. Use the new video module to create an engaging narrative about your brand and educate customers on your unique offering. So there's a couple more things that they announced, but this is you know it's. It's a lot of stuff that you know maybe we take for granted on Amazon, but Walmart hasn't had these kind of things like being able to put videos on your brand page. I mean, Walmart hasn't even had a brand page for that long. So a lot of cool things coming to Walmart that you're probably used to on Amazon, but now hopefully that'll help you get a little bit more, maybe some better conversion, maybe some more sales on the Walmart platform. Bradley Sutton: Next news article is from CNBC and it's entitled Amazon is ditching the plastic air pillows in its boxes. How many of you have gotten Amazon packages or maybe even gotten samples of your own shipments and maybe Amazon used like a big box and it had those like bags filled with air, right, airbags, I guess you can maybe call it. They call it air pillows right here in this article. But that is going away, all right, because they want to use 15 billion fewer plastic pillows annually, and now they're going to be adding paper fillers that are made from recyclable materials. All right. Now, from a customer standpoint, what I'm worried about is, depending on what this, this paper fillers is, is. If it's what I think it is, it's like those stuff that almost looks like comes from a shredder. I'm just worried it's going to be like that and then customers are going to complain that all this stuff got all over their packaging and all over their house and it's a little bit messy. You know, those air bubbles, just like you know, explode it and for a bad or worse experience for the unboxing part of it Does it make a big mess. You know, might, might be worth looking into. Hopefully not. Bradley Sutton: Next article is not really an article, or it was an article. It's by in style, but I brought it up to kind of like show an example of what happens because of affiliate marketers out there for Amazon. So this is actually something that just came up in the news and it really uh. You know, sometimes when I, when I'm looking for e-commerce news, I type in just regular keywords like Amazon and stuff, and this has nothing to do with e-commerce sellers, but it's something that got a lot of views. All right, this is an article by in style and it's entitled Priyanka Chopra just unlocked my new go-to airport outfit and it's $15 at Amazon. Bradley Sutton: All right, so this is a person who just made this article, you know, a couple days ago, and then you know she doesn't know this actress, right, but she just like saw, she just took an image from this actress's Instagram, put it on here, and then what she did was she found different sets from Amazon and other websites that look like what this actress was wearing, and then the links I noticed here were like Amazon affiliate links. Now, the one that was $15, I went to that listing here on Amazon. All right, so this is a. It says B T, f, B M woman's pajama set. Right Now, take a look before the article came out yesterday or two days ago now, on this on the 19th, this pajama set or whatever the heck it is, um, had a BSR of 453,000. All right, now this article comes out on the 20th yesterday and the BSR goes from 450,000 down to 6,000. I think you can probably see that that's a big sales increase. Bradley Sutton: So, again, a cool strategy for you is. You know, can you make your own article. That gets picked up. You know, the show starts showing up in news. Can you get your products? You know, somehow that come out in some of these blogs and articles and it could drive tons and tons of traffic to your list. I thought that was just a cool example of something that literally was just released yesterday, and then you can see the effect that something like that has on an Amazon listing A couple of things that actually were released like a month, two months ago. But when I look on LinkedIn and other places, I don't see too many people who know about it, and a couple of people I talked to like hey, did you know that brand analytics and brand seller promotions has this and that? And they said no. So I wanted to just go ahead and highlight, even though it's not like brand new news. Like I said, this was probably released a month ago. But just a reminder to check those of you who have brand registry go into your search query performance and then go into your monthly view at the brand level. You know, choose a month. You know, maybe choose May. That's the most recent month. And now, when you go all the way over to the right hand side and you hit the generate download button over here you are going to get some new options that maybe you haven't seen. So the ones you've seen before is simple view, comprehensive view, but now you've got a couple other reports here that maybe you knew about these. If you did, great. If not, go ahead and check it out. One is called Amazon's Choice Badge Data. All right, so it's going to show you, hey, how did your catalog performance go when you had an Amazon's Choice Badge, as opposed to when you didn't have it? The other one is Search funnel outliers data and it says search funnel metrics that include your top and bottom performing queries or outliers, and this allows you to focus on specific search query performance without the need to review thousands of queries. This data is only available at the monthly reporting range, so go ahead and take a look at your search query performance at the monthly level and at the brand level If you have not taken a look at this before. Bradley Sutton: Another thing that was launched a couple months ago or about a month ago that I don't see too many people talking about. You know we talked months and months ago about brand tailored promotions, and now there's a few new audiences that are available in brand tailored promotion, the ones that there's a few here that you know Amazon has had for forever right, or at least since it launched. I forgot if it was like late last year or early this year, but you know you've got your at risk audience, which is customers who haven't purchased recently nor frequently, with varied spend. You've got what I think is one of the one of most powerful ones here the brand cart abandoners. You know people who added your product to the cart but didn't actually purchase. You've got your brand followers here, but now you know there there's some other ones here that maybe you haven't seen, depending on the last time you check this, but you're able to make. Remember, the whole point of this page is you're able to make special promotions that go directly to these audiences. Bradley Sutton: So one is declining, promising All right. You ever heard of that one. It says customers from your brand's promising audience who are predicted to spend less with your brand in the next year. Uh, declining top tier. This is customers from your brand's top tier audience who are predicted to spend less. You've got your high spend customers. That's always been there. You've got potential new customers. What is that made of? It says customers who have clicked on your brand or your storefront or products, added products to their cart but have not purchased from your brand in the last year. Okay, so they never even purchased from you. You've got promising. All right, these are customers who purchased recently. They buy occasionally and they spend above average. All right, they've you've got recent customers. This is just a five percent sampling of your brand's customers. You search group performance. Those of you who are brand registered, go in there, take a look, play around some of these things. Maybe there's some potential for you to make some more sales, either by looking at some different data points or by targeting a new group of buyers. Bradley Sutton: I just wanted to show you, if you're watching this on YouTube guys, you know maybe getting this a little bit late this version of the news, the news, always comes first, as well as all of our podcasts. It comes out first on your podcast player. So if you have an iPhone, go into the Apple podcast app right now. All right, and those of you who are already following, just scroll down a little bit and pass the first few episodes. You'll see this. Ratings and reviews…

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#571 - Amazon PPC Deep Dive with Destaney Jun 18, 2024

Show notes

week’s Tacos Tuesday show is brimming with expert advice on leveraging Amazon's new data rollouts, like brand metrics and category insights, now seamlessly integrated into Helium 10’s Adtomic tool. Discover how these new metrics can help you understand both organic and sponsored performance, offering a pathway to improved conversion rates by analyzing category averages. Plus, we dive into innovative advertising elements, including AI and sponsored TV, to future-proof your Amazon PPC strategies. Launching a new product on Amazon and unsure about the best PPC tactics? Destaney breaks down the nuances between phrase, broad, and exact match campaigns, emphasizing the necessity of bid evaluation and search term analysis to boost exact match performance. Learn about keyword isolation and its potential to enhance relevancy and campaign success. With actionable tips on using our Keyword Tracker to analyze Amazon's recommended rank, you’ll find out how to significantly improve your organic ranking during the crucial launch phase. As Prime Day approaches, how can you keep your ad campaigns sharp and your sales soaring? We explore effective strategies to drive extra traffic while overcoming eligibility issues, such as running sponsor brands to subpages and utilizing alternative platforms like TikTok and Google. Our discussion includes crucial advice on building landing pages for optimal conversions and making savvy budget adjustments for Prime Day. Balancing defensive campaigns with organic sales is key, and Destaney shares her wisdom on maintaining a competitive edge without cannibalizing your organic presence. Join us for this insightful episode packed with practical tips to elevate your Amazon advertising game! In episode 571 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Destaney discuss: 00:00 - Amazon Advertising Strategy Session & AMA With Expert Guest 03:11 - Brand Metrics in Advertising Strategy 05:31 - Value of Amazon's Search Query Performance 08:48 - Understanding Repeat Purchases for Supplements 13:44 - Keyword Isolation Debate and Strategy 17:13 - Amazon Relevancy and Ranking Insights 20:45 - Optimizing Pricing Strategy for Prime Day 22:43 - Optimizing Amazon Advertising Budget Allocation 23:59 - Alternative Traffic Sources and Prime Day 30:22 - Amazon Advertising Strategies and Tips 31:31 - Planning for Prime Day Success ► Instagram: instagram.com/serioussellerspodcast ► Free Amazon Seller Chrome Extension: https://h10.me/extension ► Sign Up For Helium 10: https://h10.me/signup (Use SSP10 To Save 10% For Life) ► Learn How To Sell on Amazon: https://h10.me/ft ► Watch The Podcasts On YouTube: youtube.com/@Helium10/videos Transcript Bradley Sutton: Today we've got expert guest Destaney back on TACoS Tuesday and she's going to be answering a lot of advertising questions on a variety of topics such as keyword isolation, sponsor display strategy, Prime Day, PPC tips and more. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. If you're like me, maybe you were intimidated about learning how to do Amazon PPC, or maybe you think you just don't have the hours and hours that it takes to download and sort through all of those sponsored ad’s reports that Amazon produces for you. Adtomic for me allowed me to learn PPC for the first time, and now I'm managing over 150 PPC campaigns across all of my accounts in only two hours a week. Find out how Adtomic can help you level up your PPC game. Visit h10.me/adtomic for more information. That's h10.me/adtomic. 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 is our monthly TACoS Tuesday show, where we talk about anything and everything Amazon advertising related. And as always, we have special guests on with us each month and every other month we have the specialist of guest here. So, without further ado, let me go ahead and introduce her Destaney welcome, welcome back. How's it going? Destaney Wishon: It is going incredible. Super excited to be here. Bradley Sutton: Can you believe we are in the middle of June of 2024 already? It's like I don't know what's going on here. Destaney Wishon: We're already being thrown straight into Prime Day planning, like it never stops. Bradley Sutton: Yeah, it's never ends and, like I think the last few years that I've been in the Amazon world, it has been the fastest years of my life, like it's just going by. There's always so many things to do. So, just right off the bat, let's, let's just kick it off with anything new in the Amazon advertising world. Over the last couple months since you've been on here, you know like new reports from Amazon or your team has been trying out some new strategies or trying out some new ad types or different things, anything you can update us on. Destaney Wishon: I think the two biggest things Amazon's given us a lot more data lately. Helium 10 and Adtomic have already been pulling in some of that data from like a category perspective, so insights and planning brand metrics, which is being tied directly into Adtomic now, is one of the best rollouts in my opinion, and they've recently updated it to add even more data around like subscribe and save and lifetime value and repeat purchases, which is always a conversation for sellers, as well as allowing us to see category comparisons how many clicks are within our category, how many detailed page views are within our category and how are we comparing to average. I think that was a huge rollout. And then the second big rollout is just all the creative elements we've gotten recently, either from an AI perspective or like sponsored TV. I think those are really big and even if you're not ready for them yet, it's showing the direction Amazon's going, which is the important part. Bradley Sutton: Yes, now I was on some kind of training yesterday or day before and somebody actually asked about that the brand metrics that is showing in advertising, and so that brand metrics page that's showing all you know the data there is across organic and sponsored, or it's only showing you what's happening in sponsor. Okay, good, yeah, I was like there's a 50-50 chance. Somebody asked me which one and I'm like I'm going to, because I saw there was some like fine print and it just made it seem like it was across the board. So how are you, which parts of that are you using and how is that affecting your ad strategy? Destaney Wishon: I think the biggest thing is again, it's showing you retail and advertising, organic and advertising combined so we don't really have a lot of resources for that anywhere else. Those are two different API’s from a technical perspective. So, amazon doesn't usually give us that data. But you know there's a lot of questions already in the comments asking about conversion rate and performance and efficiency. And Amazon advertising is amazing for driving clicks. That is its job. Think about it as a customer. If you click on a sponsored ad, you're ready to purchase and if you don't purchase, it's because the price was wrong or the listing was poor, the reviews were poor. If the ad drove the click, it was successful. The reason brand metrics is important is because brand metrics gives us conversion rate compared to the category. So, you can pull up brand metrics right now and like, let's say, I'm selling dog toys, I can see that my conversion rate is a 23%, but the category median is a 30%. If I'm converting less than the category, my PPC is not going to be near as efficient, because people are going to click, but they're going to buy a category product and not mine. So that's probably the biggest thing that I'm using it for. Bradley Sutton: Okay, cool, cool. Now you know. Speaking of conversion rates, you know obviously there's search create performance that can help you with your conversion rates at the even keyword level. But then there's also the counterpoint that sometimes people do is that, hey, you know, the data there is so limited compared to overall. You know, like anybody can just see the number of sales and compare it, because there's only a certain kind of, you know a certain set of situations where it's going to register in search query performance. You know, like if somebody clicks something today and then 25 hours later, they actually buy it, it doesn't count. They click on something, they click something else, they hit back on their browser and they purchase. It doesn't count. You know, like I don't know about your experience. My experience sometimes is between twenty-five to forty percent of overall purchases, but my opinion I just want to get yours is that it's still valuable because it's still apples to apples it's not giving you the whole picture but valuable because it's still apples to apples. It's not giving you the whole picture, but you can at least benchmark what's happening with you at the keyword level compared to the exact same situation for other competitors. Is that how you feel, or are you kind of ignoring that data. Destaney Wishon: A hundred percent. From a volume perspective, like a sales volume or an impression, I don't use it because, like you said, it's a smaller data set, but from a conversion rate perspective it's probably still showing you. You know 30% to 40% of your overall data set, but from a conversion rate perspective it's probably still showing you. You know 30% to 40% of your overall data set. Here's how it converts. So that actually scales out pretty well in my opinion, and that is super, super valuable to understand. Because, again, if someone else is converting better than you, they're going to get the same amount of clicks but drive more orders. That's what conversion rate is at the end of the day. So. when you're able to dive into SQP, you can actually see those comparisons on the search term level. Bradley Sutton: Yes, absolutely. All right. Now, going back to Atomic, you had talked a little bit about Adtomic and some of the newer features, but something that's been out for a while now is the custom bid rules. Have you, for any of your clients that you're using Atomic for, have you started at all with the custom bid rules? or are you still using, like, just the Adtomic algorithm and making decisions based on that? Destaney Wishon: Anyone who, I think, has followed me knows that I'm a pretty big fan of breaking out by strategy. So, that's where we recommend implementing custom bid rules is because there are certain keywords that maybe you are willing to take a loss on at the end of the day from a keyword level. Again, be clear. I don't want to say you know, go run your overall amazon advertising at a 400 ACoS but there's certain strategies that are going to need different rules and that's why it's so important not to have a set it and forget it automation running. In my opinion, now if your only goal is a 20% ACoS, you don't care about anything else. Your only goal is profitability for your business, for your solopreneur endeavors. That's fine, but if you're really building a brand that's going to scale, it's so competitive in the category and CPCs are kind of increasing that you're going to need to have some keywords that maybe you target at a 50% ACoS because they're your top sales driving keywords, and then maybe you're creating a campaign targeting competitor ASINs that you want to run at a different ACoS. That's where it gets really important to start building out those segments and strategies. We also do it on the lifecycle level. So, if you have an established product with hundreds of reviews, you can run at a lower ACoS because your conversion rates higher. If you have a new product launch, you don't want to set a low ACoS or else you're going to drive zero sales and your honeymoon period is going to flop because you have no data. Bradley Sutton: So, there's a lot of people, maybe even watching, who are for the. If they're just getting into supplements, they're. They probably have some crazy sticker shock of what kind of cost per clicks they have, but you know how, how do you count? You know how, how do you calculate LTV? You know, with the data that Amazon you know gives and tools available and where is your like, like, how do you, you know help brands like that really focus to make sure long term they're profitable? Destaney Wishon: Historically, this has been a really vague area in Amazon. They haven't given us a lot of insights. I know that we have a lot of plans on the Helium 10 side here, but the first thing that you need to consider is just that repeat purchase rate. In supplements we consistently see $20 to $40 cost per clicks for a $20 to $40 product. And the part that people need to remember is, if you get a customer to buy your supplements and you believe in your product, your supplement should be good enough that they buy it the next month and the month after and the month after. So, that's why lifetime value is so important to understand, because if they end up buying your $20 supplement four times, that's $80. So, even though you paid $20 cost per click, the product you sold was actually $80, because ideally, they come back and repeat purchase from you. So, it's super important. I think. When it comes to actually coming up and finding those insights, the majority of people rely on typically their DTC information because that's where you have it most easily accessible. Amazon gives you subscribe and save data within brand metrics, insights and planning. Amazon gives you subscribe and subscribe and save data within brand metrics, insights and planning, like I mentioned, and also through DSP, you can have a pretty clear indicator of what you subscribe and save or your repeat purchase rate is, and that's what helps you justify those high cost per clicks and that's why you see them as well. People know that someone comes back five to six times. They're going to be willing to pay for that first purchase because they have a great product. Bradley Sutton: All right, we got the first question from Joan. Joan says it's a pretty common question. I would say what's the best strategy to control ad spend? For a $21 item in a competitive niche, cost per click is often over $2. Some of those supplement sellers wish they had cost per clicks at $2. But we're selling product but we're only helping Jeff buy more rockets. We aren't profitable unless I can improve ad spend efficiency. So, right off the bat, if at $2 on a $20 product they're not profitable, probably their conversion rate is not very high. I'm assuming on some of these keywords. Destaney Wishon: A hundred percent. The first thing is to realize whether or not you have a conversion rate problem or an Amazon advertising problem. So, going back to our initial kind of call out, I recommend going into Adtomic, going into your account overview. A few people later on have asked this question on where you find the data I mentioned Adtomic, account overview, brand performance and then, once you're within brand performance, you can niche down and figure out how you're performing compared to the category. If you're converting better than the category, then it is an ad efficiency issue. It means you need to improve the keywords you're targeting. Instead of going after dog toy, which may be too broad for your dog toy, go after soft dog toy for small dogs, where you're going to be sacrificing lower volume but…

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#570 - Amazon Listing Optimization Workshop Jun 15, 2024

Show notes

Join us in this episode as we bring you an exciting update on Project X, where we gear up to launch a new product on Amazon. We walk you through our meticulous process for keyword research, listing optimization, and advanced photography techniques, essential for any Amazon seller looking to boost their e-commerce game. Utilizing tools like Helium 10's Xray and Cerebro, we identify top-performing competitors and extract valuable keywords to build a successful product listing. This episode is packed with actionable insights, including expert advice from Lailama Hasan, Helium 10’s marketing content manager, and Tayyaba Hasan, project manager at AMZ Onestep. Next, we explore the significance of competitor analysis in optimizing your Amazon listings. Using Helium 10 Listing Builder’s Competitor Performance Score (CPS), we highlight the importance of identifying high-performing keywords that competitors are ranking for, such as "coffin letterboard" and "coffin decor." We also discuss how to enhance product descriptions by addressing common customer pain points and incorporating unique product characteristics. By reviewing competitor images and customer use cases, we gather valuable insights to improve our own product's features and marketing strategies. Finally, we dive into the art of creating impactful product images to boost conversions. With expert guidance from our expert guests, we explore the three main types of images required by Amazon: main images, infographic images, and lifestyle images. Practical tips on lighting, equipment, and setting up backgrounds are shared to help you capture high-resolution, detailed images. Additionally, Tayyaba Hasan explains our four-step approach to creative image development, from research to optimization, and the importance of A-B testing and updating creatives based on customer feedback. Stay tuned as we wrap up with a sneak peek into next week’s webinar about TikTok Shop. In episode 570 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley, Lailama, and Tayyaba discuss: 00:00 - Listing Optimization Workshop for Amazon Sellers 02:12 - Amazon Product Keyword Analysis Strategy 09:06 - Optimizing Amazon Listings With Competitor Analysis 11:09 - Using AI to Write Product Listings 20:21 - Optimizing Amazon Listing Images for Conversions 21:16 - Product Photography 32:51 - Listing Image Optimization for Amazon 33:04 - Optimizing Listing Images for Conversions 36:24 - Image Concept for Pre-Cut Letter Boards 41:23 - Product Sizing and Reviews 43:38 - Stay Tuned For Our TikTok Shop Webinar Transcript Bradley Sutton: Today's a deep dive update into Project X, where we're going to launch a new product soon and together we're going to go over how I found the keywords and how I make the listing for this product plus get guest expert advice on photography, A+ Content and more. How cool is that? Pretty cool. I think Bradley Sutton: 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 you guys can see that I've got all my Project X gear on today because this is a Project X update where you know for those of you who don't know Project X was this case study we did where we found coffin shelves and a whole bunch of other products that we started selling on a real Amazon account and we've kept it going throughout the years. And so I decided to launch a new product, a coffin letter board and I'm going to open up my strategies into how I find the keywords a little bit of a generalization on it, but how I find the keywords, how I put together my listing, and then we're going to talk about some advanced strategies for photography, like when you should use a agency, when you can do it on your own, and how you should tackle things like A+ Content, and how you can look at competitors to get ideas, et cetera. So we're going to go deep into this. This is a recording of a live training that we actually did a few days ago, and so we've cut it up so that you guy s can get the best of those strategies and hopefully you can take some of this and apply it to your next product launch or maybe your first product launch out there. So hope you enjoy this listing optimization workshop. Bradley Sutton: And I'm going to take you from ground zero, getting the keywords first. So here is on Amazon. First of all, let's go to the main keyword for this product coffin letter board. All right, and this is just a easy way in which we can get the main keywords. Okay, once I get to this page, I like to run Xray on the page to see who are the top sellers. All right, so who is really making the most money in this coffin letter board niche? And this is a niche that you know. I've been watching this for a while. You know like I wish I would have been one of the first ones to sell this, like I was for the coffin shelf, but unfortunately, I wasn't. All right. But that's all right. I wanted to show you guys hey, you don't always have to be the very first to the market. Bradley Sutton: Now, when you're running Cerebro on a product that you don't even have yet. Like me, I don't have a coffin letter board yet. I need to choose another product to be the baseline product, all right. So I'm just going to pick one here from like around the bottom of the page. It's not selling. Well, let's go ahead and pick this. So that's the first one that you click on. Needs to be a product that is not going to be one of the main competitors. And now what I want to do is I want to select the like five, six, seven or eight top competitors for this product. All right, that are very similar to my product informant function. So this is the number one guy. This, this nom new coffin letter board. All right, believe it or not, this guy is selling 500 of these coffin letter boards a month. Kind of crazy. Uh, here's another one. They're only selling about 29, but we'll go ahead and throw them in, uh in there as well. Here's another one. They're selling 119 units a month. So I definitely want to see what's going on with them. I'm not going to choose this LED one, all right. So this is interesting. This is a. Is this a coffin letter board? Yes, but because it's got this LED like and it's very small, I can tell because of the price is $12. I am not going to look at the keywords for this product, all right, because I don't think that it's going to be super relevant, uh, to me. I want to get hyper relevant products to my product. All right, let's go ahead and choose a couple more here. This one's selling 65 units a month. Here's another one that's selling 29 units a month. All right, this is good. Let's go ahead and enroll with this, all right, so we're going to hit run Cerebro. Bradley Sutton: What am I doing? What did I just do? Why is this an important step? I want to analyze the competition right. That's where I'm going to get my keywords. What are the keywords that are driving sales, and some of them are doing incredible sales, and these are the keywords that are going to form the base of my listing. And now what I'm looking for is I want to get like the top 10, 15 keywords and make sure those are in phrase form in my listing. All right, and listing builder is going to help with that. But then I don't only want to be relative or indexed for 15 keywords, these uh products. There might be 50, there might be a hundred, there might be more than that of keywords that they might be getting sales from, uh, or that they might be ranking on page one for, and that means that I probably should be able to rank on page one for these, for these keywords. So this is going to be what I'm looking for what are all of the relevant keywords to all of the products, or at least some of the products that I want to be indexed for or searchable for? Okay, so let's go ahead and see the results here. All right, so 8,000 keywords. I know there's a lot better way to find this in 8,000 keywords. Now what I'm going to just do is I'm just going to show you a quick one that I can do, but again, this should take like about an hour by itself. I'm going to do this in five minutes. I'm going to say minimum search volume 200. And then I'm going to go to these advanced rank filters and the number of competitors. I'm going to say minimum one is between rank one and 30 under competitor rank. So basically, what I'm saying is show me all of the keywords Helium 10, where this product, these products, one of these letter boards is ranked between one and 30. That means they're on page one. Bradley Sutton: Okay, and so I have a whole bunch of keywords that have come up here. You can see some of these coffin letter board sign. Here's a keyword that's a brand name. I always delete those. I don't want to have a brand names on here. I don't want to. You know that's against Amazon terms of service to put brand names in your listing. Okay, um, so I probably should take a lot more time to see if there's any other brand names, but let's just go with this as is. Again, we have videos that have very detailed a strategy on keyword research, but you guys can watch that. We're just going to pretend that we already vetted all of these keywords. Bradley Sutton: So now, what I'm going to do is I'm going to export this to the clipboard, okay, and then, the next thing I'm going to do is I'm actually going to go into listing builder and I am going to put these keywords in. Now, this is the. This is where listing builder comes in. I could just have this list of keywords, right, and you know, have it in a Google doc or an Excel file or something, right? But I want to be able to make sure that I'm indexed for my important phrases. Plus, I want to make sure that I'm indexed for the phrases that maybe I don't have room for. But I need those individual keywords, and if you're trying to do that just with a naked eye, you know, like that, that's almost impossible to make sure. All right, I'm going to show you how Listing Builder is going to help with that. Bradley Sutton: So, here in listing builder, um, I'm going to add a new, a new listing. All right, I'm going to say create from scratch and let's just start building. Okay, the very first thing is I need to put in my keywords. So I'm going to hit manually add keywords and I'm just going to paste all of those 114 phrases. Now there's a lot. I know I probably don't want to see like I already see another one that has that brand name. I'll just go ahead and delete that. But again, we're just kind of like fast forwarding this process. But whatever tools that you use to get all of your keywords that you want to rank for, go ahead and make sure that they are all here in your keyword bank and then hit the word add to bank. Ok, now it's going to show me all of these keywords plus their search volume, and now I'm pretty much ready to start going with my listing. Bradley Sutton: So I'm going to go ahead and hit next and now you can see here that I've got all my 112 keyword phrases and I've got all of the one word roots that come from it, the two word roots, et cetera. So this is the important thing because, as you see, if I were just to write my listing right now, if I were to type in Halloween decor, okay, do you see what happened here on the left-hand side, Halloween decor as a phrase got checked off because I just put it in my listing, and then those individual words of Halloween and decor both got checked off, and so this is important, because this is how you're able to make your listing and know that you have used all of the keywords that you want. So, at the end of the day, my top keywords, I want to make sure I've got in the phrase form. There's no way I can get 112 phrases right into my listing in phrase form, but at least my top 10 or 15, plus every single one of these individual ones that and these are the words that make up these phrases here. Bradley Sutton: Okay, so let's go ahead and go to the next step. You'll notice that this CPS is blank. Okay, so CPS is blank. This is very important. This is what tells me which of my keywords are the most important, because they're getting sales for most of my competitors. So what do I have to do? What do you guys have to do when you're making your listing like this? I have to go down here and I click keyword performance rank, okay, and now I have to hit add competitors. And so what competitors am I going to put in here? I'm going to put the same, the same competitors that I had in Cerebro, okay, now I want to. I want you guys to see what's going to happen when I do that. What's going to happen now is this competitor performance score, which actually is the same thing that was from Cerebro. If you look in Cerebro, the very last column in Cerebro, guys, is competitor performance score. This is not new to Helium 10. This has been in Helium 10 for years. This is what tells you the strength of the keywords compared to the competitors. All right, so this really helps you understand which are the keywords that most of the competitors are ranking for. Okay, and there, I did it there. Bradley Sutton: Now everybody's got a score. All right, I got to take away this because it was still giving me a score, even though I only had one keyword in there. But look at these scores. All right, so this is the number one, uh, one, and sure enough, they're the number one seller. You look at that, guys. The number one seller happens to have the number one listing SEO score. All right, so this is based on all of the keywords, how many of the keywords they're using, how many in phrase form, and how they have it optimized throughout the listing. All right, right now, what is my score? My score is seventh out of seventh, I have a zero because I haven't put anything in my listing, all right, so now I can sort this, my keyword phrases, by competitor performance score. All right, now I can see some of the top keywords here. Coffin letter board is a 10 out of 10. Coffin letter board sign. All right, uh. Coffin decoration, coffin decor All right. So these are some of the keywords that I know I have to have in phrase for my listing. So what's the next step? I'm actually going to do this, where I'm going to get some help from AI to actually write some of this listing. And again, these steps, you guys should take at least 30 to 45 minutes. I'm going to try and do it in like less than five minutes here. Bradley Sutton: So, right, here I want to start putting in some of the characteristics of this product. So let me go ahead and do that here. Let's go ahead and say hey, this is 17 inches by 10.5 inches. This product, our product, actually includes a special coffin-shaped um chalkboard as well, includes mini coffin shaped chalkboard. So I'm going to write that as a characteristic. That's something that's I chose so that I can differentiate it. So that I can differentiate it from what's uh, what's going on. Let's uh with the competition. All right, what else do we see? Well, can I put includes wooden stand. Can hang on wall. What are some other places that I can get ideas on what to put here? Let me show you really quick. Let's say, I go into that top selling coffin letterboard right here I'm going to run Helium 10 review insig…

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Helium 10 Buzz 6/13/24: Amazon Subscribe & Save Update | Walmart.com New Features Jun 13, 2024

Show notes

Could this single change to Amazon's Subscribe and Save program revolutionize your Amazon selling strategy? Listen as we unpack all the latest buzzing news in the E-commerce space!We’re back with another episode of the Weekly Buzz with Helium 10’s Chief Brand Evangelist, Bradley Sutton. Every week, we cover the latest breaking news in the Amazon, Walmart, and E-commerce space, talk about Helium 10’s newest features, and provide a training tip for the week for serious sellers of any level.Registration is now live for Amazon's premier selling partner conference: Amazon Accelerate.Go to: h10.me/accelerate to get your tickets and use the code “HELIUM10SELLER” to get additional discountsVirtual Packs Are Available on Walmart.comhttps://www.linkedin.com/posts/david-milstein-53692611a_walmart-walmartmarketplace-ecommerce-activity-7205970821775822850-m-0y/TikTok Shop is huge for the beauty industryhttps://www.theverge.com/2024/6/11/24176221/tiktok-shop-beauty-wellness-industry-growth-ecommerceAmazon Is a Top Destination for Brand-Focused Beauty Shoppershttps://civicscience.com/amazon-is-a-top-destination-for-brand-focused-beauty-shoppers/Temu Attracts More Repeat Buyers than eBay, Challenges Amazonhttps://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/temu-attracts-more-repeat-buyers-than-ebay-challenges-amazon/ar-BB1o4iliTikTok comes for Google as it quietly rolls out image search capabilities in TikTok Shophttps://techcrunch.com/2024/06/11/tiktok-comes-for-google-as-it-quietly-rolls-out-image-search-capabilities-in-tiktok-shop/Finally, gear up for some valuable training sessions, including a free TikTok Shop webinar and strategies for making the most of Prime Day with Amazon’s latest advertising tools. Plus, a cool new update to Helium 10’s Demand Analyzer tool. Don’t miss out on these essential updates and strategies to boost your e-commerce success! In this episode of the Weekly Buzz by Helium 10, Bradley covers: 00:50 - Amazon Subscribe & Save 03:12 - Amazon Accelerate 04:32 - Walmart Virtual Packs 05:26 - TikTok Shop Beauty 06:38 - Amazon Beauty 07:57 - Temu Vs. Ebay 10:03 - OX Insights 11:34 - Walmart 4 Star + 12:46 - TikTok Image Search 13:53 - TikTok Shop Webinar with Helium 10 14:20 - Prime PPC Webinar 14:51 - New Feature Alert & Training: Demand Analyzer ► Instagram: instagram.com/serioussellerspodcast ► Free Amazon Seller Chrome Extension: https://h10.me/extension ► Sign Up For Helium 10: https://h10.me/signup (Use SSP10 To Save 10% For Life) ► Learn How To Sell on Amazon: https://h10.me/ft ► Watch The Podcasts On Youtube: youtube.com/@Helium10/videos Transcript Bradley Sutton: A big Amazon subscribe and save change. Walmart's got two new features coming. TikTok shop is skyrocketing. The beauty niche these stories and more on this week's Weekly Buzz how cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I am your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show. That is our Helium 10 Weekly Buzz, where we give you a rundown of all the news stories that are going on the Amazon, Walmart e-commerce world. We also give you training tips of the week and we also let you know what new features that Helium 10 has. That'll give you serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. Let's see what's buzzing. Bradley Sutton: We got a number of news articles and things to go over today, so let's go ahead and hop right into our very first story, and this one is actually just directly from the Amazon seller central dashboard and it's for me, it's a, it's a big change. For some of you this might not affect at all, but basically this is entitled. Subscribe and save will launch for seller fulfilled orders on June 27th, All right. So those of you who are just using FBA, this is meaningless to you. For those of you who are like me and every single one of your products is FBA and you have an FBM SKU because you've got your own warehouse or you've got 3PL. Well, this is kind of big because until now you can only enroll FBA SKUs into subscribe and save. But now those of you who do both, like me or maybe there's some of you who just, for whatever reason, for regulatory reasons maybe there's some products that's not allowed in FBA, like meltable products or other things at certain times of year, guess what you can now keep that subscribe and save going, even if you are FBM. Bradley Sutton: All right, so this article talks about how they're automatically going to enroll all of your eligible replenishable products at the default discount set in your subscribe and save settings. All right, so the whole percentage discount thing is going to apply, like the you know, the 5% discount, uh, et cetera. Now, remember, you know these subscribe and save orders normally are just generated automatically for FBA, but now in your FBM pending orders you're going to start seeing subscribe and save order. So make sure to take a look at that. And if you, for whatever reason, don't want to, um, have this automatically set up, I don't know why you wouldn't want to if you have subscribe and save on. But maybe there's a reason why you don't Like, maybe you're not confident in your FBM inventory. Well, you can go to growth and hit explore programs, click increase conversion and then, under subscribe and save, click learn more and you'll have a dashboard there where you can opt out from this automatic enrollment or, as it says, set your discount funding for each product after the June 27 launch. So some pretty cool stuff that is coming to subscribe and save. And don't forget that on the Helium 10 insights dashboard, you can actually add a module or widget for your subscribe and save metrics. So if you haven't done that, make sure to go ahead and do that. You could start seeing the rate your units sold, the amount of sales and the total discount for your subscribe and save orders. Bradley Sutton: Next up, an announcement from Amazon. This is not like not some breaking news, but now the Amazon Accelerate Conference, which, in my opinion, is the premier event Amazon event in the entire world to go to, like. If people ask me uh, what is one event I have to go to? 10 out of 10 Amazon accelerate amazing event, the only time outside of Helium 10 cell and scale summit that we had a couple of years ago where you could actually go up to high quality uh or high ranking reps from Amazon and get your problems fixed. But anyways, as of yesterday, you can now register for Amazon Accelerate. It's going to be September 17th to 19th To get tickets. Go to h10.me/accelerate. There's already a hundred dollar discount right now and then you can use the coupon code. I'm not sure what kind of discount or if any discount it gives, but give it a try. Helium 10 seller no spaces, but you already get a hundred dollars off if you go ahead and register now, and then that Helium 10 seller might give you another extra discount. But again, I'm going to be there. The whole entire team is going to be there. What feels like the whole entire Amazon seller community is going to be there. Thousands of sellers there. Make sure to go. If you're a Helium 10 Elite member, get your tickets a day early, because September 16th we're going to do an event as well, so be there from the 16th through the 19th. Bradley Sutton: Next news article is actually not really a news article, but it's from LinkedIn, a post by David from Cell Quarter. He's been on the podcast a few times before and he's actually going to be on the podcast in a couple of weeks. He's been on the podcast a few times before and he actually is actually going to be on the podcast in a couple of weeks, but now he announced hey, virtual packs are available on Walmart.com. It's kind of similar to what we know as virtual bundles on Amazon, but it has a couple of advantages, according to David. All right. So, like you know, on Amazon, when you do virtual bundles, you don't get any kind of discounts on your fulfillment fees, right. But according to this for WFS, you are actually going to get discounts on your fulfillment for multiple packs, all right, and you also don't have to seemingly create listings one by one. So that is something that is going to be pretty cool for you Walmart sellers who want to do virtual bundles or virtual packs. I guess Looks like there's some cool stuff coming to Walmart. Bradley Sutton: Switching to another marketplace now, TikTok Shop. This article is from theverge.com and it's entitled TikTok Shop is huge for the beauty industry, all right. And there is this article where it says hey, TikTok Shop is the ninth biggest online beauty and wellness retailer in the United States. You might think ninth. My goodness, I can't even name nine marketplaces, you know. There's Amazon, there's Walmart, there's Target. No, it's not marketplaces. I mean, that's any website. You know people go to Sephora.com. People go to Ulta Beauty whatever the heck that website is right. People go to the. You know Maybelline or whatever. You know actual companies. Including all of those websites, TikTok shop is already number nine out of everything. So that's kind of crazy. This article talks about beauty. Content is one of the most popular types of videos on TikTok, with some creators making a living by sharing tips or testing out products. All right, so this is kind of you know, impetus, I would say for the few of you maybe in the beauty category who have been completely ignoring TikTok shop might want to jump on that bandwagon because it's blown up in the beauty category. Bradley Sutton: Next article Along those same lines how is Amazon Beauty doing? Well, you know this is an article from civicscience.com and you know, to no surprise, amazon, according to this article, has 68% of US adults buy beauty and personal care products on Amazon, at least on some of their purchases. So yeah, they are by far. Amazon is by far number one. However, there's distinct differences when it comes to how beauty buyers shop on Amazon. It says official brand storefronts are the most popular destinations among Amazon beauty shoppers. It says shoppers are twice as likely to purchase a beauty or personal care item from an official store than from an independent third party seller. All right, it says many prestige and luxury beauty brands are partnering with Amazon's premium beauty storefront. So this is something to think about. All right, you know, we just talked about hey, make sure your beauty products are on TikTok shop. You should probably make sure your beauty products are on Amazon, of course, but you know, branding is important in the beauty category on Amazon, right, if you're a no name brand, that doesn't mean you have zero chance at making sales, but there seems to be more of a skew toward more branded, you know, or brands that are more well-known in the beauty category on Amazon. Bradley Sutton: The next article is from MSN, and this one, you know, to be honest, I'm a little bit skeptical about All right. So now the title of this from MSN is Temu attracts more repeat buyers than eBay challenges Amazon. Now, this article had a general statement that seemed pretty legit, says hey, you know, we see that Temu is making more, or customers in the US are making more repeat purchases on Temu than on eBay. Maybe, all right, but here is what I'm just like flabbergasted by All right, let me quote this directly. It says the survey, which pulled 1000 consumers, revealed that 34% of respondents made purchases from Temu at least once a month. Hmm, you guys know what my initials are? Right, my name is Bradley Sutton. You know what my initials are. I'm raising my initials flag on this one. Okay, I don't know one person in the last year who has bought even one thing from Temu. Bradley Sutton: Now, don't get me wrong. I understand Teemu is the thing. I know there's people who buy stuff out there, but I'm just finding it hard to believe. 34% of people of 1000 people, 340 out of 1,000 people bought something on Temu. And I don't know one freaking person who bought something from Temu. I'm just not. This made me a little bit skeptical on this article. You know like I'm not the one who made this poll, but again, I'm just throwing that out there. Now. It says Amazon dominates the field, with 76% of the respondents shopping there at least monthly. That number seems almost low for me. What? Only double the amount of sellers or buyers bought something on Amazon to Temu? Only 76%. I mean, like I think every single person I know buys something from Amazon. You know I'm not talking about, obviously, people in the Amazon industry. I'm talking about, just, you know, people here in my community, you know. But anyways, this might be an article you want to take a look at. I still maintain whether it's right or wrong that that Temu is no real threat to Amazon, maybe outside of the the you know clothes, you know low price clothing category, but hey, who knows, maybe Temu is making moves that I'm just not aware of. Bradley Sutton: Next article is from going back to Amazon Seller Central and it's entitled Use Reviews to Improve Product Launches with New Customer Review Insights. So customer review insights is nothing new. This has been in Amazon Product Opportunity Explorer for a while now, but they have new features in there. So there's something new called review trends that show shift in customer sentiment. There's Parent ASIN Insights, so it gives insights at the parent level of products. As you know, Helium 10 Review Insights has been doing that for seven years now almost six years. It takes Amazon a little bit to get caught up, but no, this is cool that Amazon is doing this. They've got some other cool stuff that Review Insights doesn't have. They've got ASIN benchmarking, where it compares your product star rating now to the category average star rating. All right, that's new. And then also they have topic drill down. So like here's a picture, like I'm looking here in Product Opportunity Explorer at one of the competitor coffin shelves and then I could see some of these new features that they have here where they break it down to the child level and they show some topics. So a lot of this you know is available in Helium 10, you know the review insights tool for Helium 10, elite members. We've also had an advanced AI review sentiment tool that you guys have had access to. I'm not sure when or if that's going to be released at Diamond and Platinum, but elite members, make sure you're using that. If that's going to be released a diamond and platinum, but elite members, make sure you're using that. And if you don't have Helium 10, we'll make sure to use for free the review insights tool inside of seller central product opportunity explore. Bradley Sutton: Next article. It's not really an article, it's an email update from Walmart connect. All right, kind of cool announcement, but very, maybe it's going to be very similar to something you know. But basically Walmart Connect says, hey, we're launching an A-B test on item pages that introduces an additional carousel called drumroll, please four-star and above items. All right, does that sound familiar? I think we've seen four-star and above before. Nothing wrong with that. But this is going to start on June 17th and it's going to be a test that they're going to run for about four weeks and it's a carousel that's offering prominent placement opportunity that can promote…

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