Scale Your Brand Series: Optimizing Sales and Gaining New Customers
April 5, 2022
Scaling Your Brand doesn't start with increasing your ad spend. You need to create a strong brand foundation, so you're not just throwing your money away on traffic that doesn't convert.
As part of our Scale Your Brand series, we interviewed one of our Seller Velocity sponsors OMG Commerce discussing the best ways to optimize your sales & gain new customers.
[00:00:07] Chris M: Hey everybody. This is Chris McCabe of ecommerceChris and of course of the Seller Velocity Conference here with Leah McHugh, of the Seller Velocity conference and ecommerceChris. And we're here with OMG Commerce today with Chris and Trenton. Thanks for supporting the conference. Thanks for being a part of helping us promote some great content and getting some great speakers in front of our audience. Today we just wanted to talk about what your top tip or best advice would be for brands that you manage, even brands that you don't for the year ahead, what you're focused on in terms of revenue growth and enhancing their brand presence on Amazon.
[00:00:41] Trenton: Yeah. Thanks Chris for having us. My tip is pretty simple, but it's something that a lot, we see a lot of clients come to OMG and it is something that we implement that they really haven't thought about. And what we see is like most clients come and they have a legacy product that is doing really well. They have a lot of reviews. This is what their business is kind of like, it's the cornerstone of what they've built their Amazon business around. And then they start to expand that portfolio. So they add a couple skews here, a couple skews there and what I've seen is they come and they're like, Hey, we had great traction with this product. We listed it. It got reviews. We started ranking for all these maybe high funnel keywords. And we're just not seeing the same thing happen. We have one or two reviews. Sales are kind of dismal and we're trying to push it through PPC and so the first thing I would ask is, Hey, Have you utilized your audiences off of Amazon? So do you have Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, anything that you have a following on? Let's start there because you have people who are already interested in your brand and let's tell them that you have a new product. Right then you already have maybe a thousand people on Instagram, maybe a few, couple hundred on Facebook, whatever, whatever it may be.
[00:01:56] Chris M: Right.
[00:01:57] Trenton: And for anybody who doesn't have a following on these social media platforms, the great thing is -- you can hire an influencer, a relatively cheap, cheap price right now. And it can be anywhere from like the 10,000 to 20,000 range. It costs somewhere usually between two and $300 for that type of audience, depending what vertical you're in and make sure you're hiring somebody in your vertical.
If you're selling car parts, don't go after like somebody who's in the beauty category. So making sure your audience makes sense with your influencer. And then having them push for you. So once you do that, and I would follow that up with a discount on your product. But the most important tip that I have is to then request review third party tool for this or you can do this through Amazon-- through Amazon it's a little bit more manual. You have to go and actually click like each sale. Hey, request, request, request. So if you have someone on your team who has time. Have 'em do it, but if you need something a little bit more automated, we suggest one of three tools FeedbackFive, Jungle Scout, or Helium10. And the good news is most sellers usually already subscribe to one of these platforms.
And then what you'll do is go through, you'll set up the automation, Feedbackfive, we find is usually the easiest and user friendly to set this up but I would say most people who come to us already have Helium10 and so we just suggest they use that because we want to keep it as slim as possible. We don't need you to go subscribe to another third party tool. And I have all these different tools that kind of already can be run through a single platform. So utilize Helium10---
[00:03:33] Leah: Also a sponsor.
[00:03:36] Chris M: Also sponsoring the conference.
[00:03:38] Trenton: Perfect.
[00:03:40] Chris M:Good mention --everyone that was unscripted.
[00:03:43] Trenton: And set up your automated request. I believe through Helium10 it's called a follow-up. And through this follow up, what you can do is you can type your own-- what we've found through our case study is that actually the templated one that they have through helium 10 performs better than you writing something out and automate that, get it going out to those customers. So utilizing your Instagram or that influencer pushing people towards your Amazon product detail page making those sales and then making sure you're following up, requesting your review. Once you start to get those reviews in that's when you start to push PPC. And I honestly would start really lowering the funnel long tail keywords that are very high intent. Maybe a hundred to 200 searches a month, but you might not have 1520 of those and bid high on those. And then once you start to get traction, you get 15 reviews, 20 reviews in, then you start to go higher in the funnel, in your keywords, something that is little bit more generic, but you can compete now with people who are more established.
[00:04:36] Chris M: And something that Chris and I were talking about in a separate conversation was you have to prepare properly. You can't just expect to dive in. And this all magically happens with no prep, with no lead time. I like your phrase, Chris, about, you know, kind of plowing the field before you, right before you start planting. Can you expand upon that a little bit? Just in terms of what you've seen, maybe not so much initial errors, but yeah.
[00:05:05] Chris B: Yeah. I'm on a three to seven a week minimum with e-commerce entrepreneurs, whether they're off Amazon or on Amazon. And what happens frequently is people come to great events like yours, or they're in MDS or they're in some other group and they hear about somebody had great success running off Amazon ads to their Shopify site and they think, oh, this is what I need to do. They ask for recommendations. They see, we got a good reputation. So I get a phone call and they're all excited because they're a warm lead. Right. And I like warm leads too on my side. Yep. But I'm typically having to like dump a little cold water on their excitement and enthusiasm because they're too preliminary and they haven't plowed their field. They don't have enough branded search for instance, which is very important around their brand around specific products. I'm typically saying, Hey, Talk to our Facebook team first, like let's build up a campaign there, for instance, it can be TikTok too, but set up a campaign there. And let's really see, like when you start getting some good cold traffic conversion, or if you don't then guess what? That Shopify theme that you had the guy in the Philippines put together for you that may need some CRO love and then you've gotta tweak that. And then you gotta go back and run some fresh ad sets then when you start to get traction, You're good with an agency like ours. We're gonna take a harder look at you because we've got more opportunity to give you success and then it's gonna work even more on Trenton side, with the Amazon side. And so I talk to folks from time to time that have already dove in head first and they're complaining about their agency, but I'm thinking you know it's not really the agency. It's your two steps or three steps ahead and you need to hit the brakes and plow your fields.
[00:07:03] Leah: Yeah. It's funny people really like to rush into ad spend and not in the most efficient way.
[00:07:12] Trenton: Yeah for us on Amazon, like they set up their product detail page and they'll do the bare minimum. The minimum amount of pictures, they'll have the minimum amount of information and they're sending people there and they're spending really a lot of money on a keyword that is relevant, but is very competitive. So making sure that like, you're set up for conversion rate, you want people to convert. And so they have the information about your product and so when you utilize your audiences, you send people here, you have the discount set up, you're prepared to make those sales, and you're prepared to help people convert and meet that need which you're trying to meet.
[00:07:43] Chris M: Yeah, and we love having companies like yours support the Seller Velocity Conference, because we know you get some exposure to brands that need your kind of expert advice. We know there's a lot of agencies out there, but there's different perspectives on these questions. Right? You hear a lot of podcasts and videos and opinions. And so what, what kind of final word of advice would either of you leave our audience with whether it's the one that shows up in Bend, Oregon or brands that are attending virtually, for the rest of this year, it's a competitive space. How they decide their 1, 2, 3 steps before they jump in and, and plunge with the ad spend.
[00:08:20] Chris B: Yeah I think it is talking to experienced sellers, but it's asking the deeper questions about, um, who did you talk to that helped you set up your brand strategy? Who did you talk to that really helped you with your eCommerce overall view? We've been doing this 12 years. I've got a very deep list of network people so if people aren't a good fit for us, we can point you to a consultant. We can point you to a Facebook or a TikTok. And so utilize agencies, not so much as a service but also as a resource.
[00:08:49] Chris M: Exactly. Yeah. Love that. Love it. Yeah. Well, thanks so much again for supporting the conference. We're looking forward to seeing everybody in Bend, Oregon, April 28th, 29th. Any questions on anything we've talked about today, of course we can help get you in touch with the OMG commerce. Thanks again for sponsoring guys. And we'll see you soon. Appreciate it. See ya. Thanks.
[00:00:41] Trenton: Yeah. Thanks Chris for having us. My tip is pretty simple, but it's something that a lot, we see a lot of clients come to OMG and it is something that we implement that they really haven't thought about. And what we see is like most clients come and they have a legacy product that is doing really well. They have a lot of reviews. This is what their business is kind of like, it's the cornerstone of what they've built their Amazon business around. And then they start to expand that portfolio. So they add a couple skews here, a couple skews there and what I've seen is they come and they're like, Hey, we had great traction with this product. We listed it. It got reviews. We started ranking for all these maybe high funnel keywords. And we're just not seeing the same thing happen. We have one or two reviews. Sales are kind of dismal and we're trying to push it through PPC and so the first thing I would ask is, Hey, Have you utilized your audiences off of Amazon? So do you have Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, anything that you have a following on? Let's start there because you have people who are already interested in your brand and let's tell them that you have a new product. Right then you already have maybe a thousand people on Instagram, maybe a few, couple hundred on Facebook, whatever, whatever it may be.
[00:01:56] Chris M: Right.
[00:01:57] Trenton: And for anybody who doesn't have a following on these social media platforms, the great thing is -- you can hire an influencer, a relatively cheap, cheap price right now. And it can be anywhere from like the 10,000 to 20,000 range. It costs somewhere usually between two and $300 for that type of audience, depending what vertical you're in and make sure you're hiring somebody in your vertical.
If you're selling car parts, don't go after like somebody who's in the beauty category. So making sure your audience makes sense with your influencer. And then having them push for you. So once you do that, and I would follow that up with a discount on your product. But the most important tip that I have is to then request review third party tool for this or you can do this through Amazon-- through Amazon it's a little bit more manual. You have to go and actually click like each sale. Hey, request, request, request. So if you have someone on your team who has time. Have 'em do it, but if you need something a little bit more automated, we suggest one of three tools FeedbackFive, Jungle Scout, or Helium10. And the good news is most sellers usually already subscribe to one of these platforms.
And then what you'll do is go through, you'll set up the automation, Feedbackfive, we find is usually the easiest and user friendly to set this up but I would say most people who come to us already have Helium10 and so we just suggest they use that because we want to keep it as slim as possible. We don't need you to go subscribe to another third party tool. And I have all these different tools that kind of already can be run through a single platform. So utilize Helium10---
[00:03:33] Leah: Also a sponsor.
[00:03:36] Chris M: Also sponsoring the conference.
[00:03:38] Trenton: Perfect.
[00:03:40] Chris M:Good mention --everyone that was unscripted.
[00:03:43] Trenton: And set up your automated request. I believe through Helium10 it's called a follow-up. And through this follow up, what you can do is you can type your own-- what we've found through our case study is that actually the templated one that they have through helium 10 performs better than you writing something out and automate that, get it going out to those customers. So utilizing your Instagram or that influencer pushing people towards your Amazon product detail page making those sales and then making sure you're following up, requesting your review. Once you start to get those reviews in that's when you start to push PPC. And I honestly would start really lowering the funnel long tail keywords that are very high intent. Maybe a hundred to 200 searches a month, but you might not have 1520 of those and bid high on those. And then once you start to get traction, you get 15 reviews, 20 reviews in, then you start to go higher in the funnel, in your keywords, something that is little bit more generic, but you can compete now with people who are more established.
[00:04:36] Chris M: And something that Chris and I were talking about in a separate conversation was you have to prepare properly. You can't just expect to dive in. And this all magically happens with no prep, with no lead time. I like your phrase, Chris, about, you know, kind of plowing the field before you, right before you start planting. Can you expand upon that a little bit? Just in terms of what you've seen, maybe not so much initial errors, but yeah.
[00:05:05] Chris B: Yeah. I'm on a three to seven a week minimum with e-commerce entrepreneurs, whether they're off Amazon or on Amazon. And what happens frequently is people come to great events like yours, or they're in MDS or they're in some other group and they hear about somebody had great success running off Amazon ads to their Shopify site and they think, oh, this is what I need to do. They ask for recommendations. They see, we got a good reputation. So I get a phone call and they're all excited because they're a warm lead. Right. And I like warm leads too on my side. Yep. But I'm typically having to like dump a little cold water on their excitement and enthusiasm because they're too preliminary and they haven't plowed their field. They don't have enough branded search for instance, which is very important around their brand around specific products. I'm typically saying, Hey, Talk to our Facebook team first, like let's build up a campaign there, for instance, it can be TikTok too, but set up a campaign there. And let's really see, like when you start getting some good cold traffic conversion, or if you don't then guess what? That Shopify theme that you had the guy in the Philippines put together for you that may need some CRO love and then you've gotta tweak that. And then you gotta go back and run some fresh ad sets then when you start to get traction, You're good with an agency like ours. We're gonna take a harder look at you because we've got more opportunity to give you success and then it's gonna work even more on Trenton side, with the Amazon side. And so I talk to folks from time to time that have already dove in head first and they're complaining about their agency, but I'm thinking you know it's not really the agency. It's your two steps or three steps ahead and you need to hit the brakes and plow your fields.
[00:07:03] Leah: Yeah. It's funny people really like to rush into ad spend and not in the most efficient way.
[00:07:12] Trenton: Yeah for us on Amazon, like they set up their product detail page and they'll do the bare minimum. The minimum amount of pictures, they'll have the minimum amount of information and they're sending people there and they're spending really a lot of money on a keyword that is relevant, but is very competitive. So making sure that like, you're set up for conversion rate, you want people to convert. And so they have the information about your product and so when you utilize your audiences, you send people here, you have the discount set up, you're prepared to make those sales, and you're prepared to help people convert and meet that need which you're trying to meet.
[00:07:43] Chris M: Yeah, and we love having companies like yours support the Seller Velocity Conference, because we know you get some exposure to brands that need your kind of expert advice. We know there's a lot of agencies out there, but there's different perspectives on these questions. Right? You hear a lot of podcasts and videos and opinions. And so what, what kind of final word of advice would either of you leave our audience with whether it's the one that shows up in Bend, Oregon or brands that are attending virtually, for the rest of this year, it's a competitive space. How they decide their 1, 2, 3 steps before they jump in and, and plunge with the ad spend.
[00:08:20] Chris B: Yeah I think it is talking to experienced sellers, but it's asking the deeper questions about, um, who did you talk to that helped you set up your brand strategy? Who did you talk to that really helped you with your eCommerce overall view? We've been doing this 12 years. I've got a very deep list of network people so if people aren't a good fit for us, we can point you to a consultant. We can point you to a Facebook or a TikTok. And so utilize agencies, not so much as a service but also as a resource.
[00:08:49] Chris M: Exactly. Yeah. Love that. Love it. Yeah. Well, thanks so much again for supporting the conference. We're looking forward to seeing everybody in Bend, Oregon, April 28th, 29th. Any questions on anything we've talked about today, of course we can help get you in touch with the OMG commerce. Thanks again for sponsoring guys. And we'll see you soon. Appreciate it. See ya. Thanks.