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$85 to $117k in 45 days. 2-minute breakdown of what we did.
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Aaron has 10,000 hours of Amazon experience. In this episode we discuss:
You can connect with Aaron on LinkedIn here.
Get help with Amazon advertising here.
RESOURCES
Read our News Feed.
Book an Amazon Advertising audit.
Follow me on Twitter.
Amazon design examples.
Follow our team.
$85 to $117k in 45 days. 2-minute breakdown of what we did.
Message George.
[0:00:01] George Reid: Welcome to us. Always Day One. My name is George Reid, a former Amazonian turned amazon consultant each week on the podcast, you're going to hear industry experts, brand owners and amazon employees share their answers to the basic yet fundamental questions you should be asking yourself bang your amazon business now, let's jump in. Hello ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode of it's always day one. I'm really excited to have more and more come speak to us about amazon. He's been playing in the game for a very long time. We spoke on the phone near the week and I knew I had to bring him on. He's also very kind about me on linkedin. So it was a no brainer and get him on erIN, how are you today
[0:00:41] Aaron Moore: George, I'm doing fantastic man, thank you. Thanks for having me on.
[0:00:44] George Reid: Much appreciated John to give us and the audience that 62nd background so we can get a brief understanding into exactly who you are
[0:00:54] Aaron Moore: sure. About 10 years ago I joined a company brought them from about $1 million dollars in sales To $15 million Amazon. So I had to kind of go from 0-0 to hero real fast on that stuff And then kept him there for about 10 years and then ultimately that company was purchased by a publicly traded company. Um I had to sign a non compete for the technology that I was selling and basically I was out of a job and out of an industry that, I I knew for 10 years and $100 million dollars in sales and I'm like, well, what do I know the second best? And it was amazon. I basically did a couple of test samples of a new, new companies on amazon to try to replicate my results. I did it, I did it again, I feel good about it. 2.5 years later I managed uh, 15 to 20 brands on amazon and I do it a dizzy, everything is all done by me not currently outsourcing right now, but, and yeah,
[0:02:00] George Reid: that's what I liked a lot about our conversation the other day. Um, there's kind of like a war horse died about it, someone who's still got the ability to go in and manage every component there rather than looking, looking to go offshore outsource or give it to anyone else. It's you, it's incredibly impressive. Um, how do you, I guess first and foremost, how do you juggle that? Is there any system you have in place with each accounts? Because there will be lots of listeners who will be doing it on their own, which I find incredibly commendable. Is there any systems you have in place that you could share to help those, you
[0:02:41] Aaron Moore: know, it's, it goes down to priorities. Uh, the number one thing that helps everybody myself and and my customers clients and everybody else's sales, if your count is not selling or increasing in sales, that account needs the most attention first. If those and you're in that account and you have too much inventory. One problem of one product, but not enough of the other product sell what you got on your shelf sales cures. Also my number one priority every day when I wake up. Now I have a nice cool dashboard. Um I use a software called Merchant Spring. Um and it's a dashboard. I can see all my customers and their percentage up or down every day. So it's kind of the first thing I look at it. It's my scoreboard of the day. Look at that, See what I'm up, see where I'm down. How's my advertising campaigns compile a list and attack every day
[0:03:40] George Reid: and to get a little bit more granular. Could you give us an example of a couple of scenarios and then how well let's take today for instance how you were then attacking such problems. What does that look like? What is it like in the weeds there? I know you mentioned playing with seller support today for arguments.
[0:03:59] Aaron Moore: Yeah. Um It was kind of, it was, it was a customer's request. It was basically a misspelling and it was an ongoing customer request. And now this one doesn't equate to sales. Right? So it's a, it's a misspelling word unfortunate doesn't quit to sales, which is usually out of my um My formula for making money, but that's what the customer wants and 10-15 cases filed later in multiple flat file uploads. It's still not fixed, but sometimes you just have to give it your all what you can do on there and do that. But another, another example of, of prioritizing when, when a product is, is not selling or reselling good and not selling all of a sudden, then you kind of get into research mode. What's, what's the clues, what's the competitor like what can I do to fix it? And the latest one was, his product is down 50% in the last 30 days. So it's been trickling down, but I'm like, what the heck. And so I just revamped every single word in the listing. Revamp the a plus content, revamped a plus content back inwards and um, we did all the pictures, new angles, kind of just refresh the whole listing and The last seven days I'm up 100 116% in sales.
[0:05:14] George Reid: Right, wow. So it was, it was simply a case, I mean from an initial analysis, it was simply a case of everything was a little bit stale. The initial keyword research wasn't as relevant now is what it was when you started or were they started what listing started? Do you think that's what it was. It was just okay, so blowing off the dust almost.
[0:05:38] Aaron Moore: Well I had the same keywords because the product is kind of isolated in a unique unique niche. I just, I just got aggressive with the keyword with the copy. I'm like, this is not like your grandfather's product, this is your product and this is what you need for. And here's the features. You know, it would be stupid or not. I don't say stupid, but it would be really lame to have a stock issued product when you can upgrade it with these new features. Uh, you know, the features would be the key words and everything else. Um, and then I added new videos. I mean I chopped and we had like a three minute video on there. I chopped a dip in the 66 different videos that are 27 seconds long. So rather than have one, I had 66 reasons to stay on that listing and keep on watching videos and
[0:06:25] George Reid: I'm gonna, what's the most, a maximum limit videos and listening now. Do you know? I've
[0:06:30] Aaron Moore: Never been over three or four minutes, but I've seen him around 10 minutes
[0:06:34] George Reid: and with regard to the number of videos, because I've only ever seen one, you're saying that the ability to have more than one video within those images on the list.
[0:06:43] Aaron Moore: So here's, here's kind of my latest little video. I don't know if it's a hack, but it's, it's working for me right now. I like to create 6-10 videos. 27 seconds piece. Why? Because no one was gonna watch it over 27 seconds. I do that and they're different. They may be like how to push a button, how to how to screw this on and off? Okay. And then I create thumbnails for each one of them. The thumbnail will have the brand logo in it and then two words on, you know, push button, something like that. So okay, so on the listing at the top it will have you watch all the videos and you know what, you know what they're into because you're the thumbnails. But at the bottom of the listing where all those like additional videos live at now you completely take over that bottom area with all your thumbnails that are branded towards your product. They all look similar. So you get that view as well and kind of on the concept of the more time they spend on your listing, the greater chance are going to click by
[0:07:43] George Reid: your playing with it. Still could related video shorts or if they? Re named
[0:07:48] Aaron Moore: Jack. Yeah, I think it's, I think it's just called related videos bottom and it kind of edges everybody else out of there and you take it over and you need like you need about six to take over the whole space.
[0:08:01] George Reid: Yeah, I do remember looking at listing the other day. I think it was like the dentistry category and they were just populated with so many other competitors uploading their reviews or that influence would upload the video and they just uploaded there. Quite cute as well. You know if you're getting you to generated content, use some of that within, within the related videos and you obviously, is it based on the videos that get the most clicks or is it based purely on the time the video is uploaded? Um, and that's what's causing that they're only showing the most recent videos were at the moment. You
[0:08:38] Aaron Moore: know, I don't know what the exact metric is for that. I think that's going to go back to relevancy. So my title always has, you know, brand product tile feature, you know, and I used 130 characters. So all I know is every time I do that, whatever the related videos down below, I always replace them with, with the, with the new products that I uploaded to the listing.
[0:09:01] George Reid: Mhm.
[0:09:02] Aaron Moore: So relevant.
[0:09:03] George Reid: How have you noticed that conversion? But I've been interest or if you're not managed to monitor. Yeah, I know you said sales were up 116
[0:09:12] Aaron Moore: On average. I've noticed probably 20 or 30% uptick in sales overall
[0:09:18] George Reid: with it related videos.
[0:09:20] Aaron Moore: Yeah, right. When I write, I mean right after I drop it and I blitz did it like, you know, again, 3-6 at the time.
[0:09:29] George Reid: That's quite mad. And I guess what I like about it is in my opinion, in my head is the equivalent of when an advertising strategy on the defensive play is working really well and you search something like I think super coffee are great at it, or bulletproof coffee. So bulletproof coffee with their defense and it's just kind of a sea of orange and there's something very satisfying about landing on on any page where the colour is consistent throughout. If you can achieve that with your related videos as well. And I'm assuming you kind of got the same brand
[0:10:10] Aaron Moore: background, look
[0:10:12] George Reid: who's the same font. So it's consistent and it encourages people to go or let me watch all of them. I mean we could even probably play with is that there is a particular number order, you may like them to play them in. You can have that number in them if you've ever seen harry potter on netflix and prime, they always have like the 1234, but people like me who don't know what order they come in, it's just helpful, right? No one, like most people probably don't know the order. Um but I think if you did that related videos, I could also look nice because it encourages people to kind of over there. Is to, it seems to make sense of what give the steps here are the stepping stones, like human nature is to where there's four steps, I'll watch your four steps. Uh
[0:11:02] Aaron Moore: I just don't know how amazon orders them though because they're all over the place on the ordering and and the other the other downside. It's only on the desktop app, you know, on your phone? It doesn't come out like that, but it looks pretty on the desktop,
[0:11:17] George Reid: but still the uptick in in sales is huge, which really reinforces the power of videos. Are you then looking, you're managing the advertising as well? Right, yep. Of course. Are you looking to repurpose a lot of those videos again onto the out front?
[0:11:33] Aaron Moore: Well, usually, I mean that's the technique I use on accounts that, you know, their their budget is $3 a day. You know, they're they're they're doing quite well, but they just don't have an ad budget. And so I have to kind of do stuff like that because it's free uh to increase the sales to increase the profits. So I could go, hey, what's increase this $3 a day to $10 a day and kind of keep growing it and then uh and hopefully they don't run an inventory or some something silly like that.
[0:12:04] George Reid: Okay, good point. You made me think of, right, here is a lot of the people we've had before. They'll they'll focus massively and just talk about strategies for those monstrous sellers. Um
[0:12:16] Aaron Moore: Yeah,
[0:12:17] George Reid: I think it will be good to talk today a little bit about how we can as a smaller seller still succeeds. They'll get those marginal gains or amazon and one question quite aggressive, but I'm intrigued to see how you break this down would be, I asked quite often, right? One of the big questions I asked, if you've got 10-K, would you still, would you still open an amazon business? I'd like to in that question slightly. It does make it much harder for you are and so I apologize but you're a grown man, you'll be fine. I think
[0:12:48] Aaron Moore: I can handle this, whatever it is.
[0:12:50] George Reid: So let's imagine you've got a tank, a budget, your products just landed sat there and you carriage right now you've already bought the product is that you've got 10k to play with? What steps you now taking With that $10,000 to Kick start the business. That is your, you go get a budget basically. What are you putting in place and what kind of attributing that 10-K towards different parts of that businesses growth, albeit photography hiring someone whatever.
[0:13:24] Aaron Moore: So I'm assuming the inventories they're paid for and I have nothing else to work with except for maybe a cell phone. Is that would that be a good assumption?
[0:13:32] George Reid: I'll give you a laptop, yeah,
[0:13:34] Aaron Moore: a laptop and an and an iphone. So Um, before the listing starts, I would probably invest in a light box of some sort. Um, you know, they're 15 and 20 bucks off of Amazon a light box and a tripod. I would use that with my phone to create some high resolution, uh, photos, nice, clean all the angles at the same time. I would make videos with just a white background. I would take those pictures to remove background dot BG and remove the background on them. So it looks nice and clean. Uh Those would be my pictures. I would use uh movie to uh To make to make six videos. I would use keynote to make the thumbnails for them because they have 16 x nine format. And then already um I would probably use fiber or some other place online to create a logo. And uh and they were talking about that knocked the heck out about $25 right there. And then then you're gonna go buy some, you're going to buy some depending how it's packaged from china but you're going to maybe a couple 100 bucks and packaging and labels labels to do it. Uh label making machines. I love the Rollo label making machines. I have three of them for and I haven't set up for three different sized labels. That's a couple 100 bucks. Um Some couple tables, couple tape guns, a box of tape and then I I usually pay alright pay somebody maybe 25 to 50 cents a unit to package or label the product and then boom shipping out the door. And so
[0:15:14] George Reid: That's your operational base covered isn't it? And what are you content Pillars covered, which I like because your mind it's kind of right there. You're thinking about that from day one. then when it comes to Are you going to go to Amazon 1st? Are you going to go to website fist
[0:15:30] Aaron Moore: Amazon 1st Amazon 1st. So amazon. Uh, well I would probably stand up a Go daddy website just to go daddy simple. Um, website builder not, not get into a wordpress or anything like that. There's like this really simple go daddy system. Um, I would stand up a website with all the product on there and the same pictures on there and I would be cognizant of S. C. O. For the product that's on there. And then I would create a link for that over to over to amazon. Uh, so boom is sitting there and then at the same time I would stand up all the social media for facebook instagram, probably tick tock nowadays. So at least it's a placeholder there and then launch straight to amazon uh, with all the, with get all the product to amazon and the reason why if it's there on amazon, I could still sell off my website. I mean that I don't want to because it's so easy just to sell FDA, but everything is sitting there on amazon ready to go. And uh, if I wanted to change it and sell off my website, I could just have amazon fulfill it for me. Um, or just leave it all an amazon and have had them click from my website over to amazon and my website, make sure you apply for an affiliate link on that, click to make sure your website, you're actually affiliate to your own product going to amazon and um, you get the extra 3 to 5% of sales if, if you're selling, if you're clicking getting some clicks off your website.
[0:17:00] George Reid: Hey folks, is George here. I'd like you to check out my new site georges dot blog. It's where you can find all of my famous weekly emails as well as how we can work together to repeat. That's George's dot blog. Now let's carry on with the episode, was it the conversation we had recently about just having that amazon buy now button on your website increased conversion massively. Even just having it. There was that archer.
[0:17:32] Aaron Moore: Yeah, that was our chat. So that was in the previous company. This is, you know, my, my proof of concept was from one million to $15 million dollars a year. So it's correct. But this, this drives e commerce directors of e commerce crazy for the website stuff. My saying is on your website that you're currently so product off of have by now from us or at the, at the shopping cart or by now from amazon and click it straight over to amazon and I at once and I probably sales probably tripled because I did that because everybody, everybody landing on your website. Everybody's happy some people just like to buy from that brand because they feel trusted or something and then everybody else likes to buy from amazon and when they're, they're just keep on buying more about your product. And um, because maybe they're on their website and they saw, they discovered something they didn't know about and well I'll buy that on amazon too and, and have it there. But you calm. The old school e commerce guys hate that plan because you lose the journey, you lose the email, whatever and like sales cures all. It still cures all. So if that fixes it, it's gonna be okay.
[0:18:44] George Reid: And then when you've now obviously set that process subsequently, basic website to kick things off, you've got the button over to amazon, you've got the commission or the affiliate links set up, which is beautiful. If you then think about now you want to be in a position to market that product. What are you doing first and foremost? Is it all going to be that 10K budget? Let's say we've spent a grand so far. Are you then throwing a lot of that into an advertising budget on Amazon solely? Are you looking to go other platforms as well?
[0:19:19] Aaron Moore: I would stay on amazon no matter what. Um, I would say on amazon and my first, my first set of campaigns would be, um, Uh, CPC campaigns would be an auto low with auto, 25 cents. Um, It would be at the 25 cents that will kind of go up or down a little bit, um, what's it called, dynamic dynamic, but at 25 cents auto put on that. I would have my keyword. Uh, my keywords that are relevant to the product. Um, in three different categories, exact phrase and broad. And then I would have, my brand was big enough then if I had enough exposure on it, I do, I do a branded keywords as well. Um, and then watched every three days kick out, kick out the low, the low performers increase the high performers and keep monitoring it and then look at that the auto called auto low campaigns, Find out the new words are and what those keywords are clicking over at and go from there. But man, I tell you what, I've been doing a lot of damage with just a 25% or 25 cents Auto campaign. Um, it's crazy the amount of sales and the row as that, you know, we're talking 15 to 30 row as Because if if 11 sent click you get $100, you sell $100 product the row as just goes through the roof on that. And so that's been, that's been extremely bootstrap successful. Um, and then yeah, if you have the extra budget. I love the idea. I love the videos. The video ads are fantastic. I'd build the store out, obviously have branded and build the store out, drive traffic to the store and all that other stuff. But really your 8020 rule is going to say that CPC is going to still make the most money and that CPC that low bid CPC over that low auto, that's going to do extremely well for you too.
[0:21:18] George Reid: And so with is a lot of that budget then just going to go towards towards advertising. Obviously you've got the fulfillment in place. You've got some basic images that's not like you getting raw white box, it keeps it low cost. But the images are still going to be basically tick the box right. Are you then at some point looking to go, let me get on five and let me get a graphic designer. Let me give them some examples of basically go because this is my kind of mindset. Here's some stuff that I really like some branding. I really like some visuals already like here are my, what I call kind of raw materials, my product images on a white background. Go make them like that. He's the most simple way of doing it.
[0:22:04] Aaron Moore: I wouldn't do that because Canada is free. I can do the same thing on Canada even without the premium package on there. The free Canada, I could do it ever. I could really, I could replicate any A plus content almost I've ever seen on their, on amazon as long as you have a nice image clean and you know what if I had the wrong angle, whatever. I just reshoot it and and that the nice clear background on there. So I mean overall I wouldn't I would just I would kind of budget I would take $1,000 for ad budget and Sit on the 9000 and then figure out what I could do. Two I mean I want to double triple that when that dollar spent on advertising. I wanted to make me $4 instantly all the time And I don't want to throw $3,000 at it because if I can't do it in $1,000 1 why throw $3,000? So just incremental growth on it and then keep on cranking it up. But that other $9,000 I might need it for inventory later if if everything goes good you know I'm restocking is is more important than advertising because if you run out of sale cool your advertising is great and it's flying off the shelf but what's your restock time? What's your lead time for that? Has your inventory.
[0:23:21] George Reid: Yeah. Have you got there? I think a lot of people get caught out with that as well and it comes down to the mountains stretch that I've hammered over and over again. Kind of the operational base requires you to be in stock because the fly will spinning really nice and if that unless you're able to stay in stock I'll have the fly will continuously spin even if it's a little bit slower because you've maybe dialed in advertising down. You're still in stock is still able to be able to be purchased And that that winds against everything else. Um Now I want to pivot slightly. I love your breakdown. There is such a simple way of looking at things of how you can keep the budget tight for those who aren't in a position with with all the money in the world to go off and build on amazon business but want to pivot a little bit and go to bad recommendations. What bad recommendations do you hear most frequently right now because amazon has got a bit of an echo chamber on linked in. So I'm sure like you see a lot on there, you're seeing any overall just bad recommendations.
[0:24:29] Aaron Moore: You know what I see is a complete lack of fundamental amazon business. You know my checklist? My 5th I have like a 15 point checklist that starts on monday and ends on friday. Right? But guess what? The number one thing I do every time I log in the account that nobody ever recommends go make sure your listing is not suppressed. Seriously Not like people will tell you how to run a 14 page um CPC campaign but they won't say why don't you go ahead and double check that your listing is not suppressed. So my check starts with. So the bad advice is everybody is focusing on problems that that's good when everything has gone good. But Do you have 90 days inventory on the shelf? Are you selling out too much? Should you fix that? Is your lead time on your inventory too long. Is your listing up? Is uh is a search of press for some reason or you're you know you're back in keywords, can they be optimized? Um kind of like all the fundamental stuff like is everything going as good as it can be on your listing? Okay. Cool. And your inventory good, Then go CPC and then go new pictures and everything else. But do you have 6-7 pictures up? Do you have at least one video? Do you have a plus content with with 100 100 description words on the all text for those? Do you have a store setup? Okay if you could answer, if you can tick all the boxes there then do all the great advice that everybody's talking about on on linkedin. But the problem with lantana, everybody's what happens when it goes wrong and uh yeah so the fundamentals, I had, I had an account on uh prime on prime day. They had they uploaded 5-10,000 units big big 50% off sale. And they were they were search suppressed on on prime day the first the first morning. The reason why because the white background on their their main picture wasn't white enough and they got searched suppressed. So but that stuff goes back to pre emptively setting up your listing To not have problems like that, like I don't I don't care what what everybody else is doing on Amazon. I know the rules and I know what I can and cannot get away with. I know I need 8% image with a white background. They may not get shut down tomorrow today or tomorrow, but couldn't get shut down during prime day at midnight when I'm, you know, I should be sleeping and not paying attention to it, yep, don't take that risk. So, fundamental amazon.
[0:27:24] George Reid: I think a lot of, I'd say a large percentage of listings, I go on a large set of brands that I see, don't take those boxes either. They just don't like they don't have the storefront, they've got a plus, got storefront available, they just don't have it. They have three images and it seems insane that this conversation still happens and then I'm still having it. I still have to record live videos and share it with people.
[0:27:54] Aaron Moore: Yeah,
[0:27:55] George Reid: but I still have to do that, which I find it saying particularly very successful brands and I'm like, you've got to images like how is this still a thing, um, which which we're discussing, um, just taking off those fundamental box, obviously, always going to position yourself in in in a better place. I want to flick over to a quick speed around. We've already answered one of the questions um uh, intrigue. So your answer some of the others question number one, how do you see data leveling or widening the playing field,
[0:28:32] Aaron Moore: widening the playing field, there's too much of it. Not enough people know what to do with it.
[0:28:36] George Reid: That's my answer as well. What's the biggest threat to an amazon business?
[0:28:42] Aaron Moore: The amazon owners themselves not doing fundamental amazon business? Uh
[0:28:46] George Reid: huh I agree a lot, a lot with that as well. Someone actually said that as well recently. It's quite funny if you only had 10 grand, would you still start on Amazon business today?
[0:28:58] Aaron Moore: Yep. I would sit on $9,000 of it though, just use $1,000 to go with.
[0:29:03] George Reid: No, if you're running an amazon business on your own, what skill set would you look for in your first hire?
[0:29:10] Aaron Moore: I run 15 of them, they are my own,
[0:29:15] George Reid: you're hiring, you would hire myself
[0:29:21] Aaron Moore: what? This
[0:29:22] George Reid: little cell looking for skill set here,
[0:29:25] Aaron Moore: Who is the 1st 1, a skill set? Uh somebody that can handle a bunch of different tasks at the same time, not multitasking, but a uh yeah, that was, that was someone who could stay organized and okay, check check boxes on goals all day long, I don't know what kind of school, but the skill set, what does that stand for project management
[0:29:58] George Reid: maybe? Yeah, some people have gone like their their content creators for instance, Yeah, like they're brilliant when it comes to creating content for argument's sake. Um someone was saying they're unflappable, That was what I heard yesterday. What exactly, but it was like if so flat bill would be seller support comes along and shuts down. For whatever reason you're like, this is ridiculous. So they shut this down beyond flat. You continuously go back to them over and over again. Father question into, I think you've only answered this in today's market, Where would you launch for some amazon or your own website?
[0:30:37] Aaron Moore: The amazon? Yeah.
[0:30:39] George Reid: As expected, my friend
[0:30:41] Aaron Moore: that passed, that passed them all.
[0:30:43] George Reid: Your answer is the greatest. One of them had to the skills that may be flammable, that is flat with the opposite.
[0:30:51] Aaron Moore: Many things that come to mind when I hear the word flammable and none of them are very clean at this moment. But
[0:30:57] George Reid: Good man, thank you so much for your 30 minutes of time today. I think that's been incredibly beneficial to. It's a big and small brand owners to be honest, we've got a nice step by step of how you can go from A to b on amazon and through to see, we've got some fundamentals to nail. Um and I love some of those pieces about those related videos and the impact they can have for, for brands of all sizes. So erin, thank you. Thank you so much
[0:31:25] Aaron Moore: George, Thanks for having me. Uh do I have to go listen to myself in this podcast or do I have to skip over to another one when I go for a walk or something.
[0:31:33] George Reid: Yeah, you flat pasta long.
[0:31:34] Aaron Moore: I'll be flapping a lot of stuff today.
[0:31:38] George Reid: A good man.
[0:31:40] Aaron Moore: I think What?
[0:31:42] George Reid: Hey guys, just a quick one. If you are enjoying the podcast, I either have some actionable next steps or new ideas. I'd really appreciate. If you could one subscribe to the show and leave us review. These are really, really important to us, as you probably know being in the amazon world and two. If you're looking for additional support with your brand, head over to the website. It's always day one dot co dot UK where we've got links to other resources as often our guys speak soon.