When was the last time you questioned whether you're tracking the right metrics for your Amazon business? In this eye-opening episode, we tackle what might be the most dangerous number in your Amazon dashboard: ACOS (Advertising Cost of Sale).

Unlike other platforms where return on ad spend makes perfect sense, Amazon creates a unique ecosystem where your advertising directly impacts your organic ranking. This "rocket fuel" effect means your ads aren't just generating direct sales—they're influencing your entire marketplace performance. Yet ACOS completely ignores this crucial relationship.

We dive deep into why focusing solely on ACOS leads to misguided decisions, including how agencies often manipulate this metric by concentrating on branded search terms that artificially inflate performance. You'll learn why proper campaign segmentation matters and how to spot when your numbers look good but your business is suffering.

The real game-changer? Understanding that different products in your lineup serve different purposes. Your "tripwire" products designed to acquire customers shouldn't be held to the same standards as your high-margin complementary items. We explore how contribution margin, lifetime value, and your business lifecycle stage should all factor into which metrics actually matter for your unique situation.

Whether you're struggling with plateaued growth or simply want to ensure you're measuring what truly counts, this episode provides actionable insights to help you look beyond ACOS and focus on the numbers that actually put money in your pocket. Ready to transform how you evaluate your Amazon advertising performance? This is your roadmap to better metrics and sustainable growth.

🚀 Transform your brand on Amazon by building a powerful customer list with the After Purchase Funnel Blueprint course. Click here to get the full course for free.

➡️ Ready to go deeper into your Amazon FBA journey to accelerate your success? Get your hands on ALL of the Brand Fortress HQ resources, mentorship, and knowledge base by visiting us at BrandFortressHQ.com

⭐️ Want to help our show grow so we can continue bringing you the very best of guests and actionable content for your Amazon FBA business? We'd greatly appreciate if you took two minutes to give us a five star rating and review. Thank you!

Unlock the power of Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) and geo-targeting to transform your advertising strategy! Once available only to high-budget DSP advertisers, these sophisticated tools are now accessible to all Amazon sellers, opening new possibilities for targeted marketing that delivers exceptional returns.

Through a fascinating case study of a pool equipment brand, we explore how strategic geo-targeting solves one of the most frustrating challenges for seasonal products. By focusing advertising dollars exclusively on regions with year-round pool usage (like Southern California, Texas, Florida, and Arizona), sellers can maintain profitable advertising during traditional off-seasons while connecting with their highest-value customers. Imagine knowing that your Phoenix customers replace pool equipment annually while Michigan customers might use the same tools for years – that's the kind of insight that transforms how you target your advertising.

AMC's implementation varies across Amazon's advertising ecosystem, with different capabilities for DSP, Sponsored Display, Sponsored Products, and Sponsored Brands. We break down exactly how each platform utilizes geographic data, from true filtering to bid modifiers, and explain how to access these powerful tools even without programming expertise. The conversation expands to cover B2B audience targeting, revealing how these professional customers often deliver significantly higher average order values and better conversion rates than standard consumers.

What makes this strategy particularly powerful is how targeted advertising creates a virtuous cycle between ad performance and organic visibility. By directing your spend toward audiences with higher conversion rates, you effectively "signal" to Amazon's algorithms that your products deserve better organic placement. Whether you're struggling with seasonal fluctuations or simply looking to maximize your advertising ROI, these advanced targeting capabilities represent the future of Amazon advertising – and the time to start implementing them is now.

🚀 Transform your brand on Amazon by building a powerful customer list with the After Purchase Funnel Blueprint course. Click here to get the full course for free.

➡️ Ready to go deeper into your Amazon FBA journey to accelerate your success? Get your hands on ALL of the Brand Fortress HQ resources, mentorship, and knowledge base by visiting us at BrandFortressHQ.com

⭐️ Want to help our show grow so we can continue bringing you the very best of guests and actionable content for your Amazon FBA business? We'd greatly appreciate if you took two minutes to give us a five star rating and review. Thank you!

The moment your Amazon conversion rate drops by half is when true brand resilience is tested. In this tactical deep-dive, we examine a real-world crisis where one premium brand watched their conversion rate collapse virtually overnight, triggering a cascade of mounting problems: skyrocketing ad costs, plummeting impression share, and rapidly declining sales across their entire catalog.

For brands heavily dependent on advertising—particularly those with a 60/40 or greater split favoring ad-driven sales over organic—these conversion crises hit especially hard. The downward spiral accelerates as reduced conversion forces bid reductions, leading to fewer impressions, fewer clicks, and ultimately, a severe drop in revenue and profitability.

We walk through the comprehensive troubleshooting process: examining your metrics funnel from impressions through click-through rate to conversion; determining exactly when the drop occurred; analyzing what changes (if any) preceded it; and the challenging reality that sometimes there is no clear "smoking gun" to blame. Amazon's platform complexity means the true cause could be algorithmic changes, competitor actions, or other factors completely invisible to sellers.

Most valuably, we reveal the surprisingly powerful price lever that many premium brands underestimate. Through careful margin analysis, our guest discovered they could reduce prices by 20% while maintaining healthy 30% contribution margins—because when properly calculated, the compounding benefits of improved click-through, conversion, and advertising efficiency often outweigh the perceived margin sacrifice. Learn how referral fee reductions, TACOS improvements, and sales velocity increases can transform what seems like a crisis into an opportunity for brand strengthening.

Whether you're currently facing a conversion crisis or preparing for the inevitable day when one strikes your business, this episode provides both immediate tactical responses and strategic frameworks to not just survive the challenge but emerge stronger on the other side. Have you experienced a sudden conversion drop? We'd love to hear your story and solutions.

🚀 Transform your brand on Amazon by building a powerful customer list with the After Purchase Funnel Blueprint course. Click here to get the full course for free.

➡️ Ready to go deeper into your Amazon FBA journey to accelerate your success? Get your hands on ALL of the Brand Fortress HQ resources, mentorship, and knowledge base by visiting us at BrandFortressHQ.com

⭐️ Want to help our show grow so we can continue bringing you the very best of guests and actionable content for your Amazon FBA business? We'd greatly appreciate if you took two minutes to give us a five star rating and review. Thank you!

The line between AI hype and reality is blurring for Amazon sellers. What's actually working right now, and what still falls short of the promises?

We're witnessing dramatic improvements in AI image generation tools over the past 6-12 months. ChatGPT and Gemini can now create compelling product images for certain categories and make sophisticated edits that previously required professional Photoshop skills. Need to change a background, adjust lighting, or swap in different models using your product? AI handles these tasks remarkably well, creating natural shadows and maintaining proper perspective automatically.

The most striking revelation? Amazon products with obviously AI-generated images are selling in massive volumes with excellent reviews. While photorealistic perfection might be ideal, consumers are demonstrating that "good enough" AI imagery doesn't hinder purchasing decisions for many product categories.

Where AI delivers immediate ROI is rapid A/B testing. You can now create multiple image variations in minutes rather than hours, testing which demographics, backgrounds, or visual elements drive the highest click-through and conversion rates. For brands willing to experiment, these incremental improvements compound into significant sales growth.

Custom GPTs represent another breakthrough, with Amazon sellers building specialized AI assistants for listing optimization, keyword research, and content generation. These tools require minimal technical expertise yet dramatically streamline workflows that previously consumed hours of time.

Not everything lives up to the hype yet. Fully automated Amazon advertising remains problematic – while AI excels at bid optimization, it often goes "nuts" with keyword harvesting without human oversight. The technology is advancing rapidly, though, with today's "impossible" demonstrations likely becoming standard practice within 3-6 months.

Ready to leverage AI for your Amazon business? Start with image testing, explore custom GPTs, and remember that for any business challenge you face, someone has probably already built an AI solution that can help. The future of Amazon selling is arriving faster than most realize – are you prepared?

🚀 Transform your brand on Amazon by building a powerful customer list with the After Purchase Funnel Blueprint course. Click here to get the full course for free.

➡️ Ready to go deeper into your Amazon FBA journey to accelerate your success? Get your hands on ALL of the Brand Fortress HQ resources, mentorship, and knowledge base by visiting us at BrandFortressHQ.com

⭐️ Want to help our show grow so we can continue bringing you the very best of guests and actionable content for your Amazon FBA business? We'd greatly appreciate if you took two minutes to give us a five star rating and review. Thank you!

Launching a new product on Amazon can feel like navigating a minefield—full of potential missteps that could derail your success. In this thought-provoking episode, we flip conventional wisdom on its head by exploring what guarantees a failed product launch.

By inverting the success model, we uncover critical insights that can transform your approach to introducing new products. Our conversation dives deep into the psychology behind defining success metrics before you begin, revealing how unclear goals almost certainly lead to disappointing outcomes. We examine why competitive research isn't just helpful—it's essential for identifying your unique position in the marketplace and crafting messaging that resonates with your target customers.

The episode delivers surprising revelations about inventory management, with one host sharing a cautionary tale of their "best launch ever" that ultimately failed due to stocking out at the critical moment. We explore why having an established audience creates an unfair advantage for sellers, allowing them to generate initial velocity without deep discounting while collecting valuable feedback throughout the development process.

Perhaps most valuable is our discussion of differentiation in today's crowded marketplace. Your main image and title must stop the scroll, but your entire listing needs to deliver on that promise with conversion-optimized content. We break down why monitoring metrics during launch allows you to double down on what's working rather than stubbornly sticking to your initial assumptions.

Ready to transform your product launch strategy? Listen now to discover why the biggest mistake isn't launching a product that fails—it's not launching at all. Your next successful Amazon product might be closer than you think.

🚀 Transform your brand on Amazon by building a powerful customer list with the After Purchase Funnel Blueprint course. Click here to get the full course for free.

➡️ Ready to go deeper into your Amazon FBA journey to accelerate your success? Get your hands on ALL of the Brand Fortress HQ resources, mentorship, and knowledge base by visiting us at BrandFortressHQ.com

⭐️ Want to help our show grow so we can continue bringing you the very best of guests and actionable content for your Amazon FBA business? We'd greatly appreciate if you took two minutes to give us a five star rating and review. Thank you!

Ever feel like your Amazon business is walking a tightrope without a safety net? You're not alone. In this eye-opening episode of Brand Fortress HQ, we pull back the curtain on the five most devastating mistakes that can silently kill your Amazon brand—mistakes we've painfully witnessed both with our clients and in our own businesses.

The first deadly sin might surprise you: changing your brand name on Amazon. We share horror stories of brands forced to choose between keeping misaligned brand identities or losing years of hard-earned reviews and rankings. One particularly painful case involved a client unable to use their actual brand name in product titles because they'd registered under a different name, thinking trademark issues prevented them from using their real one. The solution came too late, leaving them with an agonizing choice.

When it comes to reviews, we reveal why preventing one negative review is worth far more than gaining multiple five-star ratings. Amazon's algorithm now weighs negative reviews more heavily, making reputation management crucial to your success. We share practical strategies for preventing negative reviews through better product design, clearer instructions, and thoughtful post-purchase communication—without violating Amazon's terms of service.

The remaining sins—going out of stock, not knowing your numbers, and lacking an after-purchase program—can be equally devastating. We share a sobering account of watching a seller's sales chart resemble a "ski slope" after inventory problems, and why maintaining at least 90 days of inventory in the U.S. is essential for business continuity. We also explain which metrics matter most (hint: it's more than just ACOS) and why building your own customer list is your ultimate insurance policy against Amazon account suspension.

Each of these mistakes represents a potential business killer, but they're all avoidable with the right knowledge and systems. Tune in to discover how to protect your brand from these common but devastating Amazon selling mistakes. Your brand's survival may depend on it. Have you encountered any of these challenges? Join us live most Tuesdays at 2:15 PM Central on LinkedIn to get your specific questions answered!

🚀 Transform your brand on Amazon by building a powerful customer list with the After Purchase Funnel Blueprint course. Click here to get the full course for free.

➡️ Ready to go deeper into your Amazon FBA journey to accelerate your success? Get your hands on ALL of the Brand Fortress HQ resources, mentorship, and knowledge base by visiting us at BrandFortressHQ.com

⭐️ Want to help our show grow so we can continue bringing you the very best of guests and actionable content for your Amazon FBA business? We'd greatly appreciate if you took two minutes to give us a five star rating and review. Thank you!

The costly lesson of mismanaged agency relationships can create quite the hit to your brand. Mike shares a raw account of how trusting an Amazon management agency without proper oversight created a perfect storm of inventory problems that coincided with tariff changes—a mistake that will have a significant cost.

Drawing from both perspectives—Mike as a brand owner who experienced the setback firsthand, and Jon as an agency owner who helps brands navigate Amazon—this conversation delivers crucial insights for anyone considering outsourcing their Amazon operations. The hosts dissect where things went wrong, revealing that the fundamental issue wasn't necessarily the agency itself, but rather the brand's approach of "abdication instead of delegation."

The episode introduces a powerful framework for evaluating agency performance: measuring inputs before outputs. During the first 2-3 months of an agency relationship, brands should focus on concrete actions being taken rather than final results. This means tracking whether promised campaign structures are being implemented, listing refreshes are being completed, and proper keyword segmentation is occurring. Only after this foundation is established should the focus shift to performance metrics.

Beyond tactical advice, the conversation challenges conventional wisdom about KPI selection. Why focusing solely on ACOS or ROAS can be misleading, as these metrics can be easily manipulated. Instead, they advocate for broader measures like TACOS (Total Advertising Cost of Sale) and contribution margin metrics that better reflect true business performance. Discover practical guidance on agency vetting, including interviewing multiple candidates, meeting the actual account manager who'll handle your business, and setting realistic timeframes for evaluation.

Whether you're considering hiring your first Amazon agency or looking to improve an existing partnership, this episode offers an invaluable perspective from those who've experienced both sides of the relationship. Avoid the costly mistakes that even experienced brands can make when navigating the complex world of Amazon management.

🚀 Transform your brand on Amazon by building a powerful customer list with the After Purchase Funnel Blueprint course. Click here to get the full course for free.

➡️ Ready to go deeper into your Amazon FBA journey to accelerate your success? Get your hands on ALL of the Brand Fortress HQ resources, mentorship, and knowledge base by visiting us at BrandFortressHQ.com

⭐️ Want to help our show grow so we can continue bringing you the very best of guests and actionable content for your Amazon FBA business? We'd greatly appreciate if you took two minutes to give us a five star rating and review. Thank you!

The business landscape has shifted dramatically with the introduction of new tariffs, creating significant challenges for e-commerce brands selling on Amazon. But beyond the immediate financial strain lies opportunity for those willing to think creatively and act decisively.

Mike from ProTuff shares his brand's raw, unfiltered experience with tariffs, revealing how compounding factors created a perfect storm for their business. When tariffs hit amid inventory and cash flow challenges, they discovered the true value of their 40,000-person email list – generating $125,000 in just two days when they needed it most. This real-world example demonstrates why building direct customer relationships matters now more than ever.

While many brands focus solely on the obstacles, this conversation explores actionable strategies for not just surviving but potentially thriving during this disruption. From investigating Section 232 tariff exemptions to exploring bonded warehouses, diversifying manufacturing to countries like India, and capitalizing on competitors' stockouts – we examine tactical approaches to navigate these choppy waters.

The most valuable insight might be the mindset shift required: successful entrepreneurs acknowledge challenges but quickly pivot to solution-finding. As Matt aptly points out, "Today it's tariffs, tomorrow it will be something else." The brands that build resilience through diversification – multiple manufacturers, various countries, different sales channels, and direct customer relationships – gain protection against whatever challenges emerge next in the e-commerce landscape.

Whether you're currently feeling the pinch of tariffs or preparing for future disruptions, this episode provides both immediate tactics and strategic perspective to strengthen your brand for the long haul. What opportunities might you discover if you look at this challenge through a new lens?

🚀 Transform your brand on Amazon by building a powerful customer list with the After Purchase Funnel Blueprint course. Click here to get the full course for free.

➡️ Ready to go deeper into your Amazon FBA journey to accelerate your success? Get your hands on ALL of the Brand Fortress HQ resources, mentorship, and knowledge base by visiting us at BrandFortressHQ.com

⭐️ Want to help our show grow so we can continue bringing you the very best of guests and actionable content for your Amazon FBA business? We'd greatly appreciate if you took two minutes to give us a five star rating and review. Thank you!

Deciding whether to hire an Amazon agency is a pivotal choice for sellers, and this conversation offers a 360-degree view from people who have lived it. Drawing from experiences as agency owners, agency employees, and brand operators who've hired multiple agencies, we unpack the crucial factors to consider before signing any contracts.

Does hiring an agency even makes sense for your business? We explore how to identify your specific goals and needs, and whether those align with what agencies typically provide. This foundation proves essential for making a sound decision.

Not every agency is right for every Amazon business. We discuss how agencies that excel with low-priced products might flounder with premium brands, and how category expertise varies dramatically across firms. This leads to practical advice on vetting agencies by examining their experience with similar brands and asking targeted questions about their strategy for your specific business model.

Recognize frustrations when we detail common agency shortcomings - from overreliance on overseas freelancers without proper quality control, to the empty promises of dramatic results in unrealistic timeframes. The most successful agency relationships function as true partnerships rather than complete handoffs, with clear communication about brand strategy and business direction.

We share a critical red flag that signals deeper problems: when simple mistakes consistently reach you as the client. This points to fundamental process breakdowns that likely extend beyond what you can see. We also caution against outdated case studies, reminding listeners that Amazon strategies from even a few years ago may be completely ineffective in today's ecosystem.

For sellers navigating the complex decision of agency partnership, this conversation offers both strategic framework and tactical advice to find the right fit - or determine if keeping operations in-house might be the better choice for now.

🚀 Transform your brand on Amazon by building a powerful customer list with the After Purchase Funnel Blueprint course. Click here to get the full course for free.

➡️ Ready to go deeper into your Amazon FBA journey to accelerate your success? Get your hands on ALL of the Brand Fortress HQ resources, mentorship, and knowledge base by visiting us at BrandFortressHQ.com

⭐️ Want to help our show grow so we can continue bringing you the very best of guests and actionable content for your Amazon FBA business? We'd greatly appreciate if you took two minutes to give us a five star rating and review. Thank you!

Unlock the secrets of social selling on TikTok and transform your e-commerce strategy. What if the key to skyrocketing your brand's success lies in 15-second videos and the power of micro-influencers? Discover how successful Amazon sellers are pivoting to TikTok, despite the looming shadow of potential bans, to harness its unique social selling capabilities inspired by China’s digital market.

From a former video editor turned marketing maestro, learn how to capture attention in those crucial first seconds and maintain viewer engagement. Dive into the world of viral content creation and uncover the strategies that turned a Trump greeting card brand into a TikTok sensation. Embrace the art of leveraging micro-influencers to amplify your brand's reach, and explore the vital role of building strong creator relationships to enhance both engagement and sales.

We’ll also explore the ripple effect TikTok has on platforms like Amazon, sharing case studies of how viral exposure fueled massive search and sales numbers. Get insights from Amazon sellers expanding into TikTok and learn why enduring brand-building principles remain vital. Whether you're a seasoned seller or new to TikTok, this episode promises to equip you with the strategies to succeed in today's dynamic e-commerce landscape.

🚀 Transform your brand on Amazon by building a powerful customer list with the After Purchase Funnel Blueprint course. Click here to get the full course for free.

➡️ Ready to go deeper into your Amazon FBA journey to accelerate your success? Get your hands on ALL of the Brand Fortress HQ resources, mentorship, and knowledge base by visiting us at BrandFortressHQ.com

⭐️ Want to help our show grow so we can continue bringing you the very best of guests and actionable content for your Amazon FBA business? We'd greatly appreciate if you took two minutes to give us a five star rating and review. Thank you!