Revox Podcast

A customer on average needs to see your content 7 times before they feel comfortable enough to purchase something from you.By looking at cheaper ad platforms, you can bring your total CPA down. It doesn’t make sense to advertise on Amazon for “Brand Awareness” unless it’s cheaper than advertising on other platforms.There are ways to advertise that are way more affordable than Amazon (or Facebook or Google for that matter).Don’t get too caught up in the metrics and attributions. This is top- to mid-level advertising, so you probably won’t be able to track direct sales. Instead, look at CPC and CPM costs to know if you’re doing well.All of my clients who have focused on this kind of advertising have seen a lift in sales across all sales channels.

April 5th isn’t a hard date on when other categories can ship in products. Coronavirus is unpredictable, so nailing down times for anything is going to be finicky.No new coupons or deals until April 5th (hopefully). Probably to slow things down as Amazon tries to cope with the possibility of a lot of their employees getting sick.Have an extra condition on all of your listings in case you run out of FBA inventory. This will allow you to keep your listing open (and ranking) by selling FBM inventory. Make no mistake. This will not slow Amazon down. Amazon, like a lot of business, will not only rebound, but will do better than ever after this. Amazon is still doing rather well, all things considered, and when everyone goes back to work, they won’t go back to shopping in brick and mortars. Amazon and online shopping in general will continue to grow. That being said. You can use this downtime to your advantage. If you have room, I would recommend spending even more in ads than you ever had before. Most companies are pulling back on everything. If you can go all in, when the economy rebounds, you’ll be leaps and bounds ahead of the competition. While we’re on the subject of gaming the system. Amazon’s attention is on pretty important things right now. And while I’m not one to advocate breaking rules…you may be able to break some here. Things in your titles, descriptions, photos, that would help give you a leg up might be worth a shot. Usually you’re not allowed to put competitor names in your descriptions. But if you can use it as a keyword…it might just help you. Adding graphics to your main photo might improve your conversion rate. Again, Amazon might catch you—but if they don’t…well…

Amazon is a marketplace with a lot of awesome opportunity. Some of the reasons you can be so successful on the platform have to do with a lot of user-testing Amazon has done. They’ve nailed what makes a page convert. No websites on the planet—no marketplaces—convert as well as Amazon does. Their customer experience is awesome. Not just how everything looks, but the buying and even returning process are awesome. And customer support is great for customers. This sets you up for running a really awesome business that’s almost done for you.The downside is that there are tons of other people on the platform with you. In the week you launch your product, there are thousands of other products also being launched. This means just on the basis of competition alone, you have a lot to deal with on day one! Coupons, promotions, giveaways, and external traffic are often the most stable route for launching a product on Amazon. It’s true you can run a successful Amazon project without much funding. But to do it really successfully, Amazon follows the model of the J-Curve, meaning you put a lot in before you start getting a lot out.

I just received an email from an email automation company about changing what they do. Instead of sending out emails for you, they now automate Amazon’s new “request a review” button.Amazon’s been trying for quite some time to edge out communication between sellers and buyers and they recently got rid of a lot of sellers’ ability to send emails to customers. Now, when you want a review, you need to go into orders and click a button for each order you want to request a review from.These email services are morphing into button pressing automation. Amazon will continue to restrict buyer/seller contact, and will probably eventually edge out that ability as well.

Coronavirus has officially hit Amazon. Two employees in Italy and one in Seattle. There was a joke online that said now that Amazon has contracted COVID-19, the rest of us can expect it for free within two days—at least those of us with a prime membership. Amazon’s building Mini Fulfillment Centers. In an article by Supply Chain Dive, Amazon’s reported to be building smaller ship houses to get customers product in one day or less. The delivery windows are somewhere in the ball park 5-10 hours. This is now available fore up to 300 million products. There are pros and cons to this for sellers (higher sales, higher expenses). Amazon is decreasing Multi-Channel Fulfillment fees to push people to use them as a fulfillment option. It’s a little more flexible than selling on Amazon directly (for example, you can have customers ship returns back to you instead of them), and Amazon’s always trying to do more to get into other markets. Looks like they’re taking on Shipstation now. A list of the new fees can be found here.

Get consistent, SIMPLE reporting on key metrics. The key word here is SIMPLE. Agents have limited time for each account and you don’t want them spending all of their time compiling data. You want them doing things to help your account. Give them objectives, not tasks. If you hired a good agency, you’re not working with less skilled people for a smaller price tag, you’re working with highly skilled people for less time. In other words, it’s most effective if you give them problems you can’t solve, then let them figure it out. It’s expensive and inefficient to try and just delegate data entry and carry-out tasks. Ask lots of questions. The goal of the agency is not to grow your account—it’s to grow your account with the least amount of effort. For this reason, a lot of agencies will work really hard in the first few months, at which point they can automate many of their tasks. But to automate and to innovate are not the same. They’re polar opposites, actually. Don’t expect them to do everything. Have a very clear scope, and temper that scope with reality. Most people hire an agency because it’s cheaper than hiring a full-time employee. If that’s the case, don’t expect them to do logistics, customer support, ads management, copywriting, and creative work. At least, don’t expect them to do it well. Even a well equip team will struggle to do all those aspects well.

You can probably guess that the answer is no. If you’ve ever searched for “Yoga Matt,” you’ll know that there’s plenty of space for product duplicates. The question is, are there advantages  to having a unique product? And that leads to another question: are you building a brand or selling products? If all you’re doing is selling products, I would say you SHOULDN’T have a unique product. If you are building a brand however, you SHOULD have at least a couple of products that are unique to you—or at least differentiate your brand. Both approaches can be successful. Just know that the main difference is that you have greater sales volumes potential if you sell a trending product, but it’s hard to rank; and conversely, it’s easy to rank for a niche product, but it might not have a developed customer base yet.

This week's headlines can be found at: https://www.sellerlabs.com/blog/icymi-amazon-seller-news-feb14/

Brand Registry is a program that Amazon offers that gives certain privileges and programs to trademark owners.Benefits of Brand Registry are greater control over your listings, A+ content, listing videos, product display ads, and beta programs.Brand Registry is simple enough to sign up for. All you need is a trademark, a seller account, and a brand of products.You for sure want Brand Registry if you plan on keeping control over your Amazon listings. Listing hijackers are everywhere and you want to be able to get rid of them easily. Brand Registry helps you do that.The benefits of Brand Registry also help your listing convert better.Link to the application: https://brandservices.amazon.com/