My special guest with me today is none other than, Amazon mega-seller Carlos Alvarez. In this episode, we discuss the ins and outs of Amazon Live Video, Amazon Live Video loopholes, the types of content you should be posting, and why you should start going live on Amazon.
Carlos Alvarez, a successful Amazon retailer, created Bluebird Marketing Solutions to empower online sellers with the techniques he learned over 20 years. He is also the founder of Wizards of Amazon, the largest Amazon Seller Meetup group in the world, a frequent keynote speaker at events and conferences, Meetup’s first City Organizer, and a Fiverr Community Manager for the city of Miami. Alvarez was recently featured in Miami Herald and Washington Post.
Norman 0:02
Hey everyone, it’s Norman Farrar, aka The Beard Guy and welcome to another Lunch With Norm.
Norman 0:15
Hey, we’re broadcasting live on Facebook, YouTube and I hope soon to be LinkedIn as soon as they approve our, soon as they approve anybody got any connections at LinkedIn, we’ve been waiting forever to get our application approved. But anyways, we want to get LinkedIn if anybody knows, let me know. But anyways, Facebook and YouTube live today. So Kelsey, tell your old man and everybody else what to do.
Kelsey 0:42
Okay, so if you are enjoying this podcast or Facebook Live, please like and share. It does a whole lot of good for us and we really appreciate it if you can get the word out. Also follow us on social media or on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, TikTok, everywhere. So, back to you. Norm. Thanks.
Norman 1:06
Oh, isn’t that weird calling your dad, Norm?
Norman 1:11
You’re supposed to say something. Anyways, Hey, Kelsey, do you know who we’re having on the podcast today?
Kelsey 1:19
No. Who do we have on?
Norman 1:21
It’s Carlos Alvarez. Oh, yeah. Amazon mega seller and I think he runs the largest Amazon eCom group. It’s really cool. So I can’t wait to start talking to him.
Kelsey 1:35
Sounds like a cool guy.
Unknown Speaker 1:37
He is Kels. So as always, if you have any questions, please feel free to put them in the comments below and we’ll try to get through the questions as soon as possible. So sit back, relax, and grab a cup of coffee and enjoy the show. Enjoy.
Norman 1:53
Alright, Carlos, there he is, how’s it going sir?
Carlos
I’m jamming into the music. I love the intro.
Norman
Oh, there we go.
Carlos
I love the intro jamming to the music in the back.
Norman 2:08
Oh wait, for the full version.
Carlos
Where’s Kelsey?
Norman
Oh, he disappeared. Well, we’ll get him back when they ah
Kelsey 2:14
You bring me back on?
Carlos
Yeah, no running.
Norman 2:19
So what I love about today’s show is the roles are reversed. I’ve been through a podcast yesterday with you, your meetup. And yeah, been drilled, I don’t know, for the last couple of days. So now, let’s talk about you. And Carlos. Well, first of all, like I said before, we met up on LinkedIn, and then we started chatting, but we got to meet a few months ago. And actually the last event that we ever went to before COVID was Tim Jordans event. That’s where we got to hang out and have some fun. But again, that’s just the fun of networking, the power of networking. But you’ve got an amazing story. Why don’t you tell? Now, not the three day long version because it could be that long. But the Reader’s Digest version of you know about you.
Carlos 3:17
Sure. Thank you for having me on the show. I love this show. Reader’s Digest version while you caught me with that. The Reader’s Digest version is going to be, I am a elementary school dropout turned serial entrepreneur who accidentally fell into an insect business of all businesses on Amazon and eBay and successfully exited it. Had no idea what to do with the money with no financial skills because they don’t really teach you that as an elementary school dropout. And I realized that at the rate that I was partying or living it up, that I would be broke within a year. And the only thing that I had ever succeeded at in my life to date to that date was selling online Amazon and eBay. I immediately turned back to that and started a beverage chilling device sir like accessories, so anything that could chill a beverage at the time, that was the first brand that I created afterwards. I also started a wholesale business on Amazon. Since then, fortunately, I mean definitely had a lot of bumps and bruises along the way. It’s not been this just rocket to success. I think I have made every mistake along the way that you can think of and I really just kept going and fast forwarding, ending the Reader’s Digest now, fast forwarding to now along the way, I’ve started an agency Bluebird Media & Marketing Solutions. Which works with Amazon sellers. I started the really small Meetup group which for Amazon sellers, which turned into being the largest amazon seller Meetup group in the world. We meet 18 times a month of which you were a speaker Saturday. Yeah, divorce worthy amount of meetups per month according to my wife. And what else, I met an amazing woman who I wind up marrying and making my wife, which I attribute to the majority of the success that I’ve had. I have two amazing kids, two and a half and nine months old and I have a bearded bald friend, an amazing friend who somehow snuck me on the show.
Norman 5:40
Yeah, it took a little bit of bribing but you know, yeah we got you on.
Carlos 5:43
Is that a good digest? I’ve never told him like that.
Norman 5:47
You know what, that is the quickest I’ve ever heard and you just gave me a great idea. We should take the guests that are on the show because we can’t really get into it when we’re squished into 30 minutes to talk about something but to grab their background and have it as a separate just a playlist on YouTube or you know somewhere so people can get to know you and know the struggles that hey look your a very successful one of the top Amazon sellers out there. But like you said, you paid your Amazon tax and probably people can learn just from that. Thanks for giving me that idea. I’m gonna profit from it. Okay, I don’t know about profit. I don’t make anything doing this stuff. But anyways, oh, that’s what’s gonna happen. We’re gonna talk after the show, and I’ll get you back on so we can talk three days about your backstory.
Carlos
I love it.
Norman
Good. So the other thing, so the main reason why you’re on today, we’re going to be talking about Amazon live. I like talking about Amazon posts. And that’s the images, the Instagram of Amazon, their social media. But I often get asked, “can you put video on Amazon post?” and the answer’s no. Amazon’s got a whole other area for that called Amazon live and you have taken full advantage of it so I wanted to bring that out and just talk a little bit about it. But before we start that, I’m getting this question a lot. Are there any programs or anything that somebody can do right now to prepare for either the fourth quarter or next year? Just that one tip and then we’ll move on.
Carlos 7:37
Whatever amount of inventory you think you need to order like multiply it by three. That’s pretty much exactly what I’m doing.
Norman 7:45
That’s what I’m hearing too. We just don’t know with prime being in fourth quarter now as well as the Black Friday, Cyber Monday. And then I like to call it credit card January or gift card January when all the gift cards are being paid.
Carlos 8:01
Yeah. Alright, it’s gonna be a wild year.
Norman 8:05
I don’t know what to say. I really don’t know what to expect. So anyways, my friend, What the heck is Amazon live?
Carlos 8:14
I think Amazon live is the thing we’ve always wanted on Amazon and that is the ability to get in front of our audience on Amazon, which is Amazon’s audience, but for the sake of this our audience, the people that are interested in our product and not only be able to get our branding and our product in front of them, but be able to demonstrate it be able to give some personality to it. Be able to get viewers to follow you back on Amazon and every single person that is following you, or watching you has a card that they regularly use to shop on Amazon. Loaded into Amazon with a buy it now button and I can’t think of anything else greater in e-commerce than that right now as far as just ease of getting in front of people, everyone armed and ready to spend. I mean they’re on Amazon. They’re there for one purpose and that’s to spend or to make a decision about purchasing something in the future. Now, the program is a year and a half, two years old and how it looks right now I believe you go to Amazon.com/live. What happens now is you can only access it if you have a Brand Registry or if you are part of the influencer program and you request an invitation to go on there which I think that’s really important too. It looks like Amazon’s doing a lot with the influencer side. To date, I’m all over the place. I’m geeking out on this, so Norm, you might have to like rain me in at some point. A little loophole I sort of found right now we’ve just begun exploiting is, let’s say that you’re four months, five months, six months out on your product coming to market. I work with a lot of products that have a 60 day lead time. 30 days on the water seems to be about two weeks connecting with these boats and another two weeks getting to Amazon and if you had to go through a sample process where I get 120 days, but say you’re in one of those predicaments and you want to use Amazon live, you have Brand Registry and you’re frustrated because you don’t know what to do and you somehow want to take advantage of the fourth quarter a loophole that I found, I don’t know it’s a loophole, but I think it’s a loophole is you’re able to create through a Amazon create, well, Kindle Direct Publishing now KDP, you’re able to upload a doc a manuscript of a book. I’m not saying I’m not talking to Stephen King novels, don’t freak out on me. But like something complimentary to your product like a mini book. And you’re able to then have that Kindle book moved over as a paperback book. So what you do is you’re now, and you have to use your own ISPN number for this to work. You’re now going to order author copies of that book and you’re going to list them via Seller Central. So now you’re going to create a separate offering and when you create the listing on Amazon now through Seller Central, you’re able to give it your own brand, which would be the brand of the product that’s coming in. Having that product is enough for you to now begin being able to utilize Amazon live video so you could technically this is like a little workaround to be able to get in quick and be able to start building with Amazon live in anticipation of your product coming.
Norman 12:03
Wow. So I had no idea. That’s a great tip. I had no idea. I never thought of that. So just to get it straight, if you want your products on the on the water, and you want to get registered so you can take full advantage of Amazon live, all you do is go into Kindle, turn that product like something about gnomes, Norm the gnome and whatever the brand is, get it over there as the paperback start. You can then start and register with Amazon live. Is that correct?
Norman 12:38
Yeah, absolutely. Well, the registering live would be, yes, the Brand Registry side of it. But once you go on Brand Registry, and you’re going live, you need to have some product to be able to connect to it. They’re not just going to let you get up there and riff. So that connection is going to be that book. I know somebody else that recently tried this actually with shirts, and they did the same thing with merch. They just wanted to shortcut this and in a second I’ll tell you why I think that is extremely important not to mention brilliant is you get a merge shirt, and like in case you’re wondering but those books, I believe you definitely know norm but you can get author copies for like $1.50 to $2 and 50 cents a book of your book on Amazon. So you’re not spending much money and there’s no minimum order quantity. You can 50 books 20 books delivered to you with free two day shipping. Gotta love it. So you can do the same thing with shirts on Merch by Amazon. You could technically grab some shirts or grab something else. Get some good quality stuff because this is your brand but again, this is just a workaround to get in earlier and now I’ll tell you why I think that work around is just critical. When someone, let’s say I’m right now and I am about to go live on Amazon or I’m going live on Amazon, all of my videos are going to have a follow button, think things Subscribe on YouTube, and why having subscribers on YouTube are so important. And just like you could lose your YouTube channel, yes, you could use your Amazon account. I’m not saying that you should. What I’m about to say I’m not saying that you should treat this as I’m just going to neglect everything else. I’m going to neglect SMS, I’m going to neglect email. I’m going to neglect social media. You shouldn’t. I mean, this is Amazon’s land at the end of the day, but they do have a follow button. What happens then? two major things. One, and this one’s for sure in effect right now is when someone follows you. Every time you go live, if they have the Amazon app on their phone and like we know everyone has the Amazon app on their phone. You will receive a push notification not just when you’re going live but if you scheduled it, a creator that or a brand that you like, is about to go live, you could have built a sense of urgency in a previous live. Like I go live, let’s say every Monday at noon, on Amazon. You could let people know, listen, the next time I go live next week, I’m going to be offering this amazing deal. So when people see this push notification come in, they’re reminded that the live events coming up. And in addition to that, they are able to just click on that little push notification and jump right into your live stream. So having those followers and being able to reach them on their cell phone is the most exciting thing that I’ve ever encountered on Amazon.
Norman 15:45
Do you get a URL or something that you could put into social media so you can mark it being out or when you’re scheduled for Amazon live?
Carlos 15:58
100% Yeah, that’s from the beginning, you definitely get it. You get that. That’s what I’ll do in anticipation. What I haven’t seen now is, the more people you bring to your live and that engaged, the more reach it gets. I haven’t seen anything that says that that happens. But I would as the product evolves, I’m sure something that seems to be what everybody else does, and it makes sense. It’ll get more priority in the feed. One thing I have tested as well is when I send this out to my email list, and I send this out on social media, I let everybody know, first 10 people to chime in and say, I received your email you’ll get some swag, or whatever the case may be or whatever reward system you have, again, use Amazon use Merch by Amazon with that private hidden link for something like exclusive shirts. So yes, you definitely get the URL and you definitely should use it to push out to your audience. You should definitely use this for any collaborators you’re connected with any influencers that you want to push your stuff out to. This is a whole new dimension to push out to an influencer. Speaking of influencers, and I know I’m all over the place, I should have mentioned that link even before I got into the follow. But speaking of influencers, this opens another dimension for this because before it was like, share my link, and do a post, or a little live video to go in your stories and talk about this. Now, with this connection, you can add this person as a creator on your ability to go Amazon live and you can have this person obviously you’re going to pay them to go live on your channel on your behalf. And they can send that link to their followers that are going to be super excited to see their favorite influencer on Amazon live which it might be the first time they’ve heard of Amazon live most of them. So that’s another really powerful feature. I’ve not experimented a lot with that one. I know someone who has and just loving it.
Norman 18:00
That is, that’s huge. I hate using the word nugget. But that’s a nugget. That’s incredible.
Carlos
Mission accomplished.
Norman
Thank you. Yeah. So if you can go out to these interviews or influencers, can you imagine the amount of exposure that you can get and they’re probably very willing to do it. They’re going to get mass exposure. One of the things I’m wondering about there’s a lot of people that they think that they have to have, what am I trying to say, a huge brand that they like I think of fitness that or supplements that you have to have a whole studio out there that you you have to come in like the home shopping network to do something like this or you have to have a workout program that you’re doing and you’re working out doing sets. What do you have, what type of brands work with this and what do you need to do to be successful? Do you have to have a big budget to do Amazon Live?
Carlos 19:10
No, you do not and every shred of doubt I’ve seen across hundreds of live videos actually shows clearly selfie style, well not literally selfie style, but from your phone, preferably phone on some kind of stabilization device, whether it’s a tripod, or something else actually works a lot better than highly produced. I would say that there’s an exception and I have not personally dealt with this, although I think it would be the case, if you have like a high end beauty brand, or, or something that’s just screaming luxury. And you’re I won’t go into details but you norm you have a phenomenal example of a knife set. And I would say where you’re trying to take it or where you’ve taken it, having it in poor lighting, and a poor setup or low quality setup might be at odds with what you’re trying to accomplish. But for most brands, know just your phone on a tripod and go. that has seen much better results than anything else I’ve seen. And if you need if you have any doubt, you can go look at some of these influencers streaming on Amazon right now and look at the quality of videos that they’re doing there. It’s talking head, look at me, I’m moving all over the place, my tables are moving but that’s talking head and they have a product and they bring it up. That’s it. This is not like avatar style quality videos we’re talking about.
Norman 20:49
It’s weird because it runs parallel to post because candid unpolished photos usually have a higher engagement rate than the polished photos or the model that’s posed. If it’s just an unboxing or somebody that you could use, like showing the product, social proof, they have a much higher engagement, at least my experiences a much higher engagement. So it’s the same with live so that’s pretty cool. Are there any brands that probably would not do well, not brands, but any product or niches that would not do that on live?
Carlos 21:29
I can’t think of any. I can’t think of any and I want to touch on something before I forget, because it’s something we just started talking about and it’s something that you’ve been all over from day one, is the post program. What’s one of the really cool updates to the post program?
Norman 21:47
Oh, go ahead.
Carlos 21:49
No, go. I’m not gonna steal your thunder here. Go for it.
Norman 21:52
Okay, so I think where you’re going is the brand feed page.
Norman 21:57
Yes. So you have a URL now. Yeah. When you’re going Amazon Live, you have a chat. Think Twitch, Amazon owns Twitch. Think Twitch, you have a feed right beside your live video that Amazon encourages you to be active in. So you could drop that URL and now you’re really spreading the love across your products. Like you’re really bringing things together. It’s such a good marriage that I wonder if the video element was to come into posts, would it be these videos like you’re almost seeing an option and you could click in and watch it or this is a previous one that’s played because it seems just like a perfect marriage to me.
Norman 22:46
Yes, I wonder where that’s gonna go. Are you allowed to, you’ve got your live video that you could just stream. Are you allowed to upload testimonials or other videos? Let’s say there’s a product video, can you add that to live?
Carlos 23:05
Yes, what they don’t want, and you know Amazon if they say we don’t want this, your account is at risk. What they don’t want is what was really popular I think two years ago, or with whatever Facebook Live came out, and that is the longer you stream the more they exposed your video. So what people did is they created this loop this like 20 hour video that just went and it just looped again so you technically we’re just going live for days and it created like a fake engagement or it would create a, it would show a picture of you a picture of me and a picture of of Kelsey and say , who do you want to see, who do you want to hear on the next show? I mean obviously me you, but then besides you would have a thumbs up besides Kelsey would have like a heart and beside me I have a smiley face so people are voting below but they’re tricking Facebook’s algorithm. So Amazon doesn’t want that on Amazon live. But let’s say that you have a demo of a video that would be really challenging to pull off live, or you have something structured with your influencer, that they’re like, look, I can’t go live on such and such date. But I would definitely give you a testimonial on this product and let me drop it in. You can totally do that. There’s no rule yet that says how short it must be. I know some people that are doing a 20 minute live and the pre recorded video is like 18 minutes. I think that that’s a mistake. Going pre-recorded live too long, because I think you’re going to have a major disconnect with the people that are in the chat that are asking you questions. Remember you’re engaging with them live. If you’re uncomfortable or just starting off doing a live video, I go so far as to say it should be a two man operation or two woman operation because if you’re if you’re so focused on the tech that you’re just consumed by it, and you can’t pay attention to the chat that’s damaging. You may want somebody just handling the chat. If you’re pre recorded, then what’s happening is you’re talking, they don’t know that it’s pre recorded. There’s nothing indicating that it’s pre recorded. And they’re asking questions and can you do this and you’re just ignoring them. So when you’re doing pre recorded, I think it should be very clear when you’re doing pre recorded, and it should be like you mentioned like if you don’t believe us, listen to what Norm, if I’m launching a beard brush, if you if you don’t believe me, because I don’t have a Beard. Well, listen to what Norman’s got to say. Let’s do trade offs. I’ll do haircare products and you’ll do the beard for me.
Norman
I mean, this is some great information. So if you’re doing live, it’s very similar to what we’re seeing here. Now, I don’t know if everybody else can see this, but when questions come in, they’re populating on the right side of the screen. So that’s very similar to what’s happening with live. Is that correct, Carlos?
Unknown Speaker 26:20
Absolutely. Yeah, and you can give thumbs up hearts stars, all of that stuff. I found a really good tip is to get people engaged that are listening. And be like, if you want to see me demo this one first, give me hearts. If you want to see this one first, give me stars. And then people will get in there and just get competitive with it. And that’s what worked really well. But exactly this chat that we see on the right column, the right rail, same way, or think Twitch, think the gaming platform Twitch. It’s exactly that and I’m assuming that a lot of the infrastructure and technology of twitch which Amazon owns. They’re going to begin deploying on Amazon.
Norman 27:05
Are you allowed to or is there any way to stream on any other platform when you’re using live?
Carlos 27:15
I would say that the answer is going to be yes. Because you’re tying into, there are several tools you can use, the one I’m liking best is vMix, which I think is sort of a competitor with StreamYard and when you do that, you can just pick other channels to push out to there. Once you connect to Amazon live, I don’t see how it could be stopped to add these other streams. So yes, you can. But again, I’ve not done that and I think someone should be really cautious when doing it. Because it’s a totally different customer. Like if I’m here, like us, we both have services and products that we can sell. But it doesn’t make sense to just jump on alive and just go total all out sales. Even if we wanted to sell probably 80, 90% of it would not be about sales. Whereas on Amazon, you can and it’s almost expected that you are a lot more aggressive with the sales of your products. People are on Amazon shop.
Norman 28:28
Yeah, I can see that. But I’m wondering, like Wilfried Ligthart.
Carlos
Oh, amazing guy.
Norman 28:36
Yeah. So one thing he always says is, “you have to get engaged before you get married” and I’m wondering if
Carlos
Frustrating thing but yeah,
Norman 28:45
yeah yes, I know
Carlos
Rules.
Norman 28:51
But can you give out value or are people on live expecting promo by? Really making it into an informative channel where you can talk about features benefits, more content, than sales promo?
Carlos 29:14
Yeah, you can. But I found that there always needs to be a where we’re getting at with this, like I’m doing all these features and I’m telling you all these lifestyle tips because of this thing that we’re passionate about that we sell. But that needs to exist somewhere. Even if on that video you’re saying, I have no promo codes for you today what I want to solve is, you know this problem you’re having because when you can eliminate this problem, you’ll be able to fully enjoy this product that I have for sale so I want to solve this for you and help you out. In that sense, yeah, you can offer value. But the streams that I saw that were not a hint to even hinting at something for sale, just didn’t do as good.
Norman 30:04
Okay, and I guess the same thing with posts is that if you put out something non engaging, and you find out very quickly ,you just move on to something else. Like try to split test Amazon live videos like you would with posts. People are going to like different styles. Llike you were saying, you could have your candid style, you could have your high polish style, you could talk about features, benefits, do whatever. And then you can start to measure the engagement, and then try to focus more and more on what’s working. Right?
Carlos 30:41
Yeah, absolutely and also don’t limit yourself geographically. I see a lot of people messing up with this is that they just think you know where they’re at. When you’re tying in with vMix. We could be four of us on the screen at once from four different areas of the world. And all of us have this product or all of us be talking about this product. But yeah, tying all that together, it’s an exciting time this Q4 with, I see a question.
Norman 31:13
Oh, what do we got there, Kels?
Kelsey 31:17
Alright.
Norman
It’s your time to shine, Kels
Kelsey 31:19
Alright, here we go. Will these live videos only stay up 24 hours like Instagram or will they show up a link up for listing and stick around?
Carlos 31:30
So that’s to my knowledge, they live forever they definitely do not expire in 24 hours they live forever. Now, as the popularity grows with Amazon Live, it’s within a couple hours after your live video or less, It’s already going to be very challenging to find it. It’s just going to be completely buried. But no, it does not delete.
Norman 32:00
That’s like posts, they stay on forever. They become part of your brand. When you’re doing live similar to when we started up on StreamYard here, do you have the ability to put in your title description, category all that stuff?
Carlos 32:22
Yeah, you do. When you go live on the Amazon side, they’re going to give you an opportunity to pull in all of the products from your brand that you want to be displayed in this video in the gallery on the bottom. Now, what they say, and this is that I want to say that this is a gray area I play in the white hat area but I my my gut tells me that this might be a gray area that I’m talking about now, and that is when my live video has the intention of I’m launching a product, because using Amazon live videos during a launch is very Powerful. That’s where I’ve seen some of the greatest results. When doing it that way, we know that we want to hyper target specific keywords during our launch to complement everything else we’re doing in our launch. If the product is in the gallery that you’re referring to, and someone clicks on it, I guess the ranking juice you’re gonna get is the keywords in your canonical URL, which is great, which is fantastic and you get a sale. But since a lot of people’s launches have to do with different juiced up URLs and being able to get credit for a lot of different keywords, you sort of miss out on that. So what I’ve done is, I’m calling it a verbal Search Find By because it’s a verbal cue that you’re giving on the live video, is I do not put that product in the gallery that I’m referring to and have on screen and I’m bringing up in shots and in videos. So there is no clickable quick link that they can click on in the live video to go. And I also use getting to your question, Norm,is these graphics that you know these awesome graphics that we’re seeing on screen if you can bring those up, and I bring up things like a promo code that they can use to go get this product. And I’ll pull up the product, you can even pull up a short video showing a Search Bind By which we’ve tested this a little bit we haven’t found that it made that big of a difference and show them search for this. And you’ll find this product between pages blank and blank and use this promo code for this amount of time to get X percent off and then you actually pull down a pull up countdown timer on your screen using vMix or whatever you’re using. The whole QVC play. This is not this part is nothing I you know I invented this is since biblical times this sense of urgency. You know, this is marketing one on one, and you’re pulling up this timer to create that sense of urgency. You’re stealing the page from QVC It works amazing because that way the viewer is forced to take that route. You’re not going to see it in your metrics because they didn’t click into the gallery and get the buy but you’re still going to be able to see it based on the promo code that they used unique to that verbal Search Find By Does that make sense?
Norman
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And that countdown clock. That’s a bonus. Yeah, sense of urgency. You gotta buy it. And the discount code,typically what are you looking at for discounts are you giving 10%, 15%?
Carlos 35:35
I like to stay in the 10 to 15% range. I’ve gone as high as 20 I think we did a 25 once and to be honest, it wasn’t needed. We’re in this to make money.
Norman 35:50
It’s a different crowd when using deep discounts, right? Those are those low sellers or the buyers that have low buyer scores that are looking for some freebies.
Carlos 36:04
The drags of buyers.
Norman
Yes, exactly.
Carlos
Yes, and on Amazon, these are people that have loaded cards on Amazon, they shop on Amazon. The majority of people, unless you’re bringing an army from your list over here, the majority are seeing your live video because Amazon knows that they’re interested in these products. They buy these products full price. This is your customer and Amazon is really good at targeting them and the data on who buys what. I haven’t found that the bigger discounts matter, if anything it’s probably like they’re not accustomed to seeing discounts that high. And it’s probably like, Oh my god, what’s wrong with the product?
Norman 36:48
Right. So Andrea had another question. What was that? Okay, Kels, what do we have here?
Kelsey 36:56
Alright, so these lives won’t show up on our related videos or in anything and then can’t be seen on our listing as all?
Carlos 37:07
I’ve not seen any live videos show up on the related. These live videos, yes will also appear when you’re going live in your brand store. Another thing I’ve noticed in two accounts that I work with, I don’t offer live streaming services. It’s just I wouldn’t even know how to scale that but I’d love to chat about it. So if anyone ever did want to reach out, I would chat about it. But what I have noticed is with people who I’m working with on other Amazon stuff who are beginning to leverage the power of Amazon live video, that some of the times that what was happening is a previous video that they had, or a current live video that was happening appeared on the checkout page and we tried to replicate this several times. And we struggled with it because you’re not going live every two hours to see this. But to me, it felt almost like you’re at checkout and this is where they get you. This is the Reese butter cup for me. This is like, I’m just grabbing this. This is my Reese peanut butter cup, or theTikTok for somebody else, or the magazine, or the 50 slow cooker recipes you just must have this winter and they just nail you with it. So that’s what it felt like. And this is you’re ready to check out. You’re just hitting by it now you’ve already determined your shipping speed, and you’re seeing this video on that screen. So I think that’s perhaps something they’re testing. And again, it was in one case, it was four. It had the Follow button a lot more pronounced with the video so somebody can follow and I’m assuming what Amazon did was they targeted people that they know are interested in this. And this is similar to the, this is almost a video version of people who bought this also bought that sort of thing or if a live video is going on and they’re about to check out, maybe stay on the platform longer after checkout.
Norman 39:11
The way that I’m looking at Amazon Live right now, you don’t have to be a huge brand. Just before just I was looking for, my dog ate my beard brush
Carlos 39:27
That’s a hashtag.
Norman 39:30
Yeah. The beard dog ate my beard comb today. I was looking for one and all of a sudden, Yeah, you’re getting these videos and you’re starting to see that Amazon play. It’s gonna be more video. And just seeing that a micro brand a very small brand can compete and this is the reason why I’m saying this. All I was looking at these brands, I started looking around beauty products. I started looking at these other things. And it wasn’t like the Doves, I was looking at shampoos and conditioners also, yeah, I wasn’t for my hair. But all of a sudden, these much smaller brands were coming up. It wasn’t Dove. It wasn’t Irish Spring. It wasn’t these P&G products. It was these micro brands. So I love it because we can level the playing field and on Amazon live, all you have to do is do it. It’s that simple. Just get on and do it. But one of the problems I think people see with this, Carlos, is that it’s a hard arduous task. And it’s not.
Carlos
It’s actually agreed it’s not but I totally understand why people see that because going live used to be my palms would sweat. As a matter of fact, the meetup group and starting it at the end of the first year, we had the circle and we said you know who everybody here share something that they’re going to go outside of their comfort zone and grow on next year. Everybody went and I was getting ready to get up and they’re like, Hey, what about you, Carlos? And everyone had been saying, like, why don’t you live stream this I can always come all the way to the meetup. And I was just like, Oh, no, no, no live streaming is my Achilles heel. I’m just terrified of it. And everybody said, Yeah, like, what’s your thing that you’re going to get out of your comfort zone? And I thought, and I’m like, What am I gonna do? And they said live. So we did it. And what we did is I just went headfirst into live streaming proz.com with Luria Petrucci (?) and they had this program which I’ve since mimicked is create, you know what, get a few friends that are afraid of Facebook Lives. Or just live Facebook Live Amazon live, very little difference. Get a few friends, together, create a private Facebook group where only you and the people you know, are in it and create a challenge and say, look, you have to go live for 30 seconds and say, I’m going to go live every day for three days for 30 seconds or one minute, and you can talk about anything you could talk about why you’re afraid to go live and how in fear you are right now. And we had a three day five day 10 day 30 day. And what happened is everyone picked the three day. And on day two regretted that they did not pick the 30. They were addicted, it was exhilarating. It’s empowering and they loved it. So create one of those, or maybe Norm can create one and we can just jump in there and have a blast with it. You know, and just you’ll see what happened was the group went dormant. Because after 10 days of doing these challenges, the fear of going live is not an issue anymore. Like you were just empowered. So it’s not a hard task. The next one I hear though else after the hard task norm is, Well, you know what I sell, what am I going to go live about? Right? Like what do I have to go live about? I will say that you want to create instead of a social calendar pretty much like a live streaming calendar to really get organized with this or you just will feel like work. But use tools like answer the public. You know that one, Norm. You want live streaming content to go live every single day and be like a live streaming God on your product and your industry, go to answer the public ones, get the free version even. Like that’s it, go there, go to Buzzsumo, go to Google Alerts, and then you’ll have more content. Then you’ll know what to do with to go live every day.
Norman 43:32
There’s a search string in Google that I use quite a bit as well and it’s when you’re on a blog article. So let’s say you’re in the pet industry, and you’re talking about pet health, and you’re in Purina, there’s a similar tag, and it’ll pull up all the similar articles to that blog article. And then you’re just bombarded with content.
Carlos
Oh, that’s gold. Gotta let me know that.
Norman 43:58
Yeah, yeah. I’ll post a string in the group. But anyways, that’s Yeah, that’s something that we do. But even being able to take this and we’re winding down now. One of the things I like about the content as well, and this goes back to your related video, Andrea, is that if you just put up related videos, you can add them as much as you want. This is a little bit off of Amazon live. But if you’re taking some if you aren’t planning to go out doing a demo, or creating a video, what to do is to book a studio for half a day or so. Get them to do all sorts of 32nd to 45 minute videos. And then to make them stand out, you do a thumbnail that makes your brand stand out.
Carlos
Well, you’re good, man.
Norman
Then you upload those six, seven slots with how to do this, 10 top features. Boom, boom, boom, and it looks like it’s tutorial video videos and people will start to stop and look at your videos and spend more time on your page.
Carlos
Let me write it down. I am writing it down
Norman
Alright, Carlos, we’re winding down here. Any last thoughts on Amazon Live?
Carlos 45:16
Go live. We didn’t even get to the metrics, but robust metrics.
Norman 45:21
Do you want to take a second and talk about the reporting and the metrics?
Carlos 45:25
Sure, but in short, you get everything. You get to see the halo effect that’s coming from live. You get to see how many people viewed your life, how many people interacted with the gallery, and you even get to show you these reports over weeks after you’re live so that you can see who viewed your live and later turned into a buyer and how long did that take. So really powerful metrics. This isn’t one of those like Amazon spark that was really great. And then just disappeared. This is robust, a lot went into this. This is here to stay robust metrics so you can really see your ROI on this quickly. Like I’m going live for X amount of time what works. Last one is, and this will probably make people more afraid so I’m hesitant to say it but it’s true. This is notTikTok. This is not go 30 seconds and everyone wants that short bite sized content. Amazon encourages you to go longer and I have found that longer form video works like I have found 15,20 minute video works better than five minutes. I also think they kind of take a page from Taobao. 2000 I think it was 2019, they had 74 stores on Taobao that made in excess of its 16 or 17 million in gross sales each, just from live streaming from their store, and the average length of each of the lives was an X a little over 20 hours long, were the live streams.Obviously, you’re rotating, there’s a team and they stayed live and this is like a major part of what they do. So I’m not saying to go live for 20 hours. I’m not saying that at all. But don’t think about stories . Don’t think of a one minute video. Don’t think TikTok. This is not that. This is longer form video.
Norman 47:27
Good point. Okay, Sir. We’ve lasted 15 minutes. That’s good.
Carlos 47:34
We had a long lunch.
Norman
It was a long lunch.
Kelsey 47:37
We’ve got one more question from Andrea. It says, how do we schedule our videos as loves or do we have to always be really live?
Carlos 47:48
No, you can definitely schedule your videos live almost like a premiere. You have your pre recorded content and then when you go into the app and you connect to your what’s the word for that your stream. There’s an actual word for this. But say we’re going to use vMix, but once you connect into vMix, you’re able to bring elements on the screen. So like right now, Norm has Lunch With Norm on the top. I see Norm Farrar on Instagram. One of the few people I follow on Instagram that I haven’t muted, just absolutely amazing stuff. Every time I think every time I think I’m a content creator, he puts some amazing stuff out there and I realize I’m just getting started. So
Norman 48:26
That’s Kelsey. That’s not me.
Carlos 48:29
Okay, good, amazing stuff, Kelsey, we got to talk. But like all these graphics , you see, are graphics that Kelsey has brought on screen. I’m not familiar with StreamYard, but with most of them, he could probably do other overlays that would come between what you see me and the screen. So in that case, you would just bring up a video that would take the place of the whole screen that you’re seeing and play that video.
Kelsey 48:55
Got it.
Norman
Alright. Well, Mr. Carlos, thank you very much. It’s been great having you on. See, it wasn’t that bad. I didn’t drill you into the side of the corner or anything with tons of questions. But anyways, alright, so I hope everybody enjoyed the show today on Facebook and on YouTube. Hopefully LinkedIn next time. If you get a chance, Kelsey, tell them what to do.
Kelsey 49:21
Follow us on social media, like and share this video. Just to get the word out. That would be great. So yeah, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, follow us everywhere,
Norman 49:31
Yeah, one of the things I want to add. We’re trying to find really incredible guests like Carlos. Not necessarily an Amazon but ecommerce could be social media. It could be just business in general. We want to bring the world of business unto this podcast. So if you do know of anybody, please just have them reach out and and we’ll get them on to the podcast. So Carlos, thanks again for being on and how do people get in touch with you.
Carlos 50:01
I’m very active on Instagram at Wizards of Amazon. I put my number out everywhere 3059021283 texting obviously works better, but you can reach me that way. I have a telegram group chat that I’m always on which you can access at amazongroupchat.com.
Norman 50:22
Now, A lot of times people come out and talk about contact information, but you’re Wizards of Amazon group is probably, for the value it costs nothing basically to join, and the amount of content that you get, and the quality of people that you have on that group are probably one of the top if not the top in the industry.
Carlos
I appreciate that.
Norman
And this is how you think everybody in Amazon, right? You get to a point where, oh yeah, you go to this event or that event. I hope I’ve never heard of Wizards of Amazon until like last year. And then all of a sudden, it’s like who’s this and this massive group is the largest Amazon group out there. So anyways, check it out. It’s fantastic. And on that note, tune in this Thursday and we’re gonna be having cash Riley Jr. on and he’s gonna be talking about retail is dead. So until then we’ll see you later. Thanks for joining us today.
Date: August 28, 2020
Episode: 17
Title: Norman Farrar Introduces Carlos Alvarez, a Successful Amazon Retailer who Created Bluebird Marketing Solutions to Empower Online Sellers with the Techniques He Learned Over 20 Years.
Subtitle: You have to get engaged before you get married
Final Show Link: https://lunchwithnorm.com/episodes/17-amazon-live-video-breakdown-carlos-alvarez/
In this episode of Lunch With Norm…, Norman Farrar introduces Carlos Alvarez, a successful Amazon retailer who created Bluebird Marketing Solutions to empower online sellers with the techniques he learned over 20 years.
His goal is to empower, teach, and help brands and entrepreneurs achieve greater financial independence in the selling profession through Amazon and digital marketing.
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