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Episode 239 - Major Amazon FBA Shifts in 2022 w/ Troy Johnston | Lunch With Norm Podcast

#239: Major Amazon FBA Shifts in 2022

Troy Johnston

About This Episode

On this episode, we look at the shifting trends of Amazon as we go into 2022. We discuss what the reality for tools are, useful tips on navigating customer ownership, and what brands need to know to do well with social media to improve the customer experience. Troy Johnston is the Co-Founder of Seller.Tools, an all-in-one suite of more than a dozen Amazon tools. He is obsessed with creating data-driven solutions for Seller.Tools clients by empowering sellers with the best data, superior optimization, and easy to set up automation. 

About The Guests

Troy Johnston is the Co-founder of Seller.Tools, an all-in-one suite of more than a dozen Amazon tools including a free chrome extension that empowers brands to get more Amazon reviews, CB increase keyword ranking and outpace the competition on Amazon. Troy sold one of his flagship brands for multiple 7 figures and quickly moved to consult for 8 & 9 figure clients on Amazon.
 
Troy is obsessed with creating data-driven solutions for Seller.Tools clients by empowering sellers with the best data, superior optimization and easy to set up automations. You can find Troy and an amazing community of FBA sellers through the Facebook group FBA Kings.

Sponsors

This episode is brought to you by:

Global Wired Advisors is a leading Digital Investment Bank focused on optimizing the business sale process. Our approach combines decades of merger and acquisition experience with online and e-commerce expertise to increase the transactional value of your greatest asset.Maximizing the value of your company in a business sale is achieved through the full expression of its future potential. Choosing the right representation to provide this vision to the right buyer, means putting your future in focus.

For More information visit https://globalwiredadvisors.com/

Are you a private label seller looking to expand into larger markets internationally or need an experienced  import partner to keep growing? Zee makes selling your Amazon products abroad easy with excellent import knowledge, door-to-door solutions, customer service and scalability. Streamline your import process with Zee today to increase profit margins and continue to scale.Ready to expand your ecomm empire and take your Amazon FBA Business global?

For More information visit https://zee.co 

Take a deep dive into your business processes to make data-driven decisions and outperform the competition in an innovative way.

Sellerise is a comprehensive solution for your everyday business needs with innovative tools like the PPC Dashboard, Smart Alerts, Review Requester, and Keyword Tracker. Everything you need to grow and scale your business is just one click away. Stand out from the crowd and conduct business whenever, wherever. Innovate your effort and work smarter, not harder. The difference is amazing. Sellerise is for professionals at every level of the business journey. Simply select the capabilities that best fit your needs.

Visit www.sellerise.com

Episode: 239

Title: Norman Farrar Introduces Troy Johnston – Co-founder of Seller.Tools

Subtitle: “Major Amazon Shifts in 2022”

Final Show Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfdDbRT9tz8

 

Back on Lunch with Norm…Today’s show is about Amazon’s shifting trends in 2022. We discuss useful tips on navigating customer ownership and the results of Amazon continuing to release more tools. Today’s guest is the Co-Founder of Seller.Tools Troy Johnston. He empowers clients with the best data and superior optimization for their Amazon business

 

If you are a new listener to Lunch With Norm… we would love to hear from you. Please visit our Facebook Page and join in on episode discussion or simply let us know what you think of the episode!

 

In this episode, we discuss:

  • 0:00 Intro/Housekeeping
  • 3:46 Welcome Troy Johnston
  • 4:48 Amazon FBA 2022 – Predictions & Trends
  • 6:28 Supply Chain Problems and Inventory Management
  • 11:11 Risk Evaluation Process In 2022
  • 14:22 Trends that are Happening Towards the End of 2021
  • 17:20 More Inventory More Cash Flow
  • 20:56 Tools for FBA Sellers – What to Expect?
  • 26:38 Absolute Best Amazon Seller Tools
  • 30:14 Tips and Tricks on Customer Ownership
  • 41:05 Drive Traffic and Keep Your Customers
  • 42:51 Tips to Help Make Your Product Stand Out

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Check Out More Lunch With Norm…. Programming

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Norman Farrar  0:03  

Hey everyone, welcome to 2020,I’m Norman Farrar are 2020 Perfect. Welcome to 2022 I’m Norman Farrar, aka the beard guy. Welcome to another lunch with Norm the Amazon FBA and Ecommerce podcast. I hope that’s not an indication about how things are gonna go. But anyway, today we got a great show with a returning guest, we’re going to be talking about major Amazon shifts in 2022. Our guest is the co-founder of seller tools he’s been on before. He was awesome. It’s one of the most downloaded episodes we’ve had. He has. He’s the co-founder of seller, seller tools. It’s an all in one suite of more than a dozen Amazon tools. He sold his own brand for multiple seven figures and moved really quickly,moved on to help consult eight and nine figure clients on Amazon. He’s also obsessed with empowering sellers with the best data superior optimization and easy to set up automations. Our guest today is going to be Troy Johnston. But before we get to Troy, let’s have a word from our sponsor. I wanted to give a quick shout out and say thank you to global wired advisors for sponsoring this episode of lunch with Norm. Global wired advisors is a leading digital investment bank focused on optimizing the business sales process. For more information please call Chris shuffling and his team over at globalwiredadvisors.com All right, where is the Boy Wonder?

 

Kelsey 1:53  

Hello Happy New Year’s.

 

Norman Farrar  1:55  

Happy New Year’s Cal’s.

 

Kelsey  1:58  

Wow, we made it I think, what is it 15 seconds before having a little flub, but you know, that’s, uh, we’re gonna move past that. And we’re gonna go and that’s what we’re gonna we’re gonna turn around. Yeah, we’re gonna try it out. But I welcome everyone. Welcome to 2022. Thank you for joining us. I’m super excited for today’s episode with Troy. He’s a great guest. And we’re very happy to have him back. If you guys are new to the podcast, of course, smash those like buttons, give us those thumbs up. We’d really appreciate it. Also, if you are not part of the beer nation yet, you can go over to lunch with Norm Amazon FBA and E commerce collective. That’s where all the good stuff happens. Also, we do have a paid program on our website, lynford norm.com. And yeah, check it out. Check. Click the membership button, and you’ll see everything that we have available. But yeah, anything else?

 

Norman Farrar 3:02  

I think that’s it. If you have any questions. First of all, I don’t think people are used to us starting on time. I know it’s pretty bad. It’s probably the first, maybe the second time we’ve started on time. But we’re going to try to do it this year. We’re going to try to at least do it once a week. Aren’t we kels on time?

 

Kelsey  3:22  

Maybe maybe more than once a week, but we’ll see. I mean, that

 

Norman Farrar  3:25  

means you have to show up and you have to press the button. Right? That’s right to press. Yeah.

 

Kelsey  3:30  

You have to be in the studio.

 

Norman Farrar  3:33  

I’m already depressed. Okay. This is where I live. Okay. So if you have any questions, throw it over in the comment section. Sit back, relax, grab your cup of coffee. Enjoy the episode and welcome Troy

 

Troy Johnston  3:48  

a norm. Thanks for having me on.

 

Norman Farrar  3:51  

The first guest of 2022 and now

 

Troy Johnston  3:53  

I feel so honored and privileged Yeah, happy 2022

 

Norman Farrar   3:57  

I and I didn’t say 2020 Can you believe that?

 

Troy Johnston  4:03  

Let’s just go back in time. It’s no wonder I was hoping you’re gonna bring me on it was gonna Oh, yeah. Just so young, you know?

 

Norman Farrar   4:10  

Yeah, but if I said that, you’d have to come in full uniform. Yeah, outfit. Yes. Yeah. Just like Kelsey usually is wearing a cape but So how’re you doing?

 

Troy Johnston  4:23  

Doing good doing good trying to bring in this new year strong excited optimistic but yeah, there’s there’s also kind of the once you get down to business, a lot of realities a lot of things that just are part and parcel of you know, of what this year looks like in E commerce and on Amazon. So trying to look at it stubbornly but with a smile on my face and excited for what’s you know, what’s ahead.

 

Norman Farrar   4:48  

Why don’t we start with that? What are some of your thoughts on how things are going to roll out this year?

 

Troy Johnston   4:54  

Yeah, it’s the dynamics at play a really, really interesting so You know, 2021 brought us a lot of sort of macro shifts and trends, when it comes to just e commerce as a whole, what I like to you know, what I sort of coined is the the idea of the pandemic hangover were in 2020. You know, Amazon picked up, ecommerce picked up, there was such an acceleration, there was an evolution, you know, there was the the talk that we had moved from, you know, a decade’s worth of, of that evolution. And now, coming into 2021, all of that throughput, that still has to be managed. I mean, this isn’t a physical product business, you can’t generate revenue without a product. Yeah, the supply chain issues, the raw material shortages, all of the issues inherent in what we do. And then you have the Amazon shifts on top of that, right. And that’s the stuff that I’m, I have a somewhat unique perspective, both as a seller and as a service provider through Amazon, SAS, and sort of have to navigate it on both of those, both of those fronts, so not to not to put it in an eerie or negative perspective. But but that’s the sobering look, I think, coming into this year of being what has changed. And then how do we grapple with that to make the most informed decisions and kind of setup our respective businesses and again, for me, both as a seller and a SAS, set them up for success.

 

Norman Farrar   6:28  

You know, it’s kind of funny, as you you mentioned just a little bit earlier about the 10 year gap, right? That just was like that, because of the pandemic. And it’s funny, you go into the airport, and maybe your order, this just happened. So you’re ordering some food, and the the menus on the QR code. And you see some little old lady with her iPhone, like knowing how to use a QR code. And I think that’s, you know, that sums it up, you know, we just got to that period now, where everybody is ordering online, everybody is, and it doesn’t matter how big or how small people are ordering online. But what’s interesting too, is today, I got an email from one of my clients. And it also shows you what today’s bringing us is local domestic supplier, the manufacturer can’t get their product in, there’s a supply chain problem. And their three week lead time has now gone to a 14 week lead time within the states. So it’s affected because some of the chemicals or some of the, you know, whatever they’re using, is on no ships waiting to be unloaded. So although we do say, you know, like, now, hey, check out North America, check out South America, you know, check out India, but even doing this locally in North America. It’s got its hang ups because they’re waiting for resources that are coming in offshore. And it’s a real problem. Like, I think, and we were planning on going down this rabbit hole. But I think it’s important that inventory management, supply chain management is probably one of the biggest things that are affecting us right now. And that we have to make sure that we probably order. If you think that you have to order three months in advance, I’d be doing it five months in advance, you know, just to cover off that. And right now. We’ve had that other delay, that’s going to be happening, right? Chinese New Year’s just around the corner,

 

Troy Johnston  8:40  

right? Yeah, no, it’s so true. And we know that as well. We’ve got a brand that is, you know, domestically sourced, it’s right here in the United States. And that’s, you still have the raw materials that, you know, that can lend themselves to needing to be sourced elsewhere. And so you still have your supply chain is impacted. So yeah, I’m right in line with you. And I think this is where for, you know, when when you touched on optimization, and I think this is, this is a time where really, really optimizing your supply chain workflow has to be part of the conversation for brands that are either either coming online, or just revisiting somewhat some of the status quo. And I think for a lot of brands, the status quo has been shaken up, they’ve sort of had to be resourceful. But I think a fresh look at what they’re allocating for budget for lead time, being more conservative, potentially looking at getting more well capitalized if you haven’t pursued funding, if you haven’t even opened up to strategic partnerships. And this is where I’m always a little bit leery because once you throw everything on the table, then you’re sort of paralyzed by the the amount of choices. But I think that’s the exercise that really makes a lot of sense coming into this year of I’m going to take that optimization, strategic approach and take it throughout the entirety of my business. Not only that, My own channel presence of Amazon, which is what we do a lot with tools, but then also as a business owner, what am I? If my premise is I’m leveraging Amazon because I love the logistics, you know, I’m not loving the fees, but I understand what it’s facilitating the relatively low barrier to entry, we have all those positive checkmarks. But what are the, you know, what are the unforeseeable? What are the things that what are our known knowns and then are known unknowns? And how can we sort of map that out. And I think I think businesses that that really have dialed in systems and processes, even though that used to be a really great competitive advantage, I think it has an exponential impact coming into a year like this, where, you know, and I think these are definitely points we can explore is, if you can, if you can fold that into your, your business makeup, I think that’s where you truly can separate from the pack. With all those dynamics we touched on at play, because this is kind of a, it’s it’s almost a reset, I think in terms of the marketplace, the approach and the strategies that you can or cannot, you know, safely deploy on Amazon.

 

Norman Farrar   11:11  

We, towards the end of what in the fourth quarter, we put a lot of stress on bringing on people that were involved with SOPs automation. And like you said, if you don’t have those things in place, now, it’s a problem. If you’re not thinking about them, it could be a problem. The other thing I was was thinking about was risk evaluation. We touched on this last year, you know, we talked on a couple of podcasts about it. But you really have to think about risk evaluation in advance. What are you going to do if? Do you have a secondary supplier? These are all things that if you think about it in advance, like we use a project management tool called teamwork. In teamwork, there’s a notepad and notepad, you can just have a link to an SOP, or to something that helps you with that risk evaluation. If you’ve already pre thought the, you know the process, it’ll make it a lot better for you. And I’m, if it’s minor stuff, I mean, you can do it. But if it’s more major, like an action plan, what are your action plans? What are you going to do? Who do you contact? These are all very important things. And you know, what we haven’t even touched? Well, we kind of are touching on some of the things that you do over at seller tools, which is a lot of automation. But it’s I just think that risk evaluation in 2022 is going to be very important for for all Amazon sellers.

 

Troy Johnston  12:46  

Yeah, no, I agree. I agree completely. I think you know, and it when you hear risks, you always think of okay, this pessimistic view of like, worst case scenario, well, what if you what if you played out a, you know, a business use case where your business does that you’re hitting your quarterly goals, you’re on your way to hitting your annual goals? I think playing that out, I think, you know, if you look at it reasonably, you do have those, those fail safes or those measures in place to where you sort of know, okay, you know, if we’re straining our manufacturer, because we’re just clipping right along, and we’re meeting our objectives. Well, you know, maybe having that, that backup, having somebody who who’s engaged, or maybe even more closely aligning with your manufacturer, with some type of more solidified strategic partnerships, I think, very similar to Amazon, I think a lot of brands can also fall prey to just being transactional with their manufacturers. And I think this is that really great time to have conversations about, you know, what, what, how can you build more continuity, if you know, you’re going to order from this manufacturer and a year from now? How can you relate to them your extended investment in their business, and potentially solidify that whether it’s an agreement, it’s a contract, you know, even even an implied understanding, and that’s the first step, but figuring out ways to get more creative to where you’re not just simply another brand, who they’re the manufacturer of that you have some type of unique standing some type of unique relationship. And that’s a part of your, your optimization strategy.

 

Norman Farrar   14:22  

Right. You know, there’s, there’s just so many little things that are different from two years ago, last year brought, you know, different ways of looking at things and also working off of Amazon. I don’t know, you’re dealing with a ton of people. What are some of the trends that you saw happening last year? Towards the end of 2021?

 

Troy Johnston  14:47  

Yeah, I mean, the the common thread for us, and I would say this more so on the solo tool side is that, you know, a lot of what we were known for was figuring out ways of developing more continuity with them. With with our customers of figuring out pre and post purchase strategies to extend beyond just that transactional relationship with the customer and figuring out whether it’s promotional, whether that’s value add, the constraint they were having was, was purely related to inventory, it was they were not able to, if they can’t move a unit, they they less than the value and the be the ability to realize those transactions to even think about extending that customer lifecycle. So that was definitely the thorn in their side. And it was challenging for us. Because even though we can go back to Okay, let’s think about optimization. Let’s think about automation, there’s a lot of things that we can do. The that is that is in the 8020 of a sort of an Amazon business, it’s really high up on that list. And you can think of it in a relative sense, if a brand is just purely being transactional, one purchase, and then you’re building a customer relationship. And then over six months, you’d have three or four transactions, you increase that LTV, you generate positive feedback, you welcome reviews more easily. That’s a whole different dynamic. But yeah, that that, that inventory challenge kind of stood us in the face, and we we sort of had to help, you know, try to try to navigate a lot of things that were touching on ways you can think about, okay, we the problem is very apparent. And it’s, it was very rare that it was a there’s a general approaches to it. But I think often this is where a lot of business owners kind of have to think, Okay, what is my unique circumstance? What are some of the the unique variables at play, that can lend itself to the best short and long term solution, so I think it just injected a lot of potential creativity. But I also know a lot of first time business owners, you know, a lot of folks just kind of getting the feet underneath them when it comes to selling on Amazon. We’re just trying to grapple with this idea of like, we know, inventory is important, I can’t I can’t make a buck without it. And that was, so we ended the year on a bit of a bit of a tricky note, I still want to be positive, positive and optimistic. But that was really the tone. For much of q4.

 

Norman Farrar  17:20  

You know, one of the things we used to preach, I used to preach, I still preach, the more that you can turn over your inventory, the better cash flow. Unfortunately, the way that I’m seeing the cash flow game right now, or the inventory game, is that you have to buy more inventory to cover off the just in case. So you know, just in case that your sales take off, or they don’t take off, you still have that inventory either in your warehouse. And that’s another different play right this from from two years ago, is that you have you have to have a three PL at your warehouse, if you’re new to Amazon, or to the podcast, that means a warehouse, a fulfillment center that can take your product, send it over to Amazon, and you’re not getting stuck with huge fees over at Amazon. But at this point, just because of the supply chain issue and trying to get things out of China, you have to take a bigger hit on the inventory, which means you have to take a bigger hit on your cash flow. Now, I hope we can change that. Or I hope you can just take that one big hit. And then you can cut it back and just kind of every month or every two months get back on track. But that’s something that has changed. And by the way, I know we’re going down all sorts of different rabbit holes. Today we we are going to be talking about automation and a few other things that seller dot tools are going to be better experts in and Troy’s an expert in but just before we get to that Troy has an incredible giveaway today. I think he did the exact same giveaway on the last time you were on. And some lucky person is going to get drumroll What is it try

 

Troy Johnston 19:09  

it’s going to be one free month of the seller dot tools starter plan which will give you access to pretty much our whole suite of features to try everything out. Run some new keyword research listing optimization, competitive analysis, PPC, all that. All that good stuff as part of our all in one suite you’ll be able to tap into

 

Norman Farrar 19:26  

and one of the things that we’ve talked about you don’t even hear this because you’re not around I don’t see you in the stream. So I know you’re not listening to every podcast, maybe one or two. We mentioned your your tool a lot when it comes down to being able to select the bet not the on search volume, but keywords that turn orders and your tool is one of the very few that do that. So just that alone, somebody like whoever gets this is going to be is going to be lucky because I love that Part of your tool. I mean, there’s other other modules in your tool that are also fantastic. But that’s the one that sticks out in my mind that I absolutely love. Because I can hone in on a specific keyword, not on keyword volume. So and Kelsey doesn’t know about this. But I’ve got a second giveaway today. And the giveaway is going to be hashtag. Where is Simon? I don’t know where Simon booth has been lately. I’ve not seen him on if anybody can tell me make it up. Hashtag Where’s Simon? And we’ll give you a calendar and a huge box of chocolates. But you have to be in North America. Okay, so I’m just kind of wondering what kind of answers we’re gonna get. Alright, so back to the serious stuff. of our. Alright, let’s talk about some of your tools. So, but not your tools. But I want to talk about tools. Reality, like the reality for tools, and what reality tools can have on an Amazon sellers account now, like everybody thinks tools, different apps Helium 10. You Jungle Scout? It’s the magic button? I don’t think it is, I think you have to do other work as well. But can you give us a reality check on what you can expect from tools?

 

Troy Johnston   21:30  

Yeah, it’s, um, you know, as we touched on in terms of last year, what we have gathered from from Amazon and what, what’s been shared, what’s been passed along in terms of, you know, conduct and policies and different things that Amazon has sort of spoken about when it comes to strengthening some of the still vague language when it comes to ranking on Amazon, engaging with customers and buyers, and really how that relates to tools and the way that we have to also, you know, we share this challenge as tool providers as well as sellers of we’ve got to make sense of this, this vague, but seemingly broad language. Because what we want to do and this is this is a vision of seller tools is we want to give our users a distinct and unique advantage. And the what I you know, the 8020 of success on Amazon boils down to things like ranking and reviews, getting your products more visible to generate more revenue and reviews, reinforce that through the social proof and generate more conversions on platform. And so that’s one sort of big dynamic at play is how we treat what has been shared. It was first a forum posts, and now it’s been folded into the code of conduct, and then how that shows up into tactics and ways that we can support those tactics for ranking and reviews. The other equally big update that has that has come through, I would have kind of put this as a second plug in, there’s a third one. But the second one is that Amazon has now been rolling out their own extended tools that utilize first party data. And first party data is essentially just to say Amazon data, no estimates, no guesses, no approximations, this is Amazon saying, this is the data for clicks for searches for sales, to where now that we have an exact number, you know, if you were to ask me, four or five years ago, if we would truly have Amazon source data for these extremely important metrics, I’d say there’s just no way that we’re not going to get that Amazon supports this cottage industry, that is Amazon tools. And we all sort of have gotten accustomed to using estimates. And so now there’s been this this shift of, okay, we have the source data, it’s, you know, it is the best data just by virtue of who, who is the source. And now we have to think about how we can leverage it. And again, I view this as both the seller and service provider, but that is another substantial shift, sort of tide shift when it comes to Amazon as a whole. And then the third, but not unrelated to the second pillar is how Amazon is enriching a lot of on platform solutions and features, just by virtue of rolling things out, like brand registry brand registry now has unlocked this whole on the on the back end, there’s just a whole slew of things that you can tap into, or Amazon sort of saying if you if you stick around in the ecosystem, we can add in a bunch of value that starts to give you some of that some of that search term data, some of that demographic data, you know, Brent, the brand referral program that that dovetails into the attribution so really focuses on you know, empowering external traffic. So that third pillar starts to all of these things, sort of independent, but also together creates this really interesting backdrop for tools to think about, well, how can we safely innovate? How can we make sure we’re providing real value? Where data has been so crucial to what we do? But now Amazon sort of said, well, here’s the best data, what are you gonna do with it? And then, you know, how do we keep a very close eye on the feature, almost the feature set where Amazon’s almost becoming a tool, a suite of tools in and of itself, and make sure that we can exceed the value that Amazon’s rolling out. So that’s sort of the 2022 backdrop that tool providers have to sort of look at and think about. And, you know, I’ve just finished by saying the three, the three things that we really focus on our three pillars that solo tools is data, it is automation, and then it’s optimization. And so it’s, it’s sort of created a unique lens with which to view those different areas. Because now with the best source data from Amazon, we have to think about, okay, how can we then analyze that data or arrive at outcomes to where a, a seller has this new profound high level of confidence in the data? But then how can they then make informed decisions? How can it become actionable? So that’s my long winded way of sort of breaking down something that we’re thinking about constantly, when it comes to how things have shifted, coming into 2022.

 

Norman Farrar   26:29  

And going back to the Amazon data, you really don’t get access to it unless you’re brand registered. Right. Right. Right. Okay. And out of that suite of tools, so under brand, what would be the best tools or the best apps that you’re seeing that sellers can utilize?

 

Troy Johnston  26:49  

Yeah, right. Right now, I’m very big on opportunity explore what Amazon’s released there for the potential of looking at categories, what they refer to as niches and then product level, detail, it’s immensely insightful, it’s it’s a, it’s a bit of a shift in terms of how you think about product research. You know, as an example, you know, Amazon looks at like 90 Day chunks. So there’s, they’re sort of giving us the carrot, but saying, you know, here’s a half a carrot, like, you know, adjust the way that you think instead of 30 day or even one day, we have a lot of users that really appreciate like, you know, single day analytics, it’s, it’s a bit of a shift there. But because it’s its source of data, that we’re used to, you know, pay to play or, you know, getting getting PPC data, you used to have to invest or spend some money to get that level of insight, it’s extremely beneficial, especially at that phase of the business, you know, as we’ve been spending more time there. It’s one of the areas where, admittedly, we’re spending a lot of time because we’re gonna, we’re gonna leverage that data and arrive at being able to analyze it for sellers is that that point where you’re doing product discovery and product validation is tends to be the most anxious, because everything we’ve touched on, you need to be well capitalized. So usually, you’re you’re exposing yourself to quite a bit more in the way of the capital, you need to raise and deploy and the potential risk. And so at that phase, the data and the analysis become even more profound. It’s not like you’re just repositioning a keyword you’re listing and maybe you lose incremental sales, you’re deciding whether you’re going to validate source, sell a product, and so the, the value of the data itself, but again, the analysis is really crucial. So but that’s, that’s definitely where we’re spending a lot more time and it breaks down from products to search terms, there’s even insights there to where you can look at top five ASINs, top 20 ASINs, benchmark performance in a category or niche and really see if there is a potential point of entry. And it’s, I think it’s, it’s it’s one that I don’t see as many sellers tapping into whether they weren’t part of the initial beta or weren’t familiar with, it’s a really quick contact that you need to do with Amazon where you can request it. But once you have it completely free, there’s a lot to be able to extrapolate there, whether you’re extending your product line, so you already have a product or for a new brand, you know, new to Amazon sellers. That yeah,

 

Norman Farrar  29:30  

that’s the one thing I noticed is that if you’re trying to expand your brand, it gives you a ton of insight, you know, just so easy just to very quickly say oh, yeah, I could go here, go there. And it is a different approach it it is a little bit. I’m sure they’re going to be changing the look and feel of it after you know. It’s in beta, right. It’s still in beta.

 

Troy Johnston  29:54  

Yeah, yeah. And it’s only available in certain marketplaces to and to their credit and You know, we’ll have to see if they they turn around on that feedback, they’ve been requesting a lot of that of like, you know, share your share your feedback on this tool or any metrics that you want to see. So they seem very interested in, you know, optimizing the tool itself.

 

Norman Farrar  30:14  

I, one of the trends that I noticed last year is customer ownership. And, you know, going from Amazon, to going to Shopify, you know, to your own e commerce Store. Do you have any tips on that? Have you seen any trends on that? Where now Amazon sellers who are doing okay, or maybe they got, you know, kick between the legs, and they’ve just had enough? And they’re going over to, you know, Shopify, any thoughts on customer ownership?

 

Troy Johnston   30:43  

Yeah, I have a somewhat, I guess, nuanced perspective. You know, as I as I read, again, that the now that the policies and the conduct, some of the language has been updated, you know, Amazon does state contacting a customer outside buyer, seller messaging is considered excluded. And so you sort of have to start from a place of if you’re okay, proceeding with any tactics where you potentially do own your customer more, and the interaction that you have with them, I fall on the side of if you treat that customer the same way, Amazon treats their customers, you tend to be safe, and you’re not adding any incentives or any anything that’s obvious, because what happens, and I, I see this all the time norm where on Facebook, somebody sees the most extreme example of somebody incentivizing for reviews, and then that gets automatically linked to will inserts are bad. And the execution matters with these these types of things. And so really, what I encourage is if you if you can hop over that first hurdle, and you feel comfortable, even engaging with customers, outside buyer seller messaging, then it is what kind of what kind of value can you exchange, easily and effortlessly, and this again, usually is post purchase is my favorite, because it’s every potential customer, you can really customize what that looks like based on your product and packaging. And the value can be really, you know, in their face, it’s very obvious where they can get at what they can do. And what they can be a part of, if it’s a, if it’s a giveaway, if it’s tied to some kind of user generated content, or something similar. So I think that conversation this year, I think is going to be another one where I’ve seen a lot of a shift to and I don’t know if you’ve seen this as well, where the the interest in direct to consumer has really elevated, which I think is, is great. But we’re still at that same hurdle. And this is one of the Brennan, my my business partner and fellow tools, we’ve gotten into a few debates and conversations of well, if you’re engaging with that customer pre purchase. And, you know, let’s say you gather, you know, customer information and contact information at that point, and then you drive them to purchase on Amazon, and there’s nothing on the back end. Is that an Amazon customer? Have you gone outside buyer seller messaging? How is that? How does that customer potentially treated? Because then, you know, obviously, if you have their contact information, you can send them to another sales channel or a social media opportunity or engagement. But I think those are the types of they’re good conversations to have, because I think brands have to sort of decide their interpretations, then from there, what the execution can look like. And I think it’s better to sort of discuss it openly versus any kind of broad brush of like, you know, again, insert cards, or this way, or this part of the sales cycle is another way. But I you know, I want to know your thoughts. This is a, this is an interesting topic.

 

Norman Farrar  33:40  

It’s it’s a great topic. Um, I think they’re the very first thing you have to consider. And what Amazon Amazon hired 10,000 people, I think it was last year to do this. And that is basically to compare products. They buy your product from Amazon, they buy your product from Walmart, or wherever. And if there’s any differences, so if they open it up, and there’s an insert driving people to your website, or if you got the Walmart one and there’s no insert, then there is a problem, or there’s a potential problem. So from what I understand, and this is just what I believe, from what I’ve heard, and I don’t want to misguide anybody, but from what I do that this is the way I do it, and this is what I’ve heard, if you’re packaging your product with an insert, and that insert is the exact same on your website or over a Walmart and it drives people over for whatever reason, then that should be fine. If you’re asking if you’re putting on the insert, if you like our product, here’s a QR code. If you don’t like our product, here’s a link that is 100 percent against Terms of Service. It can’t look like it’s incentivizing a review. So getting extra warranty is fine. If you’re got a knife and you produce a cookbook, that’s fine. If you’re tagging people, so you get their information from their Instagram, that’s fine. I don’t have any problem at all sending an insert a QR code driving people over to get something from my website, if that could be if I’m selling soap, giving them a sample of our shampoo. Again, no problems with that. I don’t think Amazon has a problem if they tell you what they think is an incentive and what’s not. You know, if, if you think if you do a gut check, and you go, Oh, yeah, this is wrong. It’s probably wrong. Yeah, you know. And, you know, if you don’t have to, that’s the thing. Like, you can do it. Right. I like I talked to Paul Baron about this, you know, he does a lot of this type of thing. When he when I we do between him and I we do all sorts of different types of inserts. But you know, he’s got some really great ideas about, you know, how to drive traffic over to a site, just to be an influencer. You know, people like your product, Hey, okay, great. Grab their name. And then you know, we need to do it. That’s one thing. So here’s one, we’re running with one of our clients. They’re running TV commercials, they just started. Well, they’re EECOM spiked off their Shopify store. There’s their Amazon spiked, because people went to the website and said, Oh, I’d rather buy on Amazon. Well, this comes back to your question that was a pre purchase, which went over to their site, which ended up over on Amazon.

 

Norman Farrar  37:06  

Should that be their client? You can’t, obviously you can’t, you know, you can’t approach those people. Unless they click QR code for warranty. The other thing is, on your Amazon listing, that could drive traffic over to your website, is that if you put your product documentation up, so under Product Manager, what is it called product, manage product documents, under inventory, you can put a wide variety of different documents up, people see it, it could be instructions, it could be directions, it could be whatever, troubleshooting, but people aren’t doing enough of that. And then when people see that you’re not like for us, right? They’ll go to your website, because your name is on it. And to check it out. Now, if your website looks like it’s consistent, and good and high quality, you don’t even have to have a pop up that comes up. i We do all the time. But you know, we have a pop up. But if they think it looks great, then they’re going to fill in their information. And I’m telling you, I don’t know what you think about this, I preach this I matter of fact, the company PR reach, I preach it. Content is everything. If you can drive, it’s not only good for SEO, but if you can show people about your product and give them the information that they’re seeking, they’re going to love you. And the trick is not to put all of your products on Amazon. If I sell soap, I might put five out of my 10 or seven out of my 10 cents on Amazon. The other three you have to go to my site to get so it there’s a lot of little tricks. And then the other thing to this and now I’m I’m going on on this. But the other thing about I notice a lot. I had one client, one client that had 280,000 emails and never did an email campaign. So it’s what you do with the with your customers, as well. You know, creating a sales funnel, creating an email campaign doing an SMS campaign, which I really sucked at until I had an SMS expert on and they said, you know, you’re missing out on a ton. So, anyways, I’ve been long winded. I’m gonna, Kelsey, I think we I think we passed our commercial. But anyways, let’s have a quick word from our sponsor. Thank you solarize for sponsoring this episode of lunch with Norm solarize is your comprehensive solution for your everyday business needs. Everything you need to grow and scale your Amazon Business is just one click away. For more information. Contact demon is team over at cellar eyes calm and remember seller eyes is with one our. Okay, there we go. Now just a quick reminder hashtag, we’ll have Kelsey, we’ll get you one lucky person a free month over at seller dot tools. And it looks like hashtag Where is Simon has got some results. Simon is here. Welcome, Simon. But I still want to know what the answers are that you would have given? Where was Simon. So if you can make up anything that’s still good for the entry for the box of chocolates as well as the calendar. Alright, so hashtag Where is Kelly Simon? And give us an answer why? Or where he was? Okay, how’s that? Now let’s get back to this. Alright, so, you know, we talked, I don’t know, if you have anything more to add about driving traffic over to your website and owning your clients, which I think is probably the most important. The most important thing you can do. And I’d like to hear that from the audience as well. Any listeners, you know, how important or what have you done to drive traffic and keep your customers?

 

Troy Johnston  41:28  

Yeah, and I think norm you and I overlap completely if you if you have a value centric approach. And as you kind of touched on, as you know, you know, when you see it when when you get into the incentives, and the things that go from gray to black very, very fast, is that I think oftentimes we just don’t put ourselves in the, in the buyers shoes of like, if I’m buying this product, what’s going to make a better buying experience for me are going to be FAQs isn’t a detailed video of walking me through how to use it or common myths or misconceptions or is it something that’s highly personalized a founder video would be really a great way of strengthening a connection to the product or brand. There’s, I think this is where, and something we could definitely riff on of the one size fits all, I think that’s the other thing that’s really going to be really hard to apply in 2022. I think strategy and execution, if you do both of those things separately, uniquely, I think this is where there’s true separation, there’s going to be brands that really do this well, and others that whether whether it is one size fits all, or a lack of a cohesive strategy and solid execution, I think those brands will really will really struggle. I just think that’s, that’s sort of the dynamics at play.

 

Norman Farrar   42:51  

You know, one of the things that we’re talking to our customers about our clients about, let’s say that you have just a regular their bottle, okay, bottle of shampoo, supplements, just a package. Okay, not even a package, just the bottle with the product. And what we’re telling people is, at least if you’re trying to deal in a, with a higher perceived value, like the top tiers is that get the package. So you can have more information on the package, which but the customer experience is also that much more, and you could put an insert in the package as well. So that 15 to 25 cents, is going to make you stand out from everybody else who puts a bottle of supplements in a package, or you know, very few people or a bottle of shampoo. And the response that we’ve got from the clients that have done that. It’s huge, like the quality of the reviews that are coming in, you’re getting usually people review, if they absolutely hate your product, you’re getting paid to hate your product. Or if it’s like top of the charts right in between it, you know, for 234 stars, those are the more trustworthy because people are either over the top or you know, they just hate you for some reason. But if you do an upright and you package properly and you know possibly put an insert or whatever, it could even be a little sample bottle of something else, you know, or package. This adds to the customer experience. And if Amazon does something right it’s the principle that the customers everything, it’s the customer experience. And if your product sucks, and there’s another product that doesn’t the customer experience and the reviews gonna go the one way the five star the one star is going to go the other That’s how it should work anyways, but I still believe it, I know I can launch a product, you know, launch a product, and it’ll be a high quality product. I can use manipulation. But you can rank, you can go out there and rank without having to use manipulation, you know, and manipulation being a ton of rebates, you could do it with look at Sharon, Sharon, Evan, you know, we were doing we used to do a lot of rebates, like rebate style, we call them concierge rebates, because they weren’t through a network. They were real customers. But she just, you know, she would come on and talk with me and say, Nope, you’re absolutely wrong. Just PPC, just drive traffic, PPC, and you can rank and you could be very successful, as long as your customer experiences there.

 

Troy Johnston  45:53  

Yeah, yeah, no, it’s a really strong point, the only thing I’ve maybe add insurance brilliant. So it would be in addition to is just thinking about now, that optimization element, I think, when we think about on channel with with products in our detail page, I think that’s that is another area where we all have to that is the entirety of what a customer interacts with before they click that Add to Cart button and purchase. And so that detail page optimization, I think is going to be really crucial in the moving pieces of it not only the foundational elements of getting your title and bullet points, main images, and video number seven, all of the things that we can do. But now is it’s even more media enriched is how we’re using your, you know, e plus e plus EVCA plus content, you know, owning related video shorts, you know, driving and welcoming more q&a. Hopefully, that’s, you know, optimized, and you have, you know, it’s keyword enriched, but it also is informative. And I think that’s, you know, that’s the founding, that’s what we all have to do. And I think brands kind of ask themselves, well, in what way, are we doing this in a superior way, or reliably re optimizing to where we’re increasing and not just, you know, maintaining kind of the status quo? With that real estate?

 

Norman Farrar 47:09  

Right? Oh, I’m just wondering, Kelsey, Do we have questions?

 

Kelsey  47:16  

Yeah, so we have one question come in, and then a couple comments. Sure, we can go through. So let me just see. Uh, alright, from Simon with Amazon, now incentivizing sellers to drive external traffic? Surely, if you make the first contact with the customer, you have some claim on ownership. Is that correct?

 

Troy Johnston  47:35  

Yeah, that’s, that’s, that’s a great question. This was really the conversation I was having. And we I think, both brought up very, very valid points when I was discussing it with, with Brendan as well is, okay. So if I’m engaging with this customer, let’s say it’s a paid ad. So let’s we’re running, you know, Google traffic, we’re paying to then drive that customer to Amazon, presumably, are we driving them to a landing page, then Amazon, does that change the dynamic because that landing page allows us to then either pixel that customer or gather contact or customer information. I’m, I’m of the mind that if we carry the threat of I think, again, how you you and I norm, really treat and engage and support this customer, that as long as we’re delivering value, and we’re not putting our foot, you know, stepping into other areas of the interpretation of code of conduct or policies, that this is a customer that you sort of share with Amazon, you sort of are taking some amount of ownership because you want to drive an optimal buying experience. That’s where you have aligned vision with with Amazon. But I would also say I sort of see the other side, too, where if Amazon is really using some of that vague language, one of the analogies we always use I’m I’m probably people probably tired of me saying it is the Google SEO example. Google uses such vague language, that they pretty much cover everything that says okay, if you get an advantage by optimizing utilizing different SEO strategies, they can sort of ping you or come after you or do you rank you. But are they going to always follow through on that is that more so that they can just be they have every base covered? Amazon sort of taking on that shape and form where reasonably you would expect if you’re just delivering more value and a better buying experience? You’re okay, and in the end safe, but I wouldn’t want to welcome too much disregard for saying, well, Amazon does they do they do sort of say this? But is that just sort of vague broad language or is that they’re going to come after me for giving a customer a detailed FAQs and a place to contact support if they had any issues at all with their product or product, you know, product warranties, something that implicitly or explicitly shows that I backed my product, here’s what information I need. I stand behind that, again, these are all assumptions we’re making that brands are going to do that. Because if you don’t follow through on registries or warn, you know, registrations or warranties, well, you’re, you are in the the bad bucket again, both in Amazon’s eyes and rightfully so. That’s sort of my, my long answer of negation navigating the point is, I think it’s it is, it’s still nuanced. But I err on the side of, you’re sharing this customer, you’re doing right by them, you’re adding as much value as possible. And you’re sort of saying, Well, if this is my execution, well, how would Amazon perceive it? And would they be okay with it, and sort of acting with that spirit in mind,

 

Norman Farrar  50:44  

and you could put a landing page, so you’ve got a landing page, maybe have a video bit of information, and you give a choice, by buy on Amazon, buy on my site. And then that way, you know, there, there are people that will specifically want to buy on Amazon. But some people want to go to your site. And I don’t know, if that splits gonna be 7525, it’ll be, it’ll probably be higher on the Amazon site. But there are going to be people that are going to want to go to your site and buy, because they’re anti Amazon.

 

Troy Johnston   51:20  

Right. Now, that’s a great point, we do have, we do have a number of years and so many chat is one of the platforms that is really preferred with a lot of our users and community. And they’ll do the same site type of thing will take the form and function of a landing page and just sort of converted into a mini chat flow, because it will automatically capture some of the customer information. If we, let’s say they order we can verify the order and pull, pull additional information without even requesting, necessarily requesting it. But giving them that option, or creating a more unique customer journey, instead of just add to detail page is a really great way of making this very, very, very seamless, and to your point can enrich. You know, if you have the video, you have the information there, you can enrich while also letting them own. Where do you want? What do you wanna buy? We want you to buy? Where do you want to, you know, you can make that choice.

 

Norman Farrar   52:13  

And going back to Simon’s question, you could take advantage by using that landing page. And if they do, click on Amazon, that’s pixeled. So you will get the 10% Yeah, 10% off of the 15. So anyways, you could still take advantage of the referral program. And if if you’re doing any form of external traffic, if you’re not signed up with attribution, get signed up with attribution and start, you know, pixeling any form of external traffic? Yeah, absolutely.

 

Kelsey   52:51  

All right. So you kind of touched on it before Troy, but I guess this was for customer ownership, as well. But can you do the last suggestion with many chat?

 

Troy Johnston   53:02  

Yeah, absolutely. It gives, you know, in my opinion, it gives you a little bit more control. Because it’s not a fixed resource in the way that a landing pages where, you know, here, here’s what it is, and sort of do with it what you will, with mini chat, because it’s interactive, it really allows for the customer to make make decisions. And you can also again, kind of customize it, where, you know, in the past, we’d randomize what kind of journey they’re taken on, we can randomize what kind of links they go to, or utilize, whether that’s keyword specific or not. And so I think it gives you a little bit more control. But absolutely pre and post purchase. Mini chat has a slight, slight advantage in my eyes. For those reasons, you just have a little bit more that you can do there.

 

Norman Farrar   53:46  

And just to give you a little plug over at seller dot tools, you do have a lot of automated mini chat flows already created, haven’t you?

 

Troy Johnston  53:58  

Right? Yep. Yep. And then we’ll fold in a lot of these these types of features. And it covers a pretty wide range, you know, distributing single use promo codes, Buy One Get One offers, you know, sending a gift card to a customer even flows, you know, one of the ones that I really love is a customer actually sort of supporting themselves to where, if they have an issue, we can send them trigger this flow, have them do they want a free product? Do they want a gift card equivalent? And because they support themselves, not only are you safeguarding your team’s time, but it’s sort of it’s sort of a cool way of empowering the customer say, what’s going to make this right. And with two or three button clicks, we can have them whatever value they choose, we can get that taken care of.

 

Norman Farrar  54:43  

I think it’s important. My again, going back to Paul Baron when we started talking about his chats that he would be putting together. One of the things that I always found out that I throw my computer against the wall sometimes because I could never I got into this loop that you can never contact anybody. And it’s not the right. You know, like, you’re typing in something, it’s the wrong, you know, information, you type it in again, and you never got to the right person. So you have to make sure that if somebody is or needs to either get online chat or get in contact with you by email or whatever, that there’s an easy way for them to do it. And there’s a, especially at the beginning there was it, it was either, here’s my bot, and there’s no way because they took the contact information away from the website, you know, so anyways, that was my pet beef.

 

Troy Johnston   55:39  

That’s a good point. It’s a good point, good best practice, it folds in whether, you know, Lindland pay or mini chat.

 

Norman Farrar   55:45  

Yeah, sure. Yeah. Okay, Kelsey, any more questions?

 

Kelsey  55:49  

Oh, yeah, just a couple of comments that I read. So the first one is from Manny for 2022. I believe that the secret of finding new products with platforms like Etsy are not anymore a secret as they were. And people’s eyes are much faster on those product opportunities. We need new methods to find these opportunities. Do you have any thoughts on this?

 

Troy Johnston  56:13  

Yeah, I personally don’t have as much experience with utilizing Etsy for product product validation, I definitely, I see it as a great place to potentially harvest, we actually work with somebody who does some handmade, handmade products. So kind of right in that. Right in that space. I’m still a big believer, if there’s sort of the external validation of coming full circle and having the Amazon component that data, that data validation as well, which we touched on for opportunity to explore pros, if you can see signals of something that is handmade or maybe like a tangent of where you could you could source it from a manufacturer in a ready made state. I would still bring it back and validate some of the some of the crucial points. Does your budget match what’s possible? When you look at ratings and reviews? Can you match the velocity of some of the top sellers looking at top top five top 20. Another important sort of, and this goes back to product research, actually doing keyword research is looking at keyword in sales traffic. Yeah, keyword traffic and sales and looking at that distribution. And seeing if there is a, there is an opportunity to come in, if there is only, let’s say, a very small subset of keywords that are getting an abundance of sales and an abundance of traffic. Well, you need to narrow that down and sort of say, well, who’s winning this? Is it branded related search? Is there a moat around these competitors? Where I can’t come in? Or is there an even distribution of keyword sales, QR traffic and sales to where, okay, that’s a wider window, greater potential. And then I can dive into those keywords and start to say, Well, yeah, I can, when that there’s no branded search or trademark or anything that’s, that’s safeguarded, to where there’s not potential to get into that category. But that to me is taking that external validation and kind of doing a little bit more on platform due diligence with the Amazon validation, and again, opportunities for Pro. I’m hoping we’ll have something that to help with some of this analysis. It but that is where it really shines.

 

Norman Farrar   58:24  

Right? Now, the product opportunity. So a lot of people have seen Project X, you know, with Tim and Bradley, and they’ve, you know, they’ve gone and they’ve done their Pinterest, and they’ve done the Etsy and but like you were saying, or what you were asking Manny, I still think that works. If you have if you do your competitive competitive analysis, if you think, excuse me for a sec. They’re professional frog in my throat clear, just like that. So if you go and you do your competitive analysis, and if you take a look at those products, I think that if I’m like if I’m using helium 10, I’m looking at their x ray, and I can see through and I can see that there’s one major brand taking up everything. Can I take market share away from anybody else? And if the other people are doing a bad job or a poor job of optimization, or even, can you just improve it? Sometimes I’ll just go for it. You know, it’s it. If I look at look at I’ll give you one example. Okay. And this is in my niche. Dr. Squatch. Dr. Squatch. Okay. They do millions of dollars a month. It’s bar soap. They came on a year and a half ago. They completely dominate that area. Yeah, now, and it’s men’s sense, their packaging item like, I think their packaging is okay. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe it’s fantastic. I think it’s okay. I think their listings are okay. But they came on, they had the capital, they did the research, and now they’re out there, they took it away from every, quite a few people. So if you can do it with a simple thing like bar soap, can you do it with shampoo, it’s gonna cost you a heck of a lot more, because it’s so competitive. And if you have that financial resource to do it, then go for it. If you think you want to be the best plastic shoe stretcher out there, you know, you go for it, you know, if you can think you can beat the other 10 or 12, or whatever there is 50. You know, if you have better plastic, if you have better metal, if you can innovate the product, these are all things you have to take a look at. Amazon is definitely, definitely still an area where you can make a lot of money, you just have to do it a lot smarter than before. It’s all about brand. Now, I don’t care. There used to be people that came on and would, you know, they would say you don’t need brand, sell product arbitrage. And still, you can sell product arbitrage. But they would sell a product, not a brand. I was I came up with brand. So I was always you got to build a brand you got to build. Now Amazon is saying you’ve got to build a brand. Those people with brands, and that are consistent with their brands are the ones that are probably the winners. Now, here’s another thing I was talking about. Kevin King and Steve Simon since products avant, right. And I thought like I was telling this one person who asked me about this a fantastic service, you can go and check it out, they’ll find you the product, but the guy came back and well. Does that guarantee that I’m going to be a winner? No, because you might suck. They’re saying that, you know, here’s a good product that we’ve identified. But if you don’t spend the money on the marketing, or on PPC, or on photographs that’s on you. So these are the things that you have to look for. You know, when you when you are doing product opportunity, you can have the best product opportunity out there. And you could still lose, or you can have the worst category. And when. So I’m not too worried. I don’t know about you try i i can look at a product and sell a product. You know, I don’t worry about competition. Yeah, I do. I mean, I shouldn’t say I don’t worry about comp, I analyze competitors. But I if I wanted to put out a supplement, I could put out a supplement.

 

Troy Johnston 1:02:59  

Yeah, yeah. And I mean, the two the two variables, I think and you touched on them that I think they’re they’re they can be glossed over is what is your what is your budget, because those costs that you were touching on, you know, not only the product, but what it’s going to then take the entirety. So think about not only your product, your logistics, your advertising your launch your post launch, formalizing a true strategy that informs what that budget number, truly, truly is. But you also touched on optimization, if you look at a handful of listings that are topping the category and you’re like, Well, wait, they don’t know how to do keywords there, their immediate is underutilized. They have no EBC or a plus, you know, we’ve seen Amazon hype that time and time again of you know, 10 to 15% Bump, we see it all the time on our Seller Central accounts, you know, get get that A plus etc, you’re gonna see an increase in performance, which is true, it is it is true, that it does help to both legitimize and reinforce authority for for product. But that can be part of your analysis of, okay, I’ve got, I’ve got a semblance of an idea I’m looking at who’s winning in this respective category? If I have the know how, and I can see, oh, there’s missed optic, you know, missed optimization. For these listings? Well, I can I can come in and just simply do a better job and greater follow through. But those two things have an interplay, because maybe that just that doesn’t mean you need to allocate the appropriate budget. So knowing your numbers is important, but those are, I think, crucial, if not, and hopefully it’s not at the scale at a very large scale of overlooking the importance of your budget, but the optimization piece is another one. I think, again, detail pages is so crucial, because when we talk about external PPC, we talk about on platform PPC, everything comes back to the central place, and that is your detail page. And that is you know, that’s that’s where the conversions are realized. Right. So that’s really crucial. Get it right.

 

Norman Farrar 1:04:58  

Yep, very good. Next one. Question Kells.

 

Kelsey  1:05:01  

All right. Well, I think we’re coming up to the close now, just one last comment from Tony. I did an A B test on new products selling well, I want to turn off PPC sales died, same for Google in Shopify, so that he was just talking about external traffic. And from many, yes, that’s the point, being smarter and dynamic with the product you’ve chosen. Don’t be afraid to change and improve based on the reviews and the need of the customers. So thank you for your comments. It’s really appreciated. I like to always hear from the beer nation and their thoughts on these different things, too, so.

 

Norman Farrar  1:05:41  

So Kelsey, I just want to go back to Tony’s for a second. So the turning off PPC, I forget who we had on PPC expert. I’m not sure if it was reetou. Or somebody just recently. And they were saying that if you turn off your PPC, because you think, oh, you know, maybe you’re maybe you’ve got a higher A cos and you decide that you want to turn it off, what you’re not realizing is that there are a lot of organic sales that come through, because people are not going to click on that sponsored ad. They rather they don’t, there are some people that don’t trust sponsored ads, because it’s a paid placement. So they’ll go to an organic sale. And so the organic sales, because let’s say that, you know, you might be top position with your PPC, and then you’re number three or number four, they recognize it, and they click it, you know it, and especially if you’re utilizing, you know, going all around the page, right, you’ve got your, your, your header, you got display, and then your PPC on the bottom. That’s just that that’s that’s just a psychological, that’s psychological warfare, when it comes to getting sales, but it costs more. But at the end of the day, like if you turn off your PPC, you’ll you will automatically see your PPC sales, they’ll go down, of course, but also your organic listings go down. So just kind of keep that in mind.

 

Troy Johnston  1:07:17  

Yeah, it’s a great point, we always leave auto even on a very small budget. And, you know, my stances with exact match, budget budget willing is, you know, break break, even if not overspending. The diversity of different ad types, I think, could lend itself to where, you know, so many of us were seeing increase, you know, CPCs, and our ACS was ticking up that with a with a variety of ad types that that could potentially offset it. But that’s, that’s more of my my stances, you know, just be more aggressive on those crucial keywords, and then isolate them to run, essentially discovery campaigns with broaden, broaden phrase match.

 

Norman Farrar  1:07:59  

Okay. All right. So before we get to the we’ll have Kelsey, you want to give us a little bit of information about the tools, seller dot tools?

 

Troy Johnston  1:08:10  

Absolutely, yeah. So we we actually do offer quite a bit that is for free. We have a seller tools, Chrome extension that’s going to cover things like LPS Pro, it’s our listing quality score tool that will give you an in depth analysis of the optimization of a listing. So as we’ve been touched on today, definitely encourage others to check it out. It also includes review request, review downloader, keyword insights, see my forgetting it all, it’s a long list enhanced search data. So there’s a lot that you can get for free through our Chrome extension. And I think I touched on it. So I’ll share a teaser here is that there may be more coming that’s going to utilize some of that opportunity to explore data. So we’re really excited about that. And then that’s even separate from our platform, which you can also start for free. As you just use more, you move into the paid plans, but we cover keyword research listing optimization alerts, PPC automations. For things like our mini chat flows, you can use them for landing pages as well. But it’s truly meant to be an all in one suite of taking you through discovery, research, optimization, and then ongoing optimization and management for your store. And it plays nicely with a Chrome extension where you can do that keyword research, plug it into your listing through our listing manager and then see how optimized you are as you get that listing live and check that over time.

 

Norman Farrar   1:09:31  

Very good. All right, Kelsey, I think it’s that time

 

Kelsey  1:09:36  

all right, you got it. Here we go. It is the wheel of Kells.

 

Norman Farrar  1:09:53  

Okay, oh, by the way, I just noticed Simon mentioning the Chrome extension is really useful. It’s a must have for any serious Amazon seller. That’s

 

Troy Johnston  1:10:03  

awesome. Yeah. Thank you, Sam.

 

Kelsey 1:10:04  

All right. All right. And thank you to the beer nation for entering today’s we’ll have Kelsey, you still see. Okay, perfect. All right, so I’m gonna shuffle these up. If you are the winner, please email me Kay at lunch with norton.com. And we’ll give this a spin. All right, so today’s winner is next, I believe that’s Nicholas Smith. Oh, congratulations. And we do have another giveaway. Can I switch my Alright, this is for the word assignment. And I think the best answer we got in was from Jessica Rabbit instead abducted by wolves. So thank you. And let’s shuffle these up.

 

Norman Farrar  1:10:57  

And Simon is excluded because he’s in the UK. Next

 

Kelsey  1:11:06  

we’ll do another one. That’s

 

Norman Farrar  1:11:11  

here. Why don’t we do this? For the, for the three people in there, they all get the prize.

 

Kelsey   1:11:20  

Oh, all right. Fantastic. All

 

Norman Farrar   1:11:23  

right. Okay, all right. So that’s it for today’s show. If you want to learn more about seller dot tools, seller tools, just check it out. I think Kelsey, put the URL in the in the comment section. Troy. Thanks for coming back. It’s awesome. Yeah.

 

Troy Johnston  1:11:45  

Here’s to a great year ahead. Yeah.

 

Norman Farrar  1:11:47  

And hopefully we don’t see you in 2023. That you’re back in 2022 for another great podcast.

 

Troy Johnston   1:11:53  

Yeah. Exactly. Hey.

 

Norman Farrar  1:11:56  

All right, sir. Well, thank you for coming on.

 

Troy Johnston  1:11:59  

Thank you. Appreciate it. All

 

Norman Farrar  1:12:00  

right. We’ll see you later. Okay, so thank everybody for tuning in for our, our first podcast of 2022. Kelsey, who do we got coming in on Wednesday?

 

Kelsey  1:12:17  

We have real Klein. He is the app developer of nozzle.ai, I believe. Okay. Yeah. So check it out. He’s a new guest. It’s the first time we’re having him on. But yeah, it’s gonna be a great episode. This was a referral, actually. And we’re gonna be talking about the heavy price Amazon sellers pay for not knowing their customers. So get out. Yeah. And yeah, also, for those joining us because this is a live show, we highly recommend you hit those three dots. If you’re watching from Facebook and press the push notifications, you’ll go live every single hour, you’ll get a notification every single time we go live, and you won’t miss anything. And for us, YouTubers, hit the little bell and the subscribe button. Those will get you those alerts when we go live. If you don’t want to forget, which I highly recommend, so you can get in your wheel of Kelsey and also smash those Like buttons. If you enjoyed enjoyed today’s episodes. Also, feel free to let me know topics you’d like to hear guests you want to hear. Just you can message me on Facebook. I’m just Kelsey Farrar or you can email Caitlin’s with norn.com. I’d love to hear your feedback. What do you think we can improve on? We’re starting this new year, and we want the very best for our beer nation too. So let us know. Join the Facebook group lynda.com Amazon FBA and E commerce collective and yeah, I think that’s it. Alright. Sponsor

 

Norman Farrar  1:13:49  

Yes, we do. There you go. Kills right here. Yeah, that was he co for sponsoring this episode of lunch with Norm. Are you looking to take your ecommerce business from local to global, you can with the help of z and their brand new app. That’s right. You can track live shipments with push notifications. Get detailed lead times for each stage of your shipment, and store all compliance and VAT reclaim documents in the palm of your hand. All while listening to lunch with Norm. Ready to expand your E commerce empire. And take your Amazon FBA business global. Use the link in the description to learn more about Z’s new app that’s now available on desktop and mobile. That’s z.co z e dot C Oh, okay. So, Kelsey, do you have anything else to say? Or can I do my thing?

 

Kelsey  1:14:49  

You can do your thing. All right.

 

Norman Farrar  1:14:51  

Thank you, sir. All right. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at noon Eastern Standard Time. Thank you, everybody. for joining us today thanks for being part of our community we could definitely not do it without you and we will see you on Wednesday

 

Transcribed by https://otter.ai