#28: The In's & Out's For Amazon and E-commerce Success

Date: August 28, 2020

Episode: 28

Title: Norman Farrar Introduces Chris Brewer, the Co-founder of OMG Commerce, a Digital and Business Strategist, an Online Marketing and Full Funnel Sales Expert.

Subtitle: Staying Committed to the Fundamentals Through the Rapid Changes

Final Show Link: https://lunchwithnorm.com/episodes/28-the-ins-and-outs-for-amazon-e-commerce-success-chris-brewer/

In this episode of Lunch With Norm…, Norman Farrar introduces Chris Brewer, the co-founder of OMG Commerce, a digital and business strategist, and an online marketing and full funnel sales expert.

Chris has a history of building 7-figure businesses. In addition to the incredible growth and success with “OMG”, his entrepreneurial accomplishments have included an outdoor advertising firm and publishing company.

Chris regularly coaches entrepreneurs and small business leaders on business growth, sales and marketing. He is the author of the book, Does Your marketing Make You Money: 7 Quick & Easy Secrets to Create a Booming Business Now.

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:

• • 4:39 : OMG Commerce 10th year with partner Brett Curry
  • 7:20 : Transformation from live events to virtual summits
  • 8:23 : The Mastermind: War Room and BlueRibbon
  • 10:23 : The e-commerce fuel group
  • 13:42: Tip for Quarter 4: Don’t coast; stay committed to the fundamentals
  • 17:52 : Contingency plans
  • 27:23 : Getting started with brand awareness
  • 30:18 : Building up authority
  • 32:44 : Google ads pros and cons
  • 39:36 : Do’s and don’ts for Amazon advertising
  • 45:44 : Drop shipping and caution
  • 48:38 : Finding good products and sourcing on Etsy, Pinterest and more
  • 51:55 : Pivot when needed

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Explore these Resources

In this episode, we mentioned the following resources:

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/momarketer/
• www.facebook.com/chrisbrewermarketer/
• https://www.omgcommerce.com/
• https://twitter.com/momarketer
• chris@omgcommerce.com
• https://smartmarketer.com/mastermind/
• https://www.ecommercefuel.com/
• https://advertising.amazon.com/lp/beta-posts
• https://www.amazon.com/gp/prime
• https://wordpress.org/plugins/woocommerce/
• http://www.kirstenross.com/
• https://www.amazon.com/live
• https://www.etsy.com/
• https://www.pinterest.com/
• https://www.warroommastermind.com/

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Norman  0:02 

Hey everyone, it’s Norman Farrar, a.k.a. The Beard Guy and welcome to another Lunch With Norm, the rise of the micro brands.

Norman  0:21 

We are broadcasting to you live on Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn and if you’re watching this on a replay, skip it and if you want to watch this on my or if you are watching this on my personal Facebook page, remember you can always go to the official Facebook page Norman Farrar, a.k.a. The Beard Guy and we have all sorts of highlights over there. So this is the point where I bring in my son, Kelsey.

Kelsey 0:48

I’m back. I’m fantastic.

Norman 0:50 

You’ve been behaving yourself in the city?

Kelsey 0:53 

Yes, yes, sir.

Norman 0:55

Good.

Kelsey  0:57 

Alright.  You know the drill everyone, follow us on social media. We have Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, all that good stuff.

Norman 1:06

Oh, you told me to do this to0.

Kelsey 1:09 

Did I?

Norman 1:10

Yeah. I’m smashing things.

Kelsey 1:14

Yes. Smash the Follow button. Yeah. So we have an official podcast now. You can find this at LunchwithNorm.com. and anywhere you find your podcasts, so Apple, Spotify, just search Lunch With Norm, and we will be there.

Norman 1:36 

Yeah, and remember, one of the things that we want to do is bring you great content. So we’ve got blog articles, we’ve also got a newsletter that, as I always say, doesn’t suck. It’s from a concert. It’s all about e-commerce, not just Amazon, not just Shopify, digital marketing, ran across the board a little bit of everything. So subscribe to it, we got a bunch of people subscribing last week and I really would like to hear your comments on that as well. Anyways, I think that’s pretty much it for the updates except if you rather watch then listen to us as a podcast, just the audio, you can always go over to YouTube and we have tons of sound bites over there as well as full episodes tons and we are coming to you live every Monday, Wednesday, Friday at noon Eastern central time. So I think that’s it for today’s updates.

Kelsey 2:39 

Yeah, so if you’re excited for today’s episode, hit those like buttons, share this video and hope you enjoy it.

Norman  2:46 

Alright, easy, got off the screen. Okay, very good. So I am really excited about today’s guest and before I get started with any introduction, I want to thank Rob Burns. So Rob reached out to me, and he said, I’ve got a guest that you’ve got to get onto your podcast and if you have never heard of this website, check it out, OMG Commerce, they have been around forever. They’re known as leaders and they provide lots of quality content. They’ve got their own podcast, but just check out their website and today, I’m so excited because the co-founder of OMG Commerce is Chris Brewer. He’s going to be on and Chris has a history of building seven and eight figure businesses for people. He regularly coaches entrepreneurs and small business leaders with on business growth, sales and marketing. So just remember, if you have any questions or comments, throw them over in the comment area and we will get to them. So sit back, relax, grab a cup of coffee and enjoy the show. Alright, so Chris, there is the man. How are you?

Chris 3:58 

Norm, I am fantastic and I am so glad to be here today. I am one of those rare few people that wasn’t that familiar with the bearded one and I actually have a member of my Amazon team that when I post I was going to be on your podcast, she sent me a direct message said, Oh, man, I love Norm, he’s amazing. So I’ve done a little bit of my research and I can concur with that. So it’s great to be here today.

Norman  4:31 

Oh, that’s great and you are one of the leaders. How long has OMG been around?

Chris  4:39 

We’ve been around for 10 years and yeah, this is our 10 year kind of anniversary year, the perfect year Norm 2020, if you’re going to have an anniversary year as a company 2020 might as well be that year because it’s just been such a smooth year. But yeah, and my business partner is Brett Curry, who I would say is probably better known than I am. He’s more of the face of our company. We both did stages back when people were doing stages. We both do podcasts, but he’s the host of our e-commerce evolution podcast and so we’ve been 50-50 business partners for 10 years. So it’s worked out quite well.

Norman 5:28 

Just hearing you say, back in the day, basically stages. Isn’t that weird? When is it going to come back where we can actually go and meet people?

Chris  5:42 

I don’t know. I think it’s just when enough people are gonna make it profitable for those companies to do that because and when they can do it, probably when it’s I’ll say this and a broad way politically safe to do so, because I know there have been events, but they’ve been events with maybe a few hundred people rather than thousands, the thousand people events, they’re just going to get too much bad PR by hosting them. Right? It’s going to be a PR play rather than maybe when it’s actually safe to do so. Who knows?

Norman  6:29 

Yeah, I mean, these virtual summits that are every week, every day. I mean, they’re great. You can learn a lot of information. But one of the best things about going out to events, the information is always fantastic. I’m always taking notes, but it’s the networking and getting to know people and I feel so ripped off when I’m listening and I can’t interact with anybody or see who’s in the audience other than answering a question. Even here, I really want to jump out and have an event, get people over, talk with people because that’s what it’s all about is really growing your network. Information is one thing, you can apply that, but your network is priceless. That is my biggest asset. So, anyways, I’m psyched. I’m just talking out of the side of my mouth here.

Cheris  7:20 

No, I think there’s a lot to that. There’s so much to the one to one relationship building and being at events. I’m in a mastermind, I’m wearing a hat today for one of the masterminds and they’ve recognized that we haven’t been able to be at the event. So they’ve extended our value by not giving us another bill until they can have live events again, which is a very wise thing to do and they’ve done their best at having virtual events. I think there’s a lot that’s been learned there virtually, and how to do those profits. We’ve been pitched on sponsoring those and when they first started, it was the same price as a live event and they quickly learned they’re not going to be able to get that same dollar amount. So it’s been a fascinating transformation. I think business overall will be better for it in the end.

Norman  8:18 

I’m curious, what is the mastermind?

Chris  8:23 

This is war room, led by Ryan deiss and Perry Belcher and Oh gosh, who’s the Roland Frasier. Those are the kind of the three guys that are leading more room. I’m also in a mastermind called Blue Ribbon, which as Firestone runs, that’s the one we’ve been in the longest, which, for anyone, it’s got a lot of Amazon entrepreneurs in there as well. Blue Ribbon is amazing. For me, if you’re an e-commerce store owner, definitely want to check out.

Norman 8:58 

Yeah, we didn’t set out to talk about mentoring or events, but it’s so important, especially nowadays. I don’t recommend going out and following 10 experts, but settling into a good quality mastermind or investing some money, because the good ones usually cost money. That’s where you get to build your knowledge. That’s where you get to build some great network and until you do that, and especially if you’re just trying to do everything on the cheap. That’s what you’re going to, I mean that’s what it’s worth. It’s going to be cheap and it could be misinformation going into really great masterminds. You’re getting a lot of the time, especially with the two that you just mentioned. They’re tough to get into, especially war rooms. But anyways, any of these masterminds that might be 90 bucks, 50 bucks, 100 bucks, 400, 500 bucks. Check it out, see who’s running it, do some investigating and join. It’s the best monthly fee. Most of them are recurring monthly, but you get so much information out of it. Yeah, I mean, if you have a problem, Amazon, if you have a problem on Amazon, you could probably just post it and have an answer in a second.

Chris  10:23 

I’ll tell you a couple of one is a suggestion and the second one is a hack. We’ll call it a hack. I also want to say for your audio person, if you hear a train whistle while I’m talking, it is a train whistle. We put our podcast room as far away from the other side of the building. It’s kind of a funny story, but when we lease the building for a five year lease, the owner said, Oh yeah, there’s a train track but it’s just a service track. You won’t have any issue with the whistle. We have issues with the whistles. It’s kind of a fun story. We’re in a 1980s old seed building warehouse that was converted into office space and it provides some interesting things sometimes. So the group I’ve recently gotten into is e-commerce fuel, Andrew Darren’s group, that’s the e-commerce fuel, but that group is fire and for the amount of money and it has a waiting list, it took me a little while to get in there. But it’s like $99 a month or 99 a quarter. I don’t know. It’s on the inexpensive thing. But I will tell you, it is phenomenal. The level of members that are in that group and how they contribute and share and then if you’re just starting out, you’re like, gosh, even 99 bucks a month. I’d rather put that into ads or I’d rather put that into freelance work. What have you, that’s fine. Here’s a little hack for you. Google podcasts, you bookmark this podcast Lunch With Norm. I know you’ve got another podcast, I think Norman, and then Google e-commerce podcast, Google Amazon podcasts. Go in and scroll through the episodes, make a note of the ones that connect with you. Then schedule time on your calendar to listen with full attention to those episodes and that can in a way, create your own mastermind group because one of the hack part of it is, then follow through and reach out to those individuals that were on the podcast. Many times if you mentioned it in the subject line, heard you on XYZ podcast. These individuals that might be hard to speak with normally, you’ll get a response and then you’re creating your own network group. Not just by listening but also engaging with the guests and hosts on those podcasts. So that’s just a little tip for you.

Norman 13:03 

Great. So today, just before we got on here, we were thinking, Okay, we already talked about it prior to coming on, and what we’re going to talk about, but then we thought, oh, maybe we’ll mix it up like the old Donnie Murray show, a little bit country, a little bit rock and roll. Let’s do the same with Amazon and e-commerce. So you’re both, you’re an expert in both. So especially with what’s going on right now. Where e-commerce businesses are, what they might be missing right now, with the way things are going? For the fourth quarter, I should say.

Chris 13:42 

Yeah, we just did. We handle Google as well. We were just on a webinar with Google yesterday or the day before on a kind of holiday prep webinar and kind of gearing up for that. A couple of things that I’ll take is, little I heard one of your other podcasts you were talking about nuggets. So I’ll throw some nuggets in here that I kind of gleaned from that event. One was a really good suggestion on the Google side. There’s a lot of things that have come out new in the last 12 months, last 24 months. If you’re running Google ads, for instance, you need to make sure you do a thorough review of your account prior to fourth quarter to make sure you’ve got all the best practices going. One area that we see a lot of is just people not using responsive ads in their search ads, only using expanded text ads. Another is the new dynamic product ads and dynamic display that’s out there, discovery ads, things that even if the accounts running well make sure you’re ready to test some of these methods into the fourth quarter. The other one is make sure you look at what happened last year, of course, we know last year was not a pandemic here. But still look at the ads that converted the best last year, you may have different skews or asins, you may have different promotions or things you want to do. But make sure you key in on those headlines and text ads and things that perform the best before you start trying to come up with brilliant new copy. So make sure that you’re not only looking at last year’s performance at an account level, but also from an ad copy level. Those are some of the things I think about and also on the Amazon side. Actually, this came from my director of Amazon. I thought it was really a good kind of reminder, don’t coast and some of you, many of you who’ve benefited from COVID with extremely high sales. Norm I was on a call yesterday with a guy who’s grown 7,000%, 7,000% more common is four to 500% growth. But don’t assume that those high sales are going to last forever. e-commerce has grown tremendously in the past several months, Amazon slaying it. Strong sales should stay, but there’s a myriad. Here comes the train horn. I don’t know if you can hear it. But there’s a myriad of variables as we go into the remainder of the year and next that we might see a different kind of things come in. You got an election. You’ve got COVID. In the wintertime, you’ve got Amazon shipping capabilities, you’ve got UPS and other kinds of fulfillment challenges. I’ve got a friend at UPS who has been working overtime and 12 hour days for months now. You can’t sustain some of that. So the main point is don’t coast because sales are high now. They are for almost everyone, unless your luxury goods or something like that, and just stay committed to the fundamentals.

Norman  17:10 

It’s interesting you say that because it’s human nature, right? Oh, sales are going so well and you just kind of leave it alone. This is where you want to probably even increase your competitive analysis. Find out what other people are doing. Try to beat them, and always take action. Don’t be one of these Amazon sellers that have great intentions, because you’ll end up being an Amazon seller with great intentions while everybody is profiting. The other thing that I think we have to talk about Chris is with explosive sales like that. You’ve got to make sure that you are properly capitalized because if you don’t, it’s going to hurt you.

Chris 17:52 

Yep and I think capitalized, some folks are properly capitalized, but their inventory is sitting somewhere and can’t move. So thinking about your contingencies now, if you didn’t, if you learned anything from this pandemic, it’s have contingency plans and just because maybe things have been going well for you recently, make sure you’re thinking about your contingency plans for the what ifs, and one of the things that I think you should also look into Norm, just in terms of being one of the things that ways you can be proactive, especially on the Amazon side is don’t miss out on kind of early access betas and that’s one of the ways that you can, if you think your accounts going great, that’s fine, but don’t miss out on those the platform’s increasingly competitive marketplace. Any competitive advantage you can get, you should be able to do that. I mean, how many times have you seen something come out and people say, Oh, the beta is not that great with Amazon. But then two or three or four months later, everyone’s saying, Oh, you have to do sponsor brand video. It’s amazing. Yeah, well, I remember at first the sponsor brand video came out and some people are losing a lot of money with it and so if you hear about a new program, and you don’t have access to it, don’t hesitate. If you’re with an agency, like ask your agency, who’s your Amazon rep, can you ask for me? Or ask your account manager to request access, because if you’re not ahead of the curve on Amazon, you’re already behind. Right? Other ones like Amazon posts, are using Amazon posts. How about the new multi product tagging feature, post scheduling, advanced reporting that just got added to the beta. So you got to stay on top of those changes, or it’s not that you’re going to wake up one day and all of a sudden your sales have disappeared. It’s going to be a drip and then you’re just going to be behind the curve and then you’re going to feel like it’s a flood to catch up.

Norman 20:14 

So almost like any social media right now, Amazon and I think this happened because of Nike. But when Nike left and said that they couldn’t build a brand or brand community, they came out with posts, post, like you said, has developed and with these three new updates, plus the ability to have your brand URL, now you can start marketing it. But what I thought was brilliant, is that you can now follow on posts, you can actually build a community on post if you do it correctly. Which, what about Amazon live? Now you can follow on Amazon live, you can get the message out, tip everyone who follows you. So you can build this community just like you could on any social media platform. There’s no commenting yet or likes but I’m sure that’s going to come really quickly. So I’m kind of curious. So you’ve got Amazon over here, we’re getting into the fourth quarter. We know that Prime’s coming up. Like, I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t know.

Norman 21:16 

I have changed my inventory strategy completely. So I know that I’m protected. But with e-com on the other side, okay, so if you’re on Shopify, do you know David Gimes?

Chris 21:33

I’ve heard the name.

Norman 21:34

You gotta meet him. He was on the other day and he built his Shopify store, zero Amazon except for this year to $16 million in a couple years. Incredible guy, but he does things completely different than the Amazon person. Now if you could kind of put them both together. Imagine the company that you can have, like no amazon for up until this year. He’s doing okay on that. But it’s everything Shopify. So I guess, long way around it. What are the two advantages? Or what should people be doing to leverage the two platforms?

Chris 22:13 

Yeah, I’m glad you asked that Norm. Because I think one of the things that is unique about our agency and I don’t want this podcast to be about our agency, but it’s what I do every day. So it becomes a part of you, is that there’s a lot of Amazon only agencies out there. There’s a lot of Amazon only, SAS and software out there. There’s a lot of Google agencies out there, until you only get to the very top tier like really big agencies. Do you find skill sets with different departments that include Google ads, and Amazon ads as well. So that’s one of the things that I think is unique for us and it also gives us very unique insight when you’re able to see both sides of it. So an answer to your question. One of the things that we’ve been, trends, that we’ve been seeing a lot are Amazon sellers that have realized, because of FBA stuff, all the stuff that happened, they don’t want to only have Amazon as their only stream that got cut off. So they’re starting to look at what would happen if I opened a Shopify store or what if I did more with my Shopify store than just let it sit out there and gain whatever organic sales that it can. I think, from an Amazon to a Google side, all I would say is, as an Amazon seller, educate yourself on the Google marketplace before trying to engage with an agency, because otherwise you’re going to be held captive to what the agency thinks is the proper channels and strategy and the agency is going to be able to help you a lot more if you’re educated on search, shopping display, not an expert, but just just get an overall understanding. Because it is a much different in many cases, shopping experience than what happens on Amazon and it takes a little bit longer time to build up. Amazon’s getting that way as well. But Google Ads takes a little bit longer time to build up. So the one of the first steps that I would tell an Amazon seller is investigate Google Shopping, find someone who can at least set up a Merchant Center account for you, build your feed. Google has free listings now. There was a time when Google would take a cut of your listing on shopping. They don’t, they’re not doing that with the free listings. So if you’ve got, one skews are going to be difficult, but if you’ve got a number of skews, 10,15,100,5000, you can get that as a feed moving into Google Shopping, and set up just a simple smart shopping campaign. That’s a good place to start for an Amazon seller to at least establish themselves on Google and I just, Norm I’m not seeing that much the reverse. I’m not seeing very many established Google sellers decide to go full on Amazon. If they do, they’re just selecting their top skews and putting those on Amazon because they’re getting search volume for it. Anyway, it’s just some initial thoughts from what you said.

Norman 25:48 

So let’s talk about Google for a second because I know going back even four or five years ago, it can be very expensive to be on Google. Okay, so I was working with Google directly. I’ve got a soap brand. I said, let’s do this. We jumped in with two feet. We started off trying to build a community, trying to build the ads, they were helping me and I blew through so much money, 5000. There was about five grand a month trying to and we were targeting specific demographics. Anyways, it just didn’t work and I started to hear this from all sorts of other people, people started to shy away, and just go to other forms of marketing, specifically, doing more PPC, sponsored ads on Amazon, of course, but also just through Facebook, and other social media ads. So are you finding that Google Ads now are more cost effective than what they were before?

Chris  26:48 

It’s a two part answer Google ads. Since the pandemic cost per click has gone down substantially in some areas, it’s gone up in other areas. CPAs, same thing. Some have gone up, some have gone down. But I really do believe it’s still a good opportunity to test Google ads. The thing I would caution there is don’t sign up with Google to do it.

Chris  27:23 

It’s going to be a roulette wheel on whether you get somebody that’s actually going to stay in line with what you actually want to accomplish versus what they are seeing in their world and their lenses as best practices. So then, Hey, bro, well, what do I do if Google’s not gonna run it and you don’t think I should run it coz I don’t know. Well, then it is finding a solid freelancer or consultant or smaller agency that you can trust to help get you established on Google and that’s where smart shopping and the free listings for Amazon sellers is a great place to start because you can have a small test budget there and see how it goes. The other thing I’ll mention, I almost forgot this and I’m sure you’ve talked about this on other Lunch With Norms and other things is, back in the day, three, four years ago, Amazon brand, what’s a brand on Amazon? Now, building a brand on Amazon is going to create a footprint for you off Amazon that’s going to help you turbo charge anything that you do with Google ads. Example that around Facebook. We typically, for brands that come to us new that want to run Google Ads if they have no branded search because they’re new will usually say go talk to these guys over here that we know are experts in Facebook ads, get started with brand awareness and and use that as an awareness channel to build up and get your your Facebook flow converting and then come and talk to us, because we know once you have branded search in Google that allows us to get a lot faster traction with your campaigns. The reverse of that is we just had a guy, start on Facebook, get shut down, lost his business manager everything and so he came to us and said, Guys, I have to start with Google. Well, Norm let me tell you, it’s been expensive. It’s been slow. He’s happy, because he has no other place to go. But like it’s gonna take us probably another two or three months, with him working on other channels to build brand awareness because he’s in a competitive spot. So that lends itself to also Amazon with enhancing your store, fronting content and running sponsor brand video and doing all the things that are going to enhance your brand. Because if you haven’t done that, and you want to do a cold start on Google, it’s going to be cold. It’s going to be brisk. It’s going to be a challenge.

Norman  30:18 

Well, you’re touching on a point that I talked about quite a bit and that’s, you have to have authority before you get trust and if you don’t have trust, nobody’s going to buy your product because you’re a micro brand and there’s all sorts of things you can do. Not only creating ads, but content, having just create a blog. Don’t go and get 250 words, 350 words, 550 words, pay $2 for these blog articles. Get quality blog articles. We like to run them around 1500 to 2500 words, great content. Like Neil Patel says, if it’s not the best blog article on the search, then don’t bother doing it. But that’s one thing to get it, then we like for us, we run press releases, press releases are going out all the time for us building up the authority, so that we can not only have links back to either the Shopify store or over to the Amazon store, but am I Oh, by the way. So this is a whole other thing, Amazon 810. Did you see or did you hear about one of the things that they’re looking at right now for weighted like on a weighted scale, its authority domains linking back? I’ve been saying this forever, like just get high quality domains, you can get it through a press release, get them linking back. So and now they’re saying that this is one of the things that they’re looking for. So and they’re also looking for external traffic coming back to Amazon. So how do you do it? You can do it through ads. We had a question up here and I should give out some shout outs, by the way. So Peter from Toronto. Hey, just a stone throws away. Let me see here, Freddie. Okay, this was actually Freddie’s question, but I also wanted

Kelsey 32:21 

We got a couple questions.

Norman 32:22 

Yeah. I also want to say hi to Timmy. I just saw that she came in. But anyways, let’s go back to that question.

Kelsey  32:31 

Okay, so these questions?

Norman 32:33 

Yeah, yeah.

Kelsey  32:33 

Okay. Alright. So his question was, do you run Google ads to Amazon or Shopify stores? Why?

Chris 32:44 

Both. I mean, running Google ads to an Amazon store, if you’re new, in my opinion, is a bad idea. If you’re running Google ads to an Amazon store as an established store, with high volume, it can be a very solid strategy as long as you’ve got some tools or some insights from experts on it on the attribution side and the reason I said is, Norm this is a quick, funny story. My wife and I used to own an Amazon brand. My wife took an amazing course, she’s an amazing woman, had never done it before. Got her own product in China. We had her own brand, we launched and it was actually getting traction and starting to move forward and then I’m the brilliant Google guy. So I’m like, Hey, honey, you really want to supercharge this? Let me run some PPC ads for your listing and because it was low volume,  you know what happened Norm right?

Norman  33:50 

I think so.

Chris 33:51 

Yeah, I killed it. I killed her listing because the traffic didn’t convert because there were other similar products that they wanted to shop for before purchasing with us, and I killed her algorithm, which ended up pretty much killing her business and we ended up selling it to another guy for essentially what we put into it, including the inventory. So that’s just, you have to be very cautious when running ads from Google to Amazon. Running ads from Google to Shopify is like a no brainer. So like, but again, doing it smart and I would also suggest, and we can put some of these in the show notes after Norm. But there’s a course that we have that’s great for newbies on just building a bottom of funnel Google Ads campaign. There’s another group that we subscribe to that’s got other great training in it that if you’re not interested in, and we don’t sell courses, I just happen to have one on her site. So this isn’t a course pitch. If there’s others, I can put in the show notes to educate you if you want to learn to kind of run your own own campaigns. But I’ll tell you again, unless you’ve done the work that Norm talks about in terms of content creation, building a brand, also putting some effort into video and kind of creating a community. You just have to, you have to either have enormous patience, or very deep pockets to scale up with Google.

Norman  35:31 

Yeah.

Chris 35:33 

From start.

Norman 35:34 

So you were talking about driving traffic from Google directly over to the Amazon listing or the store and the reason why it died was because of poor conversion rates. So that screwed up the algorithm. What if, you were to have taken that and brought it over to a landing page or a funnel, which then sent it over so you’d get rid of all the tire kickers and from the landing page over to the Amazon listing, you probably have better traffic working

Chris 36:07 

Your webpage is the way to go. If you’re going to do it, there’s some, it’s got to be kind of like the Russell Brunson mentality on a landing page, which is give them one thing to do, which can be a great coupon code and exactly all the benefits of their product. Because again, if they’re shopping at an Amazon level, you’re wanting a quick pass through. But the landing page is your stop gap, so you can have Google Analytics tracking, you can have Tag Manager tracking, you’re still going to have issues on the sales side from an attribution standpoint on Amazon, but at least you’ll have enough information and you can build an audience list that you can repurpose there.

Norman  36:57 

Okay, oh, there’s another question here.

Kelsey 37:00 

Yes. So the question is, would these platforms be suitable for a new business and what strategy would you advise new entrepreneurs go with these platforms to maximize profitability?

Chris  37:13 

Well, Shopify is a platform, Google Ads is a marketplace. So I’m going to make sure we have the distinctions here that marketplaces where you can sell your product are gonna have ads with them. Google Shopping is a marketplace, Google ads are the fuel to get people to that place. Amazon is a marketplace. Amazon sponsored product ads, sponsor display, all of that. Art is the ads mechanism to get the traffic there. In terms of if you’ve got a new product, a new launch off of Amazon, I think the the DIY, more hire somebody to help you get it started would be like a WordPress with a WooCommerce plugin, the easy route which I highly recommend and I actually just created my own Shopify site on a whim for fun just three days ago and it’s already live and I’ve already made sales. Shopify is the way to go for just a quick and fairly straightforward approach.

Norman 38:17 

Okay, so let’s talk a little bit about on by the way, I got a thank you or your team for putting together a really great PDF on the do’s and don’ts of Amazon and so we’ll make that available to everybody a little bit later on. But let’s talk a little bit about the do’s and the don’ts. So what are the big do’s? What are the big don’ts?

Chris 38:43 

Yeah, I’ve got this is one that you hear sometimes about resources being made available. This one I will guarantee you is gold, and it’s going to be one of those resources. If you get it, I know I’m going to get people that say you should have charged for this information. Let me tell you where this information comes from. It comes from some friends on e-commerce fuel because I posed it as a thread and those folks contributed from the sellers point of view and then I queried my team, I queried about seven folks on my Amazon team, from directors, to our actual specialists who are in accounts every single day. So I’m just going to mention really in the time we have left, just a handful of do’s and don’ts here, but I’ll put the whole PDF together that includes both ad recommendations, and general account recommendation.

Norman 39:35

Fantastic.

Chris 39:36

Yep. So I’ll just go through a quick list of five do’s for Amazon advertising, for those of you that are veterans heavyweights, some of this is going to be old, old news for you. But for those that are kind of a blend or somewhere in the middle, the first thing you gotta do is organize your advertising. Create name campaigns around how you see your company. Parent asin, child asins, product lines etc. Create news portfolios to organize your campaigns and then I really like this, create a chronicle for your account for easy reference, which is a table that shows your portfolio, parent asin, best performing child asin, skew, description and default ad copy and then define your goals for Amazon ads at least once per quarter. Grow market share, achieve rank one, improve cost efficiency, reduce spending and then third, define and redefine the KPIs you’re going to evaluate if you’ve achieved your goals and make sure to make data driven decisions and then let Amazon do some of the heavy lifting for you, use auto campaign, suggested asins, categories, suggested bids to find converting keywords and asins on your reports. So that’s just kind of a quick summary on the ad side. This is one that I think was a really good one, do pay attention to Amazon newsletters and invites. Don’t just archive that Amazon newsletter when it comes in because you didn’t like the first line. Pay attention to Amazon newsletters. The Amazon dashboard itself, Amazon has a habit of implementing new changes under the radar with little to minimal notice. In just the past month, if you weren’t paying attention, you may have missed your IPI score falling into the red overnight, when the threshold there changed to 500 from 400 and things like this can have a major impact on your day to day operations. So it’s important to keep an eye out for those big changes. Do sponsor brand video. Like just the results you can expect to give you a little more color on that. Norm, looking at three months of data for up to 10 different clients and various categories, video A cost is 22% better than overall account A cost. Sponsor brand video on average is 3%, only 3% of the total ad spend. The average click through rate on a lifestyle video is one and a half percent and video click through rate is 62% higher than account click through rate. So, we’re getting as many of our clients and the sponsor brand video as quick as we can. Those are some of the do’s. I’ve got probably 20 others I’ll put into the PDFs. Just some quick don’ts. If you’re good with me still kind of going freestyle here.

Norman 42:43

Sure.

Chris 42:44 

Don’t think you’ve got all your bases covered, or that you’ve tested a targeting variation that didn’t work in the past, so it’s never going to work. Don’t make those kinds of assumptions. Don’t stop learning. Always be experimenting, reading and proving your craft. Don’t ignore your competitors. Don’t make most of your decisions from your gut. For agencies out there, even if your client is telling you it’s a gut feeling they’ve got, do it sometimes but observe what you do, find what works and keep improving on the process and then the final one, I’ll say because I know this is a hot button right now, with Amazon support. Okay, some of you’s blood pressure just raised at the mention of Amazon support. Don’t take no for an answer. Ultimately, success on Amazon can boil down to your persistence when it comes to correcting an issue that’s impacting sales. So when it comes to Amazon seller support, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. So if a case is marked closed, without a satisfactory resolution, do not be afraid to reopen it. With support experiencing record high call volumes, now more than ever, you’ve got to be assertive when it comes to your account and listing health. So we’ve already mentioned some of the others don’t miss out on early access betas and I think the last one I’ll just mention because it’s around ads is don’t be reactive when it comes to listing and ad optimization. Amazon is notorious for delayed reporting and Amazon’s algorithm that determines organic search ranking and ad placement is sensitive. So as much as we all want to monitor, I said, let’s say clients, for me, it’s quiet as much as our clients want to monitor up to the minute stats. As business owners, one of the most damaging things that you can do on Amazon is obsessing over inaccurate data and then making a wide sweeping listing or ad changes based on that. So as a rule of thumb, when making any major strategic marketing decisions in regards to Amazon, review at least 14 days of data, excluding the past 72 hours. So, again, I’ve got a lot of other don’ts I could share, but we’re just not going to have time for them today.

Norman  45:15 

Great. So let’s see. We are gonna be posting Oh, just a sec. Go ahead, Kels.

Kelsey 45:21 

I’m sorry. We do have a couple questions from the audience if we could do it quickly. So from Peter, he wants to know, what are your thoughts on the drop shipping model? Then we have one after this too.

Chris  45:36 

Oh, wow. How do I answer this one Norm?

Norman 45:40

I’m putting you on the spot.

Chris 45:44 

I loved the drop shipping model three years ago, five years ago. I just read an article. I think it was Newsweek. I can’t remember but it was about how young entrepreneurs are still going and setting up shop in Thailand and having a lifestyle thing and running a dropship business out of there.

Chris 46:09 

I would say if you have the energy for this, it’s worth testing. But I think for those of you that really appreciate good customer service and wanting to create a brand, not just going for get rich quick, the amount of folks that are successful with a drop shipping model today is far below the potential you can have with your own Shopify site and your own brand and I know I’m gonna ruffle some feathers there in he drop shipping community but there I would argue that there’s more gurus making money selling courses on how drop shipping is working now then people actually doing well really well with it.

Norman 47:01 

Do you know Elene Saris?

Chris 47:04 

I don’t.

Norman 47:05 

No? Oh, yeah, she got fed up with Amazon, that she had two copyright infringements, two black Fridays in a row. So, she left, and she started doing this drop shipping. She started into dropshipping and she’s doing really well. We had her on probably about a month ago and she had some really interesting tips, not the typical way of dropshipping. So it’s kind of cool, but you said it, there’s going to be controversy here. People will either be a big drop shipper or big on Amazon.

Chris  47:40 

I would bet you that she is a very intelligent person that didn’t just do this by taking a course and I think that is the difference that there are folks like her that if you listen to that podcast, you’re going to be amazed, but I would still caution folks to with inventory issues that are going on right now that are going to be out of your control. Before you know it, you could have a great idea that provides a lot of liability for you and a bad customer and review experience that’s not going to be sustainable.

Norman  48:17 

Okay, so this is the last question Kels?

Kelsey  48:19 

Yep. This is the last question that we have. So I’ve tried to. amazing to try and find a good product to sell. I found one that was not passionate, I was not passionate about and sourcing from China did not work well. How can we find good products and sourcing from the USA? Is it possible and profitable?

Chris  48:38 

I want Norm to answer this, I’ll get my first thought on it. Etsy would be where I would go. Go on Etsy. Look around at products that are there you can filter by how long the business has been around. You can filter by reviews, you can do all kinds of filtering there and do searches around things that you are I don’t know if it was Michael or who asked that question, but do searches on Etsy around things that you’re passionate about. There are folks on Etsy that have a great product, and they’re still making it in their garage or around their kitchen table and then you can go to them and talk to them about how could we potentially partner or how can I help you or even just look at how you could source that product somewhere else? Then you could launch with that. I think Etsy is still a goldmine, because there’s so many sellers on there that frankly, are either comfortable with what they’re doing. They don’t really want to go into an Amazon business because they don’t think they can scale their business. But it’s just because they haven’t looked at product suppliers and manufacturers to get it done.

Norman 49:52 

Yeah, a lot of people don’t even think of themselves as entrepreneurs, they are thinking of themselves as hobbyists and I think that’s a you know, you nailed it. Etsy is one area, Pinterest is another area, Kiersten Ross, go to Kierstenross.com and she’s got some videos there about different product opportunities, how to find them and one of the things that you can do too, she’s an expert in crowdsourcing, but check crowdsourcing sites and see what they’re doing and see if you can leverage anything that they’re working on. Sometimes there’s really some great ideas there. But there’s all sorts of opportunities, especially like on the beauty side of things. I know I’m in, I’m in beauty, I’m in pet and most of my products are made in the US because I’m not trusting any topicals. Anything that goes in your body or on your body, from outside sources for the outside overseas countries for the most part, like Korea, incredible for cosmetics, China, I just get worried whenever I hear something coming in from China that’s going on my body I’m not sure like.

Chris 51:02 

I’m with you, this last day I’ll say I’ve actually got a hard stop at noon for actually another podcast I’m going on but I ordered a I’m not ashamed to say it. I ordered a hair removal for men, I won’t show my back. It was just immediately, yours immediately, but I bought one off a Facebook ad and when I got it in and I saw it was made in China, it’s still in the cabinet. So the hair is still there. I just didn’t want to take the risks. So I’m with you.

Norman  51:35 

Michael, yeah, just a quick shout out. Thank you for listening and my buddy Dave from the good old RCA days. Glad to have you on. So last thing, Chris, I know you got that hard stop. So last piece of advice. Last piece of anything.

Chris 51:55 

I think I would, I know that you’ve got a mix of startup entrepreneurs on here and established people. I think that one of the things that this year has taught us is that anything is possible. Anything is possible negatively, anything is possible from an opportunity standpoint and I would say that if you believe in the opportunity, and you have outside sources that concur with your dream, stick to it, go for it. But I would also say that if you have major headwinds that you’re that you’re trying to keep pushing through, you’ve got to change course, you’ve got to do something different because in this day and age, you may have gotten away with this four or five years ago, but especially with the changes in our country and things that are happening now. The folks that continue to go right into the headwinds of e-commerce, against good advice from folks that are you may be close to or folks in the industry, you got to make a pivot and many times those pivots can be incredibly profitable. So that’s the last thing I’ll say.

Norman 53:14 

Perfect. Alright, Chris, I know you got that hard stop. So thank you so much for being on the show. I hope you could be on the podcast again, because we could have gone another hour easily.

Chris  53:24 

Yeah, I’d be happy to, lots of other things we could talk about. It’s been phenomenal. I appreciate it.

Norman 53:30 

Alright. We’ll see you later, Chris. Thank you. Alright, everybody. Well, I hope you enjoyed today’s podcast, we’ll be posting the whole thing along with shorter clips on Norman Farrar, a.k.a. The Beard Guy. So just check us out on my Facebook page or the YouTube channel and Kelsey, come on back and tell people what to do.

Kelsey  53:49 

Before you guys go, please like and share this and if you know anyone who’s interested in Amazon and e-commerce, take them in the video and hopefully we’ll get a few more new fans, and we’re good. Okay. Alright, we have lunchwithnorm.com so any of the people that we may have mentioned that we hosted before like Khierstyn Ross, Elena Saris, you can find all that information on our podcast Lunch With Norm. It’s up there. Go watch. It’s great. Anything else? I think we have our newsletter. You can find it at news.normanfarrar.com.

Norman  54:33 

It doesn’t suck.

Kelsey  54:34 

It doesn’t suck.

Kelsey 54:37  

If you’re interested in the podcast, you can find it on Apple podcasts, Spotify, anywhere you listen to your podcast. You can find us, Lunch With Norm. I think that’s it.

Norman  54:53 

Alright, so Monday we have Afolabi Oyerokun from Honu worldwide. He is my partner in that sourcing logistics company and we’re going to be talking about how to get the most out of your supplier through negotiation. So that’ll be an interesting one. So tune in every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at noon, Eastern Central Time, Eastern Standard Time. Or go to our Facebook page, a Norman Farrar a.k.a. The Beard Guy to find out the events so you don’t miss anything. So thank you, everybody for watching, and we’ll see you soon. Enjoy the rest of your day.