#189: Shifts in Amazon Brands and Brand Building

Episode: 189

Title: Norman Farrar Introduces Clement Wan – Capitalism Initiative Director

Subtitle: “Shifts in the Market: Being an Amazon Brand to Brand Building”

Final Show Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WExfckn05y4

Back on Lunch with Norm…On today’s lunch with Norm we have Clement Wan – Director of The Capitalism Initiative Inc. is here to talk about steps to creating a successful brand. Clement acquired a Foxbrim Naturals with Ryan Daniel Moran in 2017 in skincare that sold primarily on Amazon. He is very passionate about developing economics and eCommerce.

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In this episode, we discuss:

• 0:00 Intro/Housekeeping
• 4:21  Welcome Clement Wan
• 6:35  Shifting from Amazon Brand to Brand Building
• 12:01  Authority in Building a Brand
• 18:45  Form of Content Marketing
• 23:34  Building Trust is Just as Important as Building your Brand
• 29:19  Growing your Amazon FBA Business
• 32:29  Keeping Up with your Brand Awareness
• 35:55  Action Steps in Building a Brand
• 41:12  Mistakes in Building a Brand

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Norman Ferrar   0:01  

Hey everyone this is Norman Farrar, aka the beard guy here and welcome to another lunch with Norm, the Amazon FBA and ecommerce podcast.

Norman Ferrar    0:22  

Okay, on today’s show we’re going to be talking about a great subject, the shifting Amazon market from being an Amazon brand to actually brand building. Our guest today has a background in finance, and a passion for developing or developing economics and ecommerce. He’s a former investment banker and the founder of a specialty manufacturing brokerage based in Hong Kong. He went on to acquire Foxboro naturals with Brian Dan, Daniel Moran, who a lot of us know in 2017 in skincare and sold primarily on Amazon. It looks gonna continue building consumer brands and better data on and off Amazon. And we’re going to be talking to Klymit one. But before we do that, I just wanted to give a big thank you to our sponsor, global wired advisors, advisors, leading digital investment bank focused on optimizing the business sales process for more information called Chris and his team over at globalwiredadvisors.com. All right, Mr. Kelsey.

Kelsey   1:27  

Hello, Happy Friday.

Norman Ferrar   1:31  

I’m glad your faces cleared up from all those scratches and scrapes from your class the other night?

Kelsey  1:38  

Yes, yes. So. So yes, so for those that don’t know, I am a practitioner of jiu jitsu. So we just started up a couple months ago. So you might notice I might get a few bruises or scratches from time to time, but don’t worry, Norm isn’t that bad, but pretty much.

Norman Ferrar   2:02  

The thing is like this if you’ve been studying the art for many years, but it’s not Brazilian jiu jitsu. It’s more like Kelsey jujitsu in that you only have one opponent, you have to defeat yourself. Like I hate when I walk in the house and you’re slapping yourself in the face or you’ve got yourself in a chokehold. No, that’s terrible.

Kelsey  2:25  

No. All right, what are we doing today? Okay, so smash those like buttons. We’ve got a great prize. We’re actually giving away two prizes today. And welcome everyone to the show. I can see we got rad Jessica Meir. Manny. Welcome, everyone. What do you guys doing this weekend? What are your plans? Also? What are your thoughts in q4? Are there any areas where you want to learn more about? Just let us know in the comment sections. Also, we’re actually doing our 200th episode. And we call that the beard nation appreciation episode. So if you are interested in coming on to the lunch of norm podcast, we’ve done it before, where we have our beer nation on the podcast. So just head on over to our Facebook group. That’s lunch with Norm Amazon FBA and E commerce collective. And you’ll see a post there, and just let us know what your favorite episode was. What’s your story? Just anything that all the questions are there if you want to. But basically, if you’re interested in coming on lunch with Norm on I think September 29. Just go over to the group and let us know and we’d be happy to have you on we’re looking for about five people. So it was really great meeting the beard nation last time and we’re hoping to do that again.

Norman Ferrar    3:40  

Perfect. Okay, so if Well, I guess we should get the thing rolling, right, the episode going so you got anything else to say? I’m just curious. Okay. Oh, and by the way, I Kelsey was borrowed by another group yesterday. And it was the first time you did you we’ve exported the wheel of Kelsey. Yeah, yeah. So I thought that

Kelsey   4:05  

was a fun experience. All right, go. We’re going global.

Norman Ferrar   4:09  

We’re going global. If you have any questions, comments, please put them in the comment section. So it’s time to sit back, relax. Grab your cup of coffee. I have one here. And welcome. Alright, Clement, all right. There we go. How are you sir?

Clement Wan  4:29  

Pretty good. How about yourself?

Norman Ferrar   4:30  

Good. Good. So for those of us who don’t know you, can you just give us a bit of your background and what you do.

Clement Wan    4:39  

Um, I guess that’s a nebula for for a lot of us. But the big question that I think many of us can’t answer is the people who come to the elevator and ask what do you do and I think like, so right now. working primarily, ecommerce, kind of exploring a few different things. Is there, especially with Foxboro naturals, as you had mentioned? And also exploring things like quiz funnels and kind of how, how to build more expert authority around brand so that it can support growth, especially on marketplaces like Amazon and elsewhere. Now, my background is finance went to grew up in your hometown, I think Waterloo and and went to college, called Laurier for business and did some investment banking and then eventually got into E commerce, maybe 2015 2016.

Norman Ferrar    5:52  

I think we talked about that. So we did yeah, we did grow up and in Waterloo, memories. I didn’t go to university in what I never went to university. I went to college, but the bomb shelter, I visited that bomb shelter many a night. And is that still around? I, I believe so. I I know that we won’t get into that. But I Waterloo is a great town. A really great Kitchener Waterloo is a great town to grow up in. But let’s get on to the subject today. So if you do have questions, please, please, I think this is going to be a great topic. And what I think the first question is, you know, what’s shifted lately? Like? What has been shifting in your eyes? from Amazon from growing that micro brand to actually building a brand?

Clement Wan 6:43  

Um, I think it’s it’s not been a recent shift. I think it’s a long term shift. And I think I think one of the things that a lot of people miss is, Amazon is obviously the, the best or the biggest search engine for stuff. So we go to Google, if we look at the evolution of E commerce, or commerce, or even the internet, in general, you have search engines, where the evolution of the search engine itself is that the people who are first on it, collects great world records. And you can go back both of us are old enough to remember the the beginnings of the internet. And, well, maybe not the beginnings of the internet, but the commercialization of the internet, and, and how email, for instance, for digital marketers, initially, it used to be really frowned upon to do anything commercial. And then email marketers, for marketers, in general ruin everything. And so all of a sudden, you have people making tons of money on email. And then there was Google days when ad costs were like a penny or a few pennies for click through rates and, and then, as they built a marketplace in ads, things got a lot more costly. And I think that since similar evolution is happening in Amazon, what’s interesting, I think, is that when it comes to search engines, at least, the model has continually shifted. So initially, there’s I only kind of heard it framed in this way. But I think it’s common where it’s an AO V, average order, the focus is on building up an average order value, and being profitable on that first sale, versus a lifetime value type model, where you’re trying to increase the the profitability and the value that you exchange between the consumer and the and your brand over time. And I think that is, I’m not sure, because because of the nature of Amazon being both a marketplace platform and a search engine, it hopefully won’t ever get to the point where selling on Amazon is unprofitable. But what we do see is that it has become a lot more more competitive, in the very least, and with AD costs increasing, and especially now, all costs kind of increasing across the board for sellers. There’s there’s margin compression, and I think we’ll continue to see that. And I think my personal view is that what we’ll see over time is that Amazon, the best brands will see Amazon as a tool for customer acquisition, and ultimately selling whether or not people buy on Amazon or on their website or even Walmart, it doesn’t really matter. But at the same time I do think Amazon is the best place to scale a brands, bar none as long as Your your products are of a nature that is easily, easily. You don’t have to sell it. Because like, people come to Amazon to buy, and it’s usually impulse buying. And so unfortunately, if you you’ve invented something spectacular, I’m not sure that it would necessarily do well on

Norman Ferrar   10:24  

Amazon. Right? Yeah, yeah, you’ve you’ve, you’ve got to sell that point, you’ve got to drive a ton of traffic over to Amazon, because Who the heck is going to look for your search term? So it is a tougher sell. Right? If you’ve if you got this incredible invention, it might work on other it might work on infomercials, but not necessarily on Amazon. But excuse me for a sec. I know I’m gonna cough, I apologize, I apologize. There we go. I even hit the mute button. Saving your ears. Amazon is is the spot, I think even the term the rise of the micro brands probably came from my from Amazon, because it was so easy. You know, back in 2013 1415, you threw up anything and you could start selling but Amazon’s even said today, like not today today. But you know, recently, it’s about the brand, it’s about the community. So they’re looking for people to build brands. And, you know, promote that brands and you’ve got a captivated audience. It’s the number one search engine to buy products. Why not take advantage of it, there’s a lot of bad things that are being said about Amazon, you got to get around it, you got to have a risk evaluation, and you have to have a game plan in case something happens. But if you’ve got this and you’ve got that type of mate mindset, and you know, you’re gonna get kicked between the legs a couple times. You can you can be very successful. But I want to talk about something else, we talk a lot about being the authority. What does that mean to you and building a brand.

Clement Wan   12:06  

So I feel like people who sell on Amazon, it’s historically or at least in the last, well, since whenever I started, it’s been a very, very focused world where people have been really focused on what is happening on Amazon in tactics that relate to Amazon. But and then you compare that in parallel to direct to consumer. And it’s interesting that the people who live in the direct to consumer space, live very different vocabularies, or even like, they think about very different things. So I think in the direct to consumer space, and even general marketing outside the Amazon space, in general, the view is thinking of media as being three different types of or traffic being three different types of sources. And they’re your paid sources. They’re your earned sources, and they’re your own sources. And I heard a little bit, or I listened to your podcast with Kelsey, on Tuesday. And, and I think like, obviously, social is earned. And I think people on the Amazon space, tend to really focus on it. I would argue Amazon itself is a form of earned traffic for your, for your, for your brand. But I think people on Amazon really focus on kind of that paid and the earned. But when it comes to being an authority, I’ve come to know somebody I think you, you know, as well, Joe Reich’s felt, Oh, sure. Yeah. And like his, especially on clubhouse, especially over COVID I’ve met a number of people who I wouldn’t normally have met. And he’s, he’s definitely one of the people who I’m really appreciative of, and he recommended a book called, they ask you answer. And the idea is that when customers ask a question, obviously you answer no matter how difficult it is, and no, no matter how uncomfortable it is, and, and the author of that book, which is really interesting, is that he, he, he came into a business, a pool installation company in 2009, called River pools pulling spots, and they do 1009. Of course, for those of us who are old enough, the last financial crisis. It was it was when the financial crisis hit, they almost went bankrupt. But he discovered this idea of like creating content and answering people’s questions. And he has a very structured approach to thinking through and answering questions, which is obviously If it was just answering people’s questions, it would be very short book. But fast forward 10 years, they went from being a near bankrupt, pull installer to having to being the highest traffic site, especially when it comes to just SEO for Google searches. For I believe it’s fiber in ground fiber class pools, and they’re now a pool manufacturer. So they skyrocketed in growth. And that, that ability to create to have that internalized traffic, they went from paying for traffic to now having more traffic than they can actually handle. And that traffic is higher quality. So people buy more, and they view them as experts rather than as like salespeople. And I think that that shift in, in mindset, and I think like the other the other thing to have, I think we’ve talked before about, well, what is a brand, and I think brand is that layer of trust in being a finance guy, I think a lot of people have that nebulous or people think of brands as being very nebulous and on to 5g. But it, I think you can really quantify it in the Delta, or the difference between what somebody would ordinarily pay for a product, and because of that added layer of trust in you, as an individual, or person to pay more, because they believe that what you’re saying will actually come true in terms of the value you’re delivering. Yeah,

Norman Ferrar   16:47  

and you can see that all around the time, the culture, everything, excuse me again, but building that brand, if you can do it, and you can do it successfully, either through content or whatever means it takes the ability for that perceived value to be there, if somebody’s selling a knife, we talk about that a lot, you know, a $49 knife, and another person is selling it for $224. Same knife, you know, and just because of the packaging and the brand. That’s incredible. Also, we talk and I love talking about content. When we launch websites, it could be about anything. But I think the most important thing on a website, other than having a really nice, well designed website doesn’t have to be that expensive. But it’s the content and the consistency of the content. So in my eyes, I always see a brand having to go from Amazon, somebody is going to click off, go to Google, and you have to have that authority. And to build the authority, you have to build that trust. And that trust will then equal sales because you’re either going to go back to Amazon, or go back to your website. So anyways, oh, by the way, for any of you who are on clubhouse, follow Clement, he, he is incredible. I started like we never really had it. We never had a chance to talk, pre clubhouse. And I got to listen to you more and more and more. And you blew me away with your insight. And you know, just your, your just your presence. So if you are on clubhouse, do yourself a favor, follow Clemen I don’t do this. You don’t hear me telling people to go and follow somebody and make sure you ring that bell because you want the notifications when he’s on. So anyways, I had to say that. Thank you. I’m I’m really appreciate it. No, no problem at all. Okay, so what are some of the steps now you’ve got this content? And I want to know the form of content. What are you talking about?

Clement Wan    18:53  

I think like when it comes to so going through this program with with with Joe. And it’s been very enlightening as well, because he’s, he’s been very generous in in how he also shares his information. And I think that’s the thing about clubhouse it’s been, I think, for a lot of us, especially George during COVID We’ve been stuck in a world where we’ve been stuck. And being able to reach out to people who we normally meet has been amazing and in many respects. But I think when it comes to content, the some of the examples that that come to mind is like just just having coming with it and what I think really separates them and a lot of other sites that talk about SEO is it is truly a culture, culture shift. It’s that and I’m sure many of us have had debates and nauseum about things like capitalism and whether or not it’s good or bad or worse. they’re good or bad, because people are focused on too much unprofitability. And I think similarly, when it comes to SEO, the the challenge is, is, is your information about trying to sell? Or is it really trying to educate? And I think the the one thing about search engines over time is they try to devalue the tactics of the simple workarounds to which result in like, for lack of a better word, crappy content. And they focus a lot more on Well, what’s what’s that difference between the signal and the noise of like, how can we extract out all the fluff of writing, which is terrible, in in identify people who are actually finding value? And I think one of the signals, as Joe has pointed out is the the idea that people actually stay on your site and read. And I think that’s one of the one of the best metrics. And one thing that really because people obviously talk a lot about backlinks and backlink profiles. And I think that’s, that’s still important, because if nobody finds your your stuff to begin with, and there’s nobody to read, but when it comes to actually learning and reading, and having time on site that I think is playing an increasingly large factor on search engines, as well, and, and so I think it’s, and then there are the uncomfortable questions of answering from a framework in kind of a student slash teacher approach. It’s not, there’s, you need a certain humility. But at the same time, I think people can tell when you when they’re being approached with a used car salesman, we’re what we see as a used car salesman type approach, versus I want you to succeed in your journey. I this is like, our brand is about trying to support you and your journey, rather than then trying to sell you stuff. Obviously, we think our stuff is great, because that’s, that’s where we’re, we’re building a business around this. And we believe that there’s value in that. But there are there are alternatives. And in fact, they ask you answer, they talk about things like okay, well, maybe you can also talk about your competitors, you can even rank them and and say like, if you don’t buy our product, these are the other three or four products you might want to consider and what their view is, and we haven’t tested this to be candid, because that’s, that’s on the risk side. But what their view is like it builds trust on both sides. So when people go to, to check out these other products, they think, Oh, well, maybe I should check out yours as well. And I think being but I think that general overall view of like interest, instead of just trying to push people down to the sale, and trying to support them on their journey, I think that is becoming an increasingly large part of the brand journey, and what what really creates the trust, if people actually believe that you care about who they are, and and in the value you’re trying to offer. I think that that helps build that trust.

Norman Ferra   23:34  

Right. And one of the the, one of the things that we tried to do and we try to show people is if you are going to go out there, and let’s say you build a trust, and you want to show what type of culture that you have, and you might be donating something, don’t make it about you. If you’re going to be putting that insert in saying that you’re donating 10% of your profits or you’re doing it donating X, I see so many people making the mistake, just like you said, you know, it’s it’s, it’s a it’s it’s people look through it, they look and read in between the lines. They don’t want to support this are support that they’re doing it all about them, you go to the landing page, and it’s all about their company, it’s not about the charity, you know, if you’re going to support a charity or give, you know, proceeds back to them, make it about them, don’t even put a logo on the page, but bring it right back to their their website, you know, and so these are all little things. Exactly what you’re saying. One another thing. Neil Patel talks about it. If you’re going to write something, make sure it’s better than anything else on the page. Because that’s what people are going to go to, you know, that’s what they’re going to strive and that’s what they want to see if you’re going to hire somebody for $2 an hour with all sorts of grammatical mistakes. Don’t expect anything.

Clement Wan    24:55  

So yeah, and to that point, I think like that’s the difference between so Before clubhouse, and I guess in the last few years I, I’ve had kind of a dim view of SEO or much dimmer view because, yeah, like all of us have done search on on Google and all these places, and we find crap that kind of gets to the top. But one of the heartening things asserted there, they’re kind of I hate cardio in this, this is going somewhere, but I hate cardio. But I found that listening to podcasts while doing cardio makes both of them tolerable. And so been listening to tons of podcasts in the area of especially around authority and expert contacts, and also exploring some of the talking to others in the field. And we’re in, in seeing how, how, how they’ve been able to build expertise. And the one thing that is very consistent in all of this is that great value is something that all the search engines, and all the including Amazon, are trying to trying to evaluate and understand and put in front of their buyers. And so over time, you you hear about how terrible some of these Google corrections are. But if you look hard, you find people who actually benefit from some of these algorithm changes. And it’s consistently across the board. It’s people who create great content, in terms of things that people want to read, and not just to hit the specific keywords. And in the same way, on Amazon, it’s the first thing you need to start out with is a great product. And I think you can’t put lipstick on a pig, and especially on more transparent markets like that, eventually, it’ll catch up.

Norman Ferrar    27:11  

Right? I just saw a comment from Tony. And he was talking about Patrick Stokes was saying that recent time, time on site is not as important. And yeah, like, that was a surprise to me, because I always thought that was important. But the thing we’re talking about Tony is having incredible content. So if you have incredible content, people are going to come to the page, the time they spend on the page, probably, you know, depends on the quality of the blog, they’ll just click off the blog, very blog article very quickly. If it you know if it’s terrible. I one thing I forgot though, just like every podcast, we do have a giveaway today. The giveaway, Kelsey is probably on it, we’re going to give away two things. The first thing will be the wheel of Kelsey giveaway. And that’s going to be a press release. Anybody who wants a press release written, you provide the press release. And we’ll put it through our premium network. And I say we because I own a press release company. So just let us know, the press release, we’ll make sure that it’s written properly for you. So you get the biggest bang for your buck. And that’s we hashtag we’ll have Kelsey if you want to be entered twice. It’s take two people either here or outside of the outside of the chat. The second one, and I don’t know what this is. Hashtag. Hashtag mug club mug club. Okay, it’s gonna be the lunch winner mug. And we’ll send that out to you. That will be the second drawing. So an official What are you gonna say cows are just

Kelsey   28:52  

gonna clarify it is US Canada only. So sorry, to our international council.

Norman Ferrar    28:57  

Go Yeah, go. Go. Alright.

Clement Wan  29:00  

I believe get there.

Norman Ferrar   29:03  

All right. Yes, US Canada only. Alright, so let’s get back on. I just wanted to make sure that everybody knew the giveaways today. So hashtag we’ll have Kelsey and mug club. Okay. What are your thoughts on people selling only on Amazon?

Clement Wan    29:23  

I think it’s as much Well, I I don’t I don’t actually have an issue with that. And in fact, I think there’s a good argument we’ve seen in recent we’ll take two months. We’ve seen two massive exits in the pet supplement space, obviously the one with zesty paws and and just prior to that had honesty and I think that both of them were fantastic executioners of it delivering what Amazon wanted. And, and especially in the case of zesty paws, which had longer, I think they they dialed in their brand very well their imaging and everything is spot on. And but they also grew off of Amazon and added a lot of other markets fairly quickly. So I think growing on Amazon is a great way to, to build that initial audience and to to acquire customer customers. But I think that’s the key. If you’re just growing for the sake of growth on Amazon, if you’re if your goal is solely to be on, if you see yourself as an Amazon brand, I think that’s kind of like, skipping, skipping leg day at the gym. And the reason being is that it’s, you’re at the mercy of, of the algorithm on Amazon, and it could things change, and things can change really quickly. Within the skincare space, the people who were at the top of the chain a few years ago or not. And it’s things the market shifts, especially in it’s getting more competitive. And it’s it’s if you don’t have any other assets, again, going back to that model of like acquired or and and own traffic, or rather, yeah, own traffic, which includes your email, which which includes first party data, then then you’re really at risk. But if you have those things, and you’re selling on Amazon, and you’re using your traffic to leverage scale, then then it’s it’s tough to argue with some of the the valuations that some people have gotten, just in both cases, they expanded in the last year off of Amazon. And I think it’s important, I think the strategic acquirers want to see that that is viable. But being discovered on Amazon growing on Amazon, it’s it’s tough to beat those kinds of results.

Norman Ferrar   32:25  

Right? Yeah, yeah. A couple years ago, if you were talking to anybody about purchasing an Amazon business, they were purchasing an Amazon business. They weren’t necessarily purchasing that brand. You mentioned about the people that were on the top of the food chain are no longer there are some might be but others have fallen. Is that just because they haven’t kept up with the times or have not built up their brand?

Clement Wan    32:53  

Yeah, I think it’s a combination. Some of them haven’t kept up. Some of them have been acquired. It’s always been the case where where we generally celebrate when somebody when one of our tough competitors gets acquired, because we know that the people come next often don’t understand. And I think we’re in hirschorn, posted an article, possibly yesterday about how three ads through SEO was seeing. Seeing that with a lot of their competitors have coming into the market in discovering, I think what they call it the dark arts of Amazon and encountering them in terms of counterfeiters, in terms of bad competitors. It’s not in being losing momentum. And in that’s one of our issues. For instance, we substantially underestimated the risks of our supply chain. And we lost a ton of momentum in little after the first year of the acquisition. And that was in so that we haven’t regained but the for especially some of our products in the the challenge is just understanding. For instance, even within Amazon, we can see both of us have been in the market long enough from the giveaways in how those are done and communicated and how reviews are are obtained from people has changed dramatically from being to being far more I would say honest, if that’s if that’s a good word for it, but we’re at least transparent in terms of the challenge of before it used to be cheap enough to buy now to do things like build a culture of sharing within your community is is not it It’s a difficult transition for some, but it’s it’s doable. Click these clearly some people do sort of make the transition and survive, but you still look at some of these listings. And it they, they, they lack, in a lot of cases, they like, for lack of a better word soul of like, it doesn’t feel like there’s anybody behind those listings, it feels very corporate because that’s what some people think is, is important to consumers. But they don’t realize how, how to build that trust and that familiarity with, with, with customers. And I realize now that I’ve completely forgotten what your original question was.

Norman Ferrar   35:48  

Me too. But okay, look, let’s, let’s talk about the steps, I’m going to back into a corner here. But can you give us some action steps or something that you can give to there’s a lot of begin, beginners they’ve just learned, came off of a course. But there’s also some really incredible sellers on here. It’s the full spectrum. So what are some action points? Or what can people do to build their brand? Just some simple steps?

Clement Wan   36:24  

I think one of and this goes all the way back to basics of like, Who are you talking to? And when you look at your listings, and in something that Joe is very strong on is the idea of personas, and I think like even Ryan Lovak, it’s similar of like, well, can you define in very clear terms. And, and I recognize that there’s this, there’s also this idea of whether or not personas are great or not, but I do think the exercise of thinking through Well, what are the challenges that people thought a specific person is having, because we tried to talk too much. We tried too much in brands and businesses to talk at people. And we think of it talking at a massive audience versus at somebody specific and having that dialogue, of having that, that personal connection. And I think in dialing that in, you kind of draw in other people. And I think that’s where that’s, that’s one of the challenges or that that’s one of the issues I see on a lot of listings is the is well, do I What effectively, there’s no difference in messaging, it’s all kind of a win, especially with a lot of private label, you have a lot of the same products, literally some of them are the same over and over again, with the exception of the brand name. So then what’s the differentiating factor? And I think it comes down to Well, which one feels? How does how does that make? How does that communication feel, and I think that’s the feeling aspect of the communication is one that’s going to be important to come across in a lot of content in that actually is probably more the differentiator, and in many cases, then, then even sometimes the quality of like the images themselves, because it’s when, when we I can’t remember the exact quote, but there’s some there’s, there’s a quote something so the fact that we may not remember what somebody says, but we remember how they make you feel. And I think when we think of brands, as in that person, like in creating both the how it, how it communicates with its audience, but also how its audience sees it as like that pier and creating those elements. To that’s, that’s where that’s really where we’re the value can be built in personalization, which unfortunately doesn’t, is is one of the things especially for micro brands, they can have a huge advantage over the large corporates. And the funny thing is a lot of micro brands think they have to behave more corporate.

Norman Ferrar    39:42  

Yeah, that’s absolutely true. Just to talk a bit more about the personas, we had Rand Fishkin, he was the founder of Moz on and he now has something called spark toro.com I think it’s dot com or.io. Kells, I’m not sure but if you could post got nothing to do with the company. But it’s an incredible app to just take a look at your competition, take a look at who’s following them, see who their influencers are. And you can just very quickly find your audience. So take a look at it. It’s very inexpensive. We use it. And one of the things that I think there’s an eight minute video, once you watch that eight minute video, you’re ready to go. Very inexpensive. Check it out, I’m not pushing it. I’m not an affiliate for it. But it’s an IT is an awesome program to help you understand your audience. And it is so important, you can have the same product. Like you know, we could talk about soap, I have soap for people who actually I have soap targeted specifically for Japan, I have tope, so for mothers who like to run in the mud for some reason. I have so for different types of people, and it’s and I understand the demographic, and I can target that. But let’s talk about one other thing. Mistakes, what type of mistakes that people make when they’re when they are building a brand.

Clement Wan    41:18  

Um, I feel like I’ve made a ton of mistakes. But when it comes to brand building, it’s specifically with brand building, I do think that that lack of the belief that you have to be a lot more corporate is probably the biggest, that’s a good one. Yeah, mistake. And I also feel like figuring out and one of the, the challenges, obviously, as a as a, as an owner, you can’t do everything well. But sometimes you can forget about some of the execution, especially like logistics, supply chain, especially in these coming months, I feel like it’s going to be a huge differentiator, unfortunately, for for a lot of people, especially on on Amazon. And so the but when it comes to building brands, I do think it’s the the issue of lack of personality and lack of personalization. And that’s all related to being the to a perception that one should be moved over.

Norman Ferrar  42:43  

One of the other things, oh, there’s a couple of things that I’m looking at, and one is going cheap. If you think that you can go to Fiverr, spend five bucks to $25, to get somebody first of all, to build that logo or your tagline, who have no idea about corporate identity and where you want to go and what you want to do. That’s one thing. So I think that’s very important. The other thing is, when you’re at that period of time, it doesn’t have to be right off the bat. But it could be when Okay, usually when I’m starting something I’m thinking exit backwards. But if you get to that point, you’re saying, Alright, the brand’s going well, I’m doing X number of dollars, I want to take this thing to the next level. Well, hiring a person to bring that out in your team or to have a strategic meeting, and take a day and figure out where you want to go. There’s a there’s a an excellent consultant that we’ve had on Jeff SAS. And he’s he talks about building the brand story out and really delivering it. So that aggregator comes over whoever comes over, you’ve got it, you know exactly who you are, what you’re going to do, how you’re building the culture of your team, and how people are going to see you. And I think people miss that step. A lot of people miss that step.

Clement Wan   44:03  

Yeah. And to your point, I think when you talk about the exit, and things that kind of can kill that, that brand value and the idea of well, what is a brand and what does that how does that translate to financially? And I think like, especially smaller brands, as you’re starting out, it’s not recognizing the level of visual consistency across across what you do. I’m actually I think you can do 99 designs if you’ve got a very clear point of view of what is a good brand or what what is what is a good imagery or what looks good, but I think like the difficulty is a lot of people don’t realize what the difference between good and bad design and I think that there is a it’s an art both an art and a science and people, some people will completely assume that it’s hocus pocus and had come up with really terrible executions. But yeah, it’s one of those things where it’s, it’s very, I feel like a lot of us know what good brands look like. And we know it when we see it. But it’s, it’s things like oh well, issues around spacing, symmetry, simplicity, cleanliness, and when you when you start to really break it down, many of us don’t haven’t even thought about a lot of these things, which is why it’s oftentimes cheaper in many respects to just have it done. Well, the first time around.

Norman Ferrar  45:55  

Right, right. Okay, so before we get to the comments in the questions, I just want to remind everybody, that if you do want to have a press release, to be entered for the giveaway, just hashtag we’ll have Kelsey for our mug, it would be mug club. All right. So Kelsey, let’s talk about some questions here.

Kelsey    46:20  

So a couple here. The first one is from Jessica. What’s your recommendation for meshing your website? Hopefully, great credibility with Amazon and other ecommerce sites in light of listing limits and restrictions. So ecommerce shoppers know you.

Clement Wan   46:39  

What is your recommendation? Hopefully great credibility with. So I guess like the most common thing, like from zero to actually having a website, I’m sure you’ve talked about this was probably WordPress. But the the challenges. But with respect to listing limits and restrictions, I guess, like in terms of what you can put on? And I, I think like the the idea of meshing? I’m not? I’ll just answer the question that way. I think it’s, but how does one relate your website to Amazon. And I think the way to think of this is like, the idea of top middle bottom of funnel type, type process where Amazon is, is towards the bottom of the funnel, people come to Amazon, knowing that they’re probably going to buy something. And so your site is more, better, better spent time is better spent trying to educate people about what makes your product specifically unique? And answering their questions at the different varying points of of that funnel? And also having adding those personalization points of like, is there a real person behind this business? I think that there’s both a risk and opportunity, and being that spokesperson for your brand, because when you sell it, obviously, if it’s tied to any one individual, it become it can become an issue of how that imaging is used in the future. And so I think there’s, but at the same time, people want to believe that there’s like, yeah, they’re their actual people working behind the scenes aren’t like robots or AI? Why should I care? And that’s really is. I, the earlier parts of the funnel of like, establishing why people should care. Is, is, I think, something that both the website and social can do much better job of than even Amazon in many respects, because people are just there to quickly look and then make a, in some cases, make a fat snap decision. And may oftentimes miss things like your brand video or things like that.

Norman Ferrar 49:22  

And another part of building the brand is customer service. So if and that’s a big part of it. So if part of your brand culture is giving exceptional customer service, then make sure you’re provided. If somebody comes over to your website, and the end, you can convert people. So they’re coming from Amazon doing all this searching, and they’re coming over to your site. There are different ways I’ll get to this in a sec. But if they go and they want to talk to somebody, and they hit your chat bot first if you know yeah, they have to find it. Then you have the hamburger, those three lines that come up, and they are asking a specific question. And all they keep getting is this loop, you’re going to have a frustrated customer. Or if you’ve got just an online chat, and nobody ever gets back to anybody, you’re gonna have a frustrated customer. So if somebody is trying to communicate with you, or if you have a website, it doesn’t have to be expensive. But make sure that there are options for people to communicate, you can put your email up at the top, I know when we’re building websites, we try to have a contact page. And we also have at least three times, scrolling down the page, how to contact us. And we will, we’ll either have the online chat, or we’ll have a chat bot that will come up. And and it’ll, it’ll make sure that people know that if you want to talk to somebody real time, click here, you know, if that’s part of it, or if it’s just to leave a message, there’s, you have to deliver on that if that’s part of your brand. And what you can find from this is now you’re getting more influencer brand ambassadors loyalty building. And if you have other products outside of Amazon, and you start to target that, first of all you’re delivering that you’re building an email campaign, you can get them to buy products that are only sold on your website, and you’re driving traffic away from Amazon. And you guys, you know, so when you go to a site, I don’t know if you’ve done this, but supplements is the best for this. You’re increasing your average order value, you come in, you’re buying one bottle, well, how would you like to get three bottles? Or how would you like to have a monthly subscription, and your upsell down sell cross sell? I, you can’t do that. You can’t really do that on Amazon. So if you can get somebody over to your site, and they become loyal, and you’re giving them tons of customer service. Why would they go back to Amazon?

Clement Wan   51:55  

Well, and to your point of light, that the contact is actually really, really important, because I seem to recall, there was conversion studies of on your own website independent, independent of Amazon is that if you have a phone number, especially like a one 800 Number, or what have you. That is that can be a significant conversion factor. People just knowing nobody calls, nobody calls. Yeah. But being having that security, knowing that you can, if if that becomes becomes an issue is is this helpful?

Norman Ferrar   52:34  

Yeah, even like for us, we will put an address. So we have an address, we it’s not shown on the front page, but it’s a contact page. And they’ll see the address the phone numbers, right beside the email. So email top, right beside the main navigation bar. So people know that they can contact us and it just gives that that we’re building up that trust. And once you have that trust the likelihood of a sale, I mean, it becomes a lot easier. All right, Mr. Kelce. Next question.

Kelsey   53:09  

Okay, and just a reminder, if you are interested in one of our official lunch with Norm mugs, you just have to do hashtag mug club into the comment section. And that’s available for US Canada only. As well as a free press release for hashtag we’ll have Kelsey. Okay, you better

Norman Ferrar  53:27  

lead Shane, know that. I did that too, by the way.

Kelsey   53:31  

But just a follow up. So Rosalyn just says apologies for confusion in question. So, so convey on Amazon a real person behind the products? Is that the idea?

Clement Wan   53:42  

I think that’s important. I think that or it’s at least in the very minimum helpful that there is. And I recognize that some people aren’t, aren’t as comfortable with this. But it’s that that whole idea of like, if you’re, if you’re selling something that’s near near the same as somebody else, what are the things that can give you that edge, and that infusing having a person is the easiest way to probably infuse soul into a listing? I’m assuming you could create a persona and I’m assuming you could create a character to do these things too. But it’s how do you infuse? Again, soul is one of those things which which is like, how do you how do you even define that? But it’s that that personality? How do you create personality? Well, easiest way is to have a person

Norman Ferrar   54:38  

grow a beard.

Clement Wan  54:41  

Yes, that is not an option for me.

Kelsey   54:46  

All right. Next question. From Dr.

Norman Ferrar   54:50  

Cause. Oh, Dr. cards back.

Kelsey   54:53  

Yeah. Great to see you good doctor cars. Hey, Clement, what are your favorite top three strategies in building brand? authority on Amazon. And on Google, you don’t have to do three, if you can only have if you only have one or two.

Clement Wan   55:07  

I can’t say that I have as much experience on Google. And that’s something that we’re exploring now. Actively. And but as far as what the things we’re implementing is this idea of they ask you answer and trying to be very detailed about things like, Well, why is your product priced higher than somebody else? And customers are always asking that question. But how often are brands actually explaining why? And I think a lot of times people just pretend as if, as if, if you ignore the question, it’ll go away. But I think the the ones who are open and transparent about both how they build their brand, and who they are, as individuals are the ones who could do build that trust and effectively build that brand authority. Obviously, on Amazon, your, your limited a lot more in kind of the things that you can do. But obviously, Amazon is increasingly trying to provide a platform for brands, we know that they’ve lost a number of higher profile brands, off their Amazon in recent years, where they’ve tried to try to work with, with some companies who have just outright taken all their product off. And so but at the same time, their tools of having brand registry, those are the, I guess, what they call table stakes, in terms of, you need to have those things in order to be able to have things like A plus content to evaluate one of the measures of a brand, at least on Amazon that you have is well, how does can it does your brand name show up in the brand analytics search? And what are and what level of search? Does it have? And that is a reasonably objective measure, although obviously, if you’re, if you’re paying somebody based on that measure, they can game it by just advertising based on that. But when people search for your brand, in organic sense, it can be a very good measure of, of how, how, how much authority or how much? Well, I guess authority is, is an assumption past that, but at least how recognized it is and how how much people want. But I think it ultimately does come down to that credibility of how do you express that and I think that is in being out there answering questions and changing that culture of communication from being purely about sales, to really try to help a customer move towards their on their journey, and be a teacher even though you may may as well may quite well be a student along the way. Alright, kills,

Kelsey   58:38  

okay. And our final it’s a more of a statement, or, but if there’s anything you want to add on to this, I use 99 designs for my logo, but I was very involved as the creative director cannot expect a designer to know your vision without your guidance. And I must say rosins logo, we’ve seen it before on another episode of with Michael Kurtz. It’s a fantastic logo. But

Clement Wan  59:04  

yeah, and I can tell you, at least in the case of I don’t know about Aj is brands. But in the case of head honesty, it was it started out like a lot of really strong brands on Amazon started out as really cheap logos. And you can change it over time. But it obviously involves a lot of a lot of pain in tracking all your packaging when that changes. But yeah, I’m of the view that one can can be very, if you do have a strong point of view. 99 designs can work unfortunately, I feel like a lot of people feel their their expertise is much better than than the market ultimately does.

Norman Ferrar   1:00:00  

Right. Yeah, I agree. So everybody with an iPhone photographer?

Kelsey   1:00:08  

And last question, do you like Amazon live videos?

Clement Wan   1:00:13  

I’m gonna say that I haven’t seen anybody do well with that. And I know that there are a few people who like it’s additive. And I’m sure you’ve had him on, Carlos? Yes. He’s the one I think of whenever I think of life. But I know we haven’t seen seeing much traction or as much traction with that. I think the I think Amazon really wants to make it happen only because they’ve seen success of, of live video commerce in China specifically. But for now, at least, it isn’t. At least in my mind, it isn’t something that has been profitable yet.

Norman Ferrar   1:01:11  

Yeah, and I don’t think a lot of people are using it properly. I mean, there’s, there’s a lot of different ways that you can use it. And that’s going to take a bit of time. And there should be a lot more training on that. So I got to talk to Carlos. Yeah, yes. Okay. I think that’s it, Kelsey,

Norman Ferrar   1:01:28  

is that right? Hey, that’s it.

Norman Ferrar   1:01:31  

Well, Clement, you have to sit back and watch the wheel of Kelsey. Definitely.

Kelsey  1:01:36  

Right. Here we go. Here’s the wheel of Kelsey. All right. This is the wheel of Kelsey. Thank you to everyone who entered today’s wheel for the free press release where we have two draws today. So one is it will be in just a second. But for our first one, here we go. 321. Right, the winner, still waiting for the free press release. I know we’re working on it. Okay, Roger. All right. All right. So Gerard, please email me at K at lunch with norm.com. You are on YouTube, so I cannot reach you you have to reach me or it will never find each other. Right. And our next one for the coveted official lunch norm club or lunch with nor mug. Here we go. Let me see if there’s no. All right, here we go. 321. Who is that? Okay. Yes, Gene. All right. Very good. All right. Congratulations. So again, email me, Kate, at lunch with norm.com. We’re going to just put that in the group chat right now. And yeah, Congratulations, everyone.

Norman Ferrar   1:03:16  

Alright, so Oh, and by the way, I was talking with Kevin King the other day. And he was mentioning that he’s got a handful of tickets left for billion dollar seller summit in Austin. And that’s coming up in a couple of weeks. If you’re interested, check out billion dollar seller summit.com. And in the in the in the page or the checkout, just type in lunch with Norm, there’s no affiliate, don’t get nothing. I’m going to be there. But if you put in lunch with Norm, you’ll have I believe it’s access to the recordings and stuff like that. Anyway, check it out. You do get an additional. I think it’s for next year. I’ll make sure that this is all straight. He just talked to me about it. And I’ll get Kelsey to post it. But if you are planning on going to Austin, check it out. There’s going to be a ton of great speakers. The average seller is over 3 million in sales. So I’ve I’ve been there almost every time I was sick the one time I couldn’t go. But it is a great event. Have you ever gone

Clement Wan  1:04:32  

I’ve been to a couple of the events while it was happening. I I do live in Austin normally, but but I believe the last few times. The dates did not work.

Norman Ferrar  1:04:47  

Okay, so you were at the first one.

Clement Wan  1:04:51  

I went to one of the evening events and then I wasn’t able to attend during the day.

Norman Ferrar   1:04:58  

I’m going to I’m going to head to Austin A day or two early and then leave a day or two afterwards after the event. But anyways, it was great having you on. We got to get to like we are literally a stone’s throw away. So I can’t wait till we can get together and break some bread. And that would be fantastic. I really appreciate you coming on. Like I said, if you want to hear some really great content, follow Clement, on Facebook or on clubhouse, and you won’t be disappointed. All right, sir. Well, we will see you hopefully soon. And hopefully we get you back on the podcast.

Clement Wan  1:05:36  

Thanks for Thanks, Kelsey. You’re very well.

Kelsey   1:05:40  

Oh, just one last thing. I’m Clements I know. Is there anything that we need to? For people to get a hold of you? I know. Ryan Moran has a capital conference. So anything you want to share about that?

Clement Wan   1:05:54  

Um, no, I’m not. I’m not a part of that organization. But I do know that the cut the capitalism, or cap con, which is happening in September, it’s unfortunately the first one that I’ll miss. Just because I’m stuck here in Canada. But it is. As usual, it’s it’ll probably be a great conference just based on the speakers. And as always in Austin, if I don’t know when is billion dollar summit again?

Norman Ferrar   1:06:27  

16th 16th to the 20th.

Clement Wan   1:06:31  

It might actually be close to then if you want to have a have to check yourselves because I don’t remember the actual dates like I’ve been too much in. Okay, this just sucks being here. But so I haven’t looked at the specific dates. I know. It’s unlikely that I’ll make it back by then. But yeah, the literally there will be a few billionaires definitively and it will be some really good brand builders.

Norman Ferrar   1:07:05  

Fantastic. Okay, I got a check that out after the podcast. I’ll see. I would like to attend if I can. But anyways, thank you, Clement, and we will talk to you soon. Thanks. Have a good one. All right. You too. Okay. Kills.

Kelsey   1:07:22  

Right. Thank you, everyone for listening for today’s episode. Also. I hope everyone has a great Labor Day weekend if you are celebrating that in your country. Yeah, yeah, I actually have Blue Angels, the jets flying above my house right now. And I can hear another one coming. So I hope my app is working where it cuts out the background noise. But yes, if you missed today’s episode, go on over to our YouTube channel. Norman Farrar and you’ll be able to find all the information or all the episodes in our daily highlights as well. And if you’re new to the community, just head on over to our Facebook group lunch with Norm Amazon FBA and E commerce collective. And we are doing a really great little beard nation appreciation episode for our 200th we did this before I think that was really good. Yeah, it was great. We got to meet Marcia Simon Raja doctor, cause mark, so many beer Nation members. So we’re going to do that again. So go over to our group, we have all the information there. Or if you’re not a part of that, just send me an email and let me know why you want to be on the show. And we’ll enter you into the draft. So that’s happening at the end of September. And yeah, we’ll talk about that more later on. But

Norman Ferrar   1:08:44  

okay, so before I forget, I just wanted to thank our sponsor, H refs. We talk about it all the time. We talked about it today about building your brand and making sure that you have an e commerce website. I mean, it really is critical for your micro brand to grow. But we’re all Amazon sellers. It’s hard for us to find time and worry about a website, you know, so how do you do this? And how do you get your scores up and your ranking up? Well, H refs here to help you can monitor or hrs monitors your SEO health backlinks keywords, and it’s free. There’s absolutely no charge. And that’s called H refs, Webmaster Tools. So you can sit back you can relax, enjoy your coffee, enjoy the show while a trip does it all. Sign up for nothing zero squat zero at ahrefs.com/awt that’s H R E F s.com/awtalrighteverybodysothankyouforjoiningustodayitwasreallyapleasurehavingclementonhopefullyyoulearnedsomethingwehavethispodcasteverymondaywednesdayandfridayeasternstandardtimethankyouforbeingpartthankyouforbeingpartofthecommunityandenjoyyourweekend. Mantra Mantra

Transcribed by https://otter.ai