#104: Google Marketplace Possibilities and Pitfalls

Episode: 104

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: “Content Off Amazon Is All About The Right Message To The Right Audience At The Right Time.”

Final Show Link: https://lunchwithnorm.com/episodes__trashed/episode-104-google-marketplace-possibilities-and-pitfalls-w-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, an Online Marketing and Full Funnel Sales Expert. 

Chris’s company has risen to a level that less than 3% of all Google Partner agencies worldwide attain, which is the rank of Premier Partner.  In this episode, he talks about the possibilities and pitfalls of the Google Marketplace. 

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:

• 3:34 : Introduction of Chris Brewer
• 5:23 : Why Make A Move On Google Marketplace?
• 8:10 : Migrating into Google Marketplace
• 17:27 : Developing Your Own Brand Before Going to Google
• 24:26 : The Difference Between Google Marketplace and Google My Business
• 27:09 : Spending The Same Amazon PPC ACoS In Your Google Marketing
• 32:51 : Chris’s Giveaway
• 36:24 : OMG Commerce Approach To Sellers
• 38:54 : How To Start On Google Ads
• 42:43 : What Is The Best Ad Starting Point?
• 47:20 : The Importance Of Growing Your Own Brand
• 49:36 : Chris’s Case Study On Successful Sellers From Amazon to Google 
• 57:07 : Chris’s Advice To Sellers 

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Explore these Resources

In this episode, we mentioned the following resources:

• www.omgcommerce.com
• chris@omgcommerce.com
• www.facebook.com/chrisbrewermarketer/
• https://twitter.com/momarkerter
• Fiverr
• UpWork
• FreeUp
• chris@omgcommerce.com
• https://www.facebook.com/chrisbrewermarketer/
• https://www.omgcommerce.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/momarketer/

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Norman  0:02  

Hey everybody. It’s Norman Farrar, a.k.a The Beard Guy here, and welcome to another Lunch with Norm, The Rise of the Micro Brands.

Norman  0:20  

All right, today we have a returning guest, co-founder of OMG Commerce, Chris Brewer back on the show and Chris is going to be talking about Google marketplace. So this isn’t something a lot of people are talking about. But he’s going to be talking about the possibilities and the pitfalls when dealing with the opportunity for Amazon sellers. So Oh Hey, Faye. Welcome and let’s see, where is Kelsey?

Kelsey 0:48  

Hello.

Norman  0:49  

Hello, sir. How are you?

Kelsey 0:51  

Good. How are you?

Norman  0:53  

Good. Are you surviving the polar vortex?

Kelsey 0:57  

Barely. I’m kind of bundled up over here. It’s freezing. I don’t know about anyone else in the Beard Nation. They’re experiencing any of this winter weather. But yeah, it’s been a little brutal. One of the heaters broke down.

Norman  1:11  

So see, if you stayed here. If you would have stayed at the house with mom and dad, we have heated floors, it would have been Oh, no. All right. So what do you have to say?

Kelsey 1:25  

Okay, so if you’re watching the show, if you’re new to the show, head on over to the Facebook group, Lunch with Norm Amazon FBA and eCommerce Collective. If you’re watching from Norm’s personal Facebook page, we can’t actually use your comments on the screen. So if you’re replying, you’re not seeing your comments come up. We’re not ignoring you. We don’t hate you. It’s just for the software that we use, we can actually use it. But everyone else, if you’re watching from the Lunch with Norm Facebook page or group, LinkedIn, YouTube, you’re all good to go and if you’ve missed an episode, if you’re catching the tail end of this episode, and you just want to see more of the beard, go to our YouTube channel Norman Farrar. I’ll put the links in the comments and yeah, we’ll get you all set with Lunch with Norm contents and that’s it. We also got our Clubhouse Facebook events up. So if you’re in the Facebook group, you’ll see that there’re events, if you go to the event tabs, you can go there, grab the Facebook events link and that is the link that you can use for Clubhouse every Monday at 1:30pm, Eastern time.

Norman  2:40  

Right and so far, we’ve had a couple of sessions, both rooms went really well. There’s a whole bunch of people that we don’t normally get to talk to and it also brings up the people that are past week guests that can come in and join. But anyways, just a couple of shout outs and Kelsey, you missed out on your first thing.

Kelsey 3:01  

Yes, smash the like button and hit the bell. Subscribe to us wherever you find the beard. We have a prize today too.

Norman  3:11  

Okay, and we’ll get to that in a second. But first, just a few shout outs. So hey Faye, from North Carolina, Simon, Mero, Yarrow, Marina, Manny, Darwin, and Steven, how are you guys? Thanks for joining. So let’s sit back, relax, grab that cup of coffee and enjoy the show.

Norman  3:33  

Hello, stranger. 

Chris 3:34

Hey Norm, how are you? 

Norman  3:37  

Good. Good. So you’re on the other coast today?

Chris 3:39  

I am. I am on the Gulf Coast today and I was kind of laughing at myself when you and Kelsey were on camera. Because Jim Gaffigan got his humor about his white guy Norwegian heritage and his pale complexion and I saw that I was gonna get on here with my Florida tan and you guys are in the cooler temperatures where you can’t get any sun and so there’s just a nice contrast today.

Norman  4:06  

Yeah, I talked to some of my friends in Hawaii the other day and they just said yeah, you look like a pasty white guy and I got to get in the sun.

Chris 4:16  

We did get a cold front down here today. So it’s a chilly 61 or 58 degrees which when you’re by the water it does seem cooler. But I know everybody else is like trying to keep their pipes unfrozen and at least if you’re in the States right now you are dealing with some harsh temperatures to say the least.

Norman  4:42  

We had a steady minus 23 for four days which is I think minus 9 Fahrenheit and there is a city growing every day out on the lake. I like looking at all these ice huts and it’s pretty cool actually watching all the activity form out there.

Chris 5:02  

The fishing huts, I actually have a fishing anecdote today. So that is very good foreshadowing and you didn’t even know it.

Norman  5:10  

Well, there we go. Great minds, right? We’re just connecting here.

Chris 5:15  

Absolutely.

Norman  5:17  

So why don’t we talk a little bit about Google marketplace and why make the move?

Chris 5:23  

Yeah. So this is, I would say, a trending topic for our agency, where there’s always been Amazon sellers that have sold on Google, there’s always been Google sellers that have sold on on Amazon and there’s been those that are probably many on the podcast that are just on Amazon right now, or potentially just on Google. What I think we’re going to talk about is today is kinda like, if you’re on Amazon, and maybe you made it through 2020, hallelujah and you dealt with inventory issues, and you dealt maybe with having to switch from FBA to fbm and now you’re back to FBA and you’re seeing Amazon increasing fees, now people can find more information about you on Amazon, if they know where to look and you’re frustrated, potentially and so a lot of what I hear, because I deal with all the folks that would like to talk to us, I deal with them first, I hear a lot of we want to expand, we don’t want to be a one trick pony. We don’t want to have all our eggs in one basket and some are more ready than others. But I think that’s a good intro. Because Norm I talked to, in a given week, I’m talking with two or three sellers every week, and then probably add a few Google sellers on there as well off Amazon sellers, and for eCommerce and so in a given year, I’m talking with hundreds of folks and I hear a lot of what is happening and so I get a good sense of what is coming up and so I really do believe that there is going to be a significant amount of folks that are hedging their bets and moving into the Google marketplace. But not all of them are going to head over there and be as prepared. Right? I just noticed, I got my camera view a little lower on my screen. So occasionally, you’ll see me looking at you out there looking at the live stream, right direct, and occasionally.

Norman  7:46  

I do it all the time.

Chris 7:47  

So all good.

Norman  7:50  

All right. So you talked a little bit about Alright, if you’re kind of fed up with everything that’s going on, here’s another alternative. So now, instead of being a one legged stool, you can be a two legged stool. What are some of the advantages and how hard is it to migrate over to the Google marketplace?

Chris 8:10  

Well, I would say it’s not that hard, but that’s part of the danger. Okay, it can be very easy, just Hey Norm, just go get a Shopify store, just get a Shopify store, put your product listings up there, get you a smart shopping feed, and you’re in business, right? Well, that’s part of that little slippery slope there is that you could possibly get some early, easy wins, but lose sight of what the true potential is. So if you can remember the early days of building your Amazon store, it took time to get those reviews, to gain momentum and the same applies over to Google. You need a solid strategy, you need a solid game plan that kind of checks a lot more boxes than you may be thinking before diving into firing up your Google Ads account and starting driving traffic. So Google is still the top place that shoppers go when searching online for product information before making a purchase. There was a thing is Kenshoo there was a Kenshoo survey that like 85% of the respondents in that survey used Google in order to do their product research, and 93% of those were mobile searches from that group and so Amazon certainly catching up to Google in that regard and regards to product search and searches on Amazon are generally further along in the buying process, whereas Google searchers are earlier in the research phase and so that’s where you have to know the difference in the marketplaces themselves and those nuances can be pretty big on Google. So that’s just the high level of it. Now, my personal view on the space is that Amazon is demand capture. So this is that fishing analogy I was going to share. So it’s like bass fishing in a farm pond. Have you ever been bass fishing Norm? 

Norman 10:44

I have. 

Chris 10:45

Okay. So what do you usually use for your bass fishing lower?

Norman  10:49  

My finger. I have no idea. I’m not an avid fisherman. I know I’ve gone bass fishing with a bunch of friends and it was fun. A few times. 

Chris 10:59  

Yeah, well bass fishing in a farm pond, I grew up fishing that way and you can usually grab just a lure out of your tackle box, pretty easy, pop that on and you can pull 20-30 bass out in an afternoon if the conditions are right. So it basically Facebook’s kind of akin to fly fishing for trout but that’s a topic for another time. Google is like what I’ve got right behind me here in the Gulf of Mexico. Google’s like deep sea fishing, you need a boat, you need the right lower, or you got to go to the bait store and get live shrimp or and then as a backup, you need some squid, you need a good GPS to find the right bottom and then once you get out there, in my boat, you may think you’re on the right bottom, but then you drift a little bit and you’re a little off target and so the fishings not that great. So we’ve learned to grab a plastic bucket with a weight on it. As soon as that GPS lines up, you drop that bucket right there, that weight goes right to the bottom, and then you’re right on the spot. But even then the tides need to be right, and maybe even some chump, to get things started. So what does this really mean? Well, it means that your trophy fish are on Google, not Amazon. But it also means that you need to come prepared because a lot of people, we see this all the time here. They head out into the ocean or the Gulf, we call it the ocean, but it’s the Gulf on a kayak, they’ll see kayak, they don’t really have what they need for serious fishing. Or they come past my channel here as an incoming tide coming in and they get swept into the mangroves and dump all their gear because they really weren’t prepared. They didn’t know what waters they were heading into and so you need the skills and the experience to know where the fish are, and have the right tools to attract them. So with that as a backdrop, moving back into demand capture on Amazon, you got away with that, because gluten free or build your own. On Amazon, with those kinds of searches, they’ve got purchase intent behind them. I’m looking for gluten free bread, gluten free products, looking for a build your own deck or furniture, different kinds of things. So Amazon’s got purchase intent behind those queries. Whereas on Google, you can’t pay for those kinds of queries, you’ve got to find the queries that have purchase intent and when you do find those queries, you’re going to discover that everyone else in your niche is guess what, targeting those queries as well. So that’s where you’ve got to make sure the right gear is going to be having a well built Shopify site and looking at how fast the load times are on there for page load times. On Amazon, you don’t have to worry about it, it’s Amazon’s servers. But now suddenly, you’re on Shopify, and we’ve found sites that have really good potential, but they’re loading in seven or eight seconds, which is going to kill their quality score on Google, kill a lot of the opportunity they might have for organic SEO. So like, that’s part of one of those tools that people should be addressing early not later in the process and so that you can kind of start with the right things in mind, looking at how your product pages are set up just the way you did on Amazon. I see a lot of times very robust storefronts and product listings on Amazon and then Shopify is an afterthought. It’s a headline, with a few bullets, there’s no reviews. So those are some of the things that you need to do and that can kind of chum the waters for you when you have a more robust site to begin with, and you’ve put some work into, this is a whole nother topic, building that brand, which you really never needed, I could argue, on Amazon. So I’ll stop there for a minute Norm. But those are like I could keep going with that line of thinking, because I just deal with it so many times with people coming to us wanting to launch on Google, and they’re just not quite ready yet, they’re going to waste a lot of money.

Norman  15:47  

So a lot of Amazon sellers who’ve never taken a course might go and put up some crappy looking pictures, maybe one, they might put together some stupid looking boobley.

Chris 16:02  

Product placement, there you go.

Norman  16:03  

Some stupid looking title that’ll never get searched, the bullets are awful and maybe there’s only one bullet, and they think they’re now selling on Amazon. So the trick is to make sure that you understand, take a course, do something to understand it right and once you start selling and you want to even optimize further, you might look at hiring an expert to do it. However, with Google, it’s kind of like if I understand what you’re saying. So I go to a Shopify, I might just take my Amazon listing, which already might suck, maybe not, bring it over to Shopify and then you think you’ve got it covered. Where you should be looking at when you’re doing this, ways to not have a heavy page, take a look at what Google is looking for for ranking like that, you can easily go and find out what Google is looking for for ranking and see if your page is loading on time and or if you’re using optimized images, or if that must have video in your slider bar that switches every two seconds is taking too much time and you’re not getting that rank. There’s a whole checklist that Shopify users should be looking at. If they don’t know, it’s like that person not understanding Amazon, who’s never taken a course. Shopify is a different bird as well.

Chris 17:27  

Right. Absolutely and because Amazon, I could show you three similar products on Amazon and from my own shopping experience, if they’re similar, I’m going to look at the reviews. If the reviews are similar, I’m going to look at the price point and maybe I go with the middle product. But I’m not thinking about how fast is this loading, I’m not going in and typically reading a lot about the product mean, the thing that gets me on Amazon most often, I wish I could show this. I’m gonna yell off camera just like Jenny, do you know where that package I got from Amazon that had those little brushes in it in that little white package? If you find it, bring it to me. But you look at pictures on Amazon, you order things that you think are going to work and you get them in and they’re three times the size, because they didn’t do a good job of really showing you how the actual size was. So it’s like I can’t use this at all. Well, usually on Google Shopping for instance, and a Shopify site, there’s a lot more places that you can go to. Yeah, here we go. So like I had a little GPS I mentioned that was in my boat, and I left it out there too long and I got corroded plugs, so I needed to get some steel brushes to clean those out. Now, this is a hole that’s like, really tiny. So I was looking for these little small steel brushes. This is this, I got it. I can’t even fit it. It’s huge. So I can’t use these at all. But I just thought that was a fun little thing to show there. But that’s absolutely right. I mean, you really have to come prepared on Google. It’s got so much power and what works well on Amazon is not always what works well on Google and because again, with Amazon, you can compare three products pretty quickly. On Google, you’re going to make a lot faster judgments about whether I’m going to buy from a company or not based on your research journey and so a lot of things that we’re asking prospects that come and want to work with us is, would you buy from your own website? Look at it that way, and what are the competing brands? Where else can I buy this product or similar product? What’s the buying experience there? What’s the brand there and so your product on Amazon is connected to the Amazon brand. So I’d encourage you to develop your brand on Amazon with tools like the brand store, for example, because that’s going to help you if you have a bigger, more recognizable brand on Amazon, it’s going to help you when you move to Google. But even with those tools in place on Amazon, there are still many ways that you’re still linked to Amazon. So customers are buying from Amazon, they’re not buying from you. So you’ve heard this a lot. Hey, where did you get that? They don’t say, Oh, I got it from XYZ brand. They say I got it on Amazon. So I don’t know who sold me those brushes. Now, granted, there’s not much brand you can do with this. But this is from PMD Products. So I didn’t say Oh, I got this from PMD Products. I got it from Amazon. That’s where I got it, right? But how many times did they say well, I got it on Google. They might say I got it on the internet. But people who bought from the internet typically know exactly what brand they purchase from. So you must have a brand new, you got to have a message and you got to have a good website. Those are the main things.

Norman  21:25  

I think that might even help your Amazon store and we’ll get to an action step or some steps we can take for Google in a second. But if you have that Amazon store, and then you have a really good quality Shopify store, and you have a little bit of content out there, and your brand is consistent, maybe with some social media, you don’t have to do a ton of it, but just make it consistent. Now you’re becoming the authority and once you become the authority, if you go over that person site, a lot of people are Amazon centric, right? They want to buy from Amazon no matter what. But they’re going to check out your store just to make sure that it looks good. Well, they just made their decision, there’s authority equals trust equals sales. So you might be beefing up your Amazon sales without even knowing it just because you have a nicer website. But you can definitely drive, there’s so many avenues where you can drive external traffic over to a Shopify site and do so many other things, too. I mean, there’s so many things that you can do with it.

Chris 22:33  

Yeah, I mean, one, you own the data, right? It’s your customer information, you can build audiences, they’re not hidden away on the DSP platform. You can have access to using those and then you’re growing your email list, suddenly, you have an email list, and you’ve got that whole thing and as you grow that email list make a goal to get to 20,000 emails, that’s kind of a good sweet spot number to then start being able to use customer match on Google, using similar audiences and things like that. So I mean, the amount of opportunity and the ocean wide kind of capabilities that you have, if it’s done the right way. I think it’s I can’t find much of an argument unless you’re just you don’t have fulfilled by merchants and 3PLs figured out to really deliver the inventory properly. That’s the biggest thing is, if you’re going to be stuck in your garage for three days fulfilling orders, you may not want to do that. So I know a lot of folks stick with Amazon FBA because of those reasons. But those are, I think a lot of things we’re talking about Norm are good arguments to figure these things out and find a good partner to help you navigate kind of these waters, so to speak.

Norman  24:05  

So before we get to the next step, not sure if there’s any questions Kels?

Kelsey 24:13  

Yes. So Fatiha had a question at the beginning. Just kind of clarifying what you mean by Google marketplace? How is what you’re providing different from Google My Business?

Chris 24:26  

Oh, that’s a good point. So just to clarify, Google, my business is the local listing for your business, which again, I could argue that’s a great place if you’ve got a physical address, or even a fulfillment place if you got a warehouse, Hey, create a Google My Business account. That’s going to allow people to suddenly start leaving reviews for your brand or what the customer experiences. That’s a whole nother topic on Google My Business. The Google marketplace we’re talking about in general is selling your products on places like Google Shopping using Google ads like search ads, Google Shopping ads, display ads, Gmail ads within display YouTube ads. So all of those, you’re familiar with headline ads, sponsor brand display, sponsor brand video, Google has those components as well, it’s a lot more complicated. If you’re running in the Google marketplace, so to speak, if you’re going to take your knowledge that you have on match types on Amazon in building campaigns there, your eyes are going to be very open that the amount of levers and complexity that’s going to be inside the Google Ads environment, which is, again, why we’re heavily evaluating whether or not an Amazon seller is the right fit for us as an agency to help them get started on Google. Those are rare, we’re usually helping folks who have a little bit of traction on Google to take it to the next level. But I’m always more than happy to help folks navigate like, Where can you go to get started on Google? And one of the things that I’ll mention on that is, there’s some courses out there, I can mention hours later, if you want to, there’s other good training. I like for Amazon sellers to get educated on the Google marketplace and Google ads, specifically, before they go and try to hire any agency. You need to know what is going on in there and what the different ad types are, before you get in over your head with an agency that isn’t the right fit and you don’t know whether to judge that.

Norman  26:45  

Would you agree that, so you’re spending 15, 20, 25% of ACoS in Amazon for PPC, would you take the same amount and put it towards your Google marketing? 

Chris 27:09  

Well, one way to put that is kind of how, when we look at the Amazon DSP ads, their metric is return on ad spend, which is the inverse of ACoS. So let’s say that your inverse of your ACoS is 3x. So you need a 300% return on ad spend. I’m not talking about TACoS, I’m just talking about purchasing costs. So if you need to be a 3x ROAS that is a good place to start on Google. However, I could argue that whatever your ACoS on Amazon is going to be far less on Google, because if you’re fulfilling the delivery, you’re getting 100% of the sale, minus maybe some small Google Shopping fees, minus your cost of your agency or ads, which you’re going to have on Amazon anyway. So I could argue that if you are at a 3x and again, this is a very general, nobody writes us down, then go tell your agency, you got to be at this. If you’re at a 3x ROAS which is the inverse of whatever that relates to from an ACoS perspective, I could argue that you would probably need to take a hard look at Google to trim that down to a 2x or a 1.75. So that you have the ability to target more cold traffic, which is that ocean, that is going to be out there evaluating, you’re going to need to lower the bar on return on ad spend. So that you can reach people with the right message to the right audience at the right time. So that’s going to take additional impressions, it’s going to probably drive up the amount of clicks that you’re going to have versus sales is also going to increase costs. But that’s where you can get that dialed in, your potential for profitability within Google ads can be significant.

Norman  29:27  

Right and if you’re ranking, and I think it’s the same on Amazon, a lot of people like the organic listing and if you’re ranking organically, and there’s the sponsored ad, I mean, it’s all about branding. So they’re gonna see the sponsored ad, they’re gonna see the organic listing, they might be clicking the organic listing. So even when, like if we’re talking about ACoS, I find that if you’re getting 20,30, 40% ACoS, a lot of times you’re getting organic sales from it, that you just don’t associate with your ACoS. So I mean, it might be 2, 3 times the amount of sales that you would get through your normal ACoS, and this is where you would see it in your TACoS. Yeah, you’re total ACoS. But the other thing too, it really depends on the cost of the product, the competitiveness of the product, the search volume of the product, and if it’s recurring, so I will, I’ve mentioned this before for Amazon,PPC, but I’ll give away my product, I will do it at 100%. If it takes me to acquire a company or a customer, 100% I’ll do it, just so they can try my product. If they like my product, and they can come back, I know, they’re gonna like my product, and then they’ll come back, and I’ve got a customer, but it’s pretty risky.

Chris 30:47  

Yeah and with all of this Norm, I would encourage courage sellers, I know not all of them can have the ability to do this. But again, if you don’t have the ability, this is where you can just read up on it and educate yourself. But I can’t underscore more about this topic about brand and content. Because on Amazon, you have a couple places, you’ve got your storefront, and you’ve got your product listings, which product listings or a lot more old school Google SEO than what Google looks at SEO right now off Amazon. So, what makes you or as you look to kind of integrate these things into your Shopify store, and your overall brand messaging, you got to think of that content on Amazon is around your products. For the most part, content off Amazon is all about the right message to the right audience at the right time. So it’s a good idea to look for someone who can help you with brand development, as you work on building your off Amazon site, it’s much easier to do those two things together, it’s going to also help inform what kind of content you need to create, which is going to help your organic presence off Amazon and it’s a lot easier if you hire for brand development. At the same time, you’re working on dev with your Shopify site, then working on branding later, that’s a big piece of advice a lot of people miss. They get this great, beautiful site built out, and then they go oh, yeah, we need to go work on our brand. Well, now you’re gonna have to restructure a lot of things on the site.

Norman  32:34  

Oh, let me see. Before we get to the next question. I think we should tell everybody about the incredible giveaway. Chris, if you want to talk a little bit about what we’re going to be giving away today. That would be awesome.

Chris 32:51  

Yeah, so what I’m really proud of as the co-founder of our agency is how we help people that contact us. We know that likely 75% of the people that contact us during a given business week are not the best fits for our agency. But we take pride in the fact we take very good care of those people. So we have a link on our site called let’s talk, which will lead you to a strategy session request and so if you’re thinking about moving into the Google Ads marketplace, or you have a Shopify site, you’re getting some amount of off Amazon sales, and you’re wanting to kind of take it up to the next level. If you’ve been running Google ads, and I would just say that, if you’re running at least $5,000 worth of ad spend, which is going to give us enough data to make a good analysis on what’s happening in the account. We will audit your whole Google Ads account. Everything that you’re running with one of my lead strategists, Bill Kovar has got an MBA, Outstanding Individual for strategy. Those audits are $1,000 value, we’re actually moving to a paid model with our audits because we get so many requests for them and so somebody on the show today, if you’re one of those folks that has at least 5000 ad spend over the trending last 90 days on Google ads, and you’d like an a strategic view of what you could do with that account, we will not charge for that audit, completely free and then I’d say for anybody else that thinks they might have that opportunity as well, just fill out a strategy session request on our site. If I’ve got the bandwidth for more than just one of those for free, I’ll see what I can do but if I can’t, I make sure that I’ll hop on a call with you. Give you some solid value and insight from my 10 years of experience with this agency and 25 years plus years of marketing experience.

Norman  35:02  

All right, so it’s not gonna be for everybody. But if you are doing the ad spend, and you want to have an audit done, then just sign up and what are we gonna say Kels? What is the hashtag?

Kelsey 35:15  

I think you know. We love Chris.

Norman  35:18  

Okay, there we go. I thought it was gonna be I love Chris or I love fishing, one of the two. By the way, the last time I was in Florida, we went tarpon fishing, and that was a blast. That was a blast.

Chris 35:31  

I’ve not had that opportunity. 

Norman  35:34  

It’s crazy. You’ve never seen anything like it.

Chris 35:37  

We’ve got a lake here called Lake Tarpon and it doesn’t have any Tarpon in it.

Norman  35:43  

There you go and I wonder what Lake Surprise has in it. I don’t know if you’ve heard of Lake Surprise around Tampa. But probably some gators. But anyway, all right everybody. So if you want to apply and get into that contest, just I love Chris and we will be doing that in about 20 minutes. Okay, now I do see Simon has a question there. Kels? 

Kelsey 36:12  

Yeah, we have a couple of questions. Simon, I’m seeing Google Merchant agencies charge a percent of sales rather than a monthly retainer. Do you work this way? What is a sensible and fair percentage to give an agency?

Chris 36:24  

That’s a great question. I would say and there are some Amazon agencies that do the same. They kind of get a piece of the action. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that and I’ve had people on calls, because that’s not our model. I mean, we have a few clients we work with who’ve offered to give us a percentage, because of some expanded bandwidth they wanted from our whole team. But our model is a tiered percent of spend with kind of a base rate to start and one of the questions I’ve had, which I think is informative on your question is, well, if you’re on a percentage spin model, how is your company motivated to really help me get to the next level if you guys don’t have a piece of the action and I would say, Well, if you’re working with a smaller agency, or a freelancer, it’s gonna be a lot more meaningful, because there’s fewer pockets to spread that increase around. When you work with a larger agency, it’s pretty typical to have a percent of spin model, because one, it’s part of our company culture that we treat businesses like they’re our own. So we have an owner mindset with our team and I’m very proud of that, that we are very transparent about that with our clients. Second, our team members are bonused based on profitability and if we’re keeping clients, we’re going to be profitable, and they’re all going to share in those rewards and then the third thing I would just say on that is we’re going to win when the clients when I am not motivated by a portfolio of clients who are all at my minimum rates, and neither is our team. We want to be rewarded as we’re able to increase spend and scale. So our fee goes up as we’re able to scale the client. If we’re not scaling the client, we’re not gonna be able to increase spend and keep a client at the same time. So that’s my cents on that.

Norman  38:40  

Okay, very good. Kelsey, other questions?

Kelsey 38:44  

Yep. From Faye, If we never ran Google ads, how would you recommend we start?

Chris 38:54  

I would recommend starting by, to me this the most simple way and I would say feel free to email me through my site. If you’d like a referral for this, I don’t want to mention him on the podcast, because there’s a potential he could get overwhelmed. But one of the easiest ways to start if you have a Shopify site and your product feed already set up is to set up the Shopify Google Shopping add on. In addition to having your solid branded campaign setup, which may not spend a lot of money right out of the gate, but you need to make sure that in Google ads to get started from an Amazon seller perspective, all other things being equal. The easiest place is a solid branded campaign structure with a Shopify smart campaign shot and if you’re not on Shopify, you can still launch a Google smart shopping campaign. It’s just not as easy, not as straightforward and if you don’t want to do that work at all, I have somebody that I could connect you with. But before you get there, I would suggest, as I said earlier, educating yourself on at least Google Shopping. There’s a guide on our website called The Definitive Guide to Google Shopping. It’s actually what launched us into eCommerce five plus years ago, when Shopify picked that up and launched it as a resource on their site. It’s been updated within the last six months. So that’s a new guide that you could download on our site. It’s like 50 pages, you could walk through that and build your own Google Shopping campaign with that guide or we’ve got a course on our site. Full disclosure, it lives on Ezra Firestone smart marketer site, we make 20% of what you buy there. So it’s not going to change our world if you buy this course, I’m not plugging the course. But it is a extremely robust, it’s called Google Smart Traffic and if you’ve got a freelancer or somebody who is comfortable with media buying or Google ads, you could say, go learn this course, go set our whole Google Ads account using this course, step by step, that would be another way to go and for 900 bucks and the time involved to get that set up, you’re going to at least be able to start testing. I would also make sure that you’re setting aside bare minimum $1,000 a month in Google testing budget, keeping in mind that that’s going to disappear pretty quickly, potentially and you’ve got to have the right amount of oversight or a solid smart shopping campaign that can just keep scaling up and you’ll hit a point in that smart shopping campaign where you know you’re going to need an agency to help you because it’s going to get to a certain point and it may start to fall back off, and you can’t recoup it or it may stay right about there. But you know there’s so much more potential if you started adding other ad types, and more of what we call an accelerated marketing portfolio within the Google Ads marketplace to use all the available tools.

Norman  42:29  

So if you had a choice, Google, Google ads, Facebook ads, both other. Yeah, what’s the best starting point?

Chris 42:43  

I’ll see if I can say this as quickly as possible. To me, it’s a no brainer to have a smart shopping campaign set up with branded search, you could do that, if not one SKU. If you’ve got one SKU on Amazon, and you’re going to launch on Google Shopping, it’s not going to light anything up. But if you’ve got five to 10 ASINs that are unique, just go to Google Shopping and type in keywords for your product and you’ll see how much competition is there. So that is a standalone, that’s a good place to start. However, what we like to see as an agency is an Amazon seller that spent some time working on their brand and they’ve got either a vetted out Shopify site that’s converting well, or a landing page could be clickfunnels. They’ve got a lander that’s converting well from cold Facebook traffic. So if you’ve done some of your work on a brand, because a good Facebook agency is going to ask that question, a bad or average Facebook agency is not going to ask you any questions about the brand and how much volume and how much search you’re doing. They’re just going to start running ads for you and you’re going to be very disappointed and spend a lot of money. However, Facebook ads can be a great place to start. If you’ve got those solid landers for your products built out. You can test your branding and your messages there. Because if I get a phone call from somebody who has been able to scale up 20, 30, 50, 100,000 spend on Facebook, and they’re not running on Google, that’s like, in most cases, no problem. Because they’ve already got just like you know on Amazon, what may have gotten you into Amazon, if you’re an off Amazon seller is you noticed how much search was popping up in the Amazon search bar for your product, because people were looking for it on Amazon. If you’re running Facebook ads, guess what, there’s gonna be overflow with people researching you on Google and it can all work together. They may hit the Shopify site, see that you charge for shipping, and all of a sudden head over to Amazon and buy from you there and that we won’t even get into attribution talk there, because that’s a can of worms. But I said I was gonna be brief, I wasn’t that brief that but there you go.

Norman  45:15  

But even that last item that you said, shipping, so that is a big item. I can go over to Amazon, I can get free shipping, because I’m a Prime member and just my opinion, but I think it is really important that if you can, and this could be all just with an upsell, just, maybe you can’t make a profit on shipping an item at $10. But you can get them to buy a three pack, then you can send it out to them at a lower cost and it makes sense and then it’s okay, I can compare over it and I can actually bundle something together on my Shopify page that I could never do over on Amazon, and probably get people to buy the upsell, down sell or cross sell that I want to offer them with free shipping. Okay, so I’m glad you’re on this call, I made a huge mistake starting off on Amazon. I went through a course, I had years of eCommerce experience in different things like more corporate identity stuff, but then I got my perfect product, a bar of soap for $10. What they didn’t tell me when they said a small fee in the course, for Amazon, I didn’t realize that small fee was going to be $4.65 and now you take the cost of goods, throw in the cup a little bit of packaging, I was making like under $1 a bar and I had to sell a heck of a lot. It was crazy. So my thought is and I got around that. I did the three pack, five pack. So I got around that. But it really depends on your cost, right? Like if I could go out with that bar of soap and I’m going on to Facebook, or I’m trying to do Google ads, running to a page buying a $10 bar of soap, I might as well just get kicked between the legs right now.

Chris 47:20  

Yep and that’s where some of that front end research that you can do by just simply doing a Google search for your brand name, doing a Google search for your top performing keywords on Amazon, seeing the Google Shopping results that come up. If you know you can afford free shipping and guess what all the Google Shopping results show free shipping, you’re probably not going to sell much on Google Shopping, because people are going to buy from products that have the reviews showing up in Google Shopping, they’re going to buy from people that have free shipping. So you have to know what you’re going to be up against. But if your product is priced lower than everybody else, and you don’t offer free shipping, that can be a differentiator there for sure. But that’s some of the things that we’re evaluating as well, when people are talking to us is there are some Amazon sellers that are selling off Amazon, but the people selling off Amazon is Wayfair, Home Depot, Bed, Bath and Beyond, Walmart, and guess what Norm, all those companies run Google Shopping ads for the products that they bought from you and now you’re gonna try to run Google Shopping ads up against those, guess who’s gonna win the big box? So that also to me is advice for those of you that may be thinking about wholesaling to big boxes, or maybe you’ve really scaled up, I would hold off on signing that deal with Chewy or signing that you’re getting your products somewhere else where you’re going to be competing against yourself, try to grow your own brand off Amazon and through Google Shopping and the other ad types and then you’ll have a lot stronger negotiating power I would add too when those companies want to sell your products.

Norman  49:18  

I’m curious and you probably have a ton of these. But do you have a case study that just came to mind where you were able to take a person selling on Amazon, take a good product and just get some incredible sales through Google.

Chris 49:36  

Yeah, a couple recent ones come to mind. I’m not going to mention their right brand name because I just don’t know if I could. But one is like a child play mat company. So it’s like a mat you put down for your child toddler to play on. They’re colorful, wonderful and this person really  had significant business on Amazon. But the difference that was able to accelerate and this is true for actually both examples. Both of these, there’s a very different, which shows you it can work for very different products. The other was a barbecue rub company. So the little bottles with the stuff in it, and you put it on your.

Norman  50:27  

I know it well.

Chris 50:29  

Whatever. It’s past lunch, I better stop with that. But both worked really hard to build a strong brand and you could tell when we were evaluating their sites, when they came and said, Well we’ve been selling on Amazon, we’re a 4 or 5, $6 million business on Amazon, but we want to launch in Google, we just have a Shopify site, we’re only making maybe 10% of our sales there. But when we went there, strong brand messaging, great photography, that wasn’t stock photography, reviews that they had worked on from their social media channels to pull those in, so that you had credibility and trustworthiness built on the site. They also had focused on CRO. So they had done some work, before even spending on Google ads for conversion rate optimization and again, I got a great lead that’s inexpensive, if anyone would want that. But again, they’re a start up, and I don’t want to overwhelm them. So message me if you want a connection there. But it’s just like usability testing, where they’ll give, if you’ve got a female demographic that’s 28 to 35, they’ll find those females, and then they’ll give them eight tasks to do on your site and that could be find the skin gel that’s got UV protectant, find that on the site, and then they’ve got to find it and they’re talking through as they’re searching for it on the site, view this product page, what are your impressions? What do you think about the site overall, so you’re getting great, actual user feedback on video, while they’re navigating your site, you can find out a lot of things there. But that’s what both of these have done and they’ve done some amount of CRO and they had, this is a big one unique positioning compared to the competition and I love it when old marketing stuff Norm that’s been around forever, that I can maybe say on a podcast sometime, and I’m catching someone who’s a lot younger than me that’s never heard it before. But like this stuff’s been around forever. So USP unique selling proposition, unique value proposition. Well, if you are an Amazon seller, who maybe you’ve got the buy box, and you’ve got Amazon’s choice, but really, if you compared your ASINs to others, there’s really no differentiator, other than the fact you got an early start, or you were very fortunate, or you had a great ads person. But on Google, that is the great equalizer. You have to have, if you can’t find what is it about my company, either in my brand story, so you may sell a widget that everybody else sells. So for instance, one client, I know I can share this. Have you ever heard of The love project Norm? 

Norman 53:38

No. 

Chris 53:39

Okay, so they were just on Shark Tank a few weeks ago and they have these bracelets that just have love on it. Well, I mean,how many bracelets Have you ever seen that are made out of fabric, I mean, there’s millions of them on Etsy, everywhere else, it’s a bracelet. But they put a story behind the bracelet and they’ve got women in developing countries that don’t have jobs that are hand making these and so that’s a cool brand story. They’re helping women in other countries, there’s a charity angle to it. So that’s a unique position, the child play mat. You can google child play mats and find a bunch. But they have a unique story about how they relate their brand to autism and helping chop children with autism. The barbecue rub companies’ got a great founder story and how he was winning all these barbecue competitions and people said you’ve got to sell this stuff. So he launched it on Amazon and he killed it. So hopefully and just telling some of these anecdotal things, there’s things with you that are listening that go well, I’ve got a pretty cool story or but if you just got a button widgets that really don’t have much of a difference other than their quality, you’re going to need to think about how am I going to separate myself when I leave the Amazon Marketplace, and if you can consolidate and have a solid story there, you’re going to be far above those that we turned down quite a bit, which is you don’t have strong differentiation, your product is sold by other people. There’s no compelling reason to buy from you now. So that’s what we see from successful brands that launch off Amazon.

Norman  55:46  

Very good. Okay, so just another just wanted to let everybody know that we’ve got the contest. If you do sell, or if you have ad spend over $5,000 on Google, put # I love Chris, and you’ll be entered into a contest. Now, I know that we have,,

Kelsey 56:10  

I’m gonna interrupt you. Because there are some qualifiers for this, I think we’re going to put anyone that’s entered today during the live, we’re going to make a post on the Facebook group, specifically about this and so we’ll get more people, hopefully a larger audience so that we get more entrance, because it is more specific. Yeah, just so we can run it out. So we’ll move the Wheel of Kelsey, we’ll still do it. We’ll just put it as a Facebook group post today and we can have anyone in the group entering it. So join our group Lunch with Norm Amazon FBA and eCommerce Collective.

Norman  56:50  

Now are you gonna interrupt me again?

Kelsey 56:52  

No.

Norman  56:53  

Hold it, hold it there, push him off. All right, Chris. Well, we’re at one o’clock. It flew by, is there anything else that you’d like to say, before we end the podcast.

Chris 57:07  

I just say if you’re considering doing this, know your numbers. Know what it’s going to be required. Come up with a budget that you know that you can spend and be okay, and it’s not gonna hurt too bad and and keep in mind, you may have been able to launch your Amazon store and find success fairly quickly, there is that potential. What I want to make sure people know when you move to Google Ads is that the first three to four months and a good agency will tell you this, the first three to four months is going to likely be breakeven or lose money. It’s not unusual, and it should be expected. Google is a marathon. So prepare for about six months of runway of ramp up and testing and learning and improving from what the data is showing you and a good and then just keep in mind that a good to great agency, if you’re looking for that to run your Google Ads is going to charge anywhere from $1500 to 2500, a month or more and so if that’s not a good fit for you right now, you should think about those dollar amounts as ways to motivate you to learn on your own. Just stay away from going to Fiverr or Upwork and finding a Google Ads Freelancer and putting a lot of trust and faith in them. It’s a lot better to find somebody even if you hire someone for the purpose of learning and so that they’re on your team, and they understand your brand and they’re there with you and they understand. So that’s essentially my last advice I would give is don’t acquiesce, don’t turn things over too soon and I’m more than happy to have calls with anyone. I set up a lot of little 15 minute calls with folks that just want to know where to go. Because likely there’s going to be many on this call. They’re like, Hey, I’m just not ready for an agency like Chris’s, it’s okay, reach out LinkedIn or send me an email, I’ll connect you with the right people or the right kind of training. If you’re not already learning everything you need to know from Norm.

Norman  59:33  

Okay and it’s funny that you just said that about the training. Kelsey and I just posted I guess it was on FreeUp for somebody to train us. We wanted to get an expert in this one field to spend a week or spend a few hours training us each week so we get to understand it. It’s a great way to do it but I always try to get, I mean, this is just me when I have the business coming in. I want to do other things. So I let experts do it , and if it’s not the agency, I’ll delegate out to an expert to get the job done. I want to hire smarter than me. That’s very easy to do, by the way. Yeah. Anyways, Chris, how do people get a hold of you?

Chris 1:00:23  

The easiest way is just my email and my assistant does read my emails in the morning, but she leaves the good ones in there. So chris@omgcommerce.com. That’s probably the easiest way to get me fast. I do have social media, I have a personal page as well as my personality page or whatever. I can’t remember what the other page is called. But if you look for this face, and Chris Brewer on Facebook, you’ll find me there. I do pay attention to messenger. But if we’re not connected, I won’t see those. So email is the best. 

Norman  1:01:07  

Very good. Chris, you’re awesome. Thank you for coming on. I just reached out quickly the other day and said, Hey, got anything new? Of course. We could have probably had you on another 10 podcasts easy.

Chris 1:01:19  

Hey man, I always love coming on this podcast. You do great things and I love what you do for your community and one of these winners will have to get one of those huts and cut a hole in the ice and see what we can bring up

Norman  1:01:35  

Anytime. Alright, Chris.

Chris 1:01:38  

Bye.

Kelsey 1:01:42  

There’s a question. Does Google’s skill share a good start to learn?

Chris 1:01:45  

What was that?

Kelsey 1:01:47  

Is Google Skillshare a good start to learn?

Norman  1:01:49  

Yep, that’s a good spot.

Kelsey 1:01:51  

Okay, perfect.

Norman  1:01:52  

There we go. Perfect. All right, everybody. So thanks Chris, for joining today and let’s see, Kelsey.

Kelsey 1:02:03  

All right. Yes. So we’re going to continue the contest. I’ll make a full post about it on our Facebook group and with all the details of people that need to enter, and how to do that exactly. I’ll just record the Wheel of Kelsey and yeah, thanks everyone. If you’ve missed the episode, if you’re new to the episode and cut the tail end of it, you can find all of the information, all of the videos on our YouTube page Norman Farrar, just search this in the corner here, Norman Farrar. That’s where all the Lunch with Norm highlights are, all the full episodes and we have our Clubhouse events.

Norman  1:02:44  

On Monday.

Kelsey 1:02:45  

On our Facebook group, so you can go to the event tab on our Facebook group and that’s where all of the information is for the weekly Clubhouse.

Norman  1:02:55  

Kelsey, I’m going to interrupt you for a sec, we’re going to be trying to record those Clubhouse recordings as well, and have them all transcribed and put into our social media. Oh, one other thing. This Friday, we’re going to have the other side of advertising and that’s going to be Brian Johnson from Canopy Management. He’s going to be on again and we’re going to be talking about Amazon product positioning. So Brian always just drops a ton of nuggets. I’m looking forward to talking with him and I think that’s probably it for today. If you liked the show, if you liked the information, please smash those likes and hit that subscribe. Everything that Kelsey supposed to say but forgot to, I deduct his pay. Anyway, Monday, Wednesdays, Fridays at noon, Eastern Standard Time. Thanks for watching. It’s awesome that you’re part of our community and enjoy the rest of your day.