Date: October 28, 2020

Episode: 56 

Title: Norman Farrar Introduces Darrell Paterson, a Co-Founder of Sponsored Profit, a PPC Wizard and a devoted father

Subtitle: “Great content is the best sales tool in the world”

Final Show Link:https://lunchwithnorm.podbean.com/e/amazon-ppc-strategies-recap-of-prime-day-2020-ep56-lunch-with-norm/

In this episode of Lunch With Norm..Norman Farrar introduces  Darrell Paterson, a Co- Founder of a Sponsored Profit, a PPC Wizard and a devoted father.

Darrell explains the different strategies Amazon sellers used this year. They recap everything about Prime Day 2020. He shares the successes, failures and what Amazon FBA sellers can use when going into this year’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

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

In this episode, we discuss:

• 4:42 Darrell backstory
• 7:36 Was Amazon Prime Day 2020 a disappointment
• 8:35 Sales on Prime Day grew up to 30%
• 12:01 Biggest difference on sales between Prime Day and ordinary days
• 15:29 The biggest performer on Prime Day; Amazon Sponsored Display Ads 
• 22:27 What is automatic campaign and how does it work
• 28:05 Prime Day 2020; Newest biggest seller
• 28:24 Tips for brand registered on Amazon and it cost, benefits and set-up
• 32:11 Multiple strategies to build up a campaign
• 34:52 Creating a campaign strategy for long-term growth
• 37:21 Amazon Sponsored Ads and how it increase brand awareness in your niche
• 43:40 Effectiveness of video marketing
• 46:33 Is reviews matter to Amazon and how many reviews needed on Amazon
• 48:56 How to delete an old campaigns in the campaign manager’s list
• 50:33 Amazon advertising cost; how does it cost for reigniting an old campaign ads

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Explore these Resources

In this episode, we mentioned the following resources:

• Sponsoredprofit.com 
• https://www.linkedin.com/company/sponsored-profit/about/
• https://www.sponsoredprofit.com/
• darrell@sponsoredprofit.com
• https://www.facebook.com/sponsoredprofit
• https://www.instagram.com/sponsored_profit
• https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCh61hdW8x6iVrPl7TIg3Ggw
• https://www.amazon.com/blackfriday
• https://blackfriday.com/cyber-monday
• https://prreach.com/

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Norman  0:02  

Hey, everybody is Norman Farrar, a.k.a The Beard Guy here and welcome to another episode of Lunch With Norm, the rise of the micro brands.

Norman  0:23  

Okay, so today I’m joined with the co-founder of Sponsored Profit, Darrell Patterson, and I should be completely transparent about this. I am a partner in Sponsored Profit. But all we’re doing is providing knowledge and education. So if you want to use the service, that’s one thing. We’re not promoting it. Okay, so Darrell is a PPC wizard and we’re going to deep dive into the world of Amazon sponsored ads. So what’s happened? What happened on Prime Day? What’s gonna look like moving forward for Black Friday, Cyber Monday? Alright,Where is my son? 

Kelsey 1:05

Hello.

Norman 1:06

Okay, so before you do anything, you’ve got to post that link from Saturday Night Live. About the father and son podcast. We’ll put that in here. It was absolutely hilarious and I think we need the Father Son podcast set like they showed on Saturday Night Live.

Kelsey 1:27  

Alright,I’ll get the right on it. I think our audience will enjoy it. I don’t know if you saw, but I’ve been posting a couple of Lunch With Norm memes on the page. So yeah, I’ll keep up with that. But getting back to our brand new Facebook page right here, Lunch With Norm Amazon FBA and E-commerce Collective, it’s brand new. We started to think about two weeks ago. So we’re still looking for members. We’re going to be talking about different topics with the online sellers and Amazon FBA Sellers. So beginner, intermediate, advanced, there’s something for everyone. We’re going to get the guests on the show onto the group to have different conversations. So super exciting. I’ll put the link right here. Just give it a second. So this link right here is to the Facebook group. So sign up.

Norman  2:25  

Yeah and post in the group.

Kelsey 2:29  

Yeah. We’d like to see conversation.

Norman  2:33  

Yes. Oh, by the way, Kels, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I am drinking from my birthday gift. 

Kelsey 2:42

That’s a nice mug. 

Norman 2:43

Both sides. The other side says, What the hell’s a bell? That’s very good and Kels, look. It just arrived. 

Kelsey 2:51

Wow, we got a lot of stuff. 

Norman 2:53

Got me all merged up. Yep, exactly. So that was an awesome birthday gift. Thank you. Son?

Kelsey  3:00  

For those watching, I can see we got some viewers already.. Go ahead and throw in where you’re watching from and say hi. We like to know who’s watching and yeah, follow us on social media and I don’t want to make this too long. But yeah, all right.

Norman  3:19  

Okay, so the other thing just, if you are joining us, we are broadcasting live on Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn. If you are watching a replay, just skip ahead and if you’re on my personal Facebook page, go over to the fan page, which is Norman Farrar a.k.a The Beard Guy. You’ll see a lot more information about the whole episode as well as highlights and other content and if you have any questions, throw them over in the content area. Other than that, sit back, relax, grab a cup of coffee, and enjoy the show. Now where is Mr. Darrell?

Darrell 4:02  

Hey Norm. How are you?

Norman 4:03

Hey. How are you, Sir?

Darrell 4:05  

Very good. Thank you. Very good.

Norman  4:07  

So what is the weather like in the UK today?

Darrell 4:10  

I was just biting and saying I’m a bit chilly. I’d say just a little guide. So just at the door. I’m freezing.

Norman  4:17  

Yeah, you should feel it here. Oh, I didn’t notice Angie from Tampa. I used to have a company in Tampa. I love Tampa. Anyways, I wish I was there. Because it’s very, very cold here. So hey, Darrell, before we get started with today’s episode, can you tell everybody a little bit about yourself, your background and your background?

Darrell 4:42  

Yeah, so I’m ex military and left the Royal Navy and started contracting fixing helicopters and airplanes. Got sick traveling around the world and living out of a suitcase in hotels. Sounds great, it was a bit then after a while. So I started looking into other ways I could pay the bills and be over the family more and that’s why I came across Amazon, that was back in 2014. So I built up and scaled my own brand on Amazon. Always had a problem with PPC, tried pretty much every agency, tool, software out there, and I’ve never really had much success. So I’ll double down and really try to get deep into PPC and really understand it and that’s where Sponsored Profit came from. We started running ads for ourselves and a few friends and then other friends are asking if we could help and yeah, we kind of built a business out of that and that’s where we are now. So this is all I do now, just running PPC campaigns for I was gonna say for the larger sellers. So the larger sellers in the agency where we also built one for profit as a way to help the smaller establishing and growing brands and yeah, pretty much a full on PPC geek and that’s all I’ve got my time, dude.

Norman  6:23  

I didn’t know you were in the Navy.

Darrell 6:26  

Yeah, I was just under 10 years in the Navy.

Norman  6:30  

I was an artillery guy. But anyways, yeah, I could never figure out why people wanted to go on the water. Anyway, that’s a whole other.

Norman  6:42  

Yeah, I just tried to think of some insults I can give. 

Darrell 6:44  

I’m sure there’s plenty, Norm.

Norman  6:50  

So hey, look, we just passed Prime Day. I can tell you for myself, for my brands, I was very disappointed and I can also, I can tell you another thing, which shocked me was Amazon when they talked about the success of Prime Day. Look at the numbers. Look at the stats. 65% of sales on Amazon this year were through Amazon own products. Amazon owned products. Right. So 35% was left for us. But I don’t know about you, like across the board. What did it look like for you? Or was it just me? Maybe I did something wrong.

Darrell 7:36  

Man. I think you hit the nail on the head. Those are disappointing. Generally, I think the previous Prime Days have been amazing, right? It’s outside of Black Friday, Cyber Monday and then the man rush up to Christmas, Prime Day’s been the day of the year for most brands. This year, I think there’s lots of reasons why that was very different. But they’re very flat. I think on average, certainly the accounts we manage. So 50 to 100% increase, which is pretty disappointing, right? Especially given even last Prime Day, our average increase was between three x and four x.

Norman  8:28  

Well, what about the, did you see a difference from day to day, the first day to the second day?

Darrell 8:35  

The first day, Tuesday on again, this is on the council we manage, was better than the Wednesday. It was almost like Wednesday dropped off again for most accounts. So it was maybe 30,25, 30% up on a normal day. But only half the increase of the first day. It was very strange. I obviously blocked everything else. I ate my calendar for those couple of days and the day before and the day after to make sure we tried to maximize all the accounts and yeah,I was getting frustrated at times. It was like there’s nothing happening. It was crazy.

Norman  9:22  

Yeah and I’d have heard some, but very few. Really just killing it. Yeah. People like you said, Yeah, maybe you doubled your sales. But what it used to be like, I just didn’t see it and I’m wondering, if I’m going out on a limb here, anybody who’s listening just take it for what it’s worth. But I’m wondering if you can take Prime Day as another leading economic indicator. You got car sales, you got more or house sales, maybe Prime Day, how is it? Maybe that should be the read on the economy. How many people are buying? I don’t know.

Darrell 10:06  

I think the whole inventory issue has played a big part. I think it’s obviously because of COVID and the situation. 

Norman  10:18  

Not for Amazon. 

Darrell 10:21

Not for Amazon. But in terms of that, you are saying those numbers 65,35. I mean, only a year ago, we were talking about third party sellers outgrowing Amazon’s own sales, right? We were, I think it’s 55% was third party sales, and only 45% was Amazon. The difference is, if Amazon is controlling how much inventory people can send, more people are struggling to get hold of inventory, it kind of makes sense that their sales would be up, right? They’re never gonna run out of stock or limit the inventory they’re taking.

Norman 10:58

Or receiving, three weeks into it, or I mean, it’s so unpredictable right now and yeah, you could throw it on COVID and, like, we’ve got a bunch of new products. First of all, it’s very, it’s harder to list. Second of all, you’ve got to have a pretty good strategy to get around and bump those sales up, which we’re doing with rebates and PPC. But if you took a look hindsight, is there anything that you could provide for our listeners, that they might have looked at differently, that they might be able to apply to Black Friday sales coming up, and I don’t think Black Friday sales are going to be horrible. I think they’re going to be fairly bang on. Like, they were like, as long as we can get the inventory systems in place and you can sell. That’s the problem, Amazon, let us sell. 

Darrell 11:58  

I think the biggest difference between this Prime Day and a normal Prime Day is the fact that is so close to Black Friday, right? We’re only what we’re known for four weeks away. Yeah. So yeah, I think the fact that it is so close, and we kind of touched on this the last time we spoke, right, it was it, how’s it gonna pan out? It’s either going to be great and it’s going to be an awesome start to q4 or it’s going to flop because it’s too close to the holidays and I think it’s the second option, all these inventory and COVID issues aside, I think it’s just too close. I think people are starting to go back to work. There’s a lot of uncertainty, people are potentially holding, I guess, where to get all those typical quarter 4 sales in time for the holidays. But waiting closer to Christmas. I think that’s my take on it. But we did have a couple of really good successes one until quite a bit. But in terms of what to take away from Prime Day, having gone through all the accounts, post Prime Day, there’s a lot of people searching for gifts already, right. The people that aren’t waiting, the people that were on Amazon shopping. So taking all those gift related search terms, from your search term reports and either add in monthly campaigns or building all these terrific campaigns that you can switch off after the Holidays around those on those converting terms and we’ve done this every year and it’s massive, right? There’s a lot of, there’s hundreds, if not thousands of different ways people search for gifts for him, gifts to her, gifts for dad, gifts for brother, like there’s tons of that type of keyword. They’ve got loads of search volume at these high traffic times. But you need to identify which ones work for your products and when it’s done right. You can not necessarily waste but you can spend a whole ton of cash, testing all these type keywords and are on these high traffic days. Well, we’ve just had one night and it’s really close to Black Friday. So not a lot it’s going to change between now and then. I think taking really, really getting deep into that data and making the most of it in the week or two ahead of Black Friday will make a huge difference. I think something out there campaigns have done really well over Prime Day around 20 to 25% of total sales from non product specific keywords to I think like stocking stuffers and looking at these gifts like keywords. So, there’s a lot of traffic on those. But don’t you don’t want to just be blanket testing all that stuff on a high traffic day. If you’ve already got that information from your Prime Day accounts, then the news is going forward over the next few weeks into Black Friday.

Norman  15:20  

What type of sponsored ad sponsored brand accounts are working right now, or campaigns are working right now?

Darrell 15:29  

So the accounts absolutely smashed it on Prime Day, they added a few things in common. So one was that they had Prime Day deals and Prime Day exclusive deals. I know that has been a big challenge for a lot of sellers as well, because the short timeframe between the Prime Day being announced and having to get those deals submitted and set up in time for Prime Day. I know, we were talking to someone only last week on that. Didn’t even get that memory load. By the time they realized it was Prime Day, it was too late deals already closed. It was a really short window. Whereas normally you have, they go a couple of months beforehand, right and they start selecting who they’re going to run for these promos. So the ones that did those, those Prime exclusive deals, typically done really well. In terms of ad types, I think the biggest performer from our point of view was sponsored display. I know for people listening, if you’re not brand registered, chances are you don’t have access to the sponsored display. But sponsored display, product targeting which is the newer version. Sponsored display has been around for a while, right? Which is kind of the baby version of DSP, it’s like the only way we can use within the advertising console to target sellers off of Amazon and that’s based on people who viewed your product pages or similar product pages but haven’t purchased. Fairly recently, they introduced product targeting for sponsored display, which used to be the old type product targeting for vendors where you’ve got the placement below the buy box, right. So people have always wondered, I hate to get that used to typically on a B for vendors, or now we’ve got the ability to have that ad position and also the ad position below the bullet points through sponsored display and a whole host of others. But they’re the two main positions, because they’re above the fold on a product detail page, right? That’s the only two things other than the actual product. So what we find with with Prime Day, and obviously the huge uptake in traffic, and the fact that all the coupons, so if it’s a Prime exclusive deal, or it’s a Black Friday deal, lightning deal, even a coupon or a discount, all of those and the little banners, the little orange banners or Prime Day was blue, but you got those little coupon promotion things that actually show up in the ads. So if you’re advertised on a product that doesn’t have those kinds of discounts, you’ll see the shoppers eyes are drawn to those coupons. So sponsored display on on products that were already high traffic items, I’m thinking of one particular example and we had a weather specific case and that happened to be number one in the whole of the sports and outdoors category and we managed to take the ad position right beneath the bullet points and with just a small coupon, and then Excuse me, I think it done something like 300 units in less than two hours off that product listing. So that’s not the entire sales, that’s just one ASIN in a product display campaign that we were targeting. That happened to be a bestseller in the entire sports and outdoors category. Which obviously on a day, like Prime Day is huge. So we took that information and then started targeting all of the other high traffic products that were not similar but complimentary type products. So I think one of the biggest mistakes people make when they’re doing any kind of product targeting is that they only look at the same type of products. They’ll be selling a silicone spatula, typically people try and target their direct competitors. What we found was a really, really powerful strategy on Prime Day, targeting complementary types of products, the same kind of audience, but not the same product. So you’re not competing directly then. So, review count doesn’t become as important, price doesn’t become as important. It’s just getting eyeballs on your product listing.

Darrell 20:16  

So yeah targeting other complimentary high traffic products that already got bestseller badges or the high up in the rankings in their top level category that’s complimentary to your products, you can get a lot of traffic, except this one particular example, I think was like 200 units in less than a couple of hours. In addition to all the other products we’ve typed in, but this one in particular stood out. So. it’s a very, it’s a bit labor intensive, in terms of you got to go and find these complementary type products that are already ranked highly and getting lots of traffic. But if you can do just piggybacking off of their success, essentially.

Norman  21:00  

Yeah, so some of the like, for an example, let’s say that you’re selling HDMI cables. So the HDMI cables, where else, you think where else can you find a complimentary product? Well, gaming systems, TVs, basically anything that you can use an HDMI cable, and you just kind of slip it in there. The other thing you can do with that, outside of what you’re talking about, you can target those with bundles, with virtual bundles. So that’s another way to get some extra traffic there. Or if you can, depending on what the cost is, get that frequently bought together spot. But, kind of keeping it on PPC. So, let’s look at what are your top three going into Black Friday right now, if you add three types of campaigns that you’d be targeting, what would they be?

Darrell 22:02  

Auto campaigns are massively effective on these high traffic days. 

Norman 22:09

Okay, let’s stop there. Yeah, auto campaigns, there’s probably a whole bunch of people rolling their eyes saying auto campaigns don’t work. So just explain that.

Darrell  22:19  

I completely disagree. 

Norman 22:22

I thought you’d say that. Why?

Darrell 22:27  

So auto campaigns, historically, we’ve literally just used for research purposes, right? It was to sign a new product, turn on an auto campaign and gather those search terms, make sure Amazon knows what your listing and your products are all about and then build on that data from there, right? Even Amazon’s own PPC University, it says run an auto campaign then take the converting terms and turn them into manual campaigns. We’ll find the NY that we can drive more traffic, and more sales in most cases. Not all cases. But a lot of cases now from auto campaigns, we use that as a growth strategy now not just as a research tool. I think the big change, which isn’t particularly new, it’s been around a while. But the fact that you’ve got the four different match types in auto campaigns now. So you’ve got the close and loose match which it’s keyword related, and then you’ve got the substitutes and complements, ASIN  related to split, we’ve started splitting those out now into their own to one match type per campaign and giving them their own budget and then we can scale them up and optimize them at a more granular level. So previously, where the old autos, you would pull a search term report, and you’ll have tons of ASINs right there just spending your budget and never converting and there’s nothing you could do about it. There’s 1,000,001 theories on, you can negative phrase maps an ASIN and they’ll stop it and so didn’t work. You can take the brand name or time and find the keywords that it’s triggering. That just nothing worked. But now as an allow us to add negative ASINs to our auto campaigns, which has been an absolute game changer and particularly, we’ve been doing this really intensively for maybe the last six months, and it’s totally changed so many accounts. You’ve still got to go through the testing process, right? You’ve got to identify what doesn’t convert at those negatives, let Amazon go and find a whole bunch more until you get to a point where you’ve got more converting terms or ASINs than you have non converting and they’re all negative. But once you get to that point, then it’s just turn the tap up. You just keep cranking up that budget and we’ve seen sales go crazy on some of these auto campaigns. Now just because we can be that much more aggressive with our bids on our budgets, because we can really, really optimize it and at a much more granular level based on each particular match type. So, yeah, auto campaigns, whether people like them or loathe them. I know a lot of people go to well, it’s a campaign used to do great, and now it’s 100% Aiko, so I switched it off, don’t switch it off, just optimize it, more frequently optimize it better and give it time, right. You don’t need to lose a ton of money during that process. Budgets are tight, keep the budget low, but keep it going and just optimize over time until you get to a point where you can really start to scale up the bids and the budgets. Because there’s literally millions of products on Amazon, right? There’s no way that I’ve got quite a good process for keyword research, and ASIN research and competitor research. There’s no way I can find all of these products and I think the last stat I read was something like 3000 new sellers, new seller accounts registered in the US alone, every single day on Amazon. So these are all new people with potentially competing products or similar products, complementary products to yours. There’s no way you can keep on top of that. Amazon does a great job on finding these products or so finding these new listings that we’ve got 1000 reviews, and they’ve come on, they’re brand new, they’ve only got two or three reviews. We can target those products and just, sounds a bit brutal. But now we can just dominate all of those new sellers that come in. So Amazon has given us those new search terms, they’ve given us those ASINs that we can then go and specifically target with our product targeting campaigns and display campaigns, take up all the real estate on their product listings, makes it very difficult for new sellers when we got people going after that, but auto campaigns a great way for a really expanded reach.

Norman  27:29  

Yeah, so when you’re looking at those automatic campaigns, especially for new sellers, it might be either intimidating, or you just don’t understand the four different types of campaigns. If you understand one thing is the, I was gonna say the negative ASINs just do that and you’re gonna see instead of turning off your automatic campaigns that will make the biggest difference. So that’s number one. What’s number two?

Darrell 28:05  

Oh, it’s a token. Boy token, newest sellers are biggest. There’s two very different very,

Norman  28:14  

For the non brand registered, what tip would you give? For the brand registered, hat tip would you give?

Darrell 28:24  

Okay, so, non brand registered, we were limited to sponsored products, right. So, in addition to the auto campaigns, which we just discussed, broad phase in exact, all three match types. But at 20 everything, don’t try and advertise your entire product catalog. If you’ve got five products and you’re especially if you’ve got a limited budget, focus on the product that’s got the best conversion. One or two products, focus your efforts there, especially on these high traffic days. So 880 20 your products at 20 keywords, look back at, depends on how long you’ve been selling, if you’ve only got 30-60 days worth of data, then obviously use that but they’ve been selling for a year or two. Use as much historical data as possible. Identify the keywords that drove the majority of your sales and focus on them. Like we literally do through this process with all our accounts these days. It’s not time for testing, right? It’s time for making money, right? We want to make profit at the end of the day as well, not just sales. So really focusing on the keywords that drive the most traffic for you, the most conversions for you and for affordable A cost as well. It’s no good running a keyword 100% A cost and losing money on every sale, especially on these high traffic. You’re just gonna lose more. So really focus on what’s really driving sales and profitable sales and then you can be more confident in scaling up your budget for these days as well, right? So anything that’s just got clicks, and no sales history at all just pulls all of that stuff. Don’t even attempt to do anything with it at 20 on your keyword campaigns.

Norman  30:26  

That sounds great. You came up with something that said 100% A cost. Okay. So what are your feelings if you’re running high, let’s say and I don’t mean you high. If you were running high cost, high A costs, 50,60,70,80, a 100% A cost and you’re experimenting and broadening your keyword research, are you for that or against it?

Norman  30:56  

You want me to explain it? 

Darrell 30:58

Yeah, go on.

Norman  31:01  

I’ve heard, I have a lot of people that try to stick within 20 to 30%, A cost. They think that’s great. I think they’re leaving money on the table, because they might not be aggressive enough. So what I like to see is if I’m running 20 to 30% A cost and I’m in that zone, and to go really wide, find some other keywords that I might be able to run, test, and get the data on, and then break out those campaigns. So now you’re going really wide on your keywords, it might cost you more, it might look like it’s costing you more. But Darrell, you know this, we’ve seen this, where we’ve taken somebody who had I’m not sure if it was 70 or 80% A cost. Still kept it at around 54. Every week, their overall or their tacos came down and I think as long as that’s happening, then you’re on track.

Darrell 32:05  

It’s a very, it’s a different strategy. Right?

Norman  32:08  

So it’s a scary strategy to some.

Darrell 32:11  

So yeah, there’s multiple strategies. Right and and absolutely, particularly when we’re starting with a brand, we want to grow campaigns, we want to grow their business. That’s us why we run PPC, right? So yeah, we’re talking specifically about Prime Day leading into Black Friday. Absolutely, you want to be maximizing their profitability and the keywords are performing. Outside of that window, 100% we’re always testing new keywords. Every single week with what I didn’t know stuff and we wouldn’t necessarily try and get those, as you said, get those keywords to break even instantly. Over time, we want to get those keywords to break even or even profitable. When we’re testing, we’re just trying to find more and more longtail ways that people search for our product to build out the campaigns. There is always a time and a place where we’re running high A cost, but keyword level, not necessarily a campaign. We’re trying to push the rank, we’re gonna boost our sales velocity on a particular keyword, try and improve our organic ranking. Now the chances are running at breakeven or profitability is unlikely to generate enough sales volumes to have that impact on organic rank. So in those scenarios, yeah, we would want it Yeah. 80, 90, 100% A cost. For these high traffic days, that’s their keywords that you want to be really careful with, because they’re high volume and high A cost on a normal day.

Norman  33:54  

That’s a whole different story.

Darrell 33:57  

Yeah, it’s a totally different story.

Norman  33:58  

Yeah. But we’ve seen it. So this is still on and it could cover both new, intermediate, expert, but we’ve seen it where a product’s just about ready to turn over, we’re right in the zone. But the person gets spooked off their row as is going increasing, their A cost is decreasing. Or sorry, their total A cost is decreasing, yet they’re still fairly high and they want us to hold off on a campaign and it kills me when I see that happen. Because hold out another month, hold on another two months. Listen to the agency. I mean, if it’s the opposite, then that’s a whole different story unless there’s strategy behind it. But let’s go over to the, Oh, go ahead Darrell.

Darrell 34:52  

Just gonna say yeah, we call it the A cost trap, right? People get fixated on their A costs and you it’s not the most important metric to measure, right? If you’re just looking to make profit, if you’re comfortable where your business is, and you’re not looking to grow, and you’re just looking to extract maximum profit, or your brand positioning to sell and you want to get that profitability up, absolutely, you want to drive that A cost down, because you are essentially showing more profit in the business there and then, but as a longer term growth strategy, you need to be looking at the total A cost, right? So it’s the impact that your ad spend is having on your total business and that doesn’t happen overnight, it takes time. But, if you’re spending, let’s say you’re doing $100,000 in sales a month, and you’re spending $10,000 on ads, now you’re totally Gus. Tacos is only 10%. If you’ve only got $20,000 of your sales from PPC, but your A cost is 50%, right? People are always looking to try and just drive that 50% down to 20 to 30%. But they’re still only spending 10% of their overall revenue. So that’s perfectly normal for any business, right? 10% of revenue invested in marketing. So if that number is staying steady, it doesn’t matter what the A cost is, essentially. If your total sales are growing at a faster rate than your A cost, then you’re in a good position, right? You’re actually making more money than if you dial it down to try and get into 20 to 30%, and you’re driving less and less volume, less velocity to your keywords and your organic sales are going to rank starts to slip and ultimately, that sales follow and then your total A cost actually starts to go up again. So yeah, it’s a fine balance. But the total A cost is the number that we pay to measure with our partners, rather than just focusing on A cost.

Norman  37:12  

So Kels, before we get into the questions, Darrell, can you answer the other side of the question for the registered, brand registered?

Darrell 37:21  

Yeah. So sponsored display. 

Norman 37:27

Simple right. 

Darrell 37:28

100% sponsored display product targeting is massively underutilized, is evolving pretty much week to week at the moment. There’s I think, 10 different ad positions now and back in the day, it was on with Vendor Central, it was only the one main ad position right under the buy box. Now there’s 10 different ad positions now. Particularly with ASIN and category targeting. It’s just vast, you can test literally hundreds of ASINs at a time and quickly optimize those campaigns and it’s ASIN, right? There’s no emotion in the keywords. But I know people tend to get attached to that’s my main keyword or I’ve got to run this keyword at a higher A cost. When it’s just ASIN, it’s just data and is really easy to optimize. But they perform so much better than pretty much any other app. I think the only other kind of less utilized ad type I would highly suggest for the biggest sales is video ads. Right? They’re still getting more competitive, they are getting more competitive as more people find them or buy them. Put the click through rate and the conversion rate on those ads is ridiculous compared to a sponsored product ad or any sponsored brand or any other sponsored brand. So it’s worth it if you’ve got a video, get an ad uo, check the requirements but they don’t even have to be, we’ve seen some ads that are literally filmed with an iPhone, right and the only 20 seconds but it’s just different, it’s new. A lot of people still haven’t seen video ads, which I spoke to a lot of people that are like I haven’t even seen them which is quite funny because there’s a lot of categories that don’t have any videos running any bans on video ads and that’s only going to get more and more exposure. I think they’re gonna be more ad placements for videos and there’s talk of video ads actually showing up on product detail pages which will be huge but yeah, it’s just it’s interruptive advertising right? You think of Facebook ads when it’s autoplaying on video, it catches people’s attention and it stands out. All the sponsored, other sponsored brand and sponsored display placements are static. So video is the only the most engaging ad type that there is out there.

Darrell 40:17  

In terms of spend, like said it is getting more competitive, some of the cost per clicks are a bit higher. So in terms of reach and what I think has the most potential, I’d say sponsored display ads, product targeting ads. In terms of engagement and conversion, video ads, if you’re not already running them, those two things for me, have been massive this last few months, comparatively in growth terms, not necessarily in terms of volume, still might only account for 20% of overall sales, but in growth terms there really, really taken off.

Norman  40:57  

Okay, Kelsey.

Kelsey 40:59  

Hello. Just to let  that we have to, in the show around, like 10 minutes, we’ll have to start wrapping up for Darrell. But, yeah, we do have a couple questions from Yarrow, you kind of touched on a couple of them already. But first off is product display ads getting more expensive for you as well, recently?

Darrell 41:26  

Not the not product targeting, I think obviously with Prime Day, over the last couple of weeks, Amazon does a really good job of going out to sellers and telling people to two x three x their bids and budgets on everything and rightly or wrongly a lot of people do and that obviously pushes the price up. But we’re finding that we’re actually getting much, much better A cost whichever way you want to measure it on product display ads, sponsored display ads, like, yeah, there’s more people competing. You just have to be on top of your optimization, right? If you’re running too hot, especially with ASIN targeting, there’s no native, right? What you can afford at your breakeven or even if you push in for profit, but there’s so many products out there to target, there’s really no need to get hung up on on any particular one, unless you’ve got a specific competitor that you’re really gunning for and you’re really going after. Just keep testing, just keep adding more targets, There are literally phases to the cycle through until you build up, build up this big pot of raisins that you convert well at an affordable cost. In terms of average price, I haven’t seen any increase in fact, I’ve probably seen on average, but from a performance relative to key words, that’s where it performed better at a better price.

Kelsey 43:16  

Okay, and just to let the listeners know, we do have a little giveaway that we’re handing out at the end, for one lucky guest. So please stay till the end of the video to find out what that is and see our second one. What about video ads? What is your recent experience? Which videos are working better?

Darrell 43:40  

So even things like unboxing videos, right? Which typical influencer type videos, lifestyle videos.  Yeah, just anything of the product being used. I always look at a video and think, treat your video the same way as you would treat your product listing, right? If you’re putting together enhance brand content, or you’re just putting together the copy for your bullet points. Like what are you trying to get across to your buyer, right? How’s it gonna make their life better? Try and convey that in your video. That’s how people convert on a product listing, right? They see the images and they picture themselves using that product and what it’s going to do for them? Hit their pain points. How is it going to make their life better? So if you’ve taken the time to build a good product listing and you’ve got a good conversion rate, you already know those pain points right? Give that to your design to video go and and get the video okay around those pain points so someone can instantly relate to it.

Norman  44:54  

Yeah, now just on that for a second. If you do have a brand ambassador or if you do have an influencer that loves your product, you could probably reach out to them and they’ll do something like that for you for free. So, whip up the iPhone and people, you don’t have to hire people to do a professional product video. Candid videos are like you were saying are just as good. But if you do, like we’ve had Rob Burns on, talking about product videos. They don’t have to be expensive either. When he’s talking, they’re four or five 600 bucks, for a professionally done video and he can go on to Animoto and do a video. There’s all sorts of ways of doing it for fairly cheap. Now, Kelsey, I saw Nathan Clark, I, now this is above Yarrow. I had a statement or was it a question?

Kelsey 45:57  

Okay. So first of all, he said his Prime Day was terrible. 

Norman 46:02

Sorry to hear that. Join the club.

Darrell 46:04  

You’re not alone Nathan.

Kelsey 46:08  

If I ever get targeted like that, I’m going to have a family member buy their product and leave a one star review of photos. But he does have a question.

Norman  46:20  

I wouldn’t recommend that.

Kelsey 46:24  

His question is, does the amount of reviews a listing has determine what PPC strategy to use?

Darrell 46:33  

Yes and no. I’m a great believer in using Amazon’s own data, right? Amazon’s got way more data points than we’ll ever have and Amazon suggests not to run ads at all on products with less than 15 reviews. That’s their own advice, three and a half stars plus, and at least 15 reviews. So typically, when we’re starting out with a new product, we would like at least a handful of reviews, before we start doing anything too aggressive with ads, just from a conversion perspective. I think the way to look at reviews and PPC is look at your competitors, right? Look at the keywords that you’re looking to target. Hi, Joe, how would your ad position sat amongst those, you’ve got those top four spots, assuming that’s what you were aiming for? What does your review look like relative to your competitors, if all your competitors only got 20 reviews, then you’ve got seven, it’s not that big a deal, right? You can go there and compete. But if you’ve got seven reviews, and everyone else has got over 1000 reviews, you’re going to struggle from a conversion perspective. Unless you’ve got something else to sweeten the deal, like a really heavily discounted price or a big coupon or there’s something more valuable to them by clicking on your ad than one of your competitors. But yeah, reviews plays, it plays a huge part in terms of from a conversion perspective and the click through perspective. So yeah, it’s depending where you’re at, just always look at what your ad looks like, or would look like, relative to the competitors that are already in those positions that you’re aiming to go for.

Norman  48:32  

Your listing, if your listing is optimized, and you think you can take on your competitor, that’s another way of just winging it a little differently.

Kelsey 48:42  

Okay, and we got one more, and then I think we’re gonna have to start wrapping it up after this. But from Dr. Koz, any idea how to delete old campaigns in the campaign manager list? It’s an eyesore.

Darrell 48:56  

So when you say old campaigns, are they paused or are they archived? If you never intend to use them again, then archive them and then there’s a filter just above the table on the left hand side, you can change it to show a filter by active status. So if you only want to see the campaign’s that are active, you can just select enabled and that will just hide all of the paused and all of the archive campaigns and in the same way, you can use that same active status filter to show any campaigns that are only paused or only archived. You can’t ever get rid of them. But you can just use that filter to hide all of the stuff that’s not active currently.

Norman  49:41  

Oh, I got something along those lines. So I’ve heard that you should never pause a campaign. So, there’s two ways either pause a campaign or gear rid of the campaign, archive it. But then I’ve heard the other side that says, never pause it, play with the bids, like you can lower the bids, or you can make it where it really becomes inactive. But the reason for it is that if you ever do want to turn it back on, it’ll cost and it’ll be harder for you to get it going again. What are your thoughts?

Norman  50:30  

You’re the tiebreaker, by the way.

Darrell 50:33  

Historically, I would agree. Yeah, I think from not just from a campaign point of view, from an ad group point of view, a keyword point of view, and never use the archive or pause anything. Just lower the bids to the point where it essentially switches it off and the logic there was that it sends the wrong signal to Amazon, right? To the algorithm and you’re switching this off, you’re saying you’re not relevant for this anymore. I think Amazon’s got a lot smarter over the years, and particularly, this last 12 months. There’s been a lot of changes and even in terms of changing campaigns, it used to be a key word at the same bid would perform completely different from one campaign to another and there’s a lot of strategies around that and we used to do it a couple of years back moving keywords from one campaign to another campaign that has specific purpose. But now, it’s not as it doesn’t have the same impact, right? I think now you can kill a campaign. We do it all the time. We have a spring clean and clear rank and if the keywords not working, then we’ll pause it a lot of stuff to get rid of, and it doesn’t seem to have the same effect that it used to, say negative effects it used to, and you can start a new campaign now and within hours be getting data and making sales, right? That wouldn’t be possible if everything else we’ve done over the last year olds archiving and pausing it and getting rid of stuff, we’ve essentially switched all that off. We don’t find that nice, I don’t think it’s that big a deal. We talk to people all the time, well, I’ve got all these campaigns that are a mess. I need a cleaner, better structure. But I don’t want to lose my campaign history. Absolutely, if you can use an existing campaign show that’s got some aged history, as well as recent history, absolutely use it. But if it’s an old shell from three years ago, that you haven’t done anything with for the last two years, there’s literally no value in it anymore. It’s gone. So don’t worry about getting rid of stuff. It will cost you more however, just to go back to your second point there about it gets more expensive. If you were to turn a campaign off that was performing really well and for whatever reason, you switched it off for over a month or two. So you run out of inventory, it will cost you more for those same keywords, those same ad positions and I think it’s almost always I’ve been hit, like Google’s sandbox, a bit of a penalty, almost, for running out of inventory. I think inventory is playing a bigger and bigger part now in the ranking algorithm, not just for organic rank, but for ad rank as well. So if you don’t have that recent sales history, you’re looking back at a further look back window, and your competitors have been selling, while your ads have been paused or switched off. They’ve got recent sales history, right and recent sales history is kind of where it always outweighs historic sales history, it’s going to hold more value. So essentially, what ends up happening is to get the same position in the auction, you have to bid more. When you’re when you’re current and you’re well optimized, you’ve got high click through rates, you’re highly relevant. You’ve got a high conversion rate, Amazon loves that, right? That’s what they want, they know that what the ad that they’re showing to the shopper is exactly what the shopper is looking for. Because it’s converting and making sales and that’s what Amazon wants. So they’re going to keep rewarding that seller more than they’re going to reward someone who’s not been advertising for the last three weeks, three months, wherever, wherever that is. So you’re just going to pay more essentially for the same ad position. Over time, you’ll start to build up that authority again, and you can start to get those same ad positions. Those lower cost per click, your cost per click will start to come down to a point. But yeah, it will be more expensive if you try and reignite an old campaign.

Norman  54:54  

Okay, I just noticed Simon joined us as well. So he’s a regular on the call. Well, and yes, I know that feeling.

Darrell 55:02  

Soggy summers that well.

Norman  55:03  

Soggy innisfil here. But anyway, hey, Simon, welcome back and everybody, Yarrow and Simon and Nathan and Dr. Koz, and if I missed anybody, just Hey, welcome and thank you for being part of the community. If one of the things I want to ask the community is we’re trying to at least touch on PPC once a month. If there’s any topic, if there’s anything that you want us to walk through, step by step, let us know. If there’s anything that you want us to publish in the group step by step, SOPs, let us know because we can either publish articles, or put the SOPs into the group to help you guys out. So just let us know, anytime and we’ll do that. So Darrell, I know it’s time I think I’ve even went over time and I know you have to go. But look, how do we get a hold of you?

Norman  56:13  

As he freezes.

Darrell  56:16

Sorry. Yeah, So I’m not a social media, spotlight type person. But yeah, email is probably the best way to get a hold of us. Either through the website and sponsoredprofit.com or darrell@sposoredprofit.com.

Norman  56:40  

Very good. So here’s the thing. So first of all, thank you for being on. The second part of this is not today, not tomorrow, but we’re working out a bonus for the agency part and for Sponsored profit, which is a $97 a month tool, which is going to be in the group. So if you head over to the group, there’s going to be bonuses there that you can take advantage of, should be published in about a week.

Norman  57:12  

But here’s what we’re doing today.

Norman  57:17  

Darrell, is offering a half hour, 30 minutes of free consultation and if again, if you have not heard of Darrell before, great. Because Darrell doesn’t want to be in the spotlight. He wants to be back there working on data working on what works. So here’s the deal. Just like last time, first person to respond. I want Darrell, get some for a half hour or a 30 minute consultation to help you out with your PPC.

Kelsey 57:51  

Alright,and I know Darrell is still in the studio. But Darrell if you need to go,

Norman  57:57  

You can just go and we’ll let you know.

Kelsey 57:59  

Yep. Alright. Thanks for coming on, Darrell. Yeah, so is it I want Darrell?

Norman  58:04  

I want Darrell. So anyways, let me see. Okay, so I think that’s probably it for today’s show Kels, why don’t we just get right into it?

Kelsey 58:20  

Okay, so, first of all, yeah, we’re gonna be starting to do we’re going Oh, before I do that, it looks like we got a winner. Nathan. Nathan gets a 30 minute consultation. I don’t know the best place for you here. Nathan. I’m gonna put my email in. It’s just k@lunchwithnorm.com. You can go email me and I’ll link you up with Darrell and we’ll get that consultation going.

Norman  58:48  

I think you’re gonna love it. Nathan. This guy knows his stuff.

Kelsey 58:53  

Yeah and anyone else? If you just want to say hi to me. If you want something from the show, you can always reach me at k@lunchwithnorm.com. But yeah.

Norman  59:02  

He doesn’t even answer my emails?

Kelsey 59:04  

I junk mail.

Kelsey 59:09  

So, our Facebook group Lunch With Norm Amazon FBA and e-commerce Collective. We’re starting to build a community. We want you to join. So if it’s something you’re interested in, please join. We’re even looking for moderators right now. So I know we got Nathan, Simon, Yarrow, Dr. Koz, everyone, we see you here every single day, or every single time we do the podcast. So if it’s something you’re interested in, you want to be a moderator group. You can email me and we’ll talk and we’ll figure something out. But yeah, I think it’d be really cool and to get some you guys involved, because you don’t want to just listen to us talk.

Kelsey  59:55  

But yeah, is there anything else?

Norman  1:00:00  

I think that’s probably it. Other than, yes go ahead.

Kelsey 1:00:05  

I was just gonna say, before I lost my train of thought.

Kelsey 1:00:11  

There’s something, okay, go on.

Norman  1:00:17  

All that for that. Okay, so, hey, look, we’ve got a newsletter. We talked about it all the time. Just head over to either NormanFarrar.com or you can go over to Lunch With Norm and you can subscribe and the newsletter, Kelsey, what does it not do? 

Kelsey 1:00:35

It does not suck. 

Norman 1:00:38

Very good. It does not suck. It’s got tons of content in it. Every Monday it’s published and you’re not going to be seeing it loaded with ads or anything like that. We’re distributing content to help make you a better online seller. Other than that, I hope you enjoyed the podcast today.

Norman  1:01:00  

Who’s our next guest? Who’s Friday?

Kelsey 1:01:02

Amy Reese. Actually.

Norman  1:01:05  

I can’t wait. That’ll be very interesting. So tune in on Friday and listen to Amy. She’s great. I’ve been on her podcast a couple of times and yeah, she’s incredible. So, Amy will be in on Friday. Other than that, I hope you have a good day and it’s gonna get colder too. So Oh, man. Hey, Kelsey. By the way, next time you get me merch, get me a black hoodie with Lunch With Norm because it’s cold in here right now.

Kelsey 1:01:37  

I’ll get you a parka. 

Norman 1:01:39

A parka? 

Kelsey 1:01:41

Yeah, or maybe one of those toques with fake beards. We’ll start. I mean, you don’t need it.

Norman  1:01:45  

With a fake beard?

Kelsey 1:01:47  

Well, for me maybe.

Norman  1:01:50  

Anyways,

Kelsey 1:01:51  

Oh, I remember what I was gonna say. So, the past two podcasts, we’ve started giving little giveaways, like the free press release with Shane Oglow and the free consultation today. So this is something that we’re gonna start throwing in once in a while. It might be at the end of the podcast, and maybe in the middle might be the beginning. Who knows? So you have to be watching live to get these free little gifts. But yeah, just you tune in Monday, Wednesday, Friday, 12 o’clock. Watch the episode. Maybe we’ll get something fun.

Norman  1:02:29  

Yeah, some of these things too. Like those press releases. If you go to prREACH.com, you’ll see there if they’re written for you, there are over $200 each. So we gave away three of them last episode and then even with Darrell. His time is worth a ton. So these aren’t cheap giveaways. Anyways, that’s it. 

Kelsey 1:02:53

That’s it. 

Norman 1:02:54

Now we can do this? Now we can finally do it. I can do it right, you’re not gonna? Okay. You did it again. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Friday at noon Eastern Standard Time. Thank you guys for watching. Thank you for being part of the community and enjoy the rest of your day.