I would like to introduce Amazon Launch and Rank expert, Izabela Hamilton. Izabela is the founder and CEO of Rankbell. For those of you who don’t know, Rankbell is a brand accelerator that helps Amazon Businesses grow to 7 & 8 figures through organic keyword ranking and optimization! In this episode we dive into the different types of rebate strategies you can use to launch and rank your amazon products!
Izabela Hamilton is the Founder and CEO of RankBell, a brand accelerator that helps Amazon businesses grow to 7 & 8 figures through driving organic keyword ranking and optimization. Izabela is on a mission to help third party sellers make an impact with their brands, build sustainable wealth, stop stressing about financial security, and start living the life they’ve always dreamed of.
To learn more about organic Amazon keyword ranking, reach out to Rankbell online.
Date: June 28, 2020
Episode: 2
Title: Norman Farrar introduces Izabela Hamilton, an Amazon Launch and Rank Expert and a Founder and CEO of Rankbell.
Subtitle: “In order to succeed, we must first believe that we can”
Final Show Link: https://lunchwithnorm.com/episodes/1-branding-mistakes/
In this episode of Lunch With Norm…, Norman Farrar introduces Izabela Hamilton, an Amazon Launch and Rank Expert and a Founder and CEO of Rankbell.
She is also a brand accelerator that helps Amazon businesses grow to 7 and 8 figures through driving organic keyword ranking and optimization. She is on a mission to help third party sellers make an impact with their brands, build sustainable wealth, stop stressing about financial security, and start living the life they’ve always dreamed of.
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:
Our favorite part of recording a live podcast each week is participating in the great conversations that happen on our live chat, on social media, and in our comments section.
In this episode, we mentioned the following resources:
Join our discussion network here!:
Norman 0:00
Hey everyone, I guarantee you this time I hit the go live. I know last Tuesday, I was talking forever and then I realized that I did not hit the go live. I’m learning. So anyway, sit back, relax. It’s Norman Farrar, and this is my Thursday live chat Lunch with The Beard Guy and today, I’m very excited to have a very good friend of mine and the co-founder of Rankbell, Izabela Hamilton.
Izabela 0:30
Thank you. Good morning from California.
Norman 0:34
You just threw something together for me, right?
Izabela 0:37
Yes.
Izabela 0:40
How are you Norm? It’s always so good to talk to you. It just, every time I see you, and I hear you, you just give me this energy like I could do anything.
Norman 0:51
Well, that’s because I tell you to have five or six cups of coffee before you come on.
Izabela 1:00
That also. Would that be said, salud?
Norman 1:03
Hey, cheers. There we go. Okay, Isabella. So this is going to be probably 20 minutes to half an hour and I think there’s a lot of people out there that really still don’t trust or understand different types of launch strategies and rebates is probably one of the misunderstood launch strategies. One of the things too, is the cost. People think about, Oh this is costing me money, when really it’s just making them tons of money if they do it properly. So first of all, let’s back up and can you tell me a little bit about Rankbell?
Izabela 1:37
Absolutely. So Rankbell was founded purely just on the idea of helping Stellar, find out more about their products, so they would order the products from China or whatever they would order them from, and then our community of buyers would actually try them and give a quality feedback, per se. So if somebody sent a product that was not assembled correctly, or it came broken or any type of problems with that product, our buyers would let us know. So the more they did this, they would order the product from Amazon, get it, open it, see what’s good, what’s wrong, give us feedback, the seller would get the feedback. Well, we noticed every time we did that, the ranking of that product will just skyrocket. So we took that idea and and kind of created the system or where we have the quality control and the ranking all in one. That’s how I discovered this amazing, actually, thing because what’s better than being on page one? I don’t think there’s much better than that. So that’s how this got discovered and we’ve been so fortunate and blessed to have such a good service that helps sellers get on page one and start selling organically because we all like you said, Norman, everybody, they worry about the cost and you shouldn’t worry about the cost of when it comes down to something so essential for your business because we all worry about paying for the product, which obviously it’s an essential part of the process, paying for your products from China or from your supplier here in the US and then making sure you have the best packaging, making sure you have the best photos and everything else to that point, and then it goes live and then you can’t sell it because if people don’t see it, how are you going to sell it? Even though your product is better than your competitors, because I trust that the sellers that come to me and probably the ones you know, they all do their best to have the best product, I have no doubt on that they have the best product, but it doesn’t do them any good. Whether I or you believe that it’s a good product, what’s important is that the product gets visibility and you get visibility when you are on page one and if you cannot save or prepare for this, then you’re almost missing out on a lot because your business will be bad a lot on what you do that first month or two months when your product goes live. So I think you’re right. I mean, people, they should definitely consider the price and they should have a schedule or a budget to include ranking and launching and when they decide to launch their product.
Norman 4:45
I think there’s a big problem though a lot of people when they’re, we talked about this on Tuesday, and people undercapitalized their project or they don’t understand their numbers. Any normal business has a marketing budget and, if you launch a product, like you said, If nobody can see you, like I hear you have great parties. I live in Toronto, if I can’t find your house and I don’t have a map, there’s no way I can attend your great parties, which you never invite me to. But anyway, same thing with rebates, and there’s different price points. You’ve got free, you’ve got three, you’ve got six, you got 8,10 to 20 and there are different levels of why you need to have rebates, but what I want to talk about is really the cost and for us, we do a lot with our clients, we talk a lot about sticker shock, all of a sudden, they see an initial cost for like a marketing campaign and they think, Oh, do I have to give away this product for free and it’s really not free. First of all, when somebody buys a rebate, so when we talk about a full purchase rebate, you’re finding a perfect person on your private network, they’re buying the product because it might suit their niche. Maybe it’s somebody in the pet niche that wants a bully stick, the bully stick might cost, let’s say, $15 and then it looks like the person’s paying 15 but really what they’re paying is about only 25% because Amazon is paying them back for that verified sale. Did I explain that correctly?
Izabela 6:28
100% Yes, people forget that part and you’re right, a lot of them come to me and say wowl, this is so expensive, or am I just giving this product free? Or, some of them will say well, I give them the product for free? Are there any other benefits? When I say benefits, I mean reviews? They think, just because you do a ranking campaign, that automatically means that these people are, they have to review and it’s not true. I mean they’re helping the sellers rank a product that is what the service is in, of course, just like when you’re able to go from Seller Central and request the review button, then we have something like that as well, where we would follow up with buyers for that. But ranking campaigns should not be confused with a review campaign because in all reality, there’s no such thing as a review campaign and I think a lot of people tend to mistake the tools so like, they’ll use a chat bot, and they’ll offer these people have their products for free, but then they’ll immediately ask for a review, not only does they’ll buy your kind of feel like well, you just gave this to me for free to write your review, so it doesn’t sit well with them and they can also turn it around and probably contact Amazon. So you have to be very careful on how you approach these types of campaigns as well and ranking campaigns should be considered just that, because it’s amazing. Just that, just having reached that page one and of course, when you have an amazing product like we discussed, then people are going to want to review that product anyway, because it made such a difference in their life, maybe they’re buying something for their child or for their house and we know your product is the best. So give them that opportunity to try your product and another thing is when you do give away these products, what you’re trying to do is get this brand recognition. So if your product is as good as you say it is, then that person will tell all their friends and family and that’s what we all do, word of mouth. Hey, where did you get this? Like we talked about a hairdryer right before getting on the show today, right?
Norman 8;53
Because I need one.
Izabela 8:55
Of course you don’t need it, but you may want to maybe gift it to your wife or your friends. So because I gave us such a great review. I told you, hey, Norm, this is what I’m using and it’s fantastic. You’re gonna take my word for it and probably buy it yourself next time you think about it. So that’s what’s great about one, obviously having a good product and two, having brand recognition. Because when you do have a ranking campaign, it’s almost like using an influencer. But you have to think of all these things. You’re giving the product for free. Yes, it will cost you like you said maybe maybe 5, 10 dollars depending on how much the product cost. But that person not only helped you rank because it’s an organic sale, but they will tell other people about this product if it’s that good. So consider it as an influencer. Of course maybe this person doesn’t have 10,000 followers, but maybe they do and some of them actually do. You don’t know who’s buying your product that can rave about it on their social media or maybe on their blog or any channel I mean, I’ve seen sellers of mine, that had Lexie, a baby product and one of the unknown influencers bought it and posted it in her mommy group and then the sales exploded. So something like this happens all the time and it’s beautiful because it’s organic and they’re like, Oh my God, my sales just exploded overnight. What happened? Well, this can happen all the time. So yeah, it’s a good ranking.
Norman 10:27
I’ve got two points, and one is what you were just talking about. We did a campaign with some shampoo and we had no idea that what happened all we knew is that we sold out way before we thought we would, almost immediately and what had happened is Ryan Seacrest. I guess his assistant bought it for him or something. Anyways, they posted that this was the best shampoo. We didn’t ask them to do it. There is no celebrity endorsement. They just posted it and all of a sudden our shampoo sold out. It actually caused a bit of a problem for one reason, which leads to my second my second point, because everybody because the influencer told them how great it was, which we didn’t ask for but they did, Thank you. They ended up doing a ton of reviews and it did so many reviews, the account got suspended and it took us about three months to get back because the amount I guess was about a 15 to 20% review rate that came in on all of these things. People just loved it. They liked it. It was great shampoo and it took another three months before we could accept it, like they allowed us back on but no reviews for three months and now it’s back on. But the point is, so many people ask for Oh, can you get me reviews? Can you get me reviews? Oh, why? Why don’t you just let it do the normal, just let it go organically? We’re always targeting I don’t know about you, but four to 7%. If I go beyond that, I mean, on launch, I might get as high as 10%. But if I go any higher than that, I’m sending red flags and I don’t want to send up those flags. If somebody likes the product, they will. So I’m looking at it as somebody goes, they go to the listing, the listing is optimized. They like what they see. They get their free product, they’re happy with it. Oh, it comes to them and it’s a nice packaging. So the branding is there as well. They might leave a review, but I really don’t think you very seldomly hear me say, Oh, my gosh, this person needs a review. When I’m talking with you about campaigns and the other thing is, when we’re talking about rebate campaigns, it’s any product like we just did a campaign, you and me together on a supplement and we got it to rank very high and very competitive keywords in less than a few days and they built out the reviews organically. This is from launch and got onto page one and there were about three or 4, 5, 6 keywords that ranked from number one to number six. Using your campaign, your rebate system.
Izabela 13:17
Thank you. Yeah. So just just like you mentioned, that’s actually a good point that you brought up and I don’t think any of us discussed this before, but that’s what happens. So Ryan Seacrest gave you a big shout out, right? You got all these reviews, Amazon suspended you. This just goes to show that Amazon is following a very strict algorithm. They don’t care who you are or what your product is, or who thought about it. It could have been JLo, it could have been anyone in your case, it was Ryan Seacrest.
Norman 13:48
Listen, gosh, Ryan Seacrest, Assistant.
Izabela 13:52
Amazing and I mean, it’s good. But at the same time, it’s like Amazon will shut you down and then ask questions later. So you lost sales in three months just because of that and were you able to tell them hey, this is the proof. This is Ryan Seacrest’s assistant, like, did you do anything and nothing?
Norman 14:16
I took screenshots, I took a screenshot of the actual announcement, the sales spiking and showed the reviews, they did absolutely nothing. Nothing and that’s another thing we should talk about too, the actual rebate system. So different rebate systems, let’s go from zero to $20, right? What’s the difference in buyer quality and how does that affect an Amazon score or Amazon ranking?
Izabela 14:52
Well, usually the products that are cheaper. I noticed I mean for a client, $20 may still mean a lot. But when I say cheaper, after that range of $20, those are cheap products. I mean, we have products that range to $100- $200. So, the lower price products actually, those people who are looking for bargains are usually the ones who are also buying these products and you would think just because it’s free, then anybody will just jump on them. But what we noticed with buyers, and even if you try to do a mini chat, that price is very important for them because even though you’re rebating them, they’re still afraid, oh, I’m spending $15 or $20 than mine. I might not get back. So when you look at this range of price products, usually you tend to attract I think in my opinion and don’t really take my word for it but you will attract a lower quality buyer because I feel like they’re just looking for some bargain prices and they’re not really willing. Somebody like a serious buyer that’s like, okay, I want to invest in this furniture piece that’s $200. You know they already have that money for it to pay in advance. So those are people who would usually buy higher priced items and then you have the lower price items. But, when it comes to quality score, I don’t think it’s more on the price. I think it’s more on the frequency of how many times they buy products during the day and how unrelated the items are. So if you’re buying a kitchen knife and then next thing you’re buying a tennis racket and then you’re buying bibs for a kid that you never even ordered for because Amazon sees your orders. They see everything that you order in the previous month or year or whatever. So if you keep buying diapers every month, their algorithm knows that somewhere there’s a baby involved, if all of a sudden you’re starting to buy notepads and school supplies for like seven year olds that’s unrelated to that. I think that’s what drives the score just a little bit more down, but it still doesn’t affect the ranking. I just think it maybe takes a little longer to rank and again, this is my opinion and what I’ve noticed but I’d like to hear your take on it.
Norman 17:35
Well, excuse me for a sec. Cigar, people tell me to stop smoking cigars. Okay, so my take first, I was talking more of the rebate cost. So if a free, if they’re rebate groups out there that are providing a free like just the product for free, compared to the one that might be $3 or $6 or $15. I always call, I have the app. Okay, so it could be like a Facebook group, or I have a concierge rebate, which is like you, I can go over to you and I can say, hey, Isabella, I’ve got a knife. Could you please make sure that people are interested in kitchen utensils? Could you have them add to cart or another model would be go and add to cart and then click off on any two competitors and come back and buy it. So I can give you a natural rhythm, which is why you’re more expensive and you have a vetted service, right? So it’s not like just going on and you’re a 100% right. If you’re going into a service that has, let’s say a thousand people buying and all of those people are buying. Normally the gnome, the coffee mug, the Coke Zero, you can see over here, but they’re all buying them. There’s a pattern, there’s a footprint. So I mean with you, you’re going into specific niches which helps break that pattern. So there is a difference between just going into a Facebook group, and so important because there’s so many people. There might be some good Facebook groups out there. But, there’s a bunch out there that just leave a huge footprint and it could hurt your account. Then you’ve got the apps and there’s a bunch out there and they’re good. Excuse me. I usually, just one sec.
Norman 19:38
Cigarr. I usually, what’s that Kels?
Kelsey 19:43
We do have a question? What about using automated feedback software that follows Amazon TOS?
Norman 19:51
Automated feedback software. So can you get clarity on that?
Kelsey 19:54
Yeah it’s from Robbie Stanley.
Norman 19:56
Oh, hey, Rob. Okay, so I don’t understand the question using automated feedback.
Izabela 20:04
Maybe trying to get reviews?
Norman 20:07
Yeah. Okay. So anyways, when we’re looking at these free sites, I find that those probably have the lowest quality score, although there could be some that have really great large networks. Then you’ve got the apps and the apps, I’m talking rebate, rebate key, rebate jet, all those apps. One of the things that I found when I’m using those apps specifically, I don’t typically try to give out 100% rebates. The problem is, people can make up fake accounts and then all of a sudden you have a hijacker on your account because they bought 10 of your products or 20 of your products and so what I do, just a little tip is that I always have a discount the people these unethical buyers are out there, they will, they don’t want to spend a dime. So if you put 5%, 10%, so it’s a 95% or 90% discount, you’ll avoid that because they’re looking for a free product and then when you go to a service like yours, there’s it’s that concierge where you really don’t have to worry about that at all. Because it’s always it’s a very diverse network and new people coming on and vetted, then you can tell them exactly what to do, which helps with a natural look and feel to Amazon, they’re not going to see a big red flag,
Izabela 21:38
Also, oh, sorry to interrupt you.
Norman 21:40
Yeah, no. Go ahead.
Izabela 21:41
You go on these like rebate sites. What’s very important when you are in a campaign is you have to make sure that you give enough of these units per day. So when you go one of these apps, you are not certain that you will reach that number, especially if you’re using a discount. Because on these sites, there are a lot of bargain shoppers and like you said they don’t really want to spend money. If you put it all 100% free, you will have a higher chance obviously, of reaching that goal. Let’s say for a supplement, we both know how hard it is to reach that number. It’s very competitive. In some cases, you may need to give 100 per day and how are you going to do that with a rebate site. Even if it’s full price, that is a difficulty so when you come to a more specialized service like ours, even we have trouble sometimes finding interested parties for supplements because it’s an item not everybody wants, of course with everything else, we don’t really have an issue with it. But when you go on these rebate sites, you may have an issue of reaching that number. Even if it’s a chef knife, that’s amazing. But chef knives are quite competitive. A lot of people are selling chef knives and they’re all amazing and it’s very hard to find the difference. So you may need to give away 50 a day, can these rebate sites give you that number per day that 50 units per day sale? That will make sure you get on ranking on Patreon. That is one thing that I’m not necessarily a fan of when using these rebate sites. Yes, it’s cheaper, way cheaper, for sure. But again, what’s the point? You just did a campaign of 300 units and then you’re not really where you are, where you shouldn’t be by giving away 300 units because it took you longer and because you weren’t really aggressive when you needed to. Now you kind of fell behind. So maybe a campaign that you need 300 units on these rebate sites, you may only have to do 100 with less service like the one I have, you may only need to do 100 on the specific keywords. So try and buy full price. Do you agree with that?
Norman 23:56
Yeah, absolutely. That’s kind of what I was saying with going to the higher services. So I’ve never had to worry about the guaranteed rate, I do mix it up and there’s also another element here, which you just talked about search, find and buy but using a mini chat or workflow using Facebook Messenger. So that is another component to this. So, for me, I like to mix it up between a concierge service. I work with the apps. So some of the three apps that I mentioned, I work with the concierge, concierge for me is the best and also with search find buy with some mini chat flows. So like through seller chat bot or something like that they’re evergreen flows. But the main thing is that you understand the process and where you’re spending the money and understand the numbers that you’re spending. So it just happened I had a conversation yesterday with a client that I know what I can do for them. I’m saying look it, I know where to bang the pipe. I’ll fix it. Just listen to me and he, 10 times and it’s like a deer in the headlights and it just give me a chance, right? You know that this is an awesome product, but they see the final price and they aren’t willing to take the chance and I can tell it like we’ve done so many campaigns, but like with a supplement, from zero, nobody existing to having 25 a day, 50 a day 150 a day. I know I was working on a supplement last year and it went from nothing. We gave away some rebates. We did press releases with them and it went 15, they went out of stock. We added 30 and they went out of stock. They added, we added 40, they went out to stock. We stopped using them as a client, because they kept running out of stock, they were afraid to spend money. But it got them from zero to first place for sleep aid, sleep aid supplements, sleep aid formula. There were six major keywords and they went from one to 150 units a day in a couple of weeks and I got this as a case study. So I was able to take the numbers and take a look because people go, Oh, you can’t do this or it doesn’t work with supplements. We just did one. The probably the most competitive keyword out there right now and we got it on page one on multiple keywords. So my other son just pinged me and he said, he’s a non amazon seller. Okay. So he just pinged me and he says, I don’t understand the process. Can we go through that? So somebody wants to buy a rebate, and they’re new to Amazon. Can you explain step one through or step A to Z?.
Izabela 27:01
Yes. So first, you have to get your product live, you have to get your products to America and then put them on Amazon. But the best thing to do is, find out how many giveaways you need to do. That’s a very important step and a lot of my clients and I don’t know of yours, Norman, they use Helium 10. It’s very elite, it’s a great process, they have CPR, and that gives you an approximate number of units you need to give away per day. It’s not exact because I don’t think there’s a service out there or software that can tell you exactly how many units you need to give away for a day and that is because of the algorithm, how many competitors are coming in and out all the time. You don’t know where your competitors are doing. They may like, do ranking campaigns that are shooting up the algorithm. So their CPR gives you an approximate number and that’s a good number to start, it’s usually a little higher than what we end up using. But if CPR tells you, you need to give away 20 a day, we might want to start with maybe 10 a day just to test it out. So don’t take that number as like the Bible and you need to follow it exactly. What we can do is start with 10 a day and test it and check every single day. How did the ranking move today or in two days? Did it go, did it shoot up to the next page? Did it only go up a few position and from then on, you can add or subtract how many giveaways you can do, So CPR recommends 8 days, but I’ve done ranking campaigns that lasted eight days, 10 days, two weeks, 30 days, and some that are continuous, where they come in every month and they do a few extra giveaways and those are probably the best because even though they’re still selling organically, you want to have that cushion. Because again, there’s a lot of sellers coming on to Amazon and they’re trying to do the same thing. They want to make money like you want the same thing. So because of that, the numbers kind of vary, and it’s not an exact number, but you have your product, you find out how many giveaways to do. You contact me, and I will make sure that you have those specific numbers every single day and because our service like you said, Norman is very concierge, you can just tell us Hey, I’ve reached this page, we can stop giveaways now or can we add another keyword or can we change this keyword to keyword, we can do all of that. We have a team that’s ready for you really at any time. Anytime you need to change something, add something, pause something, we’re all there for you.
Norman 29:54
You touched on a great point. There’s so many people who think that this is a one and done like press releases. He says, Oh, I sent out a press release and I’m not nationally known for every keyword, across the country three months later. Well, the same thing with rebates, rebates, what we found is that you have your initial campaign, and it doesn’t have to be eight days, you could try one day, which I don’t know, I have worked with one day. But if that’s a bit of a risk, I always find it when they do go out there and if you get results, if you don’t, then you gotta spend some more money, but it was something that was a Fluke by Manny coats. I remember reading that one day, he did it by accident and it worked out for him and we did try it and it worked out for us. I’m not sure if it works now. But you could do a pulse where it’s just a few every day or it could be an incline where it’s just a bit more every day, but your team is going to come up with that. The issue is when the campaigns over, you do an eight day campaign, you do a 21 day campaign, and then everybody thinks, Oh can sit down and it’s just going to be ranked forever and they forget, Amazon has competition. There’s new sellers coming on, there’s the sellers that are knowing that you’ve just bumped them off in the first place, or second or third or fourth and you’ve got to maintain and monitor again, just any tracking tool, just watch your keywords and if they start to fall, and we’ll group them together. So we have a silo of long tail keywords for a specific let’s say it’s grass fed bully sticks, well 12 inch grass fed organic, grass fed, natural grass fed and we’ll have them in this block and we color code them in Helium. Then we can see and usually what happens though all the whole group will start to fall and something’s up, either the indexing is off or whatever it is, once we find out, if it’s not the indexing, it’s just somebody knocking us down. We just throw a few more rebates against it and usually let’s say we started with 100. Maybe you just have to do three, four or five, just to get the ranking back up because you’ve got the sales history. So maintenance is a big issue that people forget about.
Izabela 32:11
Actually, since we’re talking about Rankbrell, what we decided to do, because we’ve had a long three months of quarantine and sellers running out of stock and not being able to order. At Rankbell, we decided to do a little discount for our sellers, and it’s a 25 orders for $250 and this is a six month subscription and this just helps those just like you mentioned, just to keep that flow coming in, and you know the price is unbeatable. I mean, I’ve never done this where it’s like $10 a unit and we’re waiving the signup fee which is usually 499. So, somebody out there listening and they want to take advantage of it. This will be the perfect time and we want to introduce this like subscription model exactly on what you said Norman because every month new sellers come on and if you have that small boost of even 25 units, that will make such a big difference and in the long run, it’s the cost, it’s not even existent. Like it’s such a small cost compared to the value that you get from such a service and we want to bring more awareness to the sellers that this service and services like mine are actually fantastic for your product and just like you said, in the beginning of this episode, people are always think of like the ethics of this. Amazon and other stores and pretty much anybody that sells something, they have used a rebate system, any store you go to even I haven’t been to Best Buy, but that’s just one that came into my mind. They used to have this rebates. You fill out the back of it, you send it into the store and you will get a rebate sometimes 50%, 25% sometimes even 90% I remember back in the day again, I don’t know if they still use it, but it’s not a system that’s frowned upon. This has been invented for brand awareness and for people to try and we see them all over, in all areas rebates work and Amazon is okay with rebates and until they say that that’s not allowed anymore, which I don’t think will ever happen, because we’re actually helping Amazon. If you get on page one and position one, guess what, you’re going to start creating a lot of organic sales. Amazon loves you for that! I don’t know why sellers think that Amazon is a guest stoop as a seller. Yeah, they do things like they did when Ryan Seacrest, where they just suspend you because you got too many reviews, but all reality they want you to make money, okay, they want you to make money, because if you make money, they make money. When you do a full price giveaway, Amazon is making money, you’re making money, but Amazon is making money. So they will love you for it. So they’re not looking at, you’re doing something bad. That’s why rebate apps exist and they’re flourishing, they’re doing really well and you just have to take everything as it is. The rebates are good, they increase your sales, they get you on page one, there’s nothing to be afraid. When you cross the line, and you’re doing a campaign that’s a 100 units and manage that or however you’re doing it and you request the review. You demand the review from all those people. That’s when it’s not good. That’s when it’s against TOS and I think people confuse the two of ranking campaigns with like a review campaign. They’re always worried. Oh my god, am I gonna get suspended because I’m doing a ranking campaign, no you are not. If you’re going to use black tactics and demand a review from these people that yes, that’s when you get suspended, just like in your case, you didn’t even request for it, but because the algorithm caught so many reviews coming in, you got in trouble and it’s the same thing. It’s not that they have they are personally attacking you. The algorithm found that what your brand is doing is not adequate. They don’t care if that Ryan Seacrest gave you a big shout out. They care nothing. Maybe those people behind the computers, they don’t even know who Ryan Seacrest is. They’ve never heard of whoever that name is, right? So that’s the thing, if you follow the rules and like you said, try to keep it under 10%. You can use a follow up and see what people think about your product, but most importantly, then that is make sure that you have a great product that is worth reviewing because at the end of the day, if your product is so unbelievable, as you say it is, then some people, not everybody will want to help you out at some point because, everybody know, a lot of people know how important reviews are for a brand. So, yeah, rebates are good.
Norman 37:11
Yeah and one other thing, and this is just branding 101, but when I’m not on Amazon, and I’ve got a product maybe on Shopify, I will spend basically the cost 100%. If if I’ve got a bar of soap, if I’ve got a three pack of soap, if I’m sending out something, bully sticks, pet food, whatever is selling, if it’s recurring, okay, if consumable or recurring, I always give not the product away, but the cost of acquisition. So if the cost of acquisition is 20 bucks and the cost is 20 bucks, that’s fine with me. I don’t mind because I know that product’s going out. It looks great when people open it and he’s got a great customer experience. Then people are going to come back and buy that product again. So I have no problem giving away products. The same thing with rebates.
Kelsey 38:05
We got a question from ….
Kelsey 38:10
But I have observed recently that the rebates are good for generating sales velocity, but not for improving the keyword rank. Do you think that diversity in traffic will have more impact than just generating sales?
Norman 38:22
Okay, so that was about diversity. That was about as he realized that he’s getting velocity but he’s not keyword ranking, I would say take a look at, are you using only one company and if it is, you might want to switch over and try it to a different company. The other thing is, you might not be giving away enough rebates, so if you’re going in Helium 10. Now helium 10 has nothing to do with us I just what I use, but anyways, Helium 10 goes to see APR, punch in your asin and throw you some competitors, it’s going to give you a list. It’s going to show you like search by search volume, it’s going to show you what you need. I always look at your primary long tail keyword, so grass fed bully sticks, not just bully sticks, and I search for all those other long tails and then I see what they want, right? You can try with the ones that have eight units or 12 units or 16 units or 24 units and I give away roughly 30% of what they’re asking, try doing that using a different platform or try out this incredible deal. That’s 33% off what you normally charge I believe. Anyways, try a service like that and see what happens because I’m using this right now. Izabela’s doing a campaign today for me. Other people have been doing campaigns and I’m seeing consistent results in and out every day and there’s no change and what I see in keyword ranking. What about you, Izabela?
Izabela 40:05
No, I think you’re right. So it’s very important to give away enough units. So if you’re using a longtail keyword and the volume, let’s say it’s five for a day, but if you’re only doing one, and you’re not even doing it for the whole amount, of course, you’re not going to see those results and you may think something’s wrong with the keyword or your product. So in some cases it is, sometimes keywords are just not worth going for. But increase it and just like we said, in the beginning, test it, split test it, if you see, don’t just do one campaign of 10 units, and oh my god, you’re not on page one. This is not working. Because it takes time, it takes time. Again, there’s other people trying to do the same thing you’re doing, and they’re coming in strong and you’re getting left behind and even with CPR, they may tell you you only need 20 units, but you don’t know what the other guys are doing. Maybe they just bumped 30, 40 units and of course, you’re not going to be able to rank as high. So keep testing it all the time, do more giveaways, increase your PPC, try to get some organic sales and you’ll be fine. If you’re not, then you look at what’s going on, look at your listing, start looking at everything, start looking at your pictures, start looking at the keywords that are indexed in your listing. But usually, the problem is you’re not doing enough giveaways, and then everything else.
Norman 41:32
Yeah and by the way, Kels, I’m not sure but Rob Stanley. So if Rob if you’re still listening, pm me, and we can talk about that and Rob’s with feedback whiz. So, I’m not sure if that has something to do with your app, Rob, but let me know and we can talk a bit more about that. Okay, Izabela, I think we’re running down. Is there anything else that we need to know about rebates on this call?
Izabela 42:03
I think you and me can talk forever, Norm.
Izabela 42:07
We’re never running out of things to talk about. We’re always running out of time. That’s like our thing. Just trust rebates, trust giveaways, they’re not scary. They’re here to help you. Yes, there’s a cost involved. I just made my service very affordable. So you can try that and as you know Norm, I never market Rankbell anywhere because we do like to keep it small-ish, so we can put all our attention on the sellers that come in, so feel free to try it. This is a perfect price. As I said, just trust and keep working on making your listing better, your product better reach out to Norm, reach out to me, Helium 10 and whoever we mentioned here and feedback was and everybody tried to use as many resources as you possibly can. Especially if you’re new, and you don’t know the direction to go, we’re all here to help you and we all started at some point. The only difference is that we’ve, we have practice, we’ve been doing it for so long that it comes a little bit more natural and for those listening who are just starting out, it will one day be natural for you, and it will just come to you. So yeah, it’s sometimes it feels like a scary road to embark on, thinking Amazon and then we talk about, like, how much competition is there, but at the end of the day, a lot of sellers are very successful. Especially with what’s been happening in the world, in the last three months, I think we’re moving a lot more on the online platforms and this will be a good time to start. So don’t be afraid to take this step and starting an Amazon store, even, with a product that doesn’t cost this much, just get your feet wet and just try it a little bit, do a few giveaways, use press releases, and just really just start, I think that’s probably the best advice I can give somebody.
Norman 44:12
Yeah, and one of the things we always talk about is the network. Find events, find conferences going on, or events that are going online, like virtual summits, and start to build your network that way. I couldn’t ever do this on my own. I’ve got a huge network that I always ask questions. Same with you, Izabela, I know. But it’s the people that will help get you to be a successful Amazon seller. So just put that in mind.
Izabela 44:40
I know. I’m so thankful I met you Norm. I mean, now you’re helping me create my new website. We’ve never talked about that and it’s gonna have a brand new look that I’m very excited about and Norman, I wouldn’t have done it without you. Because I always get so involved with so many other projects. So I’m very excited for when that’s over and for everybody to see the new look so I thank you for that. But you’re right, without that networking me and you will probably never got a chance to become such good friends and really help each other because that’s what friends do and if you find your tribe and your group, it’s going to make such a big difference because we are humans and we tend for that loving relationship and friends and just somebody to hear you out, even if they can’t always help you. That’s why I’m so thankful to met you and to be my friend Norm.
Norman 45:33
I’m a little red face but thank you very much.
Norman 45:38
Okay, Izabela, so we’re winding down. How do people get a hold of you?
Izabela 45:43
Rankbell.com or they can send an email to Bell @ryanbell.com or easiest way, Izabela Hamilton on Facebook or they can contact you Norm and you can tell them where they can find me.
Norman 45:55
Absolutely. Okay, so we do have a little, Izabela is gonna be showing up on something else. It’s coming up. Tune in tomorrow, or go to my social media tomorrow because there’s going to be some wild announcement.
Izabela 46:13
That is so exciting. I’ve been waiting for like, Norm when is it coming out?
Izabela 46:17
I’m super, super excited. You guys, you have to follow Norm on all his social media. By the way, I’m very jealous of your Instagram page, and everything that you’re doing and this show and the announcement for tomorrow. So I’m so excited for you. I’m so glad to be part of this with you because you are amazing, and I love you so much.
Norman 46:37
Well, thank you and right back at you.
Norman 46:41
This has been Lunch with Norm with Izabela Hamilton from Rankbell and as Izabela said, please go and like and follow me at Norman Farrar and let’s see, I’m getting better at this, right Kels? I know how to end the live now. So until next time, we’ll see everybody later.
