How to be a six-figure Amazon Seller?

Imagine learning directly from an expert who breathes and lives the Amazon space. Well, this is the what we're bringing to your ears today. Listen in as Aman Advani, senior director of operations of AO2 Management, shares his journey from a traditional digital marketing role to now holding the keys of Amazon operations.

Turn up the volume as Aman unveils the strategies that have powered countless brands' success on this ever-evolving Amazon platform. From the importance of a brand-first mentality to the nitty-gritty of pricing, reviews, SEO, and content, Aman folds back the curtain to show you the workings behind successful conversions. 

As we wrap up, Aman offers a fresh perspective on controversial advertising metrics and growth strategies, reminding us that the key to success on Amazon goes beyond just the cost metric. Tune in and arm yourself with the wisdom and strategies you need to conquer Amazon!

Ben Smith's Social Media
Instagram: https://instagram.com/skipwithben?igshid=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/skipwithben/

Business Social Media Links
Website: https://www.sellercandy.com
Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/SellerCandyPro
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sellercandyamz
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sellercandy
Website: https://sellercandy.com/

Aman Advani's Socials:
Linkedin URL: https://www.linkedin.com/in/advanimarketing/
Website: ao2management.com

Episode link & contact info
Shareable episode link  - https://bit.ly/3Q2u26B
For content collaborations, please email us at: grei@sellercandy.com 

Never Talk to Seller Support Again.

Seller Candy is the expert operations arm of your Amazon business. We provide outcome-driven support for time-consuming and challenging Seller Central issues so you Never Have to Talk to Seller Support Again! With Agency-Level security practices and an experienced team who’s been through the thick of it, we give sellers bandwidth on demand without the hassle of hiring, training, or managing.

#amazonseller #amazonbusiness #ecommerce #amazonpodcast

Never Talk to Seller Support Again.

Seller Candy is the expert operations arm of your Amazon business. We provide outcome-driven support for time-consuming and challenging Seller Central issues so you Never Have to Talk to Seller Support Again! With Agency-Level security practices and an experienced team who’s been through the thick of it, we give sellers bandwidth on demand without the hassle of hiring, training, or managing.

#amazonsellercentral #amazonsupport #ecommerce #amazonbusiness

Transcript

Aman Advani: 0:00

ACOS does not matter. Not that Admetrics don't matter, but I think solely looking at the ACOS paints a very skewed picture and doesn't always allow brands to hit their full growth potential.

Ben Smith: 0:15

All right, hello and welcome back to another episode of the Amazon Strategist show. My name's Ben, I'm the host and this is the show. That is all strategy, with no hacks, no silver bullets and no magic pills, just a real, practical strategy for serious Amazon sellers. I'm excited, guys, because today we have the incredible Amon of A02 marketing and he's here to share a ton of knowledge with us. We were just talking behind the scenes about how he's been traveling all over the place and doing all kinds of crazy things, but before we get into that, a little bit about Amon.

Ben Smith: 0:44

So, amon, he leveraged his knowledge of the Amazon and eGovar space, which we're going to dive into His operations experience, his logistics and PPC advertising experience. He's helped brands crush their growth goals on Amazon scale to six figures and beyond and explore new opportunities for their business. He's also and I personally worked with him before on this he is amazing with systems, so he's got a passion and a lot of background building robust systems, and these systems have actually been used and deployed by A02. And I'm sure we'll touch on this a little bit today. But across A02, optimize and actually empowered to allow an international team now of 50 plus people achieve growth and work with all the different Amazon brands I think you guys have several hundred now that you're helping out in this space and he's also got a passion for small businesses. He's worked with a lot of small businesses to lead growth and really help them build relationships in the marketplace and win on this crazy world that is Amazon and beyond.

Ben Smith: 1:40

So if you sell online, amon is probably your guy. You can probably help you out with a lot of different things. If not Amazon, I know Amon also has a lot of great connections, so he's a great resource and we're lucky to have him here today. So, without further ado, amon, thanks for joining us. I appreciate it. How are you doing, matt?

Aman Advani: 1:54

I'm doing great. Thank you for having me, and, man, you're driving me up way too much. I know you know just as much as I do about all this stuff, but I'm glad to be here.

Ben Smith: 2:01

Well, I don't know about that. No, we appreciate your time. I to write before this we were talking a little bit, but just to kind of recap where have you traveled in the last three weeks? I know you've been literally all over the place.

Aman Advani: 2:11

Yeah, man. So home base for me is San Diego. I actually just got back Saturday, but yeah, in the last four weeks now I've been across the United States. I was at Florida for a bit, I was in Utah for a bit and then came back maybe for 17 hours and then I was back out playing in London for two shows. One was the Forza Group aggregator show and the other one was the three Colts Extra Horsepower Vet, and in between I found some time to go to Barcelona and hang out with my brother for a few days. So that was pretty so.

Ben Smith: 2:39

do you even know what time zone you're in? Are you even operating in PST?

Aman Advani: 2:43

or are you?

Ben Smith: 2:44

operating in some weird global time zone right now.

Aman Advani: 2:47

No, I'm operating on matcha and Starbucks stacks right now, I'm just fully fueled by Starbucks. Powered through, but I think I'll be fine by the end of the week.

Ben Smith: 2:56

No, I love it. Well, I bet a lot of people can relate to that too. So let's take it back a little bit. I know we've just kind of hiked you up with that intro, but take us back to kind of the beginning and tell us a little bit about you know everyone's got a different story, but how you got into kind of this Amazon world, this Amazon journey. If you could, yeah, 100%.

Aman Advani: 3:11

So before joining on as an account manager with A02 back in man, it was like 2020, feels like forever ago. But before my experience with Amazon, you know I had about six years of traditional digital marketing experience, so running Google ad campaigns and, you know, speaking to small business, I was really working with a lot of small local businesses here in San Diego, helping them like do their Google SEO, building websites and just doing general digital marketing efforts. And I kind of just stumbled upon a job post for A02 as the Amazon account manager and I was like, oh, e-cover's, like that sounds cool. I know I shop on Amazon. So I applied to end up getting a position and I was an account manager with A02 for about a year and then we got to a point where we were able to grow at higher kind of promote from within and I was fortunate enough and I worked my, put off it up, I guess to get promoted to director of operations and did that for like another year.

Aman Advani: 4:03

And then, you know, scott, senior director of operations. So I just want to keep climbing. Hopefully that's the goal. But yeah, it's been. You know it's been three long years. I want to say it always feels longer than three years, like I think. Now, with the amount of hours I've put in, it feels like I've been doing Amazon for five or seven years.

Ben Smith: 4:19

That was gonna say you probably put in like a decade's worth of time. You know it's not. It's not a 40 hour work week. You're putting it quite a bit more than that.

Aman Advani: 4:28

No matter how much you do, that bad Amazon changes every day. So like not to say it doesn't matter, but you know it's. You're always a student of the game. I like to say right.

Ben Smith: 4:36

Well, I feel like that's kind of the the often forgot about or unsexy side of you know, running an agency as well as like it's not just following SOPs all the time. You have to stay on top, you have to be on your A game right, and that's for the reason why Amazon sellers who are starting to really grow and might have multiple channels, they look for help in getting an agency, because an agency does a lot of that staying on the front lines and the edge of kind of all the new advances and that's something you really can't do unless you're full time in it right when there's I mean I think every week there's some kind of update on on Amazon that you have to be apprised of.

Aman Advani: 5:10

Exactly and just being an agency, you know, and you know being an Amazon verified partner and you know we're working on our World Warcraft verified partnership and all the channels. But when you're in an agency you kind of just get access and insights into things that you wouldn't as a normal seller. So it's always exciting to me when I talk to our clients or to new potential clients, to show them all those new updates and changes that are coming and how they're going to benefit them.

Ben Smith: 5:29

Yeah, nice, that's awesome. Well, so I know there's a lot of things that I want to ask you about, so let's kind of shift into what we call our Q&A section and just these are going to be questions that we've either gathered from our audience, things that I personally want to ask you or things that you know are just good to know and you are the expert on. So I guess kind of the first one is you know, I've had plenty in it. You know my background, even before working with Seller Candy is same thing as you did. I was an account manager, so these questions come up all the time. But it's a very basic question until you start unpacking it and that's how do I increase my sales on Amazon, right? Is it as simple as I flip the switch and turn some advertising on? Or, when you have a customer or client of your guys, how are you kind of helping walk them through that question?

Aman Advani: 6:10

Maybe it's not asked as simply as that, but no, and oftentimes it is right, like people will just say, hey, like how come my competitor has X amount more sales than me? Like my product's better, my creative's better, whatever it may be, and I think what I like to start on Amazon with this question, how do you get your sales up? Is really looking at your conversion rate and that's you know other product level on a total catalog level. Always like to say to hone your focus to your first or top three to five products. If you've got a large catalog, always try to focus on like those big dominoes that are going to have a bigger effect as they're knocked down. You can optimize the smaller sellers as much as you want, but they're not really going to drive the sales growth that you want to see in a short period of time. So really, first of all, I would say start by looking at and analyzing your top three to five products and really start with the inversion rate and look over a course of, you know, three months, six months a year taken to effect or taken to account big events like Prime Day or Christmas or the holidays, to make sure you're counting for those kind of peaks and valleys and sales and try to see if there's a period of time during the year when your conversion rate is optimized and try to figure out why that is. And so an example might be you know I'm drinking, drinking a tea here, and the reason I bought this tea is like it's got like all these, it's got a bunch of like advertising on it, like Superfood, florville, allo, a bunch of these like how they ingredients, and I'm just trying to be healthy. So I saw in the store and it was green and I was like, oh, this has to be good for me and I grabbed it.

Aman Advani: 7:27

So, really, like, starting with that conversion rate and knowing what your specific key audience is looking for in a product, I think a lot of people approach Amazon with a product first mentality versus a brand first mentality, and I feel like when you build a brand, whether it's on or off Amazon, you attract a following of specific people that are looking for a specific solution to a specific problem. And really honing in on those people and getting your conversion rates increase based on targeting specific factors that those people identify with is a big key. And I know I'm talking a lot like general generalities right now. So to dive a little bit closer, looking at your conversion rate. That will kind of help you identify what you need to do or what the next trigger is to increase it. So if you've already got you know, if you're looking at the competition, you know your conversion rates. Better than that.

Aman Advani: 8:10

The answer might simply be a try to up the ad spend a little bit. You're going to see the volume up thick and you're going to be hitting more profitable sales. However, you also want to take into account your COGS, all of Amazon's fees If you're working with an agency, all of their fees, and then any of the ad spend or anything else you're going to spend to get the product and sell its ads, because you don't want to pump up advertising and then realize after the fact you're losing five or 10 cents every sale because you weren't taking into account all of the fees and all the factors with the COGS. So I would say it's kind of wrap us up in a nutshell and we can keep going on this for sure, because this is a loaded question but start with the conversion rate and look at things you need to do to optimize right.

Aman Advani: 8:46

If you know your conversion rates low, take a look at your SEO. It's very likely that you're not using enough long tail keywords and not placing them early enough in the title to really affect ranking. Also, making sure you fill out all the backend keywords and search term fields. And then really, the way Amazon works I always like to uh, I tell you to this is the more you give them, the more they give you. So Amazon's whole mission is to be the most consumer friendly platform on the planet. So the more information you can give potential buyers about your product whether that's directions for use, ingredient labels, suggested products or even bundles like airing products together the more info you can stuff into a listing in a easy to read, easy to digest format, the more chance you're going to convert with your target audience. And so definitely, whenever we look at a listing, you want to make sure you're covering the basics, which are have an optimized title for SEO, make sure you're putting in all the back and search terms keywords. Make sure you have good bullets.

Aman Advani: 9:37

If you have a product with ingredients, make sure you have the ingredients label, your listing the ingredients as well as the directions for use. And then, moving further, make sure you have really good, really clear 8 plus content and then six images in a video or a must. We always like to recommend this kind of like a little pro tip. If you've got five videos on any listing even if all five videos aren't necessarily related to the product, as long as they're brand related and ideally you know you want to relate them as much to the product as possible you kind of dominate the digital real estate on your page and push off other competitor videos, do that next kind of slide button and I use this word a lot, I call it the real estate, but really that's what I view a listing as and EBC is really just like auctioning to have your real estate flyer like on the first page, right. So you want to make sure that on that digital real estate you are dominating as much as possible and not allowing other people to steal your landscape, so to speak. And you do that by, you know, having good SEO, running good defensive campaigns and then making sure you have the content that speaks to your audience.

Aman Advani: 10:33

Once you have those things in mind, even if the market is super flooded, as long as you can really own in on that key audience, then that's where you go and you start pumping up the ad space.

Aman Advani: 10:41

You know, through all the different ad types, whether it's SPS, psd, you want to be doing defensive, you want to be doing brand attack, you want to be doing category. And to take this a step further, I feel like a lot of people ask me too, like, oh, what's the standard ad structure you want to launch? And it's so dependent for category and so dependent for product. If you're really new or still try to figure out what's working for you on the PPC side, I recommend launching a campaign in like every single match type right, so like launch abroad, launch a phrase, launch an exact launch set of auto campaigns, launch a couple category campaigns and then see which campaigns are bringing you the most profit and then allocate your budget 80% towards those profitable campaigns, at 20% toward more ranking or just search campaigns to get the traffic. I know that was a long answer, but I hope that kind of answers the question.

Ben Smith: 11:26

Well, I mean, I feel like we can just end the podcast right there.

Ben Smith: 11:28

That was you just covered everything you need to be a million dollar seller, right? I'll judge this side like. I think there's so much to unpack in that, right? So thanks for that answer, I think. For me, just a couple things that come to mind right here. It's a good kind of guiding principle to say, hey, let's start by just monitoring that conversion rate, which obviously you're. If you're a brand new seller just launching your product for the first time, you're not going to have a ton of data, but start establishing what your baseline is right and that's. It sounds like. That's kind of where you guys start is looking. You know, if you're working with a client that's already had a year or two of data, you can go and look what the previous you know kind of baseline was and have we improved and what do we need to do to further improve, and that gives you that really good kind of launch guide, right, is that? Is that what you guys normally do when a client comes to you?

Aman Advani: 12:10

100%. So we actually start by doing a editor analysis, something called a three axis follow chart. We take you know, either you list editor specifically that you want to track, or we'll come up with like a list of your top tech editors and we'll actually map them out on an axis based on review velocity and sales velocity, and then the bigger your dot, the bigger your sales and reviews are right. So we kind of go and we make sure, like we put you on a map and then we look at the competition around you and put them on a map. So then we have kind of clear, actionable targets for like, okay, cool, we know these three competitors own 30% of the market and they're just above us in terms of reviews, just above us in terms of sales. Let's aim to get 10% of that market share from each of them and we know we can grow our sales X amount and that's kind of how we do some of our projections.

Aman Advani: 12:49

Obviously, a lot has to do with pricing and reviews, especially on Amazon. I feel like a lot of people, even if they're not shopping directly on Amazon I know I do this all the time like I'll walk into Best Buy. If I'm going to buy something, I'll go to check and see if it's cheap or on Amazon, so I can price match, because I like to get stuff to save me.

Aman Advani: 13:04

The two day shipping is the best stuff for me. Sometimes I get it. I feel like making sure you know you're going to have the best SEO in the world, you're going to have the best content in the world, but if your price point and your reviews aren't speaking to your audience, it's going to be really hard to get that conversion rate up and then therefore increase your ad spend to get those sales.

Ben Smith: 13:21

Yeah, I know it's good, I think the other thing just that I wanted to pull out and we actually are first guests of the season. Matt from CapForge I think he's actually another San Diego guy, but he actually said him very yeah, awesome.

Ben Smith: 13:34

Shout out to CapForge. I think he said a very similar thing which is to you you mentioned earlier. You know a lot of people are coming in with a very product-centric rather than brand-centric and maybe this is your first time launching your product, so maybe you don't know or have the context on that yet. But as you decide you're going to build out a brand coming into, that mindset of the brand is defined by who's that niche, niche, niche, niche down target customer Like how can I serve them better? Matt said that was really the way that he sees all the successful Amazon sellers these days function is they are looking at huh, I'm interested in you know, something that I can give to people who are beachgoers what about? And then niche them Okay, not just beachgoers, but they're paddleboarders, not just paddleboarders, but they're, you know, stand up or lay flat paddleboarders and then finding how do I serve that specific person? Right, exactly.

Aman Advani: 14:23

And so I like that.

Ben Smith: 14:23

You said that too. I was going to ask you kind of a follow up question there. But have you seen that become more and more the case on Amazon? Because I know, for example, when I got into the Amazon world you could still you know this was six this year so you could throw out products on Amazon that you got from Alibaba. Branding did not really matter as long as you checked all the other boxes. And then I think that's from what I've seen changed, but I want to get your take given. You guys have worked with sorry people.

Aman Advani: 14:47

I kind of feel I have a mixed opinion on this one. So I feel like if you're first to market at anything, that initial strategy still works right, like you can grab a product from Alibaba, you can go find a really cheap manufacturer. But you really have to be first to market and you have to understand the market's going to get flooded at some point. So you know, looking at one of the biggest categories I see exploding on Amazon right now is all these like adaptogenic mushroom supplements, right so, like Chaga, binds, bay, rashi, cordyceps, like everyone's launching a supplement like every other day. With all these products and remember the first few that were on were able to kind of do that exactly whether it was a pill, whether it was a liquid, a branding didn't matter. They had like maybe three images up, they had a few bullet points and that short title and because they were the only ones available, they were getting all that, all those sales volume and all that search volume as well. But increasingly now people differentiate by content and it's so proven by all these new platforms popping up. So you've got, like you know, tiktoks exploding over the last couple years. The rights just launched and they have some odd million users. So people love to digest content, especially when it speaks to them.

Aman Advani: 15:47

And so, going back to that point of being super minute, right. So like, even in this space of, let's say, like Rashi supplements, there's like four different forms you can take it in and there's no way it stays day and age. You can just be like, oh well, I want to sell to this entire category, unless you're like one of the biggest brands in the world, right, it would get like Nike or Adidas, something like that, like they can make a running shoe for anyone. But if you're a small shoe brand or you're just starting out, you're not going to be able to make a running shoe that everyone's going to want at scale and get everyone to buy into it at the same time. So, starting super, super niche, right, like if you're in the supplement space, for example, let's say, okay, I know people don't like taking pills, so I'm actually going to make a lines made liquid dropper that you can drop in your water at its tasteless. That way you can just drink it, it's easier.

Aman Advani: 16:27

And then you're going after a specific subset of people that are looking for a lines made supplement and don't want pill, for really having a differentiating factor to your product is so key and I think again, like with the brand thing, you don't have to build a brand, but you either have to build a brand to attract the following weight From other brands where the market is kind of saturated, or you have to be first to market and no one else is offering what you have, or your product just has to be so, so, so much better or so, so, so much more niche that no one else is trying to compete with. And those are kind of like the avenues you can go down. Obviously, if you're an established seller and you notice that you know your editors are launching new products in the space, it is a great opportunity because you already kind of have that search volume and you know, with all the new brand tools Amazon's releasing and this kind of speaks to that point of how things are changing you can now target your existing customers with new product releases. You can send them emails, you can request reviews and sneak back on new products. So I think Amazon has noticed and they're making an effort as well to make it a more brand-centric platform. Another example is Amazon post and like basically turning Amazon to this Instagram-style feed where you can have these mini posts or these mini blurbs about your products. So I think I've seen both.

Aman Advani: 17:32

But the only way you're going to be successful at scale with like that first strategy of the Alibaba launch is if you're first to market and your product is like so, so, so niche that no one else is even in the space yet, but, guaranteed, I'm going down the road, the market is going to get flooded and someone's going to have a lower price than you. So at that point you want to make sure you have a strong brand identity, because then you're going after the repeat customers. The customers are going to buy you regardless of price point, regardless of product differentiators, because they align with your brand.

Ben Smith: 17:58

All right, that was an amazing answer. That is awesome. I think the other thing I was going to ask you about is in terms of, like, the testing of your conversion rate. Like, let's say you've got that data, you kind of know what your baseline is or you maybe have compared it to what the industry you know your niche standard is. If you have that information, are you using Amazon experience to do a lot of tests? And I'm asking because that's something I've always been interested in but not personally done. But I've heard you know some of the shows that we've gone to that Amazon experience being brought up a lot more. I know manually you can run a lot of similar things in a way, but it's not going to do the same thing. So what is the way that you guys actually will kind of split test? You know making these changes?

Aman Advani: 18:38

Yeah, 100%. So the Amazon AB test is a great example and this is something we use a lot. You know whether it's for testing a new title with different keywords, testing a main image. I think there's a few more things you can actually test on there. Now I know those are the two main things that we've normally tested with the experiments, but generally it's nice because then you know you're not like going in and fully changing your SEO, so like you're less likely to have that organic rank drop. Let's say, like you put some raw keywords in or like you know you change some keywords that you're ranking on great before, that now you're not going to be ranking on.

Aman Advani: 19:06

Included kind of mitigates any I don't want to say any risk, but it mitigates some of the risk of making those changes immediately, because you throw it through a test and usually we try to run every experiment for at least two weeks. I feel like two weeks of data is the minimum. You kind of need to be able to make a decision. If you have the liberty to run it all or definitely do like a month, great. But the AB experiments is a great way to mitigate the risk of making the full change and then wanting to reverse and then realizing like, oh man, it's gonna be terrible and like hitting my organic ranking back. So I would say it's a good week test.

Aman Advani: 19:34

And then the other thing we do is, depending on the product or depending on the category, if you've got multiple variations that are generally effectively the same product, we test between the variations to see as long as they're similar or ranked, or getting the same conversion data. Roughly, we kind of do changes, absolute changes. So doing the AB tests on the variations to see between variations Okay, we changed the title on this one, but we don't on this one Will the sales actually increase or decrease? And we know they're both started at the same base line.

Ben Smith: 20:02

Oh, that's a great tip I like that I feel like there's so many more different ways we can go there. But I want to move on to kind of the next question I have on my list here, which is how do you know, or and how do you kind of guide clients when they come to you and ask how much should I actually be spending in terms of advertising? If it's a new seller, often times they're going to have a very restricted budget At. You know, I think generally you guys are probably working closer with maybe more established brands, but do you have a way that you kind of can frame that up in terms of like, how much should I be spending, especially when it pertains to Amazon, specific, you know, advertisement, paid media, all that, because we also have a factor in like, maybe that person's got their direct to consumer side, their Google, so I'm curious how you guys kind of work through that other percent.

Aman Advani: 20:44

And so whenever someone asks me this question, I actually ask them a question back, which is on a scale of one to 10, with one being your bottom line profit and being top light revenue. Where do you sit on that scale right now? For the next three months, six months, year, what is your goal? Are you more top line revenue focused or are you more profitability focused? So most people answer like a five, and it gives you no help, right? Because like, yeah, obviously you want to have both, you want to have the top line growth and you want to be profitable. But that question if someone is, you know, on either side of the scale, it kind of helps how I frame then my response.

Aman Advani: 21:14

And if someone's more top line revenue focused or if they're bottom line focused, we always start with what I mentioned earlier, which is doing a full cogs analysis. So, again, starting with your top three or five products you don't try to do it all in a night Start with your few top products, you get the cogs from that customer and then you add in all of Amazon's fees, whether it's the referral fee, the FBA, shipping fee, pick it back, whatever it is that you're using Amazon for that they're going to charge you on. And then what we do which I'm sure isn't too different from what other other agencies are doing, but we'll actually add in like our own fees, averaged across the catalog, and then we'll do like that will give us like a baseline of OK, if we're spending no money on ads, we're just fulfilling the product or Amazon and shipping it in, we are, you know, let's say, 30% profitable on each sale. And so from there we're able to see, ok, based on that 30%, how much can we spend on the cost per acquisition for a new customer for this product, or how much can we spend per click on this product before we shut off that campaign or stop bidding and that sale doesn't become profitable. And so, starting with that college analysis and starting with that previous question of are you top line focus or are you revenue focus, that helps us gauge like, ok, let's say they're top line focus, they've got a good margin and they're OK with kind of like hemorrhaging their costs for a bit just to get their ranking up and to get the volume up and to get some sales in. Then we'll say, ok, like we can aggressively spend, we can aim for a 60 or 70% a cost on the account level because we know we don't have to be profitable for this time being. And then really just is dependent on each brand how much budget they have.

Aman Advani: 22:40

The baseline I recommend if you're just starting out on the other end of spectrum is a minimum of usually $100 a day. So like $3,000 a month is what you need for the first 90 days to really be able to test out your aspect and get campaign. So that is a baseline. If you're a new seller and then if you're an established seller, really you want to go through the cogs and make sure that as you're growing and scale you're not sacrificed for profitability. And a lot of times that can lead us to realize and like hey, actually we need to increase the price like $2. If we're sitting way below editors, losing out on, you know, the extra $2 of profit for sale, and we can allocate that money to PPC and then be able to raise our budget X amount. So that is kind of how we go about it.

Aman Advani: 23:16

And one more thing I like to tell sellers and I think you'd have it in your questions that we'll probably get to it, but I don't like to focus on just the advertising a cost. I really like to focus on total a cost because otherwise you're not tracking the organic growth month over month. And ideally, the way we view it, you want about 20 to 30% of your sales coming from ads and 70 to 80% coming from organic sales in the long run. So you don't want to just keep like. You want your organic ranking to reach a point where you're not having to pay as much to acquire a new customer.

Ben Smith: 23:43

Sure, so for a mature brand that's what you guys aim to see is that 30% paid, the other 70% coming organic. That totally makes sense.

Aman Advani: 23:52

I think that's in line with what I've normally told brands in the past Exactly, and usually when you're starting out, like if you just start selling, if you get a 50-50 split, like you're at a golden stage, like the first six months, so you can get a 50-50 split if you can achieve that. Normally what I see is kind of the opposite, like 70% coming from the ads and then 20 to 30% of sales coming organically, and then, as you go to the campaigns correctly and then you shut off old campaigns lots of new ones that are optimized you see that number start to shift, with more of the sales being attributed to the organic side.

Aman Advani: 24:19

I know that's great.

Ben Smith: 24:20

Awesome, cool. I know you mentioned Walmart at the beginning of this, but when you're talking or working with brands, you know I know there's a lot of people that are going to be watching or listening to this that have started on Amazon. So I think that's going to be a subset of people that also maybe started direct to consumer and then launched on Amazon. But generally I see a lot of Amazon sellers. They leverage the platform because it has such a big audience. Before expanding out, when do you see that moving to other platforms or even just other markets you know Amazon markets becomes a more viable option. Do you have any kind of rough frameworks for that?

Aman Advani: 24:51

Yeah, that's a tough one. So in an ideal world, you're launching all of them on the same day. I know that's not happening, right. I love to describe e-commerce as a spiderweb. I use this analogy all the time, whether it's with my team or with clients, and so a few Amazon, even though Amazon's an awesome, big, thick thread of that spiderweb, it's one thread, right, so you can maximize your potential on Amazon and then not even be utilizing the other threads of the spiderweb which are Shopify or, you know, mercado Libre, etsy, whatever it is, and so really, you want to build out as many channels there's many threads in that spiderweb as you can, such you're attracting and catching the most flies. Because you know, even myself, working in e-commerce, I don't know how much I actually shop on Amazon anymore, because I feel like at this point, I love going to the store and like seeing different packaging. It's like actually feeling big. So you don't know always where your ideal demographic is going to shop. I mean, ideally you're dividing it super clearly and then you're able to target them specifically in those channels. But that's like a lockdown the road.

Aman Advani: 25:44

My suggestion is always try to launch on as many as you can in the initial, even if you're not off. Let's say, you launch on Walmart and it's not optimized for the next year, but you're working on Amazon. That is optimized, that's fine. The main thing is again early adoption is key. So, like when a new platform pops up, I try to learn everything about it so our team can work on it and we can get lights on it. Because the earlier you get in and I'm sure you've seen this they have us on the easier it is to keep an established that organic ranking and then outranking better doesn't already. So obviously, if I launch a product today versus someone else's loss for a year, I'm going to come in with zero reviews and even if my product is better at a lower price point, then just having some reviews and having an established for an edit ranking, they might continue to beat my product out for a long time. So obviously, as funds and time allow, obviously launch on each one and ideally you're able to work with a team or with an agency or internally by yourself and come up with a strategy and kind of timeless when you want to launch on each platform.

Aman Advani: 26:39

Luckily, what's so nice about a lot of these platforms now is they have just like Amazon, they kind of have a bulk feed file template where 90% of the fields are applicable from each other there's called different things, and so you just fill out a bunch of these sheets and upload them all at night or over the course of the week and at least that, where you're getting all your products listed, you don't have to worry about that step. So I feel like that's the biggest barrier to entry. Is just like getting the products live, but then, once they're live, you do the same thing that you would on any channel, right, like you do your ad spend, you optimize the SEO, you do the content, and really I would say one big important thing about launching on these different channels is making content unique to that channel. A lot of the content you make can be evergreen, because you're going to need detailed pages, no matter what.

Aman Advani: 27:21

Then, making sure you have the sizings right, making sure you have keywords that align with what people are searching on that platform including the content is super key and making sure that all the written content on that listing is ranking for the SEO algorithm on that channel. Right, because I might take the SEO from Amazon and apply it to a Walmart listing and I'm not ranking for anything. Search terms aren't safe, they don't have the same volume, so, in short, ideally all in one night, but that's not possible. So try to parse it out and look for where your competition is selling the most in terms of channels and again, start with the biggest ones first. Like, don't try to go list at Home Depot or Lowes or one of the smaller sellers because you're like oh wow, I'm going to have 100% market dominance because those sales are going to be minuscule compared to what you're going to see on Walmart, amazon, shopify.

Aman Advani: 28:02

And the last thing I'll add to this point is speaking to the importance of having a brand. Nowadays, I always recommend doing Shopify and Amazon at the same time, like if you're going to launch Shopify, launch on Amazon at the same time and vice versa, if you launch on Amazon, launch on Shopify, because there's a large likelihood that as your product gets more eyeballs on Amazon, you're going to get more Google search volume as well and you want to be able to direct people to a website where they can go and your fulfillment costs are likely cheaper and your profits likely higher. And the goal is have Shopify or have your website or your main source, be that like D2C website, because you're going to be able to control the sale. You can sell the customer information a lot more.

Ben Smith: 28:39

Yeah, that was awesome and that's a really good final point too, about having the Shopify piece and just to be able to control, I like to say you're controlling that narrative, and I tell people this when they ask to like oh you know, I'm thinking about selling on Amazon, maybe. Maybe I have like some resellers that are selling up my products on there, and it's kind of the same thing. It's like, if you're not controlling that space, it's your products, at least with Amazon, it's going to end up there most likely anyway. But also you want to be the one controlling it, right. But it's kind of the same as true, right? If you just have a bare bones Shopify store up as you build your brand on Amazon, you'll probably start getting that in there. Now at least you can control the narrative of the traffic that's seeing you on Google. So it's a great point.

Ben Smith: 29:17

I wanted to point out that when you reference doing any actual work, amon, you always say I'm not going to add my stuff to every platform in one night, and there's a couple other instances and so I can tell you you're all the work related things. You're like oh, it's a night activity which tells me you are up doing late nights all the time. So kudos to you and that's all. Those are all great, great pieces, I think you know, like you said earlier too, it's also that realistic piece right Is Amazon, is every listing you have on different platforms is more real estate. That being said, like the caveat, obviously, as you pointed out, is that it can become overwhelming and it's more to manage. You know there are pieces you have to manage right.

Aman Advani: 29:55

And so if you're not at that stage, you want to take your resources and dedicate your time to the most profitable channel first. Like don't worry about the smaller channels because they will figure themselves out as your time or you know, as you grow bigger channel you're going to hire internally or use an agency or whatever method, and it made us a smaller channels.

Ben Smith: 30:11

Don't forget about the president.

Aman Advani: 30:13

Keep. Whether it's Amazon or Shopify or Walmart, whatever that channel is, make sure you're nurturing that one the most, because that's going to have your greatest edge of the road. Well, that cool.

Ben Smith: 30:22

So let's talk about something. I haven't asked any of our guests this, but you know, for sellers that are watching this or what have you, you know we both worked in the agency worlds, you know you and you've done a lot with A02. But we kind of touched on it at the beginning of this show. But can you kind of break down what an Amazon agency really does that maybe they can offer to a seller that that seller couldn't go and do themselves? Right? Because there's a point in time where you as an Amazon seller might be starting your brand and say I'm just going to do everything myself or I'm going to build my own small team, but then there becomes a time later where either you get stuck in a trap of trying to do everything yourself or you have way too many hats, but among you know that those and other reasons. I'm curious what are kind of the things that an agency really handles that a seller wouldn't do themselves or couldn't do themselves 100%?

Aman Advani: 31:07

So I wouldn't even say that an agency does anything that no one else can do, but I think it's the culmination of the team. So if you wanted to be able to have the capabilities of a full service agency in house, you're going to have to hire a heck of a lot of team members just to manage each kind of individual part, and I feel like, at least with us I know a lot of agencies are this way we have very specialized team members right. So, like everyone we hire, everyone on our team is an expert in their one or their one area, versus when you tend to hire an house, it's usually like one social media manager and like maybe one e-commerce manager. We have one or two or three people trying to wear, like you said, many ads and do many things. They're not able to, or you know it's not. It's not expectable for one person to be an expert in five or six different things at a time and be perfect at it or be the best at it. So I think you get the depth of a experienced team that has very specific expertise in all the different verticals for Amazon, whether it's operations, pvc, logistics, account, health, branding. So, again, like, just those five things are so vital and you almost need to hire five different people at house and pay them large salaries to be able to afford and maintain and grow at the same rate an agency can be able to provide you.

Aman Advani: 32:16

Other than that, I really feel that you know, I've been attending so many of these marketing events whether our team was attending Accelerate while I was at London and a couple other events we get the insight scoop on a lot of things from Amazon or from Walmart or from these channel partners and, you know, through verified partnerships, even like with Walmart. I know we're working on our Verify partnership. We don't have it yet, but just being an agency that they recognize, we were able to get some beta testing access that a normal seller just doesn't have access. So having those exclusive kind of benefits or those sneak peeks of new features to come is a big benefit. The other thing I'll mention is and this is kind of specific to Amazon Having someone to deal with seller support, and I know you could speak to this a ton with seller candy, but we have a team and most agencies will have a team of specialized ops team members that you know We'll deal with Amazon case logs or deal with product compliance, helping you get products reinstated or helping update products on the listing Changes just are going through.

Aman Advani: 33:10

So, if anything, the biggest benefit the agency provides is you're able to save your time for growing your brand at the top level, and we or any other agency got to manage all the micro Influence I don't want to say influencers, but the micro factors that influence that macro picture, the overall sales growth or brand or business growth.

Aman Advani: 33:29

So because we're so expert in so many things, we're able to knock them out a lot faster you would be able to do on your own or even with your own internal team and a lot of the time with less error or less attempts, right.

Aman Advani: 33:39

So you might take as an individual seller. You might take five or six times through a case log and wait two weeks to get a product back up and running which might be a top seller and at that point better than over overtaking you. You've lost organic ranking and to get those sales back it's gonna take you a long, long time versus you work with agency right and, like a lot of my clients have me on speed dial though They'll call me and say I'm off, product down. I'm like great teams on it and within 24 hours, 48 hours, we're able to get that product back up and ready. So just that time-saving element and like really time is more valuable than than anything in my opinion. So buying back your time and being able to use your time as a brand notar, folks on bigger picture things, leaving those all those micro actions and the day-to-day nuances to an agency, that's the biggest benefit I would say we got no of it.

Ben Smith: 34:24

I mean I can echo that too right, because you know just my role here at sell or candy, but also previous experience like there's so many parts that go into just running your Amazon business and it's only getting more complex, especially once you start playing at that. You know the upper levels where people have. They're investing tons of money. They might have budgets way, way bigger than you. Your brand does like you need a players or someone that's being paid to literally Stay on that cutting edge right, and that's normally not feasible for you as a brand owner who's got maybe five products on Amazon, your tribe, maybe you have a two-person team and you're simultaneously trying to deal with product development and you know accounts, receivable and shipping. You know all that stuff. So yeah, I totally see that.

Ben Smith: 35:03

The other point I was gonna call out is I mentioned very briefly earlier, but a common conversation I have is people who are they've waited too long and they've been kind of in a stagnant mode with their Brand because, while there is a time and a place to do Everything and try to learn it, you know that's how you know you and I both cut our teeth like learning flat files and all these things that is valuable but, at the same time, like it's only valuable to a certain extent, and I see a lot of business owners, or you know people, that are working with their Amazon brand.

Ben Smith: 35:30

They get to this point where they're. They should have probably stopped a year ago and get handed it off, but they're caught in this trap of still trying to hold on to doing it all themselves. And the reality is that normally, for a price point you know it's out at eight, most agencies these days like for a price point that's cheaper than you hiring one full-time in-house person or what have you. You know an agency is gonna come in and they've already got everything ready to roll, and so, yeah, I think that it does. Of course, there's a time and a place where it doesn't make sense to, but exactly for most growing eight Companies.

Ben Smith: 36:00

It does the certain point. Do you? Do you have like a rough time? You see that that turning point you know happen. Of course you, a brand, is not gonna come to day one when they're only doing, you know, $0 up to maybe $10,000 a month. But is there kind of a dollar threshold or a Point where you really see that an agency becomes a real option every brand should consider?

Aman Advani: 36:20

I would say I wouldn't even look at it from a dollars and sales or profitability perspective. I'd look at it from a systems operation perspective and really, the leaner your processes and team are and like the easier your product, this will fill right. If I'm shipping, if I have one product and it's like a plastic bottle, super easy to fulfill it, I have optimized my supply chain. I've optimized the way my team team functions with 3pl, whatever it is. The more streamline your businesses, the less outside help you need and then maybe you do have more time to dedicate to work, doing adds yourself, doing the content yourself. But in terms of that kind of threshold, to that point I would say, once you reach a point where you realize like, hey, I'm not able to hit my own deadlines, or I'm not able to get everything done the way I'd envisioned right, like I'm not able to manage all the PC campaigns 24 7, I'm not able to create all the content myself, or I'm not able to, in general, just like run the business of supply chain myself, start outsourcing, whether it's to you know, individuals in your team or an agency, because really no agency and no outside person can come and do your job as a brand owner, unless you're selling your business, right? Not, that's a whole different story. But you as a brand owner really have such a unique perspective all the product on the brand and no one's gonna drive growth for your brand Like you will. So leave the things that are time-consuming, that can be optimized by someone else, to someone else.

Aman Advani: 37:33

And Another big point that I kind of didn't mention, that I want to bring up now, is another benefit of working with agencies and at least with our team. I know you know we were about half in the US and half remote spread throughout Europe, philippines, india, brazil. We've got people all over. Now the way we assemble our teams is we try to number one we go for quality, not quantity, right. So we're not overloading accounts onto account managers. Each account manager has like their own sort of supporting caster team behind them, so we really have 24 seven coverage of basically every account we manage, because there's always four people assigned Any account and one of those four people at a given moment is gonna be outlawed, and so, whether product goes down or whether you need something Adjusted in the ads, like having that 24 seven coverage, is just something you can't do as an individual, right? Oh, that's cool, love it.

Ben Smith: 38:18

So with that, but let's, let's, let's shift gears here a little bit. I know you kind of already answered this, so I'm gonna ask you my, my lead in question, which is do you think pineapple belongs on pizza? Which? I'm really anxious to hear your answer to.

Aman Advani: 38:31

Honestly, I am a big fan of pineapple pizza. I know that my rough people are another one.

Ben Smith: 38:35

Honestly, I think almost everyone has said that, which I'm kind of shocked. I'm personally a fan, but normally I'm only one in the room when I go to a party that's saying that. The reason I'm asking is this is kind of our controversial take section. So I don't really like to ask you if you have any kind of debatable, controversial take something in the industry that maybe everyone else is going this way and you think actually the answer is over here. Do you have something like that and I think you might have alluded to earlier on?

Aman Advani: 39:02

Yeah, I kind of did it. So my controversy take and I'll say it in the most controversial way possible just to get the attention, but a cost does not matter is my controversial take.

Ben Smith: 39:12

That's bold. Do you want to tell us why? Why does it matter?

Aman Advani: 39:15

I'm actually gonna leave the podcast right now.

Ben Smith: 39:17

That was right.

Aman Advani: 39:18

We'll leave a cliffhanger that no, and so obviously you know not that ad metrics don't matter, but I think solely looking at the a cost paints a very skewed picture and doesn't always allow brands to hit their full growth. So I mentioned earlier you want 20% of your sales to come from ads, 80% to be organic and if you're only going off of your advertising, a cost as your leading metric or KPI, you're not gonna get the full picture of how those organic sales are being affected by your ads. So the metric I prefer to look at is tacos, so taco Tuesday, but Tacos is total advertising cost sale, and it can be the same thing with row ass, right, so T, row ass or tacos, whatever you want to use. But when you use a Total, a cost metric, or total row ass metric, versus just a PPC, a cost or raw aspect trick, you get a much bigger picture. It's how much your sales are being affected by your aspect month over month and you're able to make much more informed decisions how you should allocate your spend to mean your products are on your catalog to then grow your sales profitably. So, starting with that, those cards, right, you look at the cards and if you realize like okay, across an average for my whole whole catalog, for all my business on Amazon. I need a 15% total, a cost goal, hit profitability per sale and then be growing that number when you're just looking at a cost might be 30 like, might be so skewed like, it might be 30% and might be 20%. It might be so off that when you, when you try to optimize for just the PPC a cost, there's a high chance you're leaving money on the table because you're not spending that little bit more past threshold. Where you do, we might not feel comfortable. It's not looking at the right metric.

Aman Advani: 40:54

Then grow your organic sales, because I'm sure you've seen this, but we literally have Specific campaigns that we will launch that help with increasing organic ranking, and so the goal is again, like looking at that a cost. If a client comes to me and tells me, hey, we have a 30% target, a cost, I tell them immediately Okay, that's great, and just know every campaign we launch is not gonna hit the 30% metric. But averaging them out, we will right. If you're telling me that's profitable, I'm not gonna be like, oh well, you're wrong and we're gonna spend more because you're wrong. Like, no, you need to be making profitable sales, but you need to look at the whole picture and so when you're just looking at that a cost You're not taking to effect like I might spend $100 today and make $300 on just ad sales, but then in total sales for that one product I might be making 600 or 800, and I might notice the next month if I increase that spend to $200, then if my total sales double versus just the ad sales right, I might even see the ad sales drop and the organic sales double, which would be weird, but it wouldn't be the first time I've seen it.

Aman Advani: 41:49

And again, your goal on Amazon should not be spend more, make more. It should be spend as little as possible on a product with a high margin and get the organic sales to grow. And I've seen this strategy work really really well, specifically with consumable products that are on Subscribance, save and if you're a Subscribance Save customer, like that's kind of the key metric.

Aman Advani: 42:09

you try to drive your branch where it's increasing the Subscribance Save counts.

Aman Advani: 42:12

You really don't want to just be looking at a cost Because you were probably leaving a heck of a lot of customers on the table by not advertising to them or not increasing your ads and that little bit to gain their sale. So, looking at the total A cost, then another metric I love to look at and track is your cost per acquisition of a customer and you ideally want that cost per acquisition to stay the same or drop over time, right, like you don't want your cost to be increasing month over month to acquire a new customer. And ideally you're seeing that once you acquire that new customer they're getting on Subscribance Save and then they're staying for a good period of time. So where now you're spending $0, requiring that customer every month or three months or whatever their Subscribance Save rate is, and they're automatically ordering and you're getting an order in the fulfillment and then you're getting a higher margin than you would on any sale on Amazon because that person has spent $0 to find your product or to do a click or do anything to order your product.

Ben Smith: 43:01

So I know it's kind of a long-awaited answer, but no, I mean, I think you make it really your point, though, right, because the last just note I was going to say is that we were talking about earlier that, a mature generally, we're thinking about a mature brand on Amazon. We want to see that it's going to be. 70% of their sales were organic, 30% from paid media, and as you work towards that, obviously those numbers will be different. Yet we in the industry it gives so much focus to what's your ACOS, what's your ACOS, what's your ACOS, but that metric is very one-dimensional, right, because it's just looking at one metric related to your advertising versus tacos takes into account, kind of the broader picture. So I think you make it really your point.

Aman Advani: 43:39

And really it all starts like I'll hop on this forever.

Aman Advani: 43:42

But it really starts with analyzing your COGS and understanding what your limit is for cost-pracquisition of a customer to be profitable.

Aman Advani: 43:49

Because unless you have that number, you don't really even know your true target ACOS. Here, even if you're just going after that ACOS goal like you have no idea what it is, if you don't know your exact COGS, plus their referral fees, plus whatever length of ad spend, you can kind of manage, hit a profitable sale. So it always starts with the COGS and then, even if you're a new brand, I suggest always try both right, like even though I'm saying like ACOS doesn't matter like you track every metric and you're able to compare, cross-compare. But really I highly advise for any brand, whether new or existing, if you haven't already looked at your tacos, start tracking that month over month or week over week, and notice as you make changes, right, those micro changes, whether it's the SEO, whether it's the creative, whether it's increasing or decreasing the DC SPET. See how that impacts your total sales and your total ACOS, because that will give you a better picture of how you can optimize with FORT and then grow your sales career. Love it.

Ben Smith: 44:40

I'm on. You're the man. I really appreciate you coming on the show today. I mean I feel like that was a great. You know a lot of very succinct thoughts put together. I can see where you're talking and we didn't even really get into the whole system side of everything that you do, but you can really see that systematic kind of mindset working right. I really appreciate you coming on the show today. Before we go, I just I wanted to take a second to kind of turn it around to you and give you you know you the chance to kind of tell us where people might be able to connect to you or find you or if they want to learn more. So I'll let you do that real quick.

Aman Advani: 45:09

Definitely Well, ben. First of all, thank you so much for having me. Man, I know we've been. We've been talking for a couple of years now. I remember I saw you at Prosper.

Aman Advani: 45:15

I'm hoping to see your shows coming up in the future and I'm just such a fan of Seller Candy. It's been awesome working with you guys as partners for a short while and really growing our relationship. It's been awesome that I think you know kudos to you and to the team for everything you guys are doing with these podcasts, getting people on Big shout out to CavFort to get, but I know you've got you've got some great guests on you, so I'm really honored to just be a part of it. And in terms of where you can find me, I mean, hey, if you're in San Diego, shoot me an email. I'm on an AOG marketing and we have an awesome office, la Jolla at the Petitico lunch and we can talk about Acos, tacos or any other KPI you want. But I will be.

Aman Advani: 45:47

You know I attend some, some trade shows here in Southern California, so I'll probably be heading to a few of those. I'll probably be at the SEMA show in Vegas in November and then again in Vegas January for CES, and then you can definitely catch me at Prosper, and our team will be at Unbox too, so just know, any event that you're going to, if it's e-commerce related, you'll find someone wearing these shiny new A02 cello laugh shirts, and you can catch me in San Diego anytime in my line more than happy to meet for lecture, coffee, cool Love it and for anyone watching, we'll include some of that information as well down below in the show notes or, if you're on YouTube, put it in the description as well too.

Ben Smith: 46:21

So, guys, that brings us while I'm on, and guys is in. Anyone watching or listening. That's going to bring us to the end of this episode, so I wanted to say one more time I'm on. Thanks so much for joining us today. Thanks, ben. Wow, that was an incredible episode.

Ben Smith: 46:34

I hope that you listening, watching, wherever you are in the world's got some kind of value out of this show. As always, we appreciate you tuning into the Amazon strategy show. If you found some value in today's discussion, let us know. We request that you give us a rating or review. It really does help us, whether it's on Apple, spotify or Google, to not only give us feedback, but also to reach other e-commerce enthusiasts just like yourself. Beyond that, don't forget to subscribe to our social media accounts. You'll get behind the scenes content, updates and more, and all this stuff is going to be found in the show notes or the description, depending on where you're watching or listening to this episode. So that is it for today's episode. Mark your calendar for next week. We will be back again for another amazing discussion with another Titan in the Amazon industry to bring you some more expert insights and game changing tips. Until then, my name is Ben Smith, signing off and happy selling.