Q4 is wrapping up…it’s time to think ahead.
A well-optimized product listing page is critical to success on Amazon. There are a lot of components to consider and the stakes are high. Driving traffic to a subpar listing page is going to result in decreased conversion and can really hurt you.
But, don’t worry! We have partnered with the experts at Nozani and have a lot of listing knowledge to share with you. Learn how to convert visitors to your page to buyers by making sure your page addresses their needs and answers their questions.
Don’t miss the full transcription of this webinar below:
Let’s go ahead and kick things off, then. Jordan, just to confirm, you can see my screen and everything, right?
I can, yeah. We’re good to go.
Perfect. Folks, that means you all can, as well. If for some reason you have any issues, just shoot us a note on the questions section chat box.
Just a few housekeeping things. We’re going to go over … obviously, we’re going to talk about … how to fully optimize a listing. Before we do that, Nozani was very nice enough and kind enough to be able to provide a special something for everybody who’s attending today, so make sure you stay tuned to the end. We’re also going to talk about our newest solution, Teikametrics Flywheel. It’s come out, as well. Then, we’ll also talk about how you can reach out to Nozani team of questions, as well.
Without further ado, this is December 13th. Teikametrics and Nozani co-hosing the webinar, titled Actionable Amazon Strategies For Q1. Quick hint, though. Just because we say Q1, I was just reading a stat that six of the eight most busy shopping days of the year are still yet to happen. What you’re going to learn today can directly impact the success that you have, between now and the Christmas holiday season, and carry that momentum into Q1. Do not wait to action some of the things that we go through here today, as well. I urge you all to consider that, as well.
So, who are we? I am the beautiful gentleman on the left, Jason Agee, Director of Seller Partnerships here at Teikametrics. I’m sitting in our Boston office here with Pat. Patrick, you want to introduce yourself?
Hi, all. Thanks for joining us. I’m Pat. I’ve been at Teikametrics here for a little over two years. I’m now a senior member of the sales team. You know, really looking forward to today’s webinar. Thanks so much for joining.
Yeah. I personally am glad that Pat came on. When I joined, Pat was instrumental in helping me get up to speed here. I know he knows his stuff and knows what he’s talking about. Pat, it’s a pleasure to have you, man.
Yeah thanks, Jason.
Jordan, over to you, my friend.
Yeah. I’m Jordan Turley. I’m the Director of Marketing, over here at Nozani. We are a specialized agency, focused on Amazon optimization and growth. Yeah, I’ve been in this space for about four years. I started out trying to sling my own private label brand, and have just moved into more consulting and that side of things. I love it. Changing all the time, which is great for me, and super excited to be here.
Yeah, absolutely. I did see just one or two notes saying that they can’t see my screen. It seems like most everybody’s is okay. I would just go to the icon, if you’re on … just go to the toolbar and look for the Go To Webinar. It looks like a flower. Just click on that and it should bring up the video. If you guys have any questions, though, just let us know.
Good. Without further ado, let’s keep going a little bit further here. What are we going to cover today? Folks, this is going to be a very practical, very useful breakdown of something that’s very key to how to run a successful Amazon business. We’re going to start with the overview of a listing, why your listing matters on Amazon. We’re actually going to break down each component of a listing, some dos and don’ts, some pitfalls, et cetera. We’re going to give you some examples of how a properly optimized listing looks versus one that needs a lot of work.
I think one of the big Teikaways that I want us to have here today is, listings in Amazon, in general, allow smaller and upcoming brands compete with the big dogs, and win in a lot of cases. Patrick’s … Jordan’s going to lead the one through four for the most part. Patrick’s then going to talk about the Flywheel effect and how having an optimized listing helps your business scale profitably. We’ll round out with some Teikaways, the offers, and then jump into some Q and A.
I’m going to run a quick poll here. I would … you all should see this poll pop on your screen. Please participate and answer. The first question is … you all should be able to see it here, in a second. Cool. It’s which components of listings do you feel need the most to be properly optimized? Just give you a quick second here. Perfect. I’m going to close the poll here and let’s share these results. My computer’s trying to wake up here.
It looks like 41% of folks said the title. Pretty good breakdown here. We have the title, and EBC, seem to be something that … it’s actually pretty even, wouldn’t you say, Pat?
Yeah. The title’s really important. That’s the ante to play the game between your title and photos. Good. It seems like we need to cover it all, which is exactly what we’re going to be doing. Jordan, you’re in good company here because they’re going to want to listen to what you have to say. Let me go here and hide the results, and let’s get going. Perfect.
Jordan, over to you, my friend. Talk to us about the components of a listing and give us an overview.
Perfect. Here’s just a quick shot of basic overview. This is obviously going to be straightforward for most of you, especially if you are already running your Amazon business, or at least selling on that channel. We basically have a few essentials, right? We’ve got content. That’s going to include your title, your bullet points, your product description, and the content that goes into your enhanced brain content. Then, you have photography, which can include both. Obviously, your studio lifestyle and we love to add an infographic. And then, you have enhanced brand content.
There’s even more that we’re going to dive into, but here’s the basic overview, and we’ll get going on that.
Oh, great. Great.
Let me ask you this: In your opinion, what do you think the most important component of a listing is?
Great question. I don’t think you can really narrow it down to one thing. I think it’s essential now, on Amazon, to have each section of your Amazon listing fully optimized. The word fully optimized, I guess, is … I don’t know, you almost can’t say that, right? You also always want to be testing. Each of these sections are going to pull a different lever for you, and are going to help you increase traffic, or conversion, or reviews, or brand awareness. We’ll dive into all that.
Yeah. I think to your point, too, you can’t … if you’re struggling in few areas, especially things like listings or photos, all of it is essential in order to run a successful business, but especially on the different modes of how we actually access this information, which you’ll get into as well.
Next slide here. Why does an optimized listing even matter on Amazon, Jordan?
Awesome.
As I was telling you the other day, Jason, I had to put this image in-
It’s incredible, man.
One, it’s hilarious, but two, it’s very relevant.
If you think about how many products are sold on the Amazon platform right now, your product or products, you’re literally a needle in a haystack. I don’t say that to discourage anybody. This is why an optimized listing matters. You will not be found on Amazon, unless you have an optimized listing. It’s a search platform. You need to be able to be found through search. And also paid advertising, which we’ll dive into and have some great content there from Pat.
Basically, your listing is a foundation for both your organic rankings and your automatic campaigns on amazon. In the end, optimizing your listing is going to grant you two things. It’s all going to come down to traffic and conversion, so we’ll dive into how we make those two things happen.
Yeah, yeah.
Just to reiterate some nuggets that you just talked about there. It’s a few things. One, it’s how you get found, whether organically or via advertising. At the end of the day, it’s also how you sustain growth. Everybody can get one or two sales, every now, and then. If you want consistent growth, you need to really be paying attention to how you optimize your listing.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, let’s talk about-
You may be a needle in the haystack, guys, but we’re going to teach you exactly how to get your customers to find that needle.
Yeah, that’s exactly … I think the other thing that I’ve already mentioned, but I’m going to keep reiterating, is this the platform that’s more level for any of these … sorry, my screen went out here. This is the opportunity for any brand to actually have … be able to compete with the big players out there.
Jordan, are you able to see my screen, by the way?
I was. It just got pulled down.
All right, give me one second here, folks. Not sure.
In the meantime, while you’re pulling that up, the next couple of slides we’ll go over, I just want to cover a couple of foundational things that are really … set the foundation for this entire process and strategy of how to go about optimizing your listing now, and what’s working now.
It’s working now? Can you see it?
I can’t see it yet. I can just … I can start on a slide.
Okay. Here we go. You should be able to … let me flip this real quick. Oh, sorry. Not sure what happened there. You should be able to see it now.
Yeah. Yeah, I can see it up in the corner.
Yeah, it’s updating here.
Okay, cool. To touch on this one foundational thing, there are four factors that directly influence the A9 algorithm, which is Amazon’s search algorithm. Those four things are sales velocity, so meaning how often you’re making sales on Amazon. Your relevancy, are you in the right category, sub-category, do you have the correct keywords that your customers are actually searching for when wanting to buy a product like yours? Price, are you competitive there? We all know Amazon cares about that, right? Sometimes more than I feel like I want them to. And then, product availability, which is basically your in stock history.
This sometimes, I feel, it’s overlooked. This a huge deal, guys. If you are constantly running out of stock, it is going to become harder and harder to rank back up to where you were, so make sure you’re managing your inventory correctly.
This is a good point. The old algorithm, the way that a lot of folks interpret it was, if you were to stock out, Amazon, in a way, would hold your BSR, your best seller rank, and then once you restocked up, you’d still have good rank. It did affect it negatively, some, but it had less of an impact.
You’re saying, now, if you running out of a stock, it can be detrimental to your ranking and listing, right?
Yes, it can.
Okay. Yeah, very interesting. Cool. On to the next slide, about the three types of buyers. When I first looked at this, it blew me away. I never even though about this approach when you talk about the different types of buyers and how to optimize for them.
Yeah. Yeah. I won’t hit every point on here, guys. You will afterwards, and I’m going to try to go through this. I’m going to hit, obviously, the key points, but I want to make sure Pat gets to talk a lot about the Flywheel and advertising, which he’s got some really cool stuff to say there, and then make sure you all have time for Q and A.
Basically, this has come directly from Amazon. They know that they have three types of buyers on Amazon. They have head of household, so you can think of that as … it’s usually the mom of the house, but it can sometimes be the dad. They’re just really looking for the best deal for their family. Then, you have your impulse buyers. They’re the ones that, they’re like, “Oh, I want this product.”
They make a search on Amazon and most likely buy something on the first page within a minute, and they don’t really look much into comparisons or reading your listing. They’re just like, “Oh yeah, that one looks great. Let’s buy it.”
Product researcher, these usually fall into categories where you’re selling a higher ticket item on Amazon. They’re going to make rational decisions. They’re going to look at tons of reviews, compare products. They might actually read your bullet points, which not many people do anymore.
Yeah. No, I mean, look. This about it this way, too. Here’s how I interpret this, is think about the product you’re selling. If it’s a household good, a coupon’s going to work very well for that. If it’s a gadget or an article of clothing or jewelry, that will cater more towards the impulse buyer. If it’s a piece of tech or electronic, the product researcher probably cares … that’s probably your buyer base more. Make sure you’re listing is interpreting that.
Exactly. Understand where your customers fall in these three categories, and optimize accordingly. We’ll talk about that as we go down.
Yeah.
What we’re going to go through now is breaking down each component of a listing, so listing structure, then we’ll hit title, images, bullet points, and we’ll round off with product descriptions, EBC, A+, storefronts, and end with reviews.
Great. Well, let’s get down into it. So, listing structure dos.
Awesome.
Listing structure. We’re talking about variations and how you organize your listings on the back end and how they show up on the front end. Amazon, nowadays, it’s about customer experience, not real estate. They are trying to hammer this home, both in the content that they put out publicly and with … when we talked to some people up there, they’re just always trying to hit home this idea of customer experience, not real estate. There’s going to be some arguments here, I know, and we can answer those for sure.
Yeah. Look, even if it is about real estate, you can have a good presence, but if you have a really terrible experience, you can’t operate under all the real estate and then get people to buy with a really bad customer experience.
Yeah, exactly.
That makes sense. I think you made a really good point, too. The art and science behind this is, you’re trying to do two things. You’re trying to be very user friendly and customer friendly when they’re reading your listing, and they want to be really involved and have an emotional connection with a product, most of the time. Same time, too, you’re also trying to work along Amazon’s guidelines and have their algorithms and their computer pick it up, as well. You’re trying to please both parties at the exact same time.
Exactly. It’s a lot easier to have one listing rank with a bunch of variations than try to rank each of those individually. When you think about going into a retail store, if you go into a store to buy something, right? Let’s use the stock example. You find cool pair of socks and there are multiple colors, they’re all going to be laid out right next to each other.
You’re not going to have to go to different parts of the store to try to find those. That’s the same idea with your Amazon listing. You want people to be able to find different variations, different colors, different packs, quantity packs, all within the same listing. It’s great for upsells, it’s great for customer experience.
Yeah. You know-
Here’s an example of what not to do, right? Variations are key, guys. Right? With these keys? No pun intended, except yeah, it was intended.
Variations are key. It’s interesting, because this is where I will play devil’s advocate, and I’d love your opinion on it.
Yeah.
Some would argue that if you go to Amazon, and both of listings are yours, you’re pushing out a competitor, therefore you’re going to get more of the click. I’d love to get your opinion on that, first off, before I come to the second part.
Yeah. I think that’s not necessarily untrue, but as I mentioned, I think what we’re trying to do now, as Amazon gets more and more competitive, we’re trying to maximize efficiency. It’s going to be very difficult to rank, if you have this one and two pack of keys, on to page one and kick out a competitor, than it is going to be to rank just one listing. Then, you also have the advantage of those reviews being combined, right?
They could have this one listing, and they’re going to have … what is it? Over 100 reviews rather than 62 and 35.
Yeah, man. You nailed it. I think that would be my argument, too, which is you’re working twice as hard, running two separate races. Right now, I’m trying to get two different listings ranking. Why not just put all of your effort into one very strong listing, not to mention your sales velocity increases, because if you’re selling a variation, it still maps up to the parent listing. Right?
Yep.
In that case, you’re actually able to cover more ground by having them into one listing.
Totally.
Cool, cool.
Awesome. Let’s move on to title. I’ll go through this fairly quick. Basically, you’ll want to focus on the first 50 to 80 characters. There are still several categories on Amazon, where you can have a longer title count than this. We know that they’re really trying to get, pretty much, categories across the board down to 80. There’s no data to back this up, but it’s usually best practice to try to put your most important keywords, and what your customer’s wanting to see in the first 50. That’s for mobile, too. That’s usually really all that shows up on mobile. Make sure you get the most important things there.
Also, write for the customer. Don’t just keyword stuff your title. Again, it’s about customer experience. You want to put other things besides keywords that you know your customers are going to really relate to. The example here by this Bluetooth speaker is, they have loud stereo sound, rich bass, 24 hour playtime. These are all features that they know their customers are really going to enjoy reading and are going to be important in making a purchase decision.
Yeah. That also flows a lot better, too. This is where we talk about you want to strike the right balance in getting good keywords in there. Same time, too, if just looks like a bunch of unrelated keywords slapped up beside each other, anybody who’s buying it is going to be turned off by that.
Exactly.
You know what I mean?
Yep.
It’s important that you actually have a better approach than that.
Right.
Cool.
Awesome. Moving on to images. This is going to be extremely important for all buyers, but especially your impulse buyers. Basically, the way that we think of images now, and especially infographics here at Nozani, is that they’re basically your new bullet points. Right? Really, only the product researchers, for the most part, are going to read those. You want to get all of the information inside of your images, everything that you need to know to make a purchase decision, right inside of those images.
You need to have high resolution main images and studio images. Lifestyle images, sometimes people just throw stuff up, but you really want to think about what model am I contracting out to be in this lifestyle images? Is it actually a model that looks like my target audience? Is he or she in a location that you would actually use my product in? Right? And then, infographics are huge, too.
You guys can check this out later, but down below, I gave you our optimal image structure here, how many images of each you should have and what order we place them in at Nozani to maximize conversion.
Yeah.
Two things I want to highlight here. Number one, I was talking to … maybe it was Thaddeus about the purpose of images. He said it really well. He was like, “Look, you need to be able to … somebody needs to be able to go to your images and be able to make a buying decision, based on your images only.”
Especially in the mobile world, like you said, you get a little bit of the title and then you get images. You’re not getting bullet points on mobile. If you have this fundamental shift of folks buying on mobile, images are what they’re going to be buying on. You know what I mean?
Totally.
I gotta tell you … I need you to talk about something with the audience.
Yeah.
Nozani created something called the Tinder test. Before you talk about it, for those folks that don’t know Tinder, it’s essentially a dating app that is geared toward millennials, but essentially, it’s … you see photos of folks and you swipe right if you’re interested and want to have a conversation with them, or you swipe left to ignore them. You guys have actually talked about this and how it relates to your Amazon listing. Talk to us about the Tinder test, when it comes to Amazon listings.
Yeah, yeah. Of course.
We will run this test with a image. Your main image, as it shows up in the search engine results page on Amazon, it’s going to be a big factor on whether somebody, or not, clicks into your listing to learn more. Right? We think of this as relating to Tinder, as swiping right. Take a look at your image, and just think if my product here, this image, was on Tinder, would I swipe right or would I keep moving right past it. Right? You want to make that first main image really attractive, really high quality.
Yeah, that’s awesome, man. I love it. I’m going to steal. I want you to know that.
Yeah, take it. That’s cool.
Cool. I’ll go through these quickly. I want to make sure we get through everything okay. Just a couple other examples of infographic images we use here. We’ll add in … we’ll highlight promotions for our clients, and then another great idea is to throw in a product comparison infographic as well, so that people don’t even have to leave the listing to check how you stack up to your competitors.
Yeah, this is awesome. I mean, you can see some of the stuff that’s in the descriptions and below, in your listing, which is great. I can literally go here and just this organic bamboo baby hood towel, I can already make a buying decision based on that check box. That’s incredible. That’s super powerful stuff. I hope you guys are taking notes, because this is really powerful stuff.
Great. Last thing here, regarding to images, is video. This is for brand registered sellers only, and this is huge, everybody. If you aren’t brand registered yet, start the process right away of getting your trademark, so that you can have this. I mean, this stat right here speaks for itself. This alone is worth any money you have to spend to get trademarked. 64 to 85% of customers are more likely to purchase an item after watching a product video. You can do this now as just selling through seller central, as a brand registered seller. Make sure you take advantage of this.
Yeah. Speaking of this … Jordan, correct me if I’m wrong, if I say anything out of line here, but what it used to be was called … in order to get video, you needed to be a vendor. Everybody would … there’s this mad rush to become a vendor, at least sell some of your products directly on Amazon as a vendor, because it unlocked the power of video, and some other A+ content, which we now refer to as enhanced brand content.
This literally was such a goldmine by putting in these videos, because like you said, it’s between 64 to 85% … you said it’s actually closer to the higher end of that.
Yeah.
That alone could turn this on it’s head.
Totally. Awesome, let’s move down to bullet points.
Just to start, bullet points are a great place to optimize. Still, totally necessary to optimize both for SEO purposes, but you also want to have great sales copy here, because your product researchers are going to read this. You need to include your most relevant keywords that you haven’t already included in your title, cut straight to the benefits. We call out our most important benefits in all caps in the very beginning of each bullet point, and it is important, I think, to maximize character counts.
The caveat here is, if you cannot provide any real value, then don’t do that. Right? It’s great for SEO purposes, but if you’re just going to be throwing in fluff, your customer doesn’t care. Again, number one priority is customer experience, but if you can, if you’ve got a great writer, they should be able to maximize your character counts, while adding SEO value and great persuasive value, as well.
Yeah. I think whenever I’m doing a quick sniff test of a listing, to see whether they’ve optimized their listing, I often look at the bullets, to see whether they’ve capitalized the first few words of it. That usually is a good indication, right?
I think I would … the way I look at it, too, is I don’t know if we have any Reddit followers or users in the audience, but that’s the TL;DR, to long, didn’t read, that’s what I love the all caps characters there, as well. Hey, here’s a really quick snapshot of it, but if you want more info, just keep reading the bullet.
Exactly.
Cool.
Awesome. Moving down to product description.
Even if you have enhanced brand content, make sure you do have your product description fully optimized, as well. It’s still unclear whether, or not, that plays in and has SEO value, but it doesn’t hurt. This is going to be probably the very last thing these product researchers read to really make a decision. This can be the tipping point for some of these people, so make sure you address any unaddressed, frequently asked questions that they may have. That doesn’t mean you have to have an epic Q section, but get into the mind of your customers. What questions do you know that they’re asking, and then answer anything you haven’t already in your infographics and in your bullet points.
You can do some basic HTML. Amazon doesn’t love it, but I think if you stick with your bold tags, and your spacing, and put in some bullet points, so it’s just readable, that’s okay. They usually don’t crack down on that. Maximize your character counts here, as well, but just don’t keyword stuff.
Yeah, absolutely. Folks, I see some good questions coming in. I know we’re going through this quickly, so if you guys have questions, we do have the Q and A session. Please make sure you come in, and you ask. Or, even have an opinion or comment, as well. It doesn’t have to just be a question, so feel free to rifle those.
Cool.
Awesome. Cool.
Moving down to EBC. This is a massive conversion tool. Again, I just want to hit home this idea of being brand registered. If you aren’t already, go start that today. EBC, again, we’ve talked about the importance of mobile already, and how many more shoppers are at least starting the buying, the purchasing process on mobile, or at least the browsing. They might move to desktop to actually purchase, but most likely, your first interaction with a customer is going to be on a mobile.
Make sure you design your EBC with mobile in mind. What I mean by this is, Amazon, a lot of the modules that they’ve introduced in EBC, and A+ are actually not that mobile friendly. If you have EBC already, go and check out what it looks like on mobile. Most likely, a lot of people that obviously develop it, design it on desk top and never really check it on mobile. Then, they’ll be like, “Holy cow, this image shrinked down. It looks terrible.”
Right? We have … feel free to contact us, and we can help you out with what modules work well on mobile, but here are some examples of people who have done this really well. On the right is a client of ours, and it’s just a template that we have, a basic EBC template. All of these modules here shrink down really well, and Organify does a great job of having a clear value prop and some really benefit rich infographics.
Yeah, and I think we may have answered this but, Manjit asks, what is enhanced brand content, essentially? Maybe, I guess just to reiterate, this is just … if you own the brand, and you’re registered, you actually get a dedicated section below the fold that will actually highlight specifics about your brand. There are different formats of how you can mix up both images and copy. Is that the way to cover it?
Yeah, exactly. And, enhanced brand content on mobile is actually higher up than it is on desktop. They know people are on mobile, they know enhanced brand content is important for conversion, they’re actually moving that up closer. It’s pretty much the next thing you see, after your main image and title, and reviews, and everything.
Great. Absolutely. Perfect, let’s go on here. I believe that … okay, storefront.
Awesome.
Storefront, these are getting really, really cool. Again, you have to be brand registered if you have an Amazon storefront, but this is a great place to tell your brand’s story. Amazon, if any of you follow everything that’s happening really closely, which I assume you do if you’re attending this webinar, and you’re selling on Amazon, but they’re really having a big shift toward rewarding companies that really focus on brand.
A great place to tell your brand story. They have a really cool feature now, it’ll auto-populate a deals section with any current deals you have running. Then, this is also the platform on Amazon that has the most advanced tracking metrics, and they’re only getting better. It’s a great place to run headline search ads to your storefront.
Yeah.
And then something really interesting is, we’re hearing some whisperings that Amazon is actually pushing the development of their storefronts very heavily, and they want it competitive to other e-commerce platforms, like Shopify, Blue Commerce, things like that.
The effort to take over the world by Amazon is not stopping anytime soon.
Yeah.
Now, they’re proving that with this.
If you look at the evolution … we talked about this the other day. When Amazon used to have Amazon web stores, and I believe they shut it down back in 2015, if I’m not mistaken. That was their direct competition of the Shopifys and the Magentos of the world. This is a way where they’ve pulled back … they stepped one foot back to gain three steps forward, right?
Yeah, exactly.
This is a way for them to essentially have brands, which there’s this fundamental shift to brands on Amazon, anyways. This is essentially their way of competing directly with your own storefront. Or, even if you see it as competing, it’s just being an extension of their marketplace, where you can actually highlight everything that makes you special about your brand. You know what I mean?
Yep, exactly.
Yeah. Great, great.
Cool.
Ending off with reviews. Clearly, a very important thing and it’s become more and more difficult. Amazon’s made it very difficult to acquire reviews at a rapid rate. Pretty much, just circling back to the beginning, this is another reason why listing optimization is extremely important. The higher you rank organically, the better your sponsored product campaign, your sponsored ad campaigns perform, because your listing is optimized, the more reviews you’re going to get just because you have a higher sales velocity. Right?
A couple of things to do to … some white hat methods to make sure you’re doing this correctly and increasing the rate at which you receive reviews are right here. I have automation in place. We like to insert product inserts with a QR code that will lead customers directly to your review page, and then you can go in and if you have a VA, or you have time, go in and ask customers who have left seller feedback, to leave a review. And then, make sure you are responding to reviews. That reflects a lot better on your brand than if you just let those things stay there without any response from you.
Yeah, absolutely. That’s a great tip of the cap in foreshadowing for us talking about Flywheel. One other pro-tip, a couple pro-tips I wanted to highlight is, a lot of ways you can actually make your own listing better, or to clear up any confusion if they thought it was going to be … if it’s a clothing item and it comes in smaller than they thought, you can use the comments of your reviews to make your listing better, to make sure they’re buying for the right reasons, or they know what to expect.
Or, if there’s a flaw in your product, you can actually use your reviews to make your product better. You can do the exact same thing with competitors. If you see competitors … folks consistently complain about the same thing on a competitor’s listing, you can highlight why yours is different or enhance your product to stand out more compared to that. That’s just a way for you to use this intel to make your products and your overall Amazon business better.
Yeah, love it.
Cool. I believe this is where … sorry. One more, and then I think we’re going to go to some listings.
Yeah, yeah. I’ll go through this quickly, but I alluded to this earlier when we were talking about variations. You want to mimic an in-store buying experience. Again, this is another little nugget that has been given directly from Amazon. Basically, put yourself in … let’s just do a quick, imaginative exercise, I guess. Imagine you walk into your favorite store, going to buy something that you really want. Maybe you’ve asked for it for Christmas, right? You walk in, what do you need to see or to have happen in order to make that in-store purchase?
A few of the things you need in-store, are you need to see every angle of the product and it’s variations. That’s why variations are key. That’s why having the correct amount of images are key, and really high quality studio images, so you can see the product at every angle. Then, you would need to touch it, feel it, try it on, smell it, taste it. Right? This is where lifestyle photography, infographics can mimic that. Then, you’ll want to compare it to other products. You can do that with the comparison infographic, making sure you’re getting a lot of reviews. That’s another great way to do that.
And then, you might want to ask the sales attendant questions, right? This is what we went over … you can touch on this infographics, but then you’ll hit it home with bullet points and product descriptions. That’s why those are really important to make sure that you have optimized … in-store shopping is so powerful because of imagination. You can actually see, hold, feel, touch, taste a product. The more that you can mimic that experience through an optimized listing, the higher your conversion’s going to be.
Yeah, absolutely. Let me go to the next slide here. Cool. Let’s take a look at some listings here, folks. Let’s first off start with a not so well done listing. I’ll take the first one here. On this one, you have Folgers classic roast coffee. You have one image and you have one bullet. The interesting thing, too, is this is the power of a massively established brand. People are still going to buy it because they know it, they know the product. Right?
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Jordan, what’s your opinion on this listing here, put out by a very, very large company?
Yeah, it’s terrible, man. I think we can learn a couple things here. One, the importance of brand, which we’ve touched on. Right? Take advantage of the programs Amazon is giving us. Amazon Brand Registry, build up a social media channel, sell on your own channel. Build a brand, because you’re going to perform naturally better on Amazon because of that.
Yeah.
Also, Folgers is a great example of why smaller to mid size companies and brands can come in and just dominate brands like this, because they’re just not going to be found. Folgers is going to get maybe a lot of direct traffic, people typing it straight in. If someone just wants some coffee, where is Folgers going to appear? You know?
And, as Amazon as a platform becomes more robust and you can target competitive products … let’s take an example of somebody probably none of ya’ll know, but are just absolutely killing it. Cool. Yeah, this is one of your clients, as well, right?
Yeah.
Great example of an optimized listing here, another coffee brand. This is Kimera Koffee. As you can see, title. They’re still allowing more than 80 characters here, so we maximized that. And have some really good keywords in here, but the title flows. Right? We wrote for the customer.
Here’s some cool things. Let’s talk about this. You have nootropic infused ground coffee. When you go down here, it shows you infused with nootropics. If that’s alone … some folks want to just be able to use that big buzzword, but if you really do care, it’s a cognitive enhancer, meant to health improve brain function. Give me all of the nootropics of the world. I want them.
I need that, man. Need more of that in my life.
Yeah, man.
Look, here’s an image of them sitting in Seattle with this coffee. It’s being poured from an awesome vase. I think it’s a Chemex coffee maker, is what that is. They have a video have. That’s super, super powerful stuff. Look at that. It’s sitting on a marble table with a French press. That is bougie. That’s what I want.
I love it. If you scroll down, too. Look at this. Look at the example here. Look at the power of enhanced brand content that Folgers didn’t have. Become the legend. I mean, that’s just … look at this action shot. I don’t even know what that is, but I want that, too. That’s it. I’m not paid by this brand, by the way, but it’s worth noting.
Let’s look at a bad listing. We just did that. Let’s look at a good listing. Cool. Just to … I know, we’re running a little bit low on time, so we’re just going to-
Yeah, let’s just … let’s not even … I won’t even touch on this, but again, you will all receive the replay of this and this is just a great way to see how to fix any leaky funnel you might have on Amazon.
Yeah, absolutely. Cool.
Let’s run a quick poll. Now, before we transition to the last section where we talk about Flywheel, is we want … now that you’ve gone through all this, how confident are you that you are now have a properly optimized listing? Let that run here for a second. I know we covered a lot there, but that’s the power of this, and … I can see the attendee level has maintained it’s level. Folks, thanks so much. That’s a reflection on the content you have here.
That’s good. I’m glad I haven’t been too boring.
Yeah, man. Absolutely. Cool. I’m going to go ahead and shut it down for time. I’m going to close this poll. Let’s share the results. Yeah, you can see here, all of a sudden, you have more than half the folks are somewhat confident. The overwhelming … I love the 5% of, oh God, help me. That’s what we’re here … trying to do here. Yeah, look, a quarter of folks … a third of folks, if you look at it, fall in this bucket of I’m not confident that mine’s optimized correctly. That’s why were here talking about it. Let me hide these results and we’ll continue on here. Cool.
Now, let talk about the Flywheel Effect. I’m going to flip this over to Pat on our side.
Yeah. Thanks, Jason. Thanks, Jordan.
The Flywheel Effect, if you follow Teikametrics on any of our content, you’ll hear us speaking about this a lot. What is the Flywheel Effect? Essentially, that’s the relationship between your advertising and your total business performance. All of you listening, every seller on Amazon, that’s what you’re trying to establish. It’s ultimately figuring out how much advertising that you need to spend, should grow your overall profitability. Everything that Jordan covered is extremely important to achieve that Flywheel Effect. It’s arguably … the initial framework and most important thing to do, to get yourself in a right position to get to that Flywheel Effect, and I’ll go into that in much more detail, as well.
Flywheel Effect, again as mentioned, we want sellers to very easily understand how is your advertising impacting your total sales? Is it helping it? Is it hurting it, and whether it’s being used effectively? By properly scaling, controlling your advertising revenue, you’ll be able to improve your sales rank with every additional sale you’re achieving from ads. That improved sales rank is going to lead to better organic placement, better traffic, higher conversion rates, which is going to result in a lower cost, and that’s going to be the driver of your organic growth.
Yeah, absolutely. I think a couple of things here is, the purpose of advertising isn’t to just increase ad revenue. The purpose of advertising is to grow your business and see a larger ROI. If you’re doing these things right, and I would add to this, for this Flywheel Effect, is if you even add in one other level, which is make sure your listing’s properly optimized, that way you can set yourself up to get more data. That really is how this Flywheel works.
So, next slide.
Yeah, there’s just a quote I want to pick on. I won’t go into much detail on it. Essentially, this is something that Jeff Bezos and Amazon, and he was talking about his wealth. With Flywheel, it’s very relevant in every aspect of Amazon’s model. Not just seller’s growth, you guys listening in. Amazon themselves are actually utilizing the Flywheel framework, which is driving their extensive growth and their momentum. To ensure it, what Amazon’s doing is, they’re not concerned with short term growth, but rather that long-term sustained momentum. That’s how you all should be thinking, as an Amazon seller, a business selling on Amazon, is thinking about this. It’s achieving that long-term growth and not something in the initial short-term.
Yeah.
Awesome.
So, understanding the Flywheel Effect in more detail. The ultimate goal, as I mentioned, is to understand how sponsored ads is impacting overall business and overall sales. One way to capture this is to measure ad spend, as it correlates to your overall sales. A lot of sellers come in and they’re strictly focused on … they’re looking at ACOS, looking at how that is compared to their advertising sales. We want you to be thinking about, and one way to start thinking is, actually taking your advertising spend, how will that correlate to your total sales?
What that is, in simple terms, an acronym would be TACOS, your total ACOS.
That’s a metric that we actually coined here. It’s important. It’s funny, because when we talk about, and this is a plug for us, but you … look, you can calculate this yourself. When we talk to sellers, or agencies, or brands themselves, a lot of them say, “Hey, look. We’re not doing this at all or we’re doing it very manually.”
It’s super important and I’m glad to know that people are actually looking at it. They see the power of it, as well.
Yeah. If they’re simply looking at ACOS and thinking of it as strictly just a cost, and potentially just wanting that low, that’s not going to grow the overall business, which is what you’re ultimately what you’re trying to do.
Yeah.
With advertising, that’s going to jump start your growth there, as well. Flywheel Effects doesn’t happen overnight. This is where an optimized listing is extremely crucial, starting with an automatic campaign can sometimes get confused as beginning that advertising growth. But, that’s not going to happen unless your listings are optimized and you are built up to a point where you can start to be successful with those automatic campaigns. As you all know, if you are running them, Amazon is pulling a lot of terms from your direct listing. If you don’t have the proper bullet points, title, and details, that’s not going to run effectively.
Awesome. Why is optimizing your product important to grow your advertising? An optimized listing leads to better data. Better data is leading to decreased waste and spend. Higher conversion rates increase ROI, and ultimately, more revenue and profit, which is going to allow you to be in a position to start to expand your catalog and grow your business there, as well. I’ll go into those in a little bit more detail, as well.
Yeah, I don’t want to … I think you covered this well. The other thing, too, is the way Amazon automated campaigns work is, Amazon is essentially going into your listing, looking up the copy, looking up the keywords you use, and they’re going to actually then test some keywords that they think are relevant. If your listing’s optimized properly, there’s a better chance that Amazon’s able to pull from a better data set that is your listing, therefore you can see better results from running an automated advertising campaign.
Our strategy, and a strategy that’s been proven many a time over is, if you run automated campaigns, you can see what’s working for you and the money that it’s returning you. Then, you can actually explore those keywords and we call exploiting them, and move them into manual campaigns. You could actually then hone in on what is working for you and get a better ROI out of it.
If you have a very bad listing, your automated advertising doesn’t work nearly as better. Your manual campaigns will … and, to Jordan’s point, from an organic ranking perspective, you’re not going to show up because Amazon doesn’t even know how to rank you with their algorithm because it doesn’t really match up.
That’s absolutely correct and that’s exactly this here. With an optimized listing, comes better data, which you need better data to start to convert higher. Having an optimized listing is going to allow you to be served on higher quality search terms than are not produced, especially as Jason mentioned, from those automatic campaigns, which are going to relate more to your product, which you are ultimately going to turn into higher conversion rates.
Having a concise product description and bullet points is extremely crucial to have your framework of advertising take off, which is starting with an automatic campaign, as we mentioned. That’s going to help prevent a lot of waste, because naturally an automatic campaign will not run as efficiently as your built out manual campaign will eventually run.
Yeah. Pat, let me ask you a question about this. You’ve talked to a lot of sellers on … obviously, through the thousands who use Teikametrics now. You sometimes will see them have a lot of impressions and a lot of clicks for a very relevant keyword, like men’s wallets. But yet, we might suggest to them, “Hey, this keyword isn’t performing for you.”
What does that tell you, then?
Yeah, no, absolutely. You can absolutely use your sponsored products data to figure out and learn about your listings. If you’re seeing a lot of impressions and clicks on search terms or keywords that are relevant to your product, if it’s not converting, that’s an indicator that there might be something wrong with your listing, in terms of the content. Maybe they aren’t concise bullet points. Everything that Jordan covered is an extremely important component to start to convert on those terms. You can actually use that sponsored products data to learn about what potentially is not working, to then act on that and start to change your listing.
Yeah, that’s what we’re talking about here, is realizing what keywords aren’t working for you and money you’re just throwing at a wall and it’s not sticking. Yeah, you’re right. You can really pull a lot of this data and help run your listing better, too.
Absolutely.
It’s also going to decrease that waste of spend, as we mentioned. Coming back … having that listing optimized is going to drive more high quality traffic, as we mentioned. If you’re driving higher quality clicks to your product, an optimized listing is going to increase that chance to convert. Ultimately, the end goal here is increasing that revenue and profit. Prior to, if you’re running advertising without an optimized listing or a listing that’s not fully optimized to it’s highest potential, your advertising cost can start to become a burden.
Your impressions and clicks are going to become useless if they’re not converted. The advertising with an un-optimized listing, or even as I mentioned, a partially optimized listing, is going to lead to poor conversion rates, a higher ECOS, which is not growing your business. It’s actually hurting it.
Yeah.
And then after an optimized listing, as we mentioned, you’re going to see higher quality impressions and clicks, which are meaningful. That’s going to convert into sales and improve your sales rank, increase that organic traffic, which is going to result in a growing profit.
It’s just dominant as a fault, right? You need to have the first one happen.
Yeah, absolutely.
Cool. That wraps up everything that we are going … we wanted to talk about. What we’re going to do next, we’re going to talk about Nozani and what they’re offering to our clients. Also, we’ll get to some of the questions.
Jordan, I’ll field this from you and I’ll talk a little bit about it. Basically, you all will give any one of a part of our audience, a free listing audit. Right? And if you use any of their services, an additional 5% off. What comes in that listing audit?
That’s correct.
Basically, we’ll take a look at everything on the front end and just … we have a process that we go through to basically diagnose where you might be falling short. Then, we’ll give you a detailed description of hey, here’s what we would do to optimize. Here’s some actionable Teikaways that you can implement today to increase your traffic and conversion rates on Amazon, and you can run with that.
Free advice. It’s free advice.
Exactly.
I encourage everybody to look at it. Everybody could … I wish I had a stat that shows how poor a lot of these Amazon listings- or, the ones you think you are doing well, you could do a lot better.
Yep.
Beyond that, we would love for folks who are interested in seeing our Flywheel, it’s our next gen solution. We’re launching it now. Folks like you get early access to it, and I know there’s a few folks in the crowd that are already using it. Thank you very much.
Now, I’m going to run through these Teikaways and we’ll go through the questions. Number one, your listing a foundation of your Amazon business that directly impacts your organic rankings, as well as ad performance. Treat it as such. This is your baby, your listing is your Amazon temple. I don’t know if that makes sense, but instead of saying my body is my temple, this is what happens in the Amazon sphere.
Understand the three types of buyers and how you connect with them, and what buyer group your product serves most. Components of a listing is more than you think. The Flywheel Effect and data is your friend. Now, to get to a few questions here. We have a lot of them.
Number one, Jordan, I’ll kick this one over to you. The question is … I’ll see who sent it. I’m going off the top of my head. David said, “How do you get automated emails? I thought that wasn’t allowed on Amazon.”
It is allowed. Amazon has made it so customers can opt out of receiving any automated emails from a seller. You still can do it. We use a platform called Feedback Five here. It works really well. You don’t want to bombard people, so try to keep it to maybe a max of two, or so, emails. And, make it valuable, too. Right? If you have a PDF you can give them or some value, but also ask for a review or some feedback, whatever it is you’re trying to increase.
Yeah, absolutely. Very good point.
So, it says do you use EBC and become a registered brand? Do we just need a trademark for our brand name? We are a third party seller. How do you actually become brand registered?
Yeah. You need a word mark trademark, and you can find a trademark lawyer to do that, or you can try to do it yourself, if you want, through Rocketlawyer.com or some of those sites like that. Basically, yeah, that’s really all you need. You need a trademark, you need to have UPCs for your product, unless you have an exemption. Then, you just apply. If you have all that, it’s usually pretty quick and they’ll get you in.
Awesome, man.
HSA? Linda, we’ll answer this for you. Jordan, I’ll kick that one to you. What is HSA?
Yes, those are headline search ads. Those are the banner ads that show up on top of Amazon, that you used to only be able to do with AMS, and you can now do that through seller’s central.
Yeah, absolutely. In other words, you now can do it as a third party seller.
The one thing I would say is, you could use your sponsored products data to funnel and feed headline search, which I believe is now sponsored brands. Using that and adding those keywords that you know are converting in sponsored ads can help set you up for success with HSA, or sponsored brands.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
Melissa had a good question. For image checks, we should be designing with mobile in mind, correct? The second part to that is, the infographic seems to typically be really information heavy. Thoughts?
Yes, yes to the first answer … or, the first question. Yeah, infographics, you really want to hit home any benefits. If there’s anything … really, that’s just a basic marketing principle, right? People, often as product owners, we think that people want to know the nitty-gritty details of our features. Really, what people want to know, are the benefits. Right? They’re at spot A and they’re trying to get to destination B. Right? How can your product get them from A to B, and those are benefits. Highlight those benefits in your infographics, do product comparisons if you’re running … like we showed, if you’re running a promotion, you could test out throwing an infographic highlighting that promotion, so it’s readily available for people to see.
Absolutely.
I am brand registered. How do I upload a video to my image deck?
Great question.
In your enhanced brand concept module, you should be able to … or, where you go to edit that, you should be able to upload video there. I believe … it’s been a second since I’ve personally have done it, so if you guys know, correct if I’m wrong. I believe that is where you upload.
Cool.
Does the out of stock issue you just referenced affect your listing and ranking if the variations on the product are always out of stock?
Can you repeat that one more time?
Yeah, yeah. I think what they’re saying is, let’s say you sell five variations of the same key, and two of the variations are out of stock. How does that affect your listing?
Yeah, it’s still going to affect it. It’s going to be less detrimental than if your listing entirely is running out of stock, meaning all of the variations. I would still do everything you can to keep variations in stock.
Cool. Great, great. Well, I know … we’ll do one more question. Let’s see if I can pull one here. It’s tough to choose which ones get the … Jordan, how can people find out more about you and Nozani? I’ll send that link out in the recap link that goes out to our audience. Beyond that, how else … what’s the best way for them to find out more info about you guys?
Yeah, yeah. You can just head over to our website. It’s probably the best place. It’s www.nozani.com, and we put out lots of great content. I know Teikametrics does, too. Obviously, you guys are most likely following them, but you can subscribe to our blog there and continue to get some valuable nuggets from us. We send out a weekly update on what’s going in Amazon, and we love to provide value first out there to everybody out there in the Amazon world.
Definitely head over there, and again, we’d be happy to give you all a free listing analysis. Contact us for that link Jason will send out, and let’s get you all optimized for next year.
Great, great. Well, thank you all so much. We really appreciate you all taking the time. Very good questions. Thanks for being loyal followers of ours, and we look forward to serving you all, and close the year out strong, folks. We’ll see you guys next year.
Thanks, guys.
Thanks so much, guys.
