The Ultimate Guide to Amazon Profitability

by | Oct 18, 2023 | Podcast | 0 comments

Nick Gezzar
Nick Gezzar

Nick Gezzar is an independent brand consultant who owns Gezzar Consulting LLC. As a versatile business leader, he has over 10 years of experience leading people and projects in retail, marketing, advertising, and intelligence. Nick has worked for leading brands like Amazon, Lindt, Procter & Gamble, and The Hershey Company. 

Available_Black copy
Available_Black copy
partner-share-lg
partner-share-lg
partner-share-lg
partner-share-lg
Available_Black copy
partner-share-lg
  • [0:00] Harnessing the Amazon playbook with guest Nick Gezzar
  • [6:25] The importance of profitability and customer centricity on Amazon 
  • [13:06] Nick shares how he began working in the Amazon Ads department
  • [17:11] Should entrepreneurs launch new businesses on Amazon?
  • [23:28] How Amazon Ads boosts product discovery
  • [27:53] Leveraging catalog data to sell products on Amazon
  • [32:38] What does it mean to be profit-obsessed on Amazon?
  • [43:03] Key considerations for outsourcing an Amazon agency
  • [52:32] Nick evaluates Amazon advertising campaigns from notable brands
  • [1:16:16] Nick answers some rapid-fire questions

In this episode…

With Amazon a staple in e-commerce sales, brands must prioritize profitability to achieve success on the platform. Since 90% of customers never venture beyond the first results page, this requires maintaining product visibility. How can you accelerate growth on Amazon?

As margins tighten and Amazon places customers before brands, consultant Nick Gezzar says profit obsession is a must. Profit-focused businesses must position products directly in front of consumers and align with their preferences. Launching Amazon ads like sponsored products or brands improves discoverability and enhances ratings by directing customers to a specific PDP or website page. Additionally, you should analyze your catalog data thoroughly to ensure your products appear in the correct categories and target your ideal consumers. When evaluating metrics to maximize profit, study beyond traditional ROAS benchmarks to incorporate additional cost factors.

In today’s episode of What The Teck?, Rolando Rosas and Dave Kelly speak with independent consultant Nick Gezzar about increasing profitability on Amazon. Nick explains when to outsource an Amazon agency, Amazon’s customer-centric landscape, and the benefits of launching new businesses on the platform. 

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by Global Teck Worldwide. 

We are a full-service online retailer of professional headsets, webcams, and speaker phones from top manufacturers. 

Since 2002, Global Teck Worldwide has provided affordable, high-quality communications equipment and customized telecommunications services to organizations of all sizes.

Our specialists have invested hundreds of hours in technical training, certifications, and seminars to assist customers with purchasing decisions. 

We have served thousands of customers in a variety of industries with value-added services, including ergonomics, employee work accommodations, and hearing-impaired services. 

If you are a government agency, small business, or Fortune 500 company, contact us at https://circuitloops.com/contact-us/ to discover a solution that fits your communication needs.

Episode Transcript:

Rolando Rosas 0:00

Amazon ads are not cheap. They’re not getting cheaper. So the million dollar question around AD, are Amazon ads still worth the money spent on?

Nick Gezzar 0:10

If you enjoy selling products on Amazon, then I would say yes. When you’re looking at discoverability. If somebody looks for an Elgato microphone, do you want to be the one showing up in really, really good sponsored products? That’s kind of table stakes at this point to make sure you’re showing up in the search results.

Rolando Rosas 0:24

Nick, give us the numbers on page one. What was that that you’re talking about?

Nick Gezzar 0:29

I recall, it’s about 90% of customers never scroll past the first page of results from a search on amazon.com.

Rolando Rosas 0:35

What what Hold on a second, what we’ve had our fair share of training, negotiate with large suppliers. And sometimes they play hardball. I found their lack of familiarity with the Amazon world and the Amazon way can lead to disaster.

Nick Gezzar 0:51

You definitely want to have your sales team work with Amazon to have an actual knowledge of how the platform works, what all the intricacies are, if you tell somebody, Hey, we lost the buy box, and they don’t know what that means. You need to get back to some training because that’s critical. That’s like saying all the shelves are empty throughout North America. Uh, yeah,

Rolando Rosas 1:09

that would not be a good thing. What’s to come here with AI or Amazon or something else that that sellers should be looking for? In your point of view? What if sellers Be on the lookout for the news,

Nick Gezzar 1:21

it comes to AI I think one of the things sellers can be doing right now is.

Rolando Rosas 1:35

Welcome to What The Teck?, your gateway to business strategies and tech secrets, shaping today’s workplace. You know, Dave, today, I am so pumped about what we’re going to talk about today, we’ve got an Amazon insider that worked in the Amazon ads department. But before we get to talking about Nick, and all of that, you know, I was checking out this morning on Instagram, something that was posted by metaphysics AI, you know, those are the folks behind the deep fakes like the deep fake Tom Cruise, right. And they were talking about how they they are trying to get digital rights, or folks that want to put their likeness out there, which I was kind of a little bit taken aback with. Maybe they just want the spigot on high and let everybody and anybody do anything. But I’m surprised by that, because they’re wanting people to be able to control what they look like, or how they authorize and give people permission to use their lecture.

Dave Kelly 2:30

I mean, it makes a lot of sense. You know, you have a celebrity, do you have someone’s likeness, and they’re endorsing a product that perhaps that celebrity wants no part of? I would think that they would want to have some control over that.

Rolando Rosas 2:41

You know, and I think that’s what’s going to what’s going to allow this technology to take off. I know that for the writers that went on strike, and for the actors that also went on strike, I know that that was part of the negotiations, or part of what was driving some of this because nobody wants to be out of work, boy, the technology that specifically metaphysics AI because of how realistic I would call that almost ultra realistic or hyper realistic. It’s really a game changer. And we’re only at the beginning. I can’t imagine what this is going to look like six months, nine months from now. And I don’t

Dave Kelly 3:16

think it should just be reserved for celebrities or, or high profile people. I think about just the regular folks, you don’t I mean, you and I have done enough video here where if I was to move on to another organization or Dear God, I passed away. You could we could probably

Rolando Rosas 3:31

leave be leaving. We could I could have a virtual Dave Kelly, on in perpetuity. Yeah.

Dave Kelly 3:38

So like what happens with that? If I don’t work for you? If I don’t work for the business anymore? Can you legally use the likeness of me as an AI question

Rolando Rosas 3:46

or the future request we get? We maybe get the get the Latino version of you, you know, Dahveed Kelly,

Dave Kelly 3:55

little extra spice? You know, we’ll have to talk to some of the HR folks that we’ve met along our journey. Yes. See what they have to say. It’s

Rolando Rosas 4:01

gonna get very interesting. I don’t know what’s going to happen. But I know that once the legal rights around your digital likeness get straightened out, I think it’s going to make it a lot easier. But just want to say something even training the AI models, I saw something where it used to take about an hour or two for you to train a voice AI. Yeah, when you talk a lot to it. Now it’s down to two minutes. I was playing around with something the other week and in two minutes a video. And it doesn’t have to be 4k or anything like that. Who minutes, it can get trained to imagine where we’re going. This is like six or eight months since this stuff was really Megan imagine other six or nine months from now. Maybe a minute video, maybe 32nd video will suffice. So anyways, interesting, interesting. Interesting. So let’s let’s talk about Nick. Yeah, Gezzar and Amazon. Let’s bring him out. Let’s talk about let me give you a proper introduction to Nick and we’re honored to have Nick today on What The Teck? Well, let me tell you about Nick. Nick is a versatile business leader with over 10 years Dave 10 years of experience leading people and projects in retail marketing, advertising and intelligence, I think he may, he may have done some stuff for the government, you know, defense type stuff as well. And he’s worked for some big heavy hitting brands like Procter and Gamble Lindt apple, and most recently at Amazon as a senior account executives within the ads business. Let’s welcome to the show. Nick Gezzar. Hey, Nick,

Nick Gezzar 5:33

I’m actually speaking with you and not a digital avatar of you. The real Nick is where the real me I promise.

Rolando Rosas 5:41

Okay, cool. Cool. This is real. Nick. Nick, you are also coming to us live right now from the great country of Germany. This moment.

Nick Gezzar 5:50

Indeed. I’m in the southern state and bottom Verdun, Burg right now,

Rolando Rosas 5:53

my goodness, man, technology just makes this possible. Love it. I love it. You know, we were talking prior to this. And one of the things that you had mentioned to me, and I’m really just eager to dive into is about being profits obsessed. Use that phrase. And I can’t wait for you to tell me what that means. And why should we even I, to me, it’s obvious why should be concerned about profits. But as it relates to Amazon and sellers that are on Amazon, or Amazon businesses, why this is getting more and more important.

Nick Gezzar 6:25

Margins are getting squeezed from every side over the last couple of years, especially with COVID. We’ve seen transport costs, increase shortages of key supplies, prices, just increasing across the board, both for the product that you’re purchasing before you sell it, and also the retail prices. And along the way, a lot of folks margins are getting squeezed. And one of the reasons I say be profit obsessed, it’s at Amazon, they have the 14 or excuse me now 16 leadership principles. And the number one amongst them is always customer obsession. It’s a mantra that people live in Amazon.

[Continue to Page 2]

Pages: 1 2

Submit a Comment