Rolando Rosas 5:27
also see here I’m overall pick the Amazon’s choice badges I think.
Nick Gezzar 5:34
Yep. And that is also derived from the search algorithm, which is independent of well, largely independent of efforts but still influenced by it will
Rolando Rosas 5:43
lead look at this in Nick, look at this thing here, Nick, I want you to just because this this, this was not the case. So if you were on Amazon for quite some time in here, the one the middle is the bestseller. But the the number of what you’re presented with on page one alone, there is no organic result, at least from this, this particular search that we just did, there is no organic on the top of the fold anymore. It’s all all four things that you’re seeing all four elements, the first row, as well as the top row in the header. They are all sponsored ads.
Nick Gezzar 6:20
And what we can deduce from that is that KitchenAid is bidding heavily on their own branded terms. I think actually a really great search we could do would be if you moved up, and maybe just type in toaster or mixer or whatever kitchenette clients seems interesting to you.
Rolando Rosas 6:37
So let’s toaster, okay, here we go. Hey,
Nick Gezzar 6:40
call it KitchenAid one. So that’s a cat. That’s a category search term, right? Because there’s plenty of companies out there making toasters, but KitchenAid had the top bid on that. So you see these brand ads right at the top, correct. Yep. And that’s why you’re seeing the KitchenAid logo rendered as KitchenAid likes at the top, they get their tagline, you deserve the perfect toast every time and three of their toasters and it looks like they went with a assortment of colorways on it, as opposed to different types of toasters. Right now, when you look down there, that’s interesting. Look at the top, who’s their first, Black and Decker
Rolando Rosas 7:18
right now look at the first fold, this is the thing that for me, is the big difference. from previous years, you used to see, the sponsored brand was always there, right. But then at towards the top, it was a mix, we may be the first organic result, the second organic result in being organic, meaning the thing I searched for the best product. Now, the first three are those called the you’ve got the brand at the top, or the sponsored brands in the first two actual results from the organic search surfaces to other ads, that’s a change from the past.
Nick Gezzar 7:59
It’s gotten more aggressive as time has gone on, it’s really got to be bought into ADS to be showing up. Let’s let’s scroll down and see how long it takes for an organic one to arrive.
Rolando Rosas 8:08
So it’s in position. Let’s call it position three. Right? So there’s a bunch of ads, sponsored brands, let’s just leave that being the header. And then the number three position, which is at the not even in the first fold on the top of the fold is that overall pick from Black and Decker. So that’s the number three position.
Nick Gezzar 8:27
So it’s anything about that too. As you’ll also notice the first organic is the same as the first sponsored. Let
Rolando Rosas 8:32
me scroll back up. Oh, so Black and Decker. It was okay. There’s there’s some debate here, I want you to jump right in. For those that are uninitiated you’re gonna get a jumping into the fire right away. There’s a lot of debate about this, this, this scenario, just this one. I’m Black and Decker. And I’ve got plenty of reviews. It looks like I’m at 4.5 out of five. There’s some people that say you cannibalize your organic when you take this approach and trying to be the number one sponsored? Where do you come down on this? What’s your opinion of that?
Nick Gezzar 9:10
My thought is, you are never going to really be that relevant to the organic search algorithm without playing in ADS. So the organic search algorithm what it’s doing, it’s looking now granted that black box know what maybe somebody knows, I’ve never gotten to see truly underneath the hood know very few people do. But it’s based on things like reviews, how well they sell customer returns, all these different variables that they bring into SEO, what is the best product that can be served to the Amazon customer, but things like how much is being viewed how much is being purchased. That’s also driven by your sponsored ads. So the better you’re doing and sponsored ads, the better you’re also going to do on organic, which is actually pretty great for them, which I’m also gonna point this out. It’s hilarious. They misspelled Chrome in their product detail page. That’s a crazy Do
Rolando Rosas 10:01
you know what I bet? Because I’ve seen this as well, for brand names, like maybe the Decker is misspelled, it’s spelled without a C. So d e k, e r. And if you bid on D, K E R without the C, you probably getting some, some clicks as a result of that. And I’ve seen that when we do a, you know, for those that are not familiar, we use tools like helium 10, and other these type of tools that do searches. And inevitably, you’ll find that the misspellings you may find a lower bid, but irrelevant, and you’ll get clicks on it. And I don’t know if that’s what’s happening here. But I just mean, I suspect that maybe what Viet what’s at play here and may be intentional is my position on that
Nick Gezzar 10:48
when you’re bidding on terms that actually, even if you’re going with exact match, it will still allow you to bid on terms things like plurals, like if you typed toasters in instead of toaster, you would still be in the runnings, it also corrects for misspellings. So if you spelled toaster, T O, S, T, E, R, you’ll you’ll get largely the same results. But when you’re working with a brand name, those are dictionary words. So there might be some cracks there,
Rolando Rosas 11:17
ya know, and I got to say, on our end, we’ve used those misspellings to our advantage. And we’ve run PPC against misspellings. And the click through rate on it is better than the the correctly spelled word that a lot of folks are competing and bidding on. So it’s worth at least trying to see if the misspelling yields results. And we’ve found on some, not all, that
Nick Gezzar 11:44
that’s the case. Yeah, and especially going to work on branded terms. Now you’re kind of picking up the crumbs a little bit on that path
Rolando Rosas 11:51
of can literally no pun intended on the crumbs.
Nick Gezzar 11:56
Or start your grub tray. You’re there to kind of pick up some of that stuff, the basis for strategy, it’s a good way to find an extra couple of coins in the couch, you know, let
Rolando Rosas 12:05
me let’s jump into some of this because I love the tactics. And I love the discussion on the tactics. I’m a I’m a, you know, I’m a I’m a business owner, like like I am, and I’m looking at every penny, because profitability is being squeezed in if I’m picking up key words as a result, or can I can I use the misspelling, in this case, C R, UB. And it’s getting click throughs and not just click throughs. But I’m getting by so add to cart and then a buy from customers? Would there be a benefit on the organic side, when that starts happening within the PPC that so PPC is getting clicks, and as a result buys from that misspelling, would that then surface and play a role in surfacing my organic side a little bit more, will
Nick Gezzar 12:57
still show up. But the problem is, it’s still incumbent on the searcher to be misspelling a word for your keyword to hit necessarily. So assuming most folks are going to type it incorrectly mean they autocorrect on their phone, which does have a lot of
Rolando Rosas 13:11
their own mobile. So let’s, let’s look at that theory. krub. Give it a shot. See what comes comes up. It’s Krub if I just type in Krub, I get crib sheets. Scrub, daddy, interesting crowbar, I’d have no idea what that is. scrubber scrubs for women Grub Hub, which is interesting. And scrub brush. I’m gonna province. Oh, could be a misspelling for crib brand.
Nick Gezzar 13:39
Yep, there we are. Ah,
Rolando Rosas 13:43
okay. Okay. Um, I’m gonna
Nick Gezzar 13:48
just, you know, the algorithm also picks up on words that are typed in more often than others. And sometimes a new word will come in and takes a while to get picked up as an actual search term. An example I can give and this is one of the ones I can show work as you can see it on results. Do you feel with the Apple air tag? Yes. Great product I have on my key ring. bountiful air tag was not a search term anybody had ever used before their introduction, and I believe it was 2022. So originally, when you would type it in it would say Did you mean
Rolando Rosas 14:25
air dog? Oh, and now it’s there. Now
Nick Gezzar 14:30
it’s there. It now has an established history. It’s the algorithm picked up. Hey, people are searching for
Rolando Rosas 14:36
this reviews on that 169,000
Nick Gezzar 14:39
They sold a lot of units. a boatload of units literally. That’s actually under selling it.
Rolando Rosas 14:47
It says here I don’t know. We don’t know exact but at least a minimum of 10,000 sold in the past. So it could be 20,000 could be 50 but at least 10,000 sold in the past month.
Nick Gezzar 14:59
Well out. Yep. That’s Apple though that is the Goliath of real.
Rolando Rosas 15:08
Sure is those
Nick Gezzar 15:10
with those kinds of terms, those that got picked up now, air tag is a recognized search term.
Rolando Rosas 15:16
Okay. All right. So I know we moved around a little bit. But so if you are getting your feet wet now if we go back to the folks that maybe are getting their feet wet, and they’re trying to drive sales, we looked at KitchenAid, we looked at some misspellings. Where would you say that the first place to go to as an Amazon sellers getting started? Would it be sponsored brands? Would it be sponsored? So products?
Nick Gezzar 15:45
Sponsored products is the only correct answer that sponsored has to be the basis of your advertising strategy? Okay, so
Rolando Rosas 15:53
that’s what we’re looking at here. So it’s not wouldn’t be sponsored brands is the first one that you see it that let’s call it the header position. And the sponsored products are these that are down below in the results section. For rack,
Nick Gezzar 16:05
probably better if we go to a more generic category term, so we can look at it again, like what do
Rolando Rosas 16:10
you like? What do you want to do?
Nick Gezzar 16:11
Move? Let’s go with the espresso machine. Let’s see. Let’s see where that takes us. I don’t know why I’m on a kitchen kick today.
Rolando Rosas 16:18
At espresso. Oh, look at that. And let’s this this is fairly new to but let’s do espresso machine.
Nick Gezzar 16:25
Boom, boom. Look at some Nespresso one there. But let’s look at the sponsor. So Lor de alongI, Mr. Coffee, they obviously all spent big to make sure that pick up espresso machine. Now these are usually more expensive bids. Because it’s a whole category, there’s a lot of competitors, it’s probably a term that’s searched quite often. But if you want to be showing up and have your ASINs, their sponsored products is the basis of it. If you could only buy one product from Amazon ads, it needs to be sponsored products. Everything else is an add on, as I see it.
Rolando Rosas 16:59
All right. So sponsored products. Alright, let’s, let’s add, like a little, I don’t know, like a tree did that in sponsor products, you have two ways today really to pull levers, one is on the auto and one is on the manual, right? Of the two? Are you setting those up simultaneously? And you set up an auto campaign? Now off you go? And then you set up a manual? Or should you try to harvest keywords out of the auto and then set up your manual,
Nick Gezzar 17:31
I would go with the last one you suggested because as you’re entering, the problem is Amazon ads is incredibly dynamic. It’s changing every minute based on how much people are bidding, what keywords they’re looking at, you don’t really have any way to find what works except by trying it. Some I would set some money aside, do some auto campaigns, find what starts really hidden. And then you can start leveraging that in manual campaigns, you can also find things that are getting that are costing you money, but not getting you the conversion you’re looking for, then you can start doing negative keyword targeting, you can start doing things to exclude that. But really, there was a term we had in the army. Sometimes you have to fight for information. And that’s kind of what you’re doing here. You got to go in, spend some money, see what works optimize from there.
Rolando Rosas 18:18
Can we can we also close the loop here on something? Obviously, Amazon ads are great for discovery and sales. But at the heart of it, Amazon, this is a money making machine for them. There’s no way to get around that. And as a, as a business as a business operator, or even an agency. One of the things that I would love for you to tackle just briefly tell us the interests here and what you really need to do to really protect your interests and resources, as you’re spending on Amazon versus Amazon’s own interest.
Nick Gezzar 19:01
Well, Amazon is of course, always happy to collect money from you from these, it’s your responsibility as the business owner, make sure this makes financial sense for you. Let’s say you’ve got a sponsored products campaign out there, man, you’re making a $4 rule as that feels great. But you need to look at your margins and make sure you can afford to do that. Are you still profitable after that $4 rule as per lead optimized for something higher, or if your margins are thick enough, push harder on that. Amazon is not generally going to go out of their way, especially as a seller to tell you if your strategy is failing you because there’s no collecting a check. It’s really incumbent on the business owner to make sure that this is working for them financially. Right.
Rolando Rosas 19:48
And and that’s that’s the thing. I think that is the I think we’re going to hear more conversation around that because Amazon ads are not getting cheaper profitability on the platform is getting harder. There are more fees from inventory to a bunch of other things that weren’t there a year ago, even a few months ago. And I think every facet, including ads, and how it’s operating for business should be on the table. So at the end of the day, you have profits leftover for the products that you’re pushing.
Nick Gezzar 20:22
Absolutely. I fail to grow your business otherwise.
Rolando Rosas 20:25
All right, so one last thing. So you we’ve established sponsored products, that’s the way to go. When you when you get your feet wet, you’re starting on Amazon, I know that for us, we use sponsored brands, and it’s treated or should be treated differently, educate me on why I would want to go to sponsored brands, I’ve already done my homework, check that off, like you talked about I’m going
Nick Gezzar 20:50
on, all right, I’m gonna call sponsored products, you’re crushing it, you’re not getting any real, you’re getting declining marginal returns on it, right, there’s only so far you can push it, if you have a brand with which you do with global tech. That’s when you start spending on sponsored brands to make sure that you’re showing up at the top of the result, it’s really a form of advertisement, or somebody’s looking for that category for the brand, you’re the first thing that shows up, it really is a form of advertisement. And what it does, as well as it also gives an on ramp to your brand store, which is another place where you can showcase your wares in a way that is intuitive to the customer and can also drive more sales, also gives the opportunity to be the very top of the search result and show whatever three ASINs you want. There can be reasons for showing that maybe these your highest profit drivers get more people to buy, maybe just fits better to whatever the search term is, you may just have that one device that just fulfills that one need get it up there. You’re just trying to make sure the customer is seeing your brand and those products at the top. Okay, this was someone’s playing and dropping later. But once you get to the point where you’re mature enough to play in all three, my baseline recommendation is a 6030 10 split between the three. Okay,
Rolando Rosas 22:07
so I’ll say that again, from my slow brain to absorb that 60% of sponsored products 60%
Nick Gezzar 22:12
on sponsored products 3% on sponsored brands, and then 10% on sponsored display. Okay, some categories play differently than others. But that’s a good baseline to start from to start tweaking it. You know, if you’re selling higher priced items, there’s more consideration the purchase cycle is longer sponsored display might be a better move for you. If you’re selling more generic replate substitutable categories,
Rolando Rosas 22:39
garlic press or something
Nick Gezzar 22:41
like that. Yeah, I’d probably be pushing harder on sponsored products sponsored display, that might just be extra cost, you won’t get quite as much conversion. But if you’re selling printers, or I don’t know, nice microphone like this might have bought from your store. That’s one where it could make sense to invest a little bit more.
Rolando Rosas 23:00
Okay, gotcha, gotcha. So we’ve got sponsored products, how to get started sponsored brands when it’s time to bring that in into your playbook. Was there another one that you wanted to throw in there?
Nick Gezzar 23:12
Sponsored display. But what I think would it make sense to do right now that we deep dive a little more on the three of them separately, and we get a sponsor display at the end, because that one, that’s where it starts to get really interesting.
Rolando Rosas 23:27
So if you’re watching this for the first time, we’re going to have this is a four part series where we’re going to dive into the sponsored display. Nick, was there something else that we wanted to leave here for our audience, and folks listening in that would be relevant here.
Nick Gezzar 23:43
I think the real main takeaway is sponsored ads are not really optional for Amazon sellers anymore. You have to invest. And you also have to monitor your investments to make sure they’re actually paying off for you because nobody else is going to do that for you until you’re big enough to have any assuming account executive
Rolando Rosas 24:00
account executive, and I love something you said you and I’ve been. I’ve talked in the past. The only thing I would add here, something you said months ago that is not left my brain as an Amazon seller, you have to be profits obsessed because nobody else will be Amazon won’t be your he won’t be nobody else but you you have to be profits obsessed. We’ll wrap on this one. And if you want to join us there and nerd out some more. Go check that series out. Nick and I will see you.
Recent Comments