Rolando Rosas 4:40
product, a generic product. How about dog food? Can we go dog food? I love my dog is that a category you want to talk about?
Nick Gezzar 4:52
That is act you know, one of my partners I work with in my consultancy, she used to work in at hills, Pat Newton. Nutrition, incredibly competitive category. Okay,
Rolando Rosas 5:03
beautiful. So I’m going to type into the search bar on Amazon dog food, and I’m just going to hit Enter, see what comes up. Here we go. All right, we got marriage. Uh huh. I’ve seen that. I’ve seen that. Brent, here’s look at what’s interesting. You know, if you were watching our Part One it what’s interesting is how different the sponsored ad is coming out, a sponsored grand in this particular one. And no, we’re not going to go into that in this but it’s just interesting how the display it’s giving you kind of subcategories within the store, and Amazon is looking for ways to tweak and enhance the advertising experience, and this is something I haven’t seen yet, a carousel on one side and then the category to take you to their store,
Nick Gezzar 5:53
and even like to which sub tab of their store that’s pretty brilliant, but sponsored products never that flashy. They’re just gonna show up in the search results. So featured by Amazon. How surprising that they won. Yeah,
Rolando Rosas 6:08
and look at Purina One. They’re number two and number three in the sponsored and then Amazon brand. I didn’t know Amazon made dog food,
Nick Gezzar 6:16
you know, I actually did not either, but they’re always expanding their private label stuff. It’d be interesting to see how well that goes for them. Because, I mean, dog food, that’s a pretty big commitment. But what you can see here that’s fascinating is Purina is just dominating sponsored products. The top three sponsored ads different varieties of Purina dog food for the sponsored products. And then you look at the two organics. What are the next two organics? The same two organics of Purina, dog foods,
Rolando Rosas 6:46
Yep, yeah. So, so if we, if we look at the first six positions, right? So Amazon, obviously is surfacing their own brand, that whole role is, that’s, it’s that you got to pay some money to get on that first row. And then, like you said, row number two, that’s when you see the first organic result, and that is also Purina.
Nick Gezzar 7:07
And this comes down to that these positive efficiencies, the flywheel, is a term they like to use inside of Amazon, where, as you build relevance through those sponsored products ads, you will gain a lot more relevance on the organic search as well. So that’s why you’re seeing Purina One showing up so hard, both in sponsored products, right? Here’s the first two organic results. Yeah, it’s
Rolando Rosas 7:31
the same. It’s the same asin the the this one here with the looks like an Eskimo or I know exactly what it’s Husker Q, a husky, a husky that’s on the on the bag as well as is on the very first organic result. And
Nick Gezzar 7:49
you can tell they’re the same to just look at the number of reviews. Yeah, 15, 156, same one, same price. But that is coming, because obviously people have seen these sponsored ads. They click on them. The algorithm picks up on that, and that’s why these are our most relevant ones, right here,
Rolando Rosas 8:08
you know? Okay, so I want to look at something with sponsored products, if reviews is even a consideration, because so both of the sponsored ones here are 4.7 for Purina that are in the sponsored I want to just take a look at the Amazon. Amazon’s at 4.3 just want to point that out, you know, but they still put themselves in the number one sponsor. But Amazon’s Amazon. They’ll do whatever, whatever, please.
Nick Gezzar 8:30
This have happened? It’s a mystery.
Rolando Rosas 8:33
In theory, if it was a race, they would be in third position based on that. Well, let’s look at this other Purina that Is it a coincidence. Nick, I ask you sponsored products. If we look at the first three, so one, two and three, they’re all Purina. They all are rated very highly from Amazon to all of them at 4.7
Nick Gezzar 8:57
Yep, when you are bidding on those actually your star reviews will actually help you, assuming that they are good, to build that relevance, because Amazon doesn’t want to be serving ads for trash products. If those were like 2.1 and half the reviews were like, Oh, my dog got violently ill after this. Amazon doesn’t want to surface that no matter how much you’re spending on it. If your reviews are generally above 4.0 you’re gonna be safe. Well, safer once you start getting below that, I would start getting worried and
Rolando Rosas 9:30
well, and look right here. This is exactly what you’re talking about, four stars. And above is the next row, and that’s a carousel of sponsored product ads. And 4.6 I would say 4.6 is going to be the lowest because all the products above it are 4.7 so if we’re thinking about a category, and you’re using sponsored products to drive sales, to drive to increase views, and if your reviews are below four especially, let’s just say that. Additive category like dog food or others, you’re gonna have a tough time. And would you be forced to pay more than, let’s say, Purina is paying on dog food because you’re paying a penalty because your ads, I’m sorry your reviews are low, or Amazon just won’t even consider it because your views are too low or or star rating, I should say
Nick Gezzar 10:20
you’re hiding me paying out the nose or just not being surfaced at all. Amazon is very as part of their customer obsession. Tenant reviews are a big deal to them. When Amazon cried physical stores, they pulled out of that, but they were trying to make brick and mortar stores selling Amazon goods. They called it Amazon four star, because they would not stock any product that had less than four stars in the reviews of the website to them. That’s that’s a critical threshold that four stars. So that also needs to come back to your advertising strategy, also your product strategy, because if you’re consistently falling for below four stars, you’re not going to show up in search. And also people probably just don’t like your product, and you should really rethink how you’re still you
Rolando Rosas 11:06
got to reevaluate. You got to reevaluate. Wow. So for those that haven’t used sponsored products, or want to know, I know that from sponsored products, unlike sponsored brands, that leads you to your Amazon product detail page, and on that page, obviously you have your chance to convince the customer, persuade them that your product is the best and all that other stuff, but talk a little bit more about sponsored products now that we’re getting deeper and using that as a lever point to create that awareness or create the sale that you’re looking for, because it could be profitable. I know we talked a little bit this about about this on part one, but how does how the role it should play in the mix of your playbook to drive sales through your product detail page? Again,
Nick Gezzar 12:00
sponsored products is your baseline, because when you have people searching for a specific product like that, you can assume that they are they’re getting ready to buy, and when they’re clicking on it, there’s a high chance that they’re going to purchase whatever it is they clicked on. Now, the weakness of sponsored products is it can only take you to a product detail page. You are a lot. You have less degrees of freedom than you’re the other ones, but this is still where most shoppers find the items that they’re looking for.
Rolando Rosas 12:26
I heard you say something I haven’t heard before. Many people, or most you said, you said most, most people will click on the sponsored like in this first row here, they’re all Purina, for example, people will click on that and then buy Absolutely
Nick Gezzar 12:44
because people are looking for something in this category that matches their search term. Hey, there’s the item. I’m going to buy it. The analog would be like, Hey, I’m going to the store because I need to buy some rice. You’re going to walk to the section of the store where the bags of rice are, and you’re just going to grab one. You were already you were there in a mission because you were searching for that.
Rolando Rosas 13:04
I’m only paying when I clicked. It’s not not impressions, like Facebook ads paying by impression by the click, yep, all right, only pay
Nick Gezzar 13:12
when somebody clicks on it, so scrolling through that Purina is not getting charged unless you click on their other two sponsored products.
Rolando Rosas 13:20
Interesting, and I see that if, as if I scroll through here, what I’m seeing is that sponsored products keep showing up, using that 90% that using, using your words, that 90% of shoppers will only shop on page one, essentially, what are the chances that if I’m using sponsored products, I’m going to be relevant? And I do see the Amazon brand show up down here. I see Purina show up again. I see it’s interesting again, get almost two rows full of sponsored and then another organic. Do shoppers come down here to kind of the middle or below and still click on sponsored products? Am I still relevant? Or am I really I gotta be towards the top to be a player here,
Nick Gezzar 14:12
if you made a graph, relevance is gonna keep declining. The further down you scroll, like walking into a physical store, the things in the front of the aisle are always going to sell better than the stuff in the middle or the end there’s, I’ve been a by the time you scroll down here to New Trish, which your cursor is on with the musical lady on it, how many there are products has that shopper scrolled through? And then multiply that by how many people are searching for dog food, which is a massive category, by the way,
Rolando Rosas 14:41
you know? And that’s the Rachel Ray brand, right? Nutrition, her brand, yeah,
Nick Gezzar 14:47
I I only own guinea pigs. I’m not a big dog food hat. There it is. It is Rachel Ray, just
Rolando Rosas 14:53
the word nutrition that sounds like and it says Rachel Ray. Once you go into the the product detail page,
Nick Gezzar 14:59
I thought she only made human food,
Rolando Rosas 15:05
you’d be wrong, my friend.
Nick Gezzar 15:08
But by the time you get down to Rachel’s product here, how many other products have you seen?
Rolando Rosas 15:14
And at that point, I’ve been hit with a lot,
Nick Gezzar 15:17
right? I don’t think Rachel’s doing great there No, she’s gonna be less relevant. She’s probably getting less clicks.
Rolando Rosas 15:25
Yeah, if you need some help, you know what this looks a little bit like. It’s not the Blue Buffalo brand. There’s another brand called something wild. They have a similar icon. And when it comes to some of the you’ve been around, you know, product CPG companies, they’ll, they will do product labeling for other, you know, the big ones will, will do the generic products, or a lot of the other like, where you see coffee, like coffee and you see, like, wait a minute, that the packaging looks nearly identical. You’ll have
Nick Gezzar 16:00
factories where line one is doing major CPG firm. Lines two and three are doing private label for smaller brands.
Rolando Rosas 16:08
Indeed, because it’s fairly cheap, you know, you don’t have to buy new packaging. You don’t have to buy new box type. You don’t have to get new molds for the plastic you’re using. The exact same thing, just wrapping, maybe a different, slightly
Nick Gezzar 16:22
change the recipe, but I think what you were getting at, and now we’re definitely diverging from sponsored ads. But what we’re talking about here is category cues, because when you clicked on that, you immediately thought, oh, Blue Buffalo, or that wild, whatever it is, dogs, they’re using those same general suggestions through the way that they are packaged to make you think, Ah, this looks good, a natural, New Age dog food.
Rolando Rosas 16:43
Yes, that was the Amazon brand. Go back up here. WAG, WAG. Oh, interesting. I refresh my screen, and now Amazon disappeared. Yes, you know what’s interesting about that is that things are so dynamic, and things like refreshing your screen, the IP address, your customer, if you’re a customer already of Amazon, it’s interesting how nothing is static. Like I’m going to come back and see the same at No It seems as if Amazon is also continuously experimenting with the types of ads, how it shows it to you, when it in what position to see when, when and where you’re going to click,
Nick Gezzar 17:29
not only that, but also things like, imagine Sherina has a fixed budget on all of these sponsored products. If they exhaust that for the day, all of a sudden you will see a different brand show up, because they will stop bidding on those for that day. But at this time of day that you are looking at this, Purina is dominating.
Rolando Rosas 17:47
They are. They sure are. And you would would you say they’re getting either good advice, or they kind of know what they’re doing here when it comes to the Amazon strategy for sponsored product,
Nick Gezzar 17:57
right? I think they know what they’re doing here. Because if you look at this depending on what kind of dog you have and what their needs are, and these top six, I mean, these are all very distinct dog foods, a high protein dog food. I think the first one’s for joint health, probably for older dogs. They got a German Shepherd on there. They notoriously have bad hips. I grew up with German Shepherds, but all six of these fit a different need state for your dogs. This one’s kind of category specific, but I know dog owners the last 20 years have gotten far more specific in the way they feed their dogs. But when I was a kid, there was just dog food, which was
Rolando Rosas 18:35
dog food for it was senior dog and for puppies, pretty much, right? Pretty one adult. I think those are three puppies, adult and seniors, yep. And now
Nick Gezzar 18:46
there is even more segmentation of that. So I think Purina is actually a great job with that, because if you are looking for dog food, they’re trying to meet all of your potential need states on the most generic search for that category.
Rolando Rosas 18:59
So let’s talk a little bit about that. Um, you know, if we’re trying to to provide sellers here with a little more value when it comes to sponsored products, there’s multiple strategies, obviously, that you can use. In this case, we did a Category Search. What’s, what do you say about the Category Search? In this case, is an ultra competitive dog food, but where maybe I’ll do dog food. It doesn’t come up here. I’ll do it this way, organic dog food. It’s more specific. It should eliminate some of the others. And where do you come down on something that’s more tailored, maybe to the product that you’re trying to target, or you theorize the customer’s targeting versus that big category like because every seller wants to be, if you’re dog food, I want to be at the top right for dog food. But as you saw, massively competitive, high rated product as well as 1000s of reviews. It might best if I’m toward the beginning to to go somewhere else. There. And not try to storm the beach if I’m going I’m using an army term.
Nick Gezzar 20:06
So I went and got an MBA a couple of years ago, and there was a classic answer that’s applicable to questions like this.
Rolando Rosas 20:13
Okay, it depends. It took an MBA to get that answer.
Nick Gezzar 20:19
You know, I was incredibly fresh again, that was the answer like 90% of the questions. But this really, it comes down to what your product is and what your product strategy is. I mean, as a consultant, if somebody’s like, Hey, I’m gonna go launch a new brand of dog food, I would say, Don’t 10s of millions of dollars in funding. You’re not going to break into this and
Rolando Rosas 20:43
look at the results, though, and the results that came back on the web are on on Amazon, are different than the Purina blanket that we saw on just dog food. There
Nick Gezzar 20:55
you go at the top, though, there’s your boys, Blue Buffalo.
Rolando Rosas 20:57
Yes, Blue Buffalo is the number one on the sponsored brands, and then the sponsored products row. It’s a mixture. And what’s interesting is that Purina doesn’t show up at all unless they own one of these brands. That’s what I don’t know. But the Purina name itself doesn’t come up in there and nutritious actually, in the in the let’s call it the third position for sponsored products.
Nick Gezzar 21:21
You have to look at what your product strategy is, how much money you have, and what niche your product serves in the market. If it’s very specific, you need to be bidding on those very specific search terms. If it’s something with broad appeal that everybody could buy and enjoy, then it’s price time to look at those category keywords. And again, we’ll get into it later in a future video series of bidding and keywords. But a keyword, they are not all built the same. Some are going to be incredibly expensive. Some you might be the only bidder, depending on how specific we’re getting. I see, all right, let’s see
Rolando Rosas 21:59
it’s you’re right. Look at, look at this, organic dog food, small breed, organic dog food, dry so I’m sure all of these, let’s call them subcategories or even smaller niches within in theory, those may have a little bit better return. If your product is better suited. Is that my right or my wrong on that?
Nick Gezzar 22:20
Oh, absolutely. If you had a brand of organic wet dog food for seniors, you would want to bid on those terms. You don’t want to be there for just organic dog food, because you’re going to have a ton of lost sales for even worse, be there just for dogs. It’s
Rolando Rosas 22:36
a it’s a keyword, organic wet senior dog food. Let’s see what, how that that looks, okay, and interesting. Interesting on this one is that the first three results are trying to get you away from that. They’re all dry and there’s a wet, here’s the wet, here’s the wet.
Nick Gezzar 22:56
All right, yeah, I guess people are just massively overbidding on that. That is fascinating. I’m I’m not an expert on this category. I just had a second hand exposure.
Rolando Rosas 23:05
Can I ask you another question? Because this is, I asked somebody this the other day when it came to ads, and it’s relevant for for sponsored product, if, and I’m going to use this example, if I’m a Coke drinker, I probably don’t drink Pepsi. So why wouldn’t the world? Would Pepsi bid on Coke, or a term that, you know, Coke light or coke cherry, coke, in this case, wet dog food for seniors, and it just dry dog food that shows up. Is there a lot of switching that happens here? Are you really getting consumers making the switch, because I’m looking for wet and I got dry. So what I’m gonna do is I’m just gonna ignore that and go on to the wet ones. This
Nick Gezzar 23:51
is zooming out to broader marketing theory, but there are very few true brand loyalists anywhere, people who like, I fully ever drink Coke. I don’t drink many soft drinks, just kind of drink whatever’s there in front of me, if the situation’s appropriate. You know, I have Pepsi just about as much as coke. Most brands drinkers drink other beverages as well. They don’t drink exclusively Coca Cola. So there’s always a ton of switching potential and the ability to take share from the larger brands. I think it’s kind of an, it’s a slightly outdated mindset that there are these true brand loyalists out there. I gotcha. Gotcha. If you, if you ever do a real deep dive on that, there’s a great author out there named Dr, dr Byron sharp. He wrote a book called How brands grow that really gets into the statistics behind all that. All right, fascinating. Awesome.
Rolando Rosas 24:43
That is a fascinating read, so it may be worth your while to at least dip your toe in something that would allow that switch to happen. So in this case, all, all of the top sponsored products are not wet dog food. They’re dry. It’s a
Nick Gezzar 24:59
little tougher. Because this is a different category, as opposed to different brand. Wet and dry dog foods are distinct products. So I do wonder why they’re bidding that way. They might have, again, this will get back into bidding and keywords might have gone for too broad of a search. Okay,
Rolando Rosas 25:15
all right, wonderful. So let’s button it up on that. So let’s summarize a little bit here. 90% of shoppers will never go past the first page. The relevancy tends to drop off as you’re scrolling down. So it may be worth to be in the top folder, the top half versus the bottom half of a page. Because of that, there’s fewer clicks and fewer relevancy. Was there something else you wanted to button this argument up
Nick Gezzar 25:45
sponsored products is table stakes, if you were going to be on Amazon, this is the bare minimum that you need to do to be relevant for all the reasons you just stated.
Rolando Rosas 25:58
Alright, well, you’ve been listening to Nick Gezzar, former senior account executive for Amazon. At one point, you’ve gotten a little bit of a look behind the curtain, and Nick and I will be in episode number three, where we’re going to go a little deeper into sponsored brands. So if you want to know more and nerd out, we’ll see you.
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