Nick Gezzar 4:56
bling. And the hard thing is, it’s harder to measure. Or the return on that spend, because that’s building longer term brand associations, right? So the important thing with sponsored brands is you’re not going to see that same measurable ROAs that you will with sponsored products nine times out of 10 ROAs
Rolando Rosas 5:13
return on ad spend. So let’s just just put some simple numbers here. Let’s say I’m killing it on sponsored products, and I’m getting a 10 ROAs, a 10% return, a 10x it would be a 10x 10x on my dollar spent and on sponsored brands. Let me be seeing 2x is that? Is that? Is that calibrating my expectations properly? Or can I ever get to the 10x that I’m getting on
Nick Gezzar 5:41
sponsored products, I would not generally advise you to expect sponsored brands to deliver the same return on ad spend as a raw statistic the way that sponsored products does, but what it can do again, is build those mental pathways for customers to associate your brand or your product with a category and make you kind of the default in that category. I took, you know, I would generally expect about like half of the returns, maybe not quite as dramatic as a 10 to a two, maybe a 10 to like a four or five. But you’re not doing this for those same immediate sales. It’s to build the brand. And also, if we can go back to that website, can you click on the either click on the term premium gourmet milk and dark chocolate bar flavors? Yeah, there we go.
Rolando Rosas 6:29
And takes us to the Amazon store for better Exactly.
Nick Gezzar 6:35
Yep. And this is something that I would advise every seller on Amazon to have is a brand store. Rolando, I’m gonna go and say something nice about you here. You got a great brand store. Thank you. Helps your business. Perishing is doing the same thing here, though, because you clicked on that treaty dark chocolate bar is still broad. You’re gonna be looking at the different Coco quantities in there, the different pack sizes. Would
Rolando Rosas 7:01
you say that people that are into chocolate, look at that. The 7080,
Nick Gezzar 7:07
Oh, absolutely. The flavor difference, immense. That 85 me bitter 70. I’ll have a touch of sweet once you get down to like 50. Now you’re really sweet. And welcome to my chocolate podcast.
Rolando Rosas 7:20
We’re back with Nick gazar chocolate expert, former former lint employee. Can tell us a lot about chocolate,
Nick Gezzar 7:29
but you can see here, look at this variety they’re showing in the second row. This is going to be enticing to customers. Yes, this really lets you get your full spread in front of them, and it’s all your brand.
Rolando Rosas 7:41
Do you think that their heroes are these because what they’re leading with bittersweet chocolate? It looks like, obviously, the content is higher, and that’s the only thing I know about chocolate. Is that the higher the number or the percentage, the more bitter and darker it’s going to be. Is that where the action I would I’m theorizing now, I would imagine that’s where more sales are going to come from?
Nick Gezzar 8:03
Yep. And then there’s a couple different ways you could think about how you’ll do your assortment here. This is a lot like merchandising in a physical store you could do. You could just put your already existing top sellers in the top row and just kind of continue that goodness. Keep, make, keep milking those cash cows. But what if you have a new product or something you’re really excited about, throw it in that top row as well to get at that ex that exposure, to get more clicks, more views, more purchases. You
Rolando Rosas 8:28
know, I’ve seen that. I’ve seen that before, and that’s why I asked you earlier about the if we go back to the sponsored brands, and I’ve seen like tide do this. They take their they they take their tide product, and then next to it may be a different brand of PNG or a different version of it that maybe sells less because they’re trying to promote it. If you were to advise these folks, bocce, would you say, hey, instead of just showing your hero brand, maybe also feature your brand that you’re trying to get off the ground or trying to gain market share with,
Nick Gezzar 9:04
I would absolutely be advising them to show three products on there. I cannot think of a reasonable excuse for them to have just one, but I would imagine that is their top seller right there. I would expect a good way to kind of gage that is you just look at the count of reviews behind a product, and that is a good proxy for its sales.
Rolando Rosas 9:25
But let’s go and I’m gonna now it’s interesting, so let’s go back to that, because I think I don’t want to gloss over this segment of sponsored brands. There’s certain there are different things that are happening with the sponsored brands. So clicking on the very top title as well as shop per Gina took us to the Amazon store, but if I click on the on the product itself, it takes me directly detail page, right? A huge difference, absolutely.
Nick Gezzar 9:53
And that’s one of the strengths of sponsored brands, is you can drive them to the brand store, or maybe you just. If it’s an asin that they just want to buy. So in this case, you click directly on that, because that’s obviously you just want that specific dark chocolate bar. But if you were curious about browsing them, you could, you know, click up into the store, but that also gets you precedence over sponsored products ads, because those, if they were executing with three ASINs up there. Those are on top of all the sponsored products. Wow.
Rolando Rosas 10:26
The imagery is nice. I gotta tell you, they have some very enticing, nice secondary images, as they’re called. But the fact that you can direct them to the product page verse or I should be in or actually, and and product page and your store, it’s a very interesting proposition. You know, as a owner, as a business owner and entrepreneur, I don’t love the fact that I’m going to get less return, but I guess I have to be willing to accept the fact that sponsored brands is a different lever. It’s mainly used for, I guess, awareness. You do get some sales from it, and it is a product positioning thing that you’re doing, because there is a perception from what you’re saying. And Dr Byron sharp, is that when you You seem like you’re everywhere, the perception is that you are, and I guess that may create something in the mind that maybe I go with these guys, because they’re everywhere,
Nick Gezzar 11:33
absolutely like, it’s the idea of, well, everybody else must be buying this. It must be good, right? Oh, you’ve
Rolando Rosas 11:38
sounds like FOMO, like, Am I missing out on something?
Nick Gezzar 11:41
I mean, oak wouldn’t be all over these aisles if it wasn’t America’s most popular soft drink. Same kind of proposition there. If we could back up to one of the cool thing about sponsored brands. Meanwhile, do you throw some other search terms in there? Yeah, there’s a lot of different formats that you can run them. We kind of hit on that perigee na here wasn’t doing the best with just one turbine, laundry laundry detergent. And we’ll get right back to PNG, I bet.
Rolando Rosas 12:08
Yeah, laundry detergent. Ooh, laundry detergent. Sheets. Okay, let’s see what we get interesting. So this is, you know what I like that. Let’s look at a couple different examples of sponsored brands. So this one that you’ve got an interactive you got a video versus a static thing. And something i i learned recently was that there, we are hardwired for movement, very much like a dog would be. It’s very primal, but we’re very hardwired for movement, and movement, whether it be an ad or things moving on the screen catches our attention more and where it seems like, from what I was listening, I can’t remember it was on podcasting, we’re more hardwired for that than if you just looking at something that’s just there on the screen, not moving. So my engagement rate, if we got the numbers, we’d probably find a higher engagement, probably higher click through on this tied ad, because you’ve got look at how many elements move through the screen. So now you’ve got that Swish, you’ve got up, and then you have the title come shrinking. So you’ve got things all in within three seconds, moving all at simultaneous, almost simultaneous, right,
Nick Gezzar 13:20
bright colors, high contrast. It grabs your attention, right?
Rolando Rosas 13:24
And look at here. They’re trying to, you know, poo poo, their competitor. I think this is Arm and Hammer by the look of that bottom right. You know how much more you can clean by stacking up all the clothes right there. They’re definitely making a statement here. And getting to that other thing that we were talking about, how about featuring other products here? They’ve got their tied with oxy. You know, they have a lot of line extensions that the the CPG word for it, right? They’re one of their product line extensions is oxy. And doesn’t seem to take away from the fact that, you know, their leading product is just, I would imagine, Plano tie. Click,
Nick Gezzar 14:00
on the video and see where it takes us.
Rolando Rosas 14:03
Okay, takes us to the store. All right, right, right. Can I say something I did not? Have never seen their store, but this is really interesting, that they’re throwing social proof at the top of the header, right? You know, they got tied in our family. Obviously, that’s that’s almost given. They’re going to do something like that, but they threw in this kind of social proof on a survey. I may, I may take a little bit of that myself and use some some statistic that we can use. Number one, blah blah, blah, blah blah.
Nick Gezzar 14:39
PNG carefully vets every claim they make, so that one has got to be ironclad. It
Rolando Rosas 14:45
says voted most trusted laundry brand by American shoppers based on 2023 brand spark American trust study. Boom,
Nick Gezzar 14:57
yep. So that’s a very effective have they have. But PNG, they’re, they’ve kind of always been the leaders in advertising across all categories and formats. If you scroll down, there is this a brand store with a,
Rolando Rosas 15:09
yeah, kind of brand store with the tide oxy. And then here we go. We got the pods. Let me ask you give, given what you know about CPG, in my, in my kind of I do some of the laundry right now. I don’t do all of it, but I would have imagined they would position pods, because that’s the number one seller. I would think that’s the most popular you see the commercials. It’s about pods. But interestingly, they didn’t go with pods up here. They still went with a liquid. You know,
Nick Gezzar 15:38
you typed in laundry detergent as your search term. And there was a sponsored brands ad custom tailored to that. And I think for most consumers, we think laundry detergent, it’s got a handle, a spout, you pour it out. But I imagine they were expecting, this is somebody looking for a liquid. Say, serve you an ad for the liquid. You go to the liquid page, the pods are down there. Maybe they’ll pick up a couple more sales, but they they know where your mind already is, just based on what you typed in up there, okay, but if you typed in laundry detergent pod, you’d see a different ad. Okay,
Rolando Rosas 16:13
there we go. Look at this Purcell. I don’t think that’s is that that’s not PNG.
Nick Gezzar 16:19
No, no. Purcell is Henkel. Oh,
Rolando Rosas 16:21
there you go. So you it’s interesting that one word made a difference. Let’s look at, look at the difference here. Mindset, I would imagine, is important. Perso is, would you, would you say they’re a value brand instead of a premium brand? Where you use that? Yeah,
Nick Gezzar 16:38
I think, I think that’d be the perception in America. They’re big in Europe, not so much in the States. It
Rolando Rosas 16:44
shows a little in the in the sponsored brand. So if you were consulting personal, you know, you are look at you’re getting hit with the Amazon Basics, you know, below them, and you’re competing against gain, which I would imagine. So that PNG, they’re positioning that keyword right, and then you have the tides. What would you say parcel could do better here, if they’re if they were to make any changes on their sponsored
Nick Gezzar 17:11
brands, showing laundry pods would be a great place to start, instead of a liquid and then highlighting their ASINs in the sponsored brands app. Man, I’m gonna make a lot of marketers and salespeople upset with what I’m saying on this podcast.
Rolando Rosas 17:24
Well, you know, you have to you, but you know, here’s the thing, here’s the thing, Nick when you operate on Amazon, and it took us a long time to understand this is that the rules on Amazon are different. They’re not like you’re on Google, and then, certainly, in some ways, not like if you’re on an aisle in a store, there’s some conceptual things, right TV, right or linear TV, right? When you’re on Amazon, the rules and the engagement and the shopping are very different. And you could break it down by how to approach this back end side from a from a keyword perspective and positioning versus the customer experience. But if you were going to do pods, maybe have pods. Maybe they don’t have pods, let’s just check their their.
Nick Gezzar 18:14
Can we do one more search? There was one brand I remember it had some really great sponsored brands that we think we could show as an example, Sodastream.
Rolando Rosas 18:23
You want me to use that? Sodastream? Yeah, if
Nick Gezzar 18:25
we could, I think that might provide a better one, where I seem to recall them always having, there we go. That’s a great example. Actually, it’s a branded search term. They won their own branded search term, which is good, important. And if you have a brand name, you need to be bidding on your own brand name. If you if you typed in SodaStream and some competitor came up, Something’s very wrong for Sodastream. Interesting
Rolando Rosas 18:50
look at all of what comes up. And what’s important to note Nick is that on Amazon, not everything is equal. Every category Amazon has a different way of surfacing, and clothing versus sponsored versus packaged goods versus laundry versus electronics. You don’t always get some of these, like these subcategories, like shop by category, SodaStream, right bottles, it’s surfacing all these other subcategories,
Nick Gezzar 19:23
all these components, really, you have the device, you have the consumable items, you have the durable items, you have the replacements, like the cartridges, but that sponsored brands, the top looks great, though, because they have their logo, a really punchy catch line or tagline, one SodaStream, endless possibilities, three distinct ASINs being shown off, Mountain Dew, delightful. And I’m betting that goes to a great sponsor, a bunch of equipment, a brand store
Rolando Rosas 19:56
there so that, so the individual product. Seems like they’ve got them going to the product detail page, yep,
Nick Gezzar 20:03
and that’s that’s how it’ll go across most of these. If you are putting the individual ASINs on, a click on that asin will drive you to the detail page. A click on the brand name or the tagline will take you to the brand store.
Rolando Rosas 20:15
I take it. This must be a new product, because they only have 14 ratings, and they’re not flattering by Amazon standards, yeah, 2.7 interesting to say the least, indeed. All right, I’m
Nick Gezzar 20:31
trying to think there’s anything else to really hit up. Can you actually scroll down? I would say there’s a sponsored brands video that shows up in the results. Sometimes it will
Rolando Rosas 20:42
they’re dominating that word because it’s all them, yep. And then here is ninja thirsty, the next sponsored brand. Sponsored brand can show up at the top. So essentially, top of search would be the technical term you guys use. And then you could get hit with sponsored brands again, somewhere in the middle or down below. In this case, a video with Ninja thirsty
Nick Gezzar 21:05
absolutely looks to be a direct competitor to Sodastream. But like you said earlier, motion attracts human attention. That’s just what we’re wired for. Even if I was just looking for this on my own, not on your podcast, I probably stop and watch this. It’s an engaging video. So again, this is more advanced. Once you’ve got your sponsored products, you’re happy with it, you’re getting your diminishing returns, that’s the time to start looking at this. And then sponsored brands, video, I would say, is one step above going into the sponsored brands. And you also need to have video production assets
Rolando Rosas 21:37
and talk about so. So a couple of things on sponsored brands. I know that Amazon has has some type of video production services that you can click on on the in the back end. If you want to get that, you have now an AI capability attached to sponsored brands so you can generate images using AI in your product. And another thing they just rolled out was the vertical format. So essentially, what UGC or content creators or influencers would create so the mobile experience would be different. Talk a little bit about that,
Nick Gezzar 22:11
oh, man, that’s a there’s a lot of topics all at once, but I think the one you brought up at the end is the most interesting is the vertical video. Because there’s most folks are shopping on their phones, not most. It’s a depends on the category fairly even split. There’s, there’s always a significant amount of people on mobile, and it’s a different experience when you’re doing that. And that vertical video really feeds into what the customer expects and what fits well on their phone as they are. Oh, there we go. Hey, Bose, yes. And you can see, this is a horizontal video. If you were searching on your phone, you’d probably be seeing in a different format,
Rolando Rosas 22:45
correct, correct. And that’s what I was trying to see if, if we get any of those vertical surfaced on page one, for things that would be more mobile, type of searches. An interesting
Nick Gezzar 22:58
thing on that video, though, actually, that’s a great sponsor brands at the top the video in the scroll the sponsor brands. Video when you scroll down, okay, I think the point to kind of hit with that, that you’re that you see, is look at the price on those selling price, you can kind of infer from that that it has a higher raw dollar profit, right? Even the percentage is lower than some others, they have more actual dollars to spend on these bids. So when you’re looking to do things that may have a slightly lower ROAs, like sponsored brands or sponsor brands, video, especially profitable or expensive, preferably, both products are really the ideal candidate for that. You wouldn’t want to be doing sponsor brands video on a $5 package of paperclips, but a $429 set of headphones, you can afford to do that and pick up another couple sales, absolutely.
Rolando Rosas 23:56
And side note, Gary V’s, VaynerMedia. I don’t know if they’re doing the E commerce stuff, but I know that they picked them up as a client sometime last year. Nice. But talk, one more thing we’re looking at, so we’re deep, diving into sponsored brands. This is a new format that that is wasn’t available just months ago, where you have on the left the subcategories inside built into the sponsored brands, and then a carousel that scrolls through with the products. Why would I want to do this?
Nick Gezzar 24:33
Well, that’s going to depend. It depends, as they say,
Rolando Rosas 24:36
back to the MBA,
Nick Gezzar 24:39
yes, if you have a complex catalog with very specific items, I mean yours, actually, this is your category, Rolando, your stuff isn’t substitutable. A bluetooth earpiece is not the same as a wired headset, not the same as a sound bar. All are being sold under the same roof of your store, right? Would you make sure people are going to the part of your store they actually want to see? I think it’s pretty fundamental ecommerce. Every time there’s a click involved in getting to the cart, you’re going to lose customers. This is a way to remove a click. What is
Rolando Rosas 25:15
znik? It’s probably an Asian brand, 100% if we go in here, let’s go here. I’m almost I could bet it’s going to be an Asian brand. How do we know that? We go here? Under, add to cart, under, buy now. Here’s sold by and you should it should take us to their like profile page.
Nick Gezzar 25:36
Wonder, okay, yep, there
Rolando Rosas 25:38
you go. Ta da China. There’s the details. And you can’t, if you can read, you can read Chinese lettering, numbers or whatever they are, characters, you’ll know exactly what the business address is. I know Google Translate will do that for you. But that kind of name a Z, they love z’s, z’s, and the name of the city within the within the name of the company, like right here, Shenzhen, Shenzen, Shenzen, wonder hedge, I don’t know why they kind of the naming structure for their companies is that way, but that that’s just most of them tend to be that way.
Nick Gezzar 26:16
But for them, for this, uh, challenger brand, we would call it, if they sell a variety of products, you would want to make sure that your customer can get to the right part of your store, right so they’re looking for over the ear, foldable wireless headphones. They’re not gonna be interested in a sound bar
Rolando Rosas 26:35
over the ear, Bluetooth headphones. Let’s, let’s go there. Let’s just click on that, and that brings you to their store. And you know, they are a lower priced product than Bose, I don’t know, quality wise, they’re
Nick Gezzar 26:46
almost suspicious, suspiciously affordable.
Rolando Rosas 26:52
That’s right, they are. And here’s the thing that that when it comes to you know, any category is that every business has to evaluate where they’re going to be profitable. And can you compete at 28 $26 run sponsored brands and still be profitable? Every business has to look at their P and L and their ad spend to determine that, because you may not be able to be top of search with the particular keyword. In this case, headphones, a huge category, lots of bidding going on. I guarantee you, they’re paying up the nose to get that number one slot on the on the brand side and sponsored brand side to be up there.
Nick Gezzar 27:35
But overall, not a terrible placement. They could definitely do some creative work, like you can see they’re their brand, that’s that could be an insurance company for all I know. Screams headphones, yeah, but I like what they have on the right with the carousel. This is one of those things where, like, great in theory, they just need to work on the execution,
Rolando Rosas 27:59
yeah, as we saw with tide. You have you have motion. I’m going to do one other one. I’m going to be specific here. I’m going to do Red Bull. They’re, they’re a big brand to just do a branded search see. Let’s see what, what interesting. So Red Bull is, got a static image on the left. They’ve got their three asin lineup at the top, these look like probably their best product. Look at the reviews, 15,000 18,000 7000 and below, they’re spotting again, they’re they’re bidding on their own, which is another thing. We’re bidding on their own, their own term, their own brand term. Yeah, look at that. Holy smokes. The first three rows are all Red Bull. That’s actually
Nick Gezzar 28:44
a that’s actually a really good execution overall.
Rolando Rosas 28:50
And okay, these are organic, um, these are sponsored. And sponsored brands is at the
Nick Gezzar 28:56
top. Wow, but, uh, dang, that is, that’s actually a great example.
Rolando Rosas 29:00
I’m going to give you one more monster drink, huh? That’s the one. Look at that, and that is
Nick Gezzar 29:06
what we call conquesting.
Rolando Rosas 29:09
I saw somebody on LinkedIn. That’s why I wanted to throw this last one. As we wrap up here, the folks at Monster either they don’t know or maybe they’re not bidding high enough. I don’t, I don’t know what this could do long term for Monster, if Red Bull stays up there, which was the question I asked you earlier, am I gonna I love Monster? My is Red Bull gonna? Is Red Bull gonna sway me because they’re up there? Or is it just again, back to that perception, that Red Bull’s everywhere. Maybe there’s some FOMO going on. I don’t know. I’m missing out
Nick Gezzar 29:39
some perception, but I’ll tell you what, I’m actually a bit of a consumer of this category. Tell
Rolando Rosas 29:46
me, give me some insight. But when it comes to
Nick Gezzar 29:49
I’m pretty agnostic as to which one I’m having, as long as it’s sugar free. So if I type that in, I mean, I don’t usually buy by the case, have I seen those Red Bull sugar frees? That might actually be appealing to me, especially as I start looking at prices, because I got, you know, the monster zero in white, that is one of the ones I will drink sometimes, okay, but, uh, most customers are not that brand loyal, so there’s still a chance to pick it up and so, and it’s a way for them again, just to get up there, look popular, appear everywhere. Okay,
Rolando Rosas 30:25
well, there you go. You have it from a energy drink drinker. All right, so if we were to summarize here, Nick sponsored brand is not for the meek, you will. You should expect a bit lower, uh, return on ad spend. It’s going to be lower than your product, uh, sponsored products. It’s it’s good for awareness. It can drive traffic to your store. And there’s different formats that you can use, vertical, horizontal, as well as different carousel that can all play into the mix of sponsored brands. Was there anything else you wanted to leave us with?
Nick Gezzar 31:05
All I would say is just when you’re looking at doing sponsored brands, first off, make sure you’re doing sponsored products right. That’s the first step. And then as you get into it, make sure that your sponsored brands tactics are fitting to your overall strategy and objectives. There’s a lot of options out there, and you got to make sure that once you’re doing support your overall plan, and this now is also where you start worrying about creative quality. I think we’ve seen it on some of the examples we looked at that unknown headphone manufacturer had some pretty weak creative but then you look at Red Bull, and you’re seeing their distinctive asset, those two bowls crashing in front of the sun. Design in their can grabs your attention. This is where bad creative can start really wrecking your overall returns and conversion thing. And you got to make sure that your creative folks are on the ball with that.
Rolando Rosas 31:52
I love that you end on the creative it becomes more important, you know, whether it’s the video piece or the static images, so something to really think about as you’re ramping up with sponsored brands. So this has been part three in our multi part series on how to be an Amazon seller, a deep dive, and peeling the curtain back on Amazon ads with subject matter expert Nick Gezzar. Now we’ve got another part if you want to join Nick and I will be there and join you and nerd out some more. Thanks for joining us.
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