Rolando Rosas 7:00
So tell me, so you’re pulling the curtain a little bit behind. So we could see a small view into into what’s happening at Amazon that really is true. I mean, I’ve heard that, but I haven’t heard it from somebody directly that work there.
Nick Gezzar 7:12
So if you’re ever in a meeting at Amazon, as an Amazon person, like internal, and this has been I’m not gonna go anything confidential here. But
Rolando Rosas 7:19
you don’t have to give comfort and just, you know, what we already know, if you want to,
Nick Gezzar 7:23
if you want to stop the conversation, if someone has a project or proposal, just throw it out to the room, is it sufficiently customer obsessed, and people are going to massively debate that it really is something they actually live there. Even if it doesn’t always feel like that from the outside.
Rolando Rosas 7:38
You know, you remind me of something. And in getting ready for this show. This episode, I was looking at that the fact that you worked at Procter and Gamble, I worked at Altria. And one of the things I actually interviewed I interviewed at Procter and Gamble, many years ago when I was right out of college, and it really struck me that one of the folks that I was interviewing was a was where they were working for tide, they’re in the brand of the equation. And they said, you know, we, if the surveys from customers tell us they want blue crystal in TIDE, we’re gonna give them blue crystal, because they are that tuned in to what the customer is looking for, and what the customer wants. And if they want, purple crystals will get put in that zero to do with the efficacy of washing the laundry and making it more powerful. So this biting stains, it just has to do with what the customer says they want to do, or where they’re going or their preferences. And that lines up a lot like what you’re saying about Amazon and being obsessed about the customer.
Nick Gezzar 8:41
And you know, I worked at Procter and Gamble as well. And it’s really the same thing. They’re they’re obsessed with what the customer wants in their home. They’re they’re a product based company, you know, they you could just list off for an hour all the brands, they sell their pride all of our homes right now.
Rolando Rosas 8:55
Oh, yeah. They’ve known in research and a lot of categories.
Nick Gezzar 9:00
The amount of research they do, though, to find those category Insights is completely unparalleled. They spend so much time and effort and just training all their folks up. The insights teams at p&g are absolutely top notch. And anytime you meet somebody who has been with us to be called CMK when I was there customer and market knowledge, you know, you’ve got an actual research expert who knows how to you know, really distill those insights from the research and go those layers deep that they need to
Rolando Rosas 9:29
life and it sounds like you know, Amazon is a it’s a I will also say their pack leader if I were to steal Caesar Milan’s phrase. Procter and Gamble is in one or two, a number one or two in most of their categories. And it was that same way when I was at my time and ultra in the categories that they were in day one and two, and it seems like the common denominator here among three different companies, two CPG companies and obviously an internal call Amazon and internet company, services company. Is the obsession over customer and more specifically, customer data?
Nick Gezzar 10:05
Yep. And if you ever lose sight of that, you really just start losing your way. And that’s where the business goes south.
Rolando Rosas 10:11
Interesting, interesting. Oh, my goodness, you know, Dave, you want to jump in
Dave Kelly 10:18
lesson for for any small to medium businesses out there that they might be losing their way and they’re looking for, they’re looking for some help to up their communication game, you know what they need to turn to Global Teck worldwide, they are your secret weapon, when it comes to unified communications, integrations and also hardware with some global tech, they know the tech Battlefield, they’re not here to push products on you. They’re here to decode your unique needs, and find solutions to help maximize your return on investment, that customer service is top notch and satisfaction. That’s their war cry. So fellow SMB business owners, if you want to improve your communication game, step it up with Global Teck check them out at global-teck.com. So I had to fit that in there.
Rolando Rosas 11:09
No way. That’s, that’s what we want. We want we want to help businesses. You know, one of the reasons I started Global Teck, Nick was that the the little niche that we’re in, I saw that it’s tech can be hard. And it’s sometimes hard because the way the information is out there and you don’t know how to put the pieces together. And a lot of times, it can just be boiled down to some a few simple things that can help along the way. And that’s one of the reasons why we started Global Teck to make sure that businesses that wanted it devices, and now services can do that. So things don’t fall apart. And it just falls apart a lot. I mean, you worked at Amazon, and some of these, I’m sure you can attest to sometimes, you know, a system doesn’t work play nice with a piece of hardware that’s been purchased or vice versa.
Nick Gezzar 11:59
And I’ll say go for Global Teck, then you know your products as far as they go. I’ve never been on a podcast before I was asked for Rolando. Hey, what would be a good microphone for this because I don’t want to use the one built into my computer. He responded like 30 seconds later is that you gotta go with the Elgato. All right, thanks. Great.
Rolando Rosas 12:18
It’s great. It’s easy to use. And I’m not just saying that because we had one of the product managers from there. But you know, we in right here, you can’t really see I’ve got a lot of Elgato products. And why not just tell you? What’s easy, I could have gone this way with it. But you know what, it’s it’s your first time out of the gate, we want to make it easy. So that you know, you don’t get bogged down with, you know, to fine tuning this and that. But you don’t want to miss out on customer obsession. Exactly. Absolutely. I want to know, and I’m sure that a lot of folks that are listening to this. They want to how do you land a job at Amazon? In in your in the ads? How did that all come about? And you know, how did that happen? Where you went from one organization and all of a sudden you found yourself at Amazon?
Nick Gezzar 13:06
Sure. So I was working at lint and Brinkley and actually Amazon reached out to me, I’m a military veteran, they had a program for bringing veterans into Amazon. And I had heard that the interviews are almost impossible to pass that looks like a 2% acceptance rate. But you know what, I’ll get in a rep. You know, just try it out. No other interview could be this hard. Let’s just give it a whirl. And then I ended up with an offer. I was like, Oh man, I can’t I can’t not do this. I’m moving to Seattle. And then I worked in a retail vendor manager for about a year working with Apple. And also Beats by Dre. So I got to manage some massive deals. And if you had Amazon Yeah, so I was the Amazon buyer, effectively, a vendor manager would really be considered a buyer in the brick and mortar world, and just a slightly different remit. Because it’s an ecommerce company, right? Yeah, did that for about a year got to him. It’s apple, you can only imagine how large the numbers are with this. And if you screw up, you might end up in the Wall Street Journal. Things Fall Apart. So just just a little bit of pressure. But the thing I’ve seen there while I was working in retail was our advertising. A, this wonderful woman named Katherine. I met she really liked what she was doing. And I talked to her about how ads works. And I really got to see it firsthand like what happens when customer invest in ads and the massive gains it can have for them when it’s done properly. And I thought wow, I would actually love to get into this because this is really effective stuff that’s going to help businesses grow and it’s it’s really nice to be able to walk into a meeting like hey, look at this. We’ve grown your business X percent because we did XYZ right everybody feels good. So they really It just kind of suited me a little better with more social bringing good news. When you’re negotiating commercial terms, things can get a little testy or sometimes Oh, my personality,
Rolando Rosas 15:10
for sure, you know, and we we’ve had our fair share of training, negotiate with large suppliers. And sometimes they play hardball. And when it comes to the Amazon space, specifically on negotiations, I found in talking to other large brands, multinationals, their lack of familiarity with the Amazon world and the Amazon way can lead to disaster.
Nick Gezzar 15:35
You definitely want to have your sales team work with Amazon to have an actual knowledge of how the platform works. Well, the intricacies are, you know, if they, 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.
Rolando Rosas 15:54
Uh, yeah, that would not be a good thing. If Beats by Dre went out of stock at Best Buy, right?
Nick Gezzar 16:01
Then they would consider that an issue, especially nationwide and simultaneous.
Dave Kelly 16:06
Um, you know, we’re sometimes we’re sometimes surprised that some of these multinational brands don’t have dedicated resources for Amazon, they’ll have resources that Amazon is part of 20 other accounts that they that they manage, so that there’s no specialty, they don’t, they’re not even given an opportunity to really be a master of Amazon, because they’re trying to juggle so many other things, which
Nick Gezzar 16:31
is absolutely wild, because I think Amazon should be treated largely the same as Walmart, slightly different execution. But you know, most multinationals, they’re gonna have a dedicated Walmart team, they’re probably gonna have people sitting there in Bentonville going to headquarters all the time to sell to negotiate. And if you’re not giving Amazon, that same level of attention, you’re not going to get those same level of results. Everybody who sells a product knows for brick and mortar, Walmart is kind of what you live and die by, you got to be on the shelf to be there. Yeah. And I think Amazon is really that way for EECOM.
Dave Kelly 17:04
Do you think Amazon is still the best place where someone can start to start a new business?
Nick Gezzar 17:11
You know, I will tell you frankly, I have never started my own business of selling products to consumers. But I think Amazon does have much lower barriers to entry than you would find in a typical brick and mortar. Even if you were in your shoes from New England, if you were if you had a new food product, or actually any kind of product trying to get on the shelf and market basket. This can be a massive uphill climb, just trying to sell and have that legitimacy, because you’re competing with with the big dogs there, they’ve only got so many feet of shelf. In every you have a finite amount of shelf, Amazon, I mean, it’s an infinity foot shelf. As long as there’s demand for your product, you can be out there. And if you manage it right, you can get found. Are there other channels you could work with? Sure. Like if you’re making something small and artisan at home, maybe Etsy is a great place to start. But if you’re looking to scale, Amazon, I would say is going to be a critical part of that.
Rolando Rosas 18:04
I love your analogy about Walmart because I can echo that. Having worked for Altria. We even got into I don’t want to call it maybe internal battles with our Bentonville team that that essentially lived there, and was a team of a bunch of people, Senior Account Managers, national account managers, logistics people that lived in Bentonville to serve Walmart as the customer to make sure we had the proper shelf space, the contracts, were always going smooth. Any issues were nipped in the bud. So it literally was a team effort. And you’re right, Nick. In my case, I just in my in our world of electronics, where we’ve interacted with multiple suppliers that are multinationals. That hasn’t been the case where the who’s the Amazon team for you all, two guys, three, three guys in the GAO, a lawyer and two people. One guy who’s head of retail, plus he’s got other accounts on his plate. And we have yet met a multinational in our electronic space where they say, Yeah, we got a full team. One does the logistics and the other one did it just like you said for Bentonville, where there is a big importance on making sure everything is running smoothly from top to bottom with Walmart.
Nick Gezzar 19:29
Absolutely. And one of the other problems you find too, is folks who’ve been really stuck in the brick and mortar mindset. It’s hard for them to view e commerce as anything more than just a side show when there’s there’s a ton of potential there when you consider how much shopping and just commerce in general is transacted over Amazon.
Rolando Rosas 19:46
No doubt, no doubt. And I think I think that the trends for the past 15 to 20 years are going in that direction. I mean, it I remember when we started on Amazon, most of the suppliers that we work with, were not on it. Amazon, because they the prevailing thought was, there’s really no business customers on Amazon, it’s mostly consumers. And right now, as of today, that is certainly not the case, almost every major company is buying and transacting through Amazon, through the Amazon business side. And in addition to that, a lot of companies have their procurement systems connected to Amazon. So large purchases are occurring on the platform.
Nick Gezzar 20:29
Oh, Amazon business has been growing at a quick pace, I don’t have the up to date data because I didn’t work directly in Amazon business. If I recall, it was something a super majority of Fortune 100 companies do procurement through Amazon business. And they also definitely offer a lot of volume discounts, you know, selling 100 units of something, you can give away a little bit of margin more than you would for onesies and twosies. With consumers, that’s really what’s going to make up the base your sales. Yeah, depending on the category, of course,
Dave Kelly 20:59
the the other nice thing about the Amazon business side is that it gives organizations like us that deal with consumer and commercial electronics gives us an opportunity to bring more value to those buyers, and they can they better understand the story, when they see you know about the seller and like, Oh, they’ve been in business for 20 years, they’re not hiding here, here’s where they are here, their partnerships, I think we’ve been able to gain a lot of trust through that side of the platform. And I mean, she I think about when the pandemic was kind of starting and then in full swing that biz that Amazon business side that was that was very heavy for us for our for our sales,
Nick Gezzar 21:42
I’m sure for we have a bunch of employees setting up home offices, and you want standardized equipment that you know is up to spec that sounds like an Amazon business problem.
Rolando Rosas 21:50
Yeah.
Nick Gezzar 21:53
I hope you don’t mind me talking about,
Rolando Rosas 21:55
let’s go ahead and learn and listen from you. But But
Nick Gezzar 21:59
what you brought up there today with being trustworthy, you know, folks can click on the Go to the Global Teck store, and your brand stores great. It’s organized in a way that is suited to the customer needs. But it also shows this is a legitimate business, who’s been doing it for a while you know what you’re talking about, and you’re willing to put in the effort to actually give a good storefront. And that really is important for determining that that kind of customer trust.
Rolando Rosas 21:59
And I think so it’s a that’s the thing that I know, I’ve talked with our team, on on the Amazon store side, our design is that the biggest barrier for a click to go from add to cart to buy is the trust, especially if you’re unfamiliar with whether it’s the brand, or the seller. And if you don’t feel comfortable enough aka trust to go through it, that’s going to be the friction point. So anything that can remove, and there’s usually multiple friction points when you’re trying to succeed and grow on Amazon, you got to really try to overcome those friction points at brandstory. A plus content, and as well as ads. And that’s where I want to go to next with you, you know, as a seller on the platform and talking to other sellers, many of them are realizing like you said earlier, Amazon ads are not cheap. They’re not getting cheaper. So the million dollar question around ads? Are Amazon ads still worth the money spent on them?
Nick Gezzar 23:28
If you enjoy selling products on Amazon, then I would say yes. When you’re looking at discoverability Do you want your car? If somebody looks for an Elgato microphone? Do you want to be the one showing up? That’d be a great place to date on sponsored products. I mean, really, when you look at sponsored products that’s kind of table stakes at this point to make sure you’re showing up in the search results. I think it’s 90% or so of customers. And this is totally releasable. That stuff has been out the public never scrolled past the first page. So if you’re not on the first page, hold
Rolando Rosas 23:58
on, hold on, wait a minute. This is a pro tip. This sounds like or give us a pro tip. Get ready for a pro tip. Nick, give us the numbers on page one. What was that that you’re talking about?
Nick Gezzar 24:15
If I recall spending 90% of customers never scroll past the first page of results from a search on amazon.com.
Rolando Rosas 24:23
What what Hold on a second what what I got is this thunder. It is a stunner. And when you include the fact that page one today, and where organic placement is put on that digital footprint is not where it was five years ago, where not a lot of page one used to be more organic placement of listings and products. Today page one and even the the fold the first the top of the fold. It’s getting smaller and smaller.
Nick Gezzar 24:57
That’s thing when people are looking for your product or cat Korea assuming your catalogue is focused enough, like, obviously, your catalog is fits nicely into one category, sponsored products and sponsored brands get you to that top of fold. So that way the customer can actually find you. If you spend on some sponsored brands, ooh, maybe not takes you to the Global Teck store, it was for a specific piece of hardware. Now, it’s the Detail page for this one specific microphone that Global Teck is selling. But really, those two ads are almost table stakes at this point, to be able to really thrive on Amazon, could you still sell some stuff? Sure, as long as it’s, you know, relevant, highly rated enough, but you’re never gonna really go big without the ads. And fortunately,
Rolando Rosas 25:37
I like that you will never go big without the ad. And know that we use, we use we leverage the ads platform. And that’s how you and I know each other. And it’s amazing how it’s evolving. Just recently, the autofill go a little bit nerdy here into the weeds, the auto campaigns are being shown off the Amazon platform, there is no toggle switch to turn that on or off. But the fact that you can get products discovered off of Amazon via the auto campaigns is interesting, which it tells me that Amazon is looking for ways to increase that reach of ads, just outside that platform with with something as unique as the the Amazon sponsored products like what you were talking about. I mean,
Nick Gezzar 26:20
this this is one of the things I would tell by customers all the time is that Amazon ads is not just within the search bar of Amazon, when you think it when you look at how big Amazon ads is. They have the exclusive advertising rights for Thursday night football for I think the next nine years last year, I think was the very first year they did it, they bought 10 year rights. So if you want to see any TV style ad on a Thursday night football game, Amazon is the only place to do it. That’s really the top of the funnel there. Then between that and sponsored products, there are a number of products that Amazon has to make sure your product is discoverable off the web percent off the web off of amazon.com as well. Yeah.
Rolando Rosas 27:02
So with with that in mind, Nick, and in looking at the importance of ads, being part of the playbook, you talked about 39 We’re gonna go with that playbook of being successful on Amazon at and there’s a number of different strategies, you know, depending on the category, the cost of the item, the potential profit or squeezing of margins, ads do cost money, they all require different strategies. We’re going to we’re going to go into that. But what should Amazon sellers? Never do? I’m going to let you fill in this phrase, Amazon sellers should never blank.
Nick Gezzar 27:40
How would you fill that in? The Amazon sellers should never sleep on their category data. catalog data.
Rolando Rosas 27:48
Okay. Okay. You want to go into that? What does that mean? Oh, absolutely.
Nick Gezzar 27:53
This is one of the least sexy things about selling on Amazon. But every acent on there, there’s millions and millions of aliens out there have a huge catalogue of data you need to enter in. And that’s everything from the title, the category, its it, the dimensions of it, your bullet points. But if you have any errors in there, you’re not going to be discoverable, your stuff might not even show up in any results pages. Sometimes you get folks who will fat finger something or they just leave a piece out. But it can lead to all kinds of mishaps where, you know, if you’re doing Fulfilled by Amazon and you accidentally didn’t convert from centimeters to inches, well, now they think your package is two and a half times bigger, or two and a half times smaller than it actually is. And it’s not going to go well for you either way. There was one incident that I got to witness secondhand where a product was incorrectly flagged as an adult product. Oh, my. Yeah, so those are suppressed from search results, everything in those kinds of categories. You could find them but you’d have to look for them specifically. And they keep that out because you know, they want to surprise and delight people but not surprising. If one of your products is incorrectly flagged as adult, might as well just disappear. My recommendation for any seller is if you have the ability, I would just do a quarterly audit of all of your catalog data just to make sure everything is still correct in spec and showing it as it should be. Because that stuff is actually critical. That’s really the backbone of how Amazon can categorize all these Asians and get them to customers.
Rolando Rosas 29:32
You know, you’re you’re echoing a conversation. So I belong to a Facebook group called the million dollar seller group. And hence the name there’s just a book that belongs to it or they sell over a million dollars a year on Amazon in one of the things that’s come up is exactly what you just said about catalog issues. And probably again five or six years ago, it wasn’t a big thing. But given that there’s a lot less in the control of the seller one One of the biggest things that can influence that organic placement is the backend issues of things like, you know, the Browse node in the tree node, and they don’t match the browser that doesn’t match your listing. And that has a cascading effect. You’re not the contributor have record the winning contributor to a listing. And, you know, there’s nowhere this is the one thing I would say, I wish it was available on seller central to a seller when I mean, you know, when the buy box is last, understood, but that doesn’t tell you that you are the winning contributor on your own listing, right? You have to almost you have to look for that. Or let Amazon know, hey, you know, hey, I’ve tried to make a change on this and my catalog, and they won’t go through Oh, yeah, you’re not the winning contributor on your listing. So Amazon, if you’re paying attention, give us an easier way to get at that information.
Nick Gezzar 30:58
Tragedy, a completely different team than me. So I
Rolando Rosas 31:02
thought I’d throw that suggestion there. See if somebody hears it. And you know, I do know, I know for a fact that they’re Amazon people from all different Seattle, Austin, Detroit, so big, you know, let me give it props to a few people. I want to give big props to Julie, I think over Amazon, Julie, we love the work that you’re doing with our account. Absolutely love it. So I just want to give her big props, because he’s been doing a tremendous amount of work on our account over there. And she has been helpful this this whole year on a slew of things that that she’s been working with us. I just want to give him props. But you know, Nick jump, you leaked out one of the top three secrets. So let’s jump right into the top three secrets. Sorry, hit me with the top three secrets.
AI Chatbot 31:54
Well kept secrets Well, secrets. Gotta keep them safe. And sound. Well, let’s see, Prince secrets are just like diamonds.
Rolando Rosas 32:09
Right, Nick? This is the part I love. Flash the top three. So one of the three three secrets was what you just said, Don’t sleep on catalog data, which you gave you talked about so eloquently. So let’s jump into that first one, Nick, be profit obsessed. I love this term. Tell me more, please. All right, well,
Nick Gezzar 32:38
this is starting from the premise that you’re a seller on Amazon, and you’re wishing to make money office profits, the money you get to take home. Nobody cares about that nearly as much as you do. You need to be really looking at your financials, all your costs and your revenue to really see, am I actually maximizing my profit. I example like to use kind of from my ads time is ro s. Ro S is a great metric, you know, return on adspend. Let’s give you an example. Let’s say you have a $5 return on adspend for an ad campaign you’re running. Sounds great, doesn’t it? You know, it’s like a theater vending machine where you put $1 in and a $5. Bill came back out. You just bring stacks of money and keep doing that. But you need to actually consider what that means for your profit. So let’s imagine you’re running a sponsored products campaign for a let’s say this microphone. Let’s say it’s priced at $100. Retail, right? So a customer’s gonna buy it for $100. But with that $5 Row asked, How much do you think that means you actually spent on getting that conversion? Indeed, you simple numbers for this for you guys gotta guess
Rolando Rosas 33:54
it costs you let’s say all sinned. And to get that order. Let’s say it’s was $15. To get a bunch of clicks and don’t work out, right, they click but they don’t convert, and you get one that cost 15 bucks to convert.
Nick Gezzar 34:08
Actually, you would have spent $20 Total getting that conversion. Close. You were close. They’re very close. But what them Yeah, $5 rulez. Sounds great. I’m 5x in my money. But what if your product costs all in once you factor in transport logistics, the actual product cost itself was 80 bucks earns that would have left, you would have had $20 in you know, pure profit on that. And now you’ve spent that on ads, you just broke even. You’re just basically giving it a no call no additional cost to the American consumer.
Rolando Rosas 34:41
Would you say that the importance of down to the SKU level because that’s what you’re talking about is SKU level data. So every SKU is an island. The concept of loss leaders because we’re not talking p&g or Altria or Pepsi that theoretically put loss leaders and supermarkets. I don’t believe that the case in May, that was an old terminology because no profitable company is especially the big cup public ones are in it to lose money, right? So exactly SKU level data that gives you essentially a p&l on every SKU.
Nick Gezzar 35:17
Yes, that’s exactly what I’d be doing, make sure you can actually analyze at that acent level, or at least an async. Grouping level, maybe, you know, this same microphone comes in five colors augments, and it’s all basically the same shirt, you could aggregate those. But if you’re looking at like an overall reclass, for what your business is doing, there could be one or two that are just insanely profitable for you, it’s doing great. And they’re being dragged down by some, they’re actually losing you money, unless you’re willing to actually kind of peel that onion back and really see what is driving what here in terms of gains and losses, you don’t really know what’s going on with your business. So you won’t know how to maximize that profit. Maybe you need to cut off some of those lower performers, or figure out a way to juice the Higher Performers to get even more profit out of those. But if you’re just looking at that overall metric that you’re given on the console, it’s not really going to tell you very deep story, even it doesn’t make you feel good.
Rolando Rosas 36:12
I look, I don’t like losing money. And I’m hoping that that sellers, and businesses that are Amazon will will peel back the onion, because you know, there’s third party software that can help with this, things like helium 10, and there’s several others, there’s just the one that’s on top of my head, that can give you a certain level data. And you can make that determination by Asin. And figure out oh, yeah, this is our most profitable, and this is how much margin at the end of the day we’re making, as well as the ones that you know, are the dogs. And I think these times where people are squeezed like you were saying earlier, Nick, it’s the right time to take a look at the catalog and see where you need to cut bait, which skews or which ASINs are underperforming and double down. I like using that double down on the ones that are best performing. You know, again, I go back to my ultra days, there was more promotional activity spent on the Marlboro brand than any from top to bottom. And it’s the number one brand in still is today at an Altria. And I’m sure it’s probably was the same way, Procter. If you look at the promotional activity around the brands, that the resources were put in, I would say I would say that we’re probably in the top two or three brands that are where approximately am I wrong about that?
Nick Gezzar 37:32
Oh, no, no, you’re absolutely right. And Marlboro is also one of those. The I came from brand management. So Barbara was one of those, like marketers campfire stories as well. You know, before the Marlboro Man Marlboro was actually a cigarette marketed towards with it. Yes, they did a huge brand overhaul. And I mean, he probably knows better than me, I think it was the 50s or the 60s, massive ad investment. And now it’s, you know, the rugged one for men riding horses and lassoing buffalo or something.
Rolando Rosas 38:02
That did a great job. I believe Leo Burnett was the one that was there. Leo Burnett, was the agency running a lot of the campaigns and working with the brand management team on that. But yeah, you would think you would think is, um, it’s our most profitable, why don’t we invest it in the mid tier products to grow those. And that’s what shocked me my time at Philip Morris that Altria was that there was more investment in resources dedicated to the top brand than any of the other brands that were still making money for the company. That was a shocker. You’re, you’re saying the same thing that I know to be true.
Nick Gezzar 38:42
They got to the top of the mountain and they want to stay there. Keep investing in that that’s that’s prime real estate there, it’s a lot more expensive to try and make those middle size brands and products grow.
Rolando Rosas 38:52
And so you still would you say that you don’t want to take your foot off the gas, because this is the other discussion that happens a lot in the Amazon selling community and visit is like, yeah, we are already on page one. Maybe we can cut back on that sponsored product or sponsored brands. Maybe we don’t need to the algorithm will pick it up as we’re already one or two. And those keywords, would you say that’s bad advice to you know, take your foot off the gas, or that’s good advice.
Nick Gezzar 39:20
I’d say keep your foot on the gas. If it’s doing well. If your product is selling, it’s growing, it’s staying profitable. Taking your foot off the gas, all you’re doing is maybe you’ll get a couple extra points of margin. But how many extra sales are you losing? You have to do some pretty complex math, there’s a lot of risk with that. Also, you’ll start losing relevance even on the organic side of things. If people are buying it last year reviewing it less and clicking on it less. If it’s doing well try to keep it there.
Rolando Rosas 39:49
Tell me you know you and I had a discussion a month ago and you know the interests of Amazon aren’t always aligned with The interest of the seller in that I’m concerned about profitability. But Amazon wants impressions and clicks, where does the the the end of the day the sale? When does the sale and conversion piece, enter into the equation when we’re talking to, you know, focus on the ad set, obviously, you want clicks and prints, because that’s what makes money that’s what you know, puts the lights and keeps the bills going. Because it’s the most, it’s the biggest profit center, it’s I think it’s gonna be outstripping AWS here shortly. Where does that fit into the conversation? Or is that part of the conversation that we want, we want sellers to convert. So therefore, those that convert the best, we’re going to elevate those ads, versus these are the ones that are generating the most clicks.
Nick Gezzar 40:47
Military fare, all the algorithms are a bit of a black box. And if I didn’t know, like, I’d be at liberty to discuss it anyway. We’ll just put on the internet, where nobody will hear right. In Amazon’s position, though, they’ll stick with it and I’ve seen in action is customer obsession they’re worried about is the customer getting the best thing they can, if they’re looking for a specific type of microphone, want to make sure they’re serving ads for that right type of microphone at the best price. And with the best delivery promise, you know, the shortest amount of time to get to the customer, because that’s ultimately what you want, as the end customer on Amazon. I want this specific item at a good price. And I want it like tomorrow. So sometimes the seller’s needs don’t necessarily align with that. But as with any negotiation, you don’t always know what’s going on in the other party’s heads and behind closed doors. So he’s treated like any other negotiation with any other selling partner, I would say, I don’t think it’s any real, like special sauce there, unfortunately.
Rolando Rosas 41:51
No, well, I thought I’d ask anyways. But when it comes to special sauce, one of the other areas that you have here, as a top secret is that when it comes to ads, you know, companies will, especially the bigger ones that may have bigger budgets, they do you get to a point when you start growing or Amazon, you thought you know, we got a lot of stuff going on with ads and ads today for Amazon is not what it was 10 years ago, when when we were getting started. It’s become more complex. And no, it’s heading and direction like like Google ads. You know, Google’s Google Ads used to be super simple. Anybody could do them back in 2000, early 2000 Not not the case anymore, you need a specialist. So you get to a point where you’re growing and you want to scale. And you say to yourself, you know what, Nick, I need some help here. Thinking about going to an agency. What say you I know this is part of your one of your other secrets? What should I do here? When I get to the point where I’m scaling? And I don’t? I don’t know. Maybe I’m a seller? And I don’t know if I’m doing the best job? Maybe I am maybe I’m not, I’m thinking of going to an agency that can take that off my shoulder, I
Nick Gezzar 43:03
think first thing to really do is look at what are your pain points? Like what’s not working with what you’re doing right now? And where do you want it to go? If you don’t really know that, you’re just kind of showing it to an agency and saying, Hey, can you define my problem and solve it for me, we have a really clear vision of where you want your business to be. And then when you speak with an agency, you really have to make sure that they know what they’re talking about in the domain, you’re talking about to talk about Amazon ads, they should be experts on it, because presumably they are servicing other clients and hopefully getting good results. There’s never a point they look at you and like oh, what’s what’s a DSP paid look for another agency. The big thing with agencies, though, is just really looking at how they are incentivized. How are they paid? There’s no business aphorism that you get what you incentivize. Are they being paid just based on your ad spend, irrespective of its performance? That’s probably not great for you? Can you negotiate terms with them to where they will get paid or otherwise compensated for achieving your actual business goals?
Rolando Rosas 44:13
At what point do you do that though, right. So let’s say you go to Houston, yeah, I’m going to go to an agency. How do you bring that up? You know, let’s help sellers that maybe haven’t they don’t have the, they have not done this before. That’s why they’re going to an agency. And they’re like, we’re growing. So I heard this guy on the podcast or this gal, you know, on LinkedIn. How do you have that conversation? With? Is it something you say upfront, hey, look, I heard good things about you guys. But here’s my concerns, or here’s my problems, or let’s address this. How does that How should that conversation go?
Nick Gezzar 44:48
I mean, I would do an initial consult with them. And when you do want to, first of all, tell them and you know, what is your business? What are you doing? What’s your scale, maybe you’re too big for them. Maybe you’re too small for them. And those are both valid things. There’s So the whole ocean of agencies out there, but what I would ask them for is case studies. And any specific, you know, what’s their secret sauce? What’s their magic here? How are they really serving their current clients and helping them achieve better results? It should be anonymized they shouldn’t be sharing their other clients data. But you want to really hear like, is there something special about what they’re doing? Or are they just basically cribbing notes from what’s publicly available from Amazon and just doing the bare minimum, you know, really get that feel for do they know the products, they have demonstrated success they’ve shown, then ask them, you know, what their fee structure is, and how that works. Because that’s going to be critical as well, for your profit obsession. They are going to be in some sense, they could be a cost center for you, you want them to be a profit center? Sure.
Rolando Rosas 45:46
That’s what you call real life. That’s right. DJ Khaled, real life, baby. And I appreciate you sharing that. Because a lot of folks don’t know about this. There’s a lot of I know, for us, as a within Global Teck, we’ve gone through several agencies. And when you start off, you hear you get the song and dance right. But asking those questions that you said, really important, how are you incentivize? Is it the clicks? Do you get paid? You know, because you have, you’re an aggregator and on the back end you’re getting, you know, you’re making the money, are you making the money on the budget where you actually spend, you know, 95% of the budget, and you keep five, and then there’s a few agencies that, you know, that we’ve talked to where you can pay him a flat fee, that would ultimately be the best because, you know, if you can go that route, there are a lot that do it. But you can put markers down in milestones that allow you to set you know, what does success look like? And I’ve asked other people this, and I would love to know what you think success could look like, you know, because I know for us, the bottom line is more units and more profitability. And an ad agency, they may not have that as the goalpost as as the endzone to do a dance on. So how do you approach that?
Nick Gezzar 47:14
Well, it’s just like you said, you have to define what success is, how do you win the game, if there are literally no rules, it’s Calvin Ball at that point. They’re gonna just go back to really defining to them what success is. And if you do end up hiring an agency, at least quarterly reviews where they get to show you their work their results, and this is gonna sound bad, ruthlessly grilled them about it. You are paying these people to manage a part of your business, they are accountable to you. Sometimes if results aren’t as great, you’ll find, you know, some flowery language, maybe some things buried in the footnotes, dig those up, ask every question, they are there to grow your business. And if they’re not doing it, you need to identify why or see if it’s time for a new agency. I will say this too, with agencies. I mean, it probably sounds like I’m being really hard on agencies, I have seen have had phenomenal results where they have just multiplied the returns on adspend. And I would presume profitability for their clients. I’ve seen some that have come in and just absolutely destroyed something that was working great. You know, it’s not like it’s a licensed profession. It’s like it’s a doctor or an engineer. Anybody can do it. So you got to really make sure that you are finding the right folks. And you mentioned earlier your your Facebook group, the million dollar sellers group, ask peers most folks especially if they’re non competitive with you, they’ll be happy to tell you about a great agency they work with Heck, they want to help their buddy makes more money and help you do that too. And also you can get the warning of the ones to steer clear from
Rolando Rosas 48:54
Yeah, those those have been helpful right want to see a swing on sometimes they don’t want to see a swing right but I would I would say that when it comes to sellers there’s there’s there’s groups of like the one you’re talking about MTS and you do we do want to win right right DJ, let me know what you crazy. Another one yes, that’s the one I was looking for. Sometimes I hit the wrong button. But but the the getting peer peers that have worked or or have used other agencies is good info. Now Nick, Did we miss anything on the top three secrets? I know you went into the catalog one we hit the being profit obsessed with the due diligence. Was there any of those three that that you wanted to add any color or any additional info on?
Nick Gezzar 49:46
I think we covered them all really well. But just to really emphasize point number one again about the profit obsessed. Are you familiar with smile? Direct club? I’ve heard of them. Yeah. Yeah, like mailorder like orthodontics. They were basically running unprofitably for a number of years, they did an IPO four years ago, like $9 billion. And now they’re looking at liquidating the company because they couldn’t. So they did not remain profit obsessed. There’s that future promise of being profitable, it’s gonna come someday. Granted, most Amazon sellers are not on that scale. But that shows him when you’re the big boys, if you have VC money behind you, it’s gonna catch up to you someday, you have to be profit obsessed. If you want to survive long term.
Rolando Rosas 50:31
Let me get your comment on something. Because then you said VC and you think profit? You I’m sure you’re well aware of what’s happening with Amazon aggregator space, you know, that a lot of them jumped in, right after right as COVID was getting going. And, you know, the the philosophy is that, hey, you know, we’ve got the smart guys on our team who know how to look at spreadsheets and numbers. And then you realize, oh, wait a minute, running an Amazon business, at scale with so many on the books is not as easy as it sounded to me.
Nick Gezzar 51:06
Hmm, yeah, it’s people really underestimate the complexity of E commerce because it feels simple when you’re doing it at home as a customer, but there’s a lot going on in the back end that’s completely invisible to you. You know, when Amazon it’s at the time of taping, it’s currently another prime day, October. And those deals don’t just show up because somebody’s like, Oh, I’m just gonna cut the price 10% on this frame as on that that’s all now these things are carefully negotiate. There’s a ton that goes into it. That’s not just filling out spreadsheets or entering in data to there’s still also a human element of negotiation and strategy to all this.
Rolando Rosas 51:45
No doubt, no doubt the human element is the most important element. I’ve said that before. It’s that it’s, it can be the most complex one as well, because a machine can you can figure that out. Here’s the book, here’s the manual, here’s what it’s supposed to do. humans operate with a manual,
Nick Gezzar 52:04
a little more complex.
Rolando Rosas 52:07
You know, one of the other things that you you and I talked about and in in helping Amazon sellers and businesses that want to be successful on Amazon was taking a look at Amazon, let’s peel the curtain on ads. I’d love to do a quick screen share for so if you’re one of those folks that is going to follow along with us. On the video side. We’ll also describe what we’re talking about.
Nick Gezzar 52:32
Yeah, what’s your on the consumer site? Yeah, there you go. JBL. With that sponsored brands, got a great little tagline their power, your party’s epic sound and light shows. They got the three aces shown up there, which I’m a little fuzzy but probably the most relevant to Bluetooth speakers. And then we got what our voice sound box down there again. And you know, when you got a massive budget, you’re the manufacturer, it comes down to all the tenants of regular advertising just like it would with you know, television, radio or anything else appear popular and appear everywhere. You get as many impressions as you can think of like what Coca Cola does, you know, they are inescapable in your life as a consumer and that’s what everybody’s aspiring to do. So JBL is the first thing that shows up there for best Bluetooth speaker it’s great advertising, probably not getting the most measurable results over the long term but as part of that general brand advertising strategy,
Rolando Rosas 53:29
great for them. And and what would you say Neil put your brand hat on for a moment. Yeah, your brand management if you’re looking at this or even a buyer and you’re looking at this ad in terms of Amazon because you know there are there’s a difference if you hire Leo Burnett or an agency like that to do ads for and ads that work in the Amazon space. It’s not the same print and and other ads do not quite sell the same way on Amazon.
Nick Gezzar 54:02
Each medium has its own best practice digital and and old school.
Rolando Rosas 54:07
And what what would you say about this sponsored brand ads that we see and let me just describe it for those that are listening in instead of looking at that. We’ve got a couple that sitting on a dock with their feet in the water and maybe a lake and right next to them is the bluetooth speaker which looks like it doesn’t look like a small item. So if you’re if you are looking for something like this that’s outdoors, I would imagine they’ve got the looks like our little raft or little What do you call the donut things in your head? Yeah, an inner tube on the dock as well. You’re thinking okay, this is going to probably be waterproof. They’re talking about party in the ad. Do you think there’s something to this that the people that are looking for best Bluetooth speaker are more in line because this is definitely more of an outdoorsy kind of thing. In the putting that front and center, versus somebody that’s wanting to use that at home,
Nick Gezzar 55:06
you know, for this product they’re trying to promote here, there’s obviously a use case surrounding the waterproof nests of it. But just looking at this and kind of evaluate the way it would have as a brand managers, you know, does it capture my attention? Yes, there’s a very high quality photo there got some good use of colors? Like does it make an emotional connection? Sure, we look at these people they look, they look thrilled to be there with this JBL product is the branding front and center. You know, it’d be nice if the JBL Harman logo can be a bit bigger, just to get you another exposure in your head and
Rolando Rosas 55:40
in the picture itself.
Nick Gezzar 55:42
Above it, you’ll see the JBL
Rolando Rosas 55:45
brand logo there, but and that may be limited by by Amazon, I think you are on the upper left may be an Amazon constraint.
Nick Gezzar 55:54
It is it certainly is not and then does a good job of showing three irrelevant ASINs that I think are all pictures of assorted colors of the same one. But again, not familiar with the catalog is pretty good ad you don’t you don’t have that much time. You know, you don’t have that like 32nd Spot on TV with a rapt audience really paying attention. You’ve only got a couple of seconds to make your impression and grab their attention.
Rolando Rosas 56:23
All right. And so you think it does that know what I find interesting. Personally,
Nick Gezzar 56:27
if I was there, I’d probably be going for a lower price point one $400 speaker is that that is a hefty price tag, even if
Rolando Rosas 56:38
they got the third choice here is 999.
Nick Gezzar 56:42
As a consumer, I’m always looking for the best deal. Look, the $1,000 one, but we will
Dave Kelly 56:47
search. But the search wasn’t the best priced booth to speak out.
Nick Gezzar 56:52
It was just the best one. Yeah, if you’re looking for best quality. Yeah,
Dave Kelly 56:55
I want to see premium high end products if I use that word best.
Nick Gezzar 56:59
Right? That was a fair point.
Rolando Rosas 57:01
And what’s interesting again, so the the number one, here’s the what’s interesting, what would you just observed? Both Dave? And Nick? Is that the the ad that the sponsored product in placement number one, so right below the sponsored brand, that product is almost 800 bucks. 799. Right. So there may be something here, I don’t know, because the the number three, if we look at placement is $71. So it’s at the lower end of the price points for something that theoretically is the best Bluetooth speaker.
Nick Gezzar 57:34
And viewing it from the outside. This could be a very expensive search term to bid on by very competitive, which would push people to put their higher price and hopefully higher dollar margin if not percentage at the top so they can maintain profitability, the $72 one that is a very bold choice there. And what’s happening is just massively margin.
Rolando Rosas 57:58
And the name W King, I would I would put money on that. No, it’s just gonna take the output money that this is a seller that is not in the US. I would say they are more than likely. They want me to sign in boo. It’s not giving me the I want to see is visit W King store. Just looking at their images. I would put money that this this is a company based in China. And the name let me see if it can’t really No. It doesn’t give us like, I want to go in the about page. And it doesn’t give us that here. But the about will tell us the address and that tells me all I need to know and yes, and they they got quite a bit of reviews but at $72 Oh,
Nick Gezzar 58:51
if you go if you go back there there was a fascinating piece on that though. Okay,
Rolando Rosas 58:55
let me go back. Okay, let’s do that. Oh, there is still there. Yep.
Nick Gezzar 59:01
Let’s see if it’s still there. Scroll they had there was a JBL. One at the top. So yeah, sponsored display DSP. Yeah. Yeah. The last actually that is sponsored display up there, which does not require you to have a DSP instance, in the lab, the first time you looked at it, I think it was actually a JBL one. And that’s actually a great tactic to if you have a product that you are maybe it’s not a leader in its category yet, but it provides a compelling alternative for customers. You can bet on other people’s detail pages for that. Well, it’s kind of a way to merchandise your stuff right next to theirs for every virtual customer on that electronic shelf.
Rolando Rosas 59:40
Right. It’s interesting. I would I don’t know what the information is on on the conversion up here at the at this placement on the product detail page. But is it comparable? Let me ask you this question. Is it comparable to what you would get led Say, from a sponsor product. I mean, I’m very more familiar with that for me, and I know the conversion for our from our product is are you really playing the conversion numbers? Like you would let’s see what happens if I click at this time?
Nick Gezzar 1:00:13
Oh, look at that, right everything else and all has to do with the execution, you know, if you are placing it on the right competitive ASINs it can really pay dividends. If not, it might just cost you money and never get you a conversion. With with all of these things, it’s not so much about the tool, but about how you wield it.
Rolando Rosas 1:00:32
Okay, I want to do one. Or you want to talk more about this one,
Nick Gezzar 1:00:37
Jose, but if you’re in new sponsor, despite my thought would be just to try to do a couple of small scale tests and learns, figure out which ones do drive results and then go big on those.
Rolando Rosas 1:00:47
double down on what works. I like it. Here’s one that’s right up your alley. Best laundry detergent. Right? This is pure consumer. Right? If there was any brands, I didn’t number one right. is tied. Unstopables. They’ve got Downey and tied with Febreeze, which I believe on the free side right?
Nick Gezzar 1:01:12
I did. I was actually the sprays assistant brand manager back then. So that’s a really nice assortment they have there and that’s what p&g loves doing that. assortments of products within a category the way because each of those, I’m sorry, yeah. If you look at like the sponsored brands post, what’s great about that there’s tied up there, they got their brand logo, these are all very like recognizable brands of theirs, arguably unstoppables. And downy is not going to be as relevant as well known. But each of those three products there has a very specific use case. So depending what the customer is looking for, Federico, I think it’s a downy fabric softener, anything like you also have the unstoppables ones that just for like providing more fragrance to your clothing after washing, and then tie it is just the straight up detergent there with the Febreeze.
Rolando Rosas 1:02:06
It’s interesting, because they’re tied in position three, you know, they’ve got the two lower price points on the left. And they, you know, they’ve got the tide on in the third slot. But I would love to know why they would have done that where, again, if maybe they want to, they want to have a lineup where maybe they’re trying to elevate those other two ASINs given that people may just go from left to right, and then up at tide anyway.
Nick Gezzar 1:02:35
I think what we’re seeing here is the output of a strategy that we would have to try to reverse engineer and figure it out with information. We don’t have
Rolando Rosas 1:02:42
the skill to do it, Amazon like as a seller, but you the good ones are doing exactly how can I reverse engineer what tide is doing? I’m gonna reverse engineer what Coke and Pepsi are doing. And you know, obviously, their brands who they’re working with different metrics on that scale, but the philosophy behind it, what is it and why did they come up with the strap? Yeah, just
Nick Gezzar 1:03:04
Family of Brands, though, because that’s it’s a chance for them to get to other completely distinct brands from types of exposure. And Downey is pretty well known in its own right, and so as unstoppables that’s just a lot of exposures, and that’s what p&g is all about is really getting people constantly ad saturated. So that you think I mean, we both knew what was going to help you typed in best laundry detergent, top of mind for the category, nobody’s gonna say, Oh, look, there’s personal.
Rolando Rosas 1:03:29
Right, right, well, let’s let’s go to that list. So now for those that are listening in and not watching this, we’re going to scroll down to the second row we’ll call it the first row is really sponsored brands right that we got tied in the mix, but then the results that come in, here’s what we were talking about. You talked about at the very beginning. I haven’t seen an organic ad I haven’t seen an organic placement yet. The first four that are in the sponsored products row which is row number two, all of them are sponsored including tide. So it’s interesting to see with a bidding strategy here especially on Prime Day, I would bet no maybe Purcell is trying to get their foot in the door with more consumers and given that they’re right next to tide and then this laundry clubbed sheet detergent and they’re they’re paying good gotta be paying really good money to get to be on row one essentially of the sponsored product side
Nick Gezzar 1:04:27
or actually you got to tide and then you got a middle weight one with personal and then a challenger brand. So challenger brand is definitely me over investing
Rolando Rosas 1:04:37
and hope hopefully it returns good investment for them. You know the price point on on this laundry crib sheets is at $17 and this is where if you’re not watching the the p&l per SKU or per asin you know, they may they may end up seeing that today was an unprofitable day because I know a lot of brands were gearing up for yesterday and today. Oh, yeah. And
Nick Gezzar 1:05:05
bids are only gonna have to go higher on tentpole event days. Yeah,
Rolando Rosas 1:05:08
I know that I believe, tend to get a little scared on the prime days because you know, it’s like the gas is being poured in every hour, right. And the budget goes by real quick. So you really have to know what you’re doing. But I want you to look at this. This is the first organic growth. So like, look at this brand, sponsor brand and sponsor the product. Finally, you get a row of organic. And so then what’s here? It’s an interesting mix. I’m, I’m curious as to what your thoughts are, because I see Armand Hammer, I see Tyler glandt gallon glam wash, and I see personal on organic world number one. And I, to me, it’s a huge opportunity for tied to find out why they’re not on the first organic row at all. Yeah, that is
Nick Gezzar 1:06:00
that is actually fascinating. Oh, there we go, another sponsor.
Rolando Rosas 1:06:06
And then row number three on page one is the personal, pro clean laundry. It’s a sponsored video. And to me, it looks rather nice. It’s interesting, you know, they’re catching your attention. They have a motion, they tell you what it does. 110 loads, less detergent.
Nick Gezzar 1:06:26
There you go. All right. And then the row below that is that should still be organic. So there we go. Amazon. tags on the top there.
Rolando Rosas 1:06:37
Yeah, so actually the best seller tag in there on earth breed.
Nick Gezzar 1:06:42
Those two are sponsored actually, yeah.
Rolando Rosas 1:06:45
So tied, let’s see what position that would be 12345. They’re in position number six, organically with the simply all in one, liquid detergent. That’s to me surprising given the size and scope of tide, and I think for them would be an opportunity to find out why they’re in six than not one.
Nick Gezzar 1:07:09
Absolutely, maybe it’s a matter of having too many ASINs and varieties in there that’s making it hard for any one particular one to rise to the top. But they’ve got plenty of good reviews on there. You can see the person to the left, though, has a higher number and better star rating,
Rolando Rosas 1:07:25
right? Personal is rated 4.8 out of five. And you’re right look at that tide is rated 4.7. So again, the customer obsession thing with Amazon, the review, although it is greater for personal, even though look at what’s interesting here, it’s at a higher price point. And the or compare it it’s a higher price point at half the size of the tide. And it’s gotten more reviews. So that’s so to me, this just just kind of dissecting things a little bit. The Purcell not only outsells but his outselling, even though that the personal injury of the love this breakdown 25 cents per load versus the 12 cent per load. So although tide is cheaper, the more expensive product is winning in this particular search term.
Dave Kelly 1:08:21
Well wait a minute when I’m looking when I’m looking at this. So it’s this new thing that Amazon rolled out last month is showing the sales trends. per cell. The Purcell is not overselling the tide next to it.
Rolando Rosas 1:08:38
Oh, I see. I see what you’re saying. I didn’t even see that. It says 33,000 Plus bought in the past month. And 20,000. Oh, I missed that. Dave. Good. Very good observation. Very good
Nick Gezzar 1:08:50
eyes on that. The algorithm for organic search though, constantly being updated, taking in new inputs being tweaked. So fortunately, another black box. And that’s kind of hard to say. But right now, I would just be looking at that raw review count and the higher star rating as being something that would drive that. Even though it was 3000 customers who bought it in the last month. You know, it’s a good chance maybe they are more satisfied with it. So Amazon’s assuming that would be the more customer pleasing one. Also to backup and talk more about catalog data. 25 cents a load 12 cents a low that’s a great thing for customers to see. It’s very intuitive, all derived from catalog data. If you screw that up, you can get some really wacky stuff in there. Like I think I recall one seeing paper towels saying X cents per ounce which is weird. I don’t measure my paper towels and fluid ounces. So there’s a lot of ways you can screw that up that obviously these two companies have their have their catalog data perfect.
Rolando Rosas 1:09:53
Wow. Now we’re close to I want to do I want to do the one one more here. Let’s go in the liquid detergent because I’m looking at the title Liquid laundry detergent liquid detergent right laundry I want to see if we do liquid if that would if that would change the equation if personal still winning liquid laundry I’ll look at that and even finish this is another thing look at that it’s I think this is part of the new AI stuff that’s being pushed through the search these different categories brightening and whitening color and protection dye free which could be well I’m just gonna stick with the just for the sake of this liquid laundry detergent all right and I want to go and get look at this there isn’t as much there’s the all at the top with sponsored brands which okay I’m surprised I didn’t see tied there. You get the second row being sponsored and and then we get a different lineup we at Arm Hammer swash Purcell still in the mix, Armand Hammer shows up twice. Then we go to the first organic row. It seems like on this one, p&g is doing a little bit better with tide, they’re in the number three position behind Armand Hammer that’s in one and to
Nick Gezzar 1:11:16
kind of look like the more price competitive on the arm and hammers, and also
Rolando Rosas 1:11:22
sensor loads. And then the other one the other option in position one is that eight cents a load versus tides 12 cents a load? You know, something? Something look at down here. Look down here for a moment. You see this? This is something that somebody turned me on to the other day, that delivery window, has it been delivered sooner than tide? And one of the things that I I’ve been learning is that the delivery window to the customer is massively important and can affect these results as well. So if I actually use it, if I can get it tomorrow, and this is delivery Monday, October 16, which I’m not logged in as a prime member right now, just just letting the algorithm serve it up as a unanimous person, the fact that it can be delivered on Monday, which is sooner than Tuesday is interesting. And I would wonder if that’s also playing into because the pricing is very close, right? From 1352 or more tables, certainly
Nick Gezzar 1:12:26
a factor in there. Because you can also see some smaller sellers like when they have delivery windows that are two weeks out. That’s not what Amazon wants to push.
Rolando Rosas 1:12:35
That’s right. That’s right. Well, you’re talking about a smaller seller. So you go to the second organic row. You do see you go all the way. Well, those are sponsored again. So let’s just see where a smaller seller, these are all bigger sellers and it’s sponsored tied. And we’re tied, gain spot. You see the smaller sellers pop up in this sponsored area. Yeah, I’m not seeing it for this category. The big boys are the ones. The ones winning all day
Nick Gezzar 1:13:07
on JD waters and Dwight and Henkel. Yeah, yeah. Wow. Fascinating. Also, I also was I don’t think I said this early in the podcast. I am not currently employed by Amazon and nothing I say represents that position of Amazon. Okay, to be clear, I’ll just want to dude’s opinion and experience, just in case Amazon lawyers are listening and watching.
Rolando Rosas 1:13:30
It’s from your Yes, yes, yes. Yeah, we’ll make that very clear. Anything else you want to you want to interject to say here, or we beat this down?
Nick Gezzar 1:13:41
I think I think we’ve run this one into the ground pretty well. And well, considering that I am now starting my own consulting firm, I don’t need to give away all the magic.
Rolando Rosas 1:13:52
Well, Nick, you know, you worked. You’ve done brand management. You worked at Amazon, very few people know what that’s like. You’ve your expertise is very valuable for companies with their small businesses all the way up to large. And knowing how to navigate the Amazon landscape is no easy task. And understanding like what you said, you know, customer obsession, language is important, understanding where to put your money so that you’re profitable. I think that’s a huge, huge importance. And I’m hearing more and more that that’s where the focus should be. Especially if you you know, you’re not Procter and Gamble and you don’t have maybe $100 million to run on my campaign on Prime Day or something like that right. Mix of profits is something that in navigating that and where to put your chips is something important that you can help businesses with?
Nick Gezzar 1:14:49
Absolutely salutely No, what I’m looking to do is to work with Amazon sellers or vendors as well just to help them navigate the landscape, give some strategies on how to maximize their profit and also their top line. You know, I was scrolling through LinkedIn earlier today and I saw somebody else offering similar services. Its Prime Day, look at everything we’ve done. But everything was focused on top line, nothing in there mentioned whether they’re actually making any more profit off the successes through these huge deals. So that’s another thing I can also offer my services on is really thinking through the strategy, the deal, how to structure it well how to make it work, both for Amazon, but more importantly for you as the seller or the vendor to make sure that it’s actually fitting to your overall business plan that you’re not just gonna bleed money on Prime Day, just to get a little more market share.
Rolando Rosas 1:15:40
Absolutely, we learned that lesson. Man, I wish you would have told me that a couple years ago, because we found all the budgets got maxed and you know, the, the incremental incremental revenue was not there on Prime Day for us, even though all the budgets on all the campaigns got maxed out, and some Beyonds
Nick Gezzar 1:16:03
it’s seductive to see that that top line just showing that massive growth, but then you come home and realize that you didn’t bring back any profit. Yeah, it
Rolando Rosas 1:16:16
hurts. It hurts. So let’s, let’s wrap it up, Nick with this thing we call rapid fire. This is a fun, no wrong answer kind of thing. And Dave is going to help me here as well. The topic here is brands and whatever is in your brain, these your thoughts, your ideas, whatever comes just spit it out. So we’re going to start with an easy one when we started talking about big brands where I worked. Marble versus camel.
Nick Gezzar 1:16:49
Camel wides that was my thing.
Rolando Rosas 1:16:53
Was you you weren’t a Marlboro Man. All right, cool. Camel. Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe Camel. got you hooked.
Dave Kelly 1:17:00
That camel cash as a kid, you know, I was just when I was, I had no rules. When I was in high school. They were it was like the standardized. It wasn’t a test. It was like a standardized survey. So I’m a freshman in high school. And they one of the questions within the survey it had to do with camels marketing. And they said do you think and now they’re asking a bunch of 13 and 14 year olds, would you consider Joe Camel a friend? And I remember and I was a freshman, I smoked Camels a lot of us did. And we collected the camel dollars and everything was animated and you got the free camel t shirt if you bought two packs of butts and you’d wear your camel t shirt. And I think they were trying to find out from the youth. Do you are you are you succumbing to this marketing? It’s like they are trying to wrap you up and they were trying to figure it out. Are these kids? Are we I don’t want to say so dumb to think that cigarettes are fun for kids. But I never forget that and I really and I generally do feel that they were marketing directly to kids with cartoons.
Nick Gezzar 1:18:16
Jokes on camera and a leather jacket smoking a cigarette on his motorcycle. Yeah, probably not for adults.
Rolando Rosas 1:18:23
You want to rewind the clock and you know what’s interesting is I love hearing the perspective on this obviously we’re not we’re not glorifying tobacco still illegal product right? But you know we we talked about our preferences when I worked at Altria it was always a battle with the camel guys that are RJ Reynolds, the name that but RJ Reynolds and you know them trying to out outdo us outgun us in the market and that just wasn’t happening in the marble points. I have a really interesting story. Did you know Nick, I know you’re gonna find this interesting, having worked on brand management, at one point Altria, Philip Morris, which was what it was called at the time they had a really big grandiose idea they were going to build build a marble train and that actually started they did that I mean, this is how like you know, big money got thrown around in like a toy train No, of real life locomotive. And they started doing that so that they could so you know, they have the marble experiences with you take you to the ranch and all that other stuff. But beyond that, beyond the ranches and all that they were putting together a marble train and that actually started happening the money was the put the budget was there, they started it and then once they got parts of the train ready to go, and they started adding the things that would you know, you’ve been in probably those meetings you sit around the table and what would customers like? All they would love a spa experience for those that want to relax and kick back That’s this is where one of the problems came in. How do you get water to stay level when you’re going on now? It wasn’t thought through. And it was one of the big like, Oops. I don’t know, somebody lost their job over that, because they ended up having to scrap the whole idea. Because that was one of the problems that was
Nick Gezzar 1:20:23
exhibit before he did Pimp My Ride.
Rolando Rosas 1:20:29
And now you can run those those things in you know, and you can put it into a simulation, right? You know, we got to go through Colorado and Wyoming and Utah and Idaho, in take people through, you know, Marlboro country, what are we gonna do when we’re going up more vertically, but maybe five is not a good thing to do.
Dave Kelly 1:20:47
So the Marlboro train was gonna pull hot tubs and spas full of water.
Rolando Rosas 1:20:53
Yes. It was part of the part of the Walmart, you don’t want to think about you know, all they they think in ultra luxury, right? So what would be ultra luxurious, you know, that when you’re talking about these types of things. So one of the things is like, oh, yeah, kid, that’d be a spy kick back. And as you’re going through the countryside, you can, you know, kick back and relax and be outside. No, well, that’s good if you’re on a cruise ship, right? Because it’s not really moving a lot like vertical pitching, but a train when it goes, especially in the western part of the US. You got problems. So they ended up scrapping that the the bottom line, they spent a lot millions, millions, I can’t remember the exact number millions to get that going in and they had to write it off. And then I think the locomotive at some point was sitting somewhere and exhibit and somebody’s somebody’s business or something like that.
Dave Kelly 1:21:51
That’s unfortunate. That would have been fantastic to see come to fruition.
Rolando Rosas 1:21:56
Anyhow, so last couple of here, tied versus Armand Hammer when you’re looking at that.
Nick Gezzar 1:22:03
I am an Arm and Hammer guy. Actually, what really got me to them, they actually make a great toothpaste. Ah, actually, I actually brought their toothpaste in an innovation meeting once when I was at p&g We were talking about cross category stuff and actually end up converting a couple of my peers there too.
Rolando Rosas 1:22:24
Oh my god. Oh my god. That’s amazing. So
Dave Kelly 1:22:29
today in the peroxide and a toothpaste, right?
Nick Gezzar 1:22:31
Yeah, exactly. Has that that neutralizes the acids and all that like baking soda is great for everything. Why not put it my mouth?
Rolando Rosas 1:22:38
Yeah, why not? They gotcha. Gotcha on the on the ads about baking soda. Here’s another one. Like this, okay. You clicked shop. I want to do the last one, then you can you can hit them with the other two. They’ve tic tac sharp versus Amazon.
Nick Gezzar 1:23:00
Amazon, Amazon. I just want to type stuff into a search bar not watch a bunch of videos.
Rolando Rosas 1:23:06
Okay, okay. Okay, cool. Cool. Cool. Dave, I’m pitching it to you. All right.
Dave Kelly 1:23:11
Gillette versus Dollar Shave Club. Neither
Nick Gezzar 1:23:19
are you use disposable double edge razor blades and they cost 25 cents for like the absolute best in class cartridge razors. Even Dollar Shave Club is like 10x more expensive and you get more shaves and closer to whole their whole weird niche thing people call it wet shaving and I got to use like the brush with like the foam and all that but I haven’t bought razor blades in three years. I just bought a pack of 200 and they’ve lasted me for another three years from here
Dave Kelly 1:23:47
at the house is so darn expensive. I remember being a kid living with my dad. I’d be like I need more razors. He’s like you have peach fuzz on your face. Not buying you the Gillette anymore. Buy your own or use the same one that you’ve been using for a couple of months. You can use that one
Nick Gezzar 1:24:03
cartridge head through high school you’re fine.
Dave Kelly 1:24:07
Good good. All right, we were we were kind of laughing at this other one here. Birkenstock verse. Anybody who the shoes
Rolando Rosas 1:24:19
yeah Birkenstocks.
Nick Gezzar 1:24:23
Ah, neon. Birkenstocks are really great high quality and all that. But prior to go with crocs Oh, they’re waterproof. That’s true.
Dave Kelly 1:24:35
Are you on the record for saying that you own a pair of crocs?
Nick Gezzar 1:24:41
I don’t, but my kids do. I’m from Florida, so I can only do like those floppy flip flops, you know, the thong style back. It’s part of my cultural heritage.
Rolando Rosas 1:24:53
Well, I mean, this is well, you know, right now All right. You’re all the way in Germany we won the amazing alright. That’s what that’s what you are Bad boy. Bad Biggie that she did he thinks you’re a bad boy for using those flip flops like that. Oh, Nick, you know, as we’re, as we’re wrapping up here, do you have any predictions on what’s what’s to come here with AI or Amazon or something else that that sellers should be looking for? That’s in your point of view, nothing proprietary, but in your point of view with what’s happening? What should sellers Be on the lookout for?
Nick Gezzar 1:25:45
As it comes to AI? I think one of the things sellers can be doing right now is there’s some things out there that are publicly available, like open AI chat GPT on GPT, three right now, you can actually get it to write you some pretty decent copy, I wouldn’t ask it to write me things and just throw it on the internet without editing it. But to give you like a rough draft of what you want up there, you can really open up, you know, Changi BTS prompts right now and say, Hey, write me five Amazon product detail page bullet points for this product, which has these features can actually turn out some pretty passable results, you’d still want like a good creative mind be looking at it to you know, first of all check for any factual inaccuracies, and maybe jazz up the language a little bit, but it gives you a really great place to start and I think is for small business owners, finding ways of his AI tools enhance your productivity. without increasing your costs. It’s gonna become, unfortunately grimly necessary, which tragically is not great for copywriters, and designers. That just kind of heartbreaking. But that’s just kind of the reality of of how it is and the system we live in. I would just start really getting familiar with how to start doing AI prompts.
Rolando Rosas 1:27:02
I agree, I think that AI is only gonna get easier with time, if you’ve been using Chet GPT for a while and now playing around with Claude. Rod is interesting. It spits back out stuff much faster. And it has more of a conversational style of a back and forth, whereas check GPT is very prompt, heavy, and then go response. So Nick, I appreciate you coming on the podcast today. How can folks get in touch with you if they want more of Nick Azhar or to chat with you further? All right, well, the
Nick Gezzar 1:27:39
best way would be to write me at my email, which is at nick@gezzar.com. I don’t know if there’s any post editing we can do to have that flash across the screen, we can you go hey, thanks. Sorry. It’s nice. I’m having a unique last name. Nobody had the domain yet. And that is the address for my new company Gezzar Consulting LLC. You can also reach me through LinkedIn. After this taping, I’ll be putting a Calendly invite link on there. So you can just look at my schedule, book some time and talk and love to start finding new clients and help them achieve success on Amazon.
Rolando Rosas 1:28:21
All right. And and you know, indeed, I’m sure that anybody that taps your knowledge will be very impressed with with your, with your consultation and your knowledge. And with regards to Amazon. So thanks for joining us today, Nick, we really appreciate that. I’ve been looking forward to our conversation today and all the wonderful things that you shared. And if you like what you’ve heard today, nerding out on Amazon ads in Amazon is the thing that’s driving your business or maybe you want to learn a little bit more and nerd out even more, you’ll want to check out our conversations with other Amazon experts like Kevin King, Steven Pope, as well as Chad Rubin of Profasee, where you’re gonna get some really interesting nuggets on what it takes to excel on the Amazon platform. You can check that out on Apple podcast, Spotify, or anywhere where you consume your podcast. And so thanks for checking us out today and for tuning it. Now. For those that have been listening in or watching on YouTube. I’m gonna have some videos up here on the screen that you can check out where Dave and I have more details on how to grow as an Amazon seller. We will see you in those videos.
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