Rafael is the Founder and CEO of Share It Studio, a leading creative agency that helps Amazon and Walmart sellers turn data into powerful visual storytelling. Under his leadership, Share It Studio has worked with hundreds of top-performing e-commerce brands, blending creativity with analytics to craft product images, videos, and A+ content that actually convert.

Before founding Share It Studio, Rafael built a career in film and marketing, becoming a 3-time Telly Award–winning entrepreneur. He’s passionate about helping brands optimize their listings, understand their buyers, and stand out in competitive marketplaces.

 Highlight Bullets

> Here’s a glimpse of what you would learn….

In this episode of the Ecomm Breakthrough Podcast, host Josh Hadley speaks with Rafael Veloz, founder of ShareIt Studio, about optimizing Amazon product listings through visual storytelling. Rafael discusses the nuanced impact of AI-generated images, emphasizing that authenticity often outperforms polished visuals — demonstrated by a shoe cleaner brand scaling from $400K to $12M monthly. He advocates for a full-funnel marketing approach beyond PPC, continuous image testing, and integrating AI tools strategically. Rafaell also highlights the importance of emotional connection in content creation and recommends building strong internal creative teams to drive sustainable e-commerce growth.

Here are the 3 action items that Josh identified from this episode:

Timestamps:

00:00:01 Authenticity vs. Professionalism in Ads
Organic, real-feeling content can perform twice as well as high-end professional videos, depending on the product’s industry.

00:00:50 Podcast and Guest Introduction
Host Josh Hadley introduces the topic of AI images on Amazon and welcomes guest Rafael Veloz from ShareIt Studio.

00:02:27 Are AI Images Hurting Amazon Listings?
AI images can hurt sales if used incorrectly, as they can lower the “perceived value” for emotionally-driven products.

00:04:01 The Shoe Cleaner Case Study
A shoe cleaner brand grew from $400K to $1.2M a month by focusing on authentic, emotional content.

00:06:26 How to Test and Update Main Images
Analyze competitor reviews for emotional triggers, create multiple main images, and test them both off and on Amazon regularly.

00:12:01 Building a System for Creative Content
Instead of “hacks,” build a system. Constantly track competitors’ rankings, reviews, and image changes to stay ahead.

00:14:33 Optimizing Creatives for PPC Campaigns
Create different ad creatives for different PPC campaigns and keywords to reduce wasted ad spend and improve conversions.

00:16:55 Driving External Traffic to Amazon
Amazon now rewards external traffic. Don’t just focus on TikTok; create content that connects to specific buying intentions.

00:19:34 Connecting Creative and Media Buying Teams
Your creative team and PPC (media buying) team must work together to create a cohesive and effective marketing strategy.

00:22:28 Using AI to Build a Community
Create AI-generated personas and avatars on social media to build a community and drive traffic to your product listings.

00:25:44 The Process for Creating Viral Content
A strategist analyzes the market, a script is developed, and a mix of organic and AI video is used.

00:27:36 Final Advice: Embrace AI
Don’t fear AI. Hire team members dedicated to exploring and implementing new AI tools to stay competitive.

00:28:40 Actionable Takeaway 1: Marketing Efficiency Ratio
Stop focusing only on ACoS. Adopt the Marketing Efficiency Ratio (MER) to measure your total marketing spend against revenue.

00:31:03 Actionable Takeaway 2: Systemize Image Testing
Create a consistent system for testing main images on Amazon, using real customer data to make decisions.

00:31:45 Actionable Takeaway 3: Hire a Creative Lead
Invest in a high-level creative team member to lead your marketing, as this is the most important aspect of your brand.

00:33:56 Rafael’s Favorite AI Tool
Rafael recommends Claude for its data gathering and Open-Claude’s “Coworker” feature for automating executive assistant tasks.

00:36:30 Connecting with Rafael
Find Rafael at ShareIt Studio’s website or email, and mention the podcast for a free 30-minute consultation.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Tools and Websites
“Amazon Experiments”: “00:08:54”
“Pixel”: “00:08:54”
“Productpinion“: “00:08:54”
“Fiverr“: “00:08:06”
“Social Media Platforms (TikTok, Instagram)”: “00:10:30”
“Streaming TV Ads”: “00:10:30”
“Amazon Inspire”: “00:17:10”
“TikTok“: “00:18:46”
“Euka“: “00:25:19”
“TikTok Shop“: “00:25:19”
“OpenAI“: “00:28:40”
“Open Claw“: “00:34:08”
“Claude“: “00:34:21”
“Lovable“: “00:34:21”
“Google Drive”: “00:35:02”
“ecombreakthrough.com“: “00:37:06″Books
“The E-Myth by Michael Gerber“: “00:01:09”
“Traction by Gino Wickman“: “00:33:53″Videos/Platforms
“YouTube“: “00:23:01”

Companies/Organizations
“ShareIt Studio“: “00:01:09”
“Nickelodeon“: “00:14:33”

Contact Information
“Email (hello@shareitstudio.com)”: “00:36:31”

Social Media
“Instagram“: “00:36:31”

Episode Sponsor:

This episode is brought to you by eComm Breakthrough Consulting where I help seven-figure e-commerce owners grow to eight figures.

I started my business in 2015 and grew it to an eight-figure brand in seven years.

I made mistakes along the way that made the path to eight figures longer. At times I doubted whether our business could even survive and become a real brand. I wish I would have had a guide to help me grow faster and avoid the stumbling blocks.

If you’ve hit a plateau and want to know the next steps to take your business to the next level, then email me at josh@ecommbreakthrough.com and in your subject line say “strategy audit” for the chance to win a $10,000 comprehensive business strategy audit at no cost!

Transcript:

Rafael Veloz 00:00:01  If something feels off, most just feels. Most likely you’re gonna back away from it and push back. For example, for the shoe cleaner brand, we did a super professional high end video that looked amazing and all that, and we started running tests with the organic meaning shot like it’s real. Perform twice as better than the other one. Why? Because it looks. It looks real. It looks, it feel real. But if I go to the beauty space, the one that looks more for high end beauty, that looks more professional usually performs better. Why? Because of the industry.

MC 00:00:36  Welcome to the Ecomm Breakthrough podcast. Are you ready to unlock the full potential and growth in your business? You’ve already crossed seven figures in sales, but the challenge is knowing how to take your business to the next level.

Josh Hadley 00:00:50  What if AI images are actually ruining your product listings on Amazon? Today’s guest has the answer for you. Welcome to the Ecom Breakthrough Podcast. I’m your host, Josh Hadley. I scaled my own brand from 0 to 8 figures in sales, and now my mission is to take it to over nine figures on my journey to nine figures, I bring you the unfiltered conversations with the smartest minds in e-commerce.

Josh Hadley 00:01:09  Past guests include Ezra Firestone, Kevin King, and Michael Gerber, author of The Myth. Today, I’m thrilled to welcome back onto the show Rafael Veloz. Rafael is the founder and CEO of ShareIt Studio, a leading creative agency that helps Amazon and Walmart sellers turn data into powerful visual storytelling. Under his leadership, ShareIt Studio has worked with hundreds of top performing e-commerce brands, blending creativity with analytics to craft product images, videos, and A-plus content that actually convert. Before founding ShareIt Studio, Rafael built a career in film and marketing, becoming a three time Telly Award winning entrepreneur. He’s passionate about helping brands optimize their listings and understand their buyers and stand out in a competitive marketplace. With that being said, welcome back to the show, Rafael.

Rafael Veloz 00:01:57  Yay! I’m recording a little video here for social media because now everybody has to be social. If not, you’re going nowhere. Thank you so much for having me, my friend. I really appreciate you and for giving me this time opportunity to, you know, make people hopefully better, a little bit better.

Josh Hadley 00:02:11  I love it. Well, Rafael, we started off with the with a click-baity hook. AI images are ruining your listings on Amazon. True or false? You’re the image guy. You’re testing hundreds of images. Main images, secondary images. Is AI images helping or hurting Amazon sellers today.

Rafael Veloz 00:02:27  All right. So I’m going to say yes but but this is where the big buck comes in place. It depends how you’re using it right. It’s not. The tool is who is using the tool itself. So depending on the type of product that you’re trying to sell, if AI and you’re not using it correctly, AI might be hurting because you might be pushing away people from you. Why? Because perceived value, right? Perceived value is very important. If you have a I don’t know, let’s say a very fine back woman’s back and it says it’s made in Italy. And the other one, I might use my country, you know, just in case nobody gets offended. made in Venezuela. It cost $5,000.

Rafael Veloz 00:03:00  Most likely the woman or men was going to buy this bag, as I prefer the one that’s made in Italy. Perceived value. Maybe it’s actually both made in China and they’re just shipped to these countries, and they put the last zipper on, and now they’re made in this country. Right? They have a tag because that’s what actually works a lot of times. But because of perceived value, the one just got to be worth way, way more perceived value. So if you’re selling something, the kids dog, anything that’s very emotional or has an emotion connected to it and you’re using AI and it actually looks AI, then you’re probably hurting your brand. Whatever it is that you test a lot on Amazon, not just off Amazon, but on Amazon, because Amazon has the last word. At the end of the day, that’s where the sales come in, or Shopify, etc.. But yes, I would say it does unless you use it correctly in the right industry or the right market.

Josh Hadley 00:03:42  No.

Josh Hadley 00:03:43  Makes a lot of sense. You talk about testing. So how are you testing this? And I know you’ve got data not right in front of you, but you’ve got data to back up your claims of like what’s working and not working. So tell me, like what’s working right now with main images, and how often should be sellers updating their images to maximize their conversion rate.

Rafael Veloz 00:04:01  That’s that’s a great question. Okay. Let’s talk about how I’m using it and how I’m getting the data. And then we can dive in a little bit how, you know, the process of how you should update it. So we have a client he sells shoe cleaner Brent. And he was doing he’s still doing very very well. We still manage him. We got him from 400 plus K a month to $1.2 million a month in less than a year. And we the way we did it is to understand the audience more. At the end of the day, AI, at least now, is the one that’s going to rank your product itself, right? If you ask the right questions, somebody goes in, I’m looking for this type of shoe cleaning for this specific material.

Rafael Veloz 00:04:36  And if you’re listening, saying that and your reviews are saying that, and the whole ecosystem is saying that, most likely the AI is going to say, hey, maybe this can help you go in, but at the end of the day, it’s a human. The bias is not product, so they switch to something more emotional. Let’s go to babies, right? You have kids. So I at least the first one, maybe all of them. You were pretty, like, me. Take this. And buying the baby bottle and the formula and all these things. I know my at least my cousin’s having a baby right now, so she’s going haywire with that. She’s like going through all these conspiracy theories and all that. So I assume that a lot of moms are like that as well. If something feels off, most just feels most likely you’re gonna back away from it and push back. For example, for the shoe cleaner brand, we did a super professional high end video that looked amazing and all that, and we started running tests with the organic meaning shot like it’s real.

Rafael Veloz 00:05:24  That video that we shot that was like organic, real made, homemade amateur was actually shot in the professional studio with an iPhone, but we used it. Everything else, we used it perfectly. The only thing that changed was the camera movement, the edits and the actual camera, which was an iPhone at that time against the $10,000 camera that we had with the $15,000 lenses. The organic one I’m calling organic or the real one. Quote unquote. If you’re listening, I’m saying that in coatings perform twice as better than the other one. Why? Because it looks it looks real, looks it feels real. But if I go to the beauty space, the one that looks more for high end beauty that looks more professional usually performs better. Why? Because of the industry. I hope that made sense. If not, I can go deeper.

Josh Hadley 00:06:05  No, I love those details. I would love to hear even more like give me some use cases in actual case studies. Like what were the things that you you’ve tested on those main images that have worked? And again, how often are you testing this? Is this.

Josh Hadley 00:06:18  Are you swapping out main images every week? Is it every month? Like how important is it for these brand owners to be swapping out main images?

Rafael Veloz 00:06:26  Okay. This is this is what we’ve how we’ve managed to at least stay relevant with our customers products or have our customers products stay relevant competitions coming in. If you’re selling a product, let’s make in 400 K a month just one. As in, most likely you’re gonna get competition. It’s normal. It’s capitalism. It’s finest. Why wouldn’t you? Right. Like you should be afraid if you don’t. What we do is the following. We looked at the market. We look at the competitors, what they’re doing. We look outside trends that might affect this. For example, right now, a lot of it is that a lot of people are pushing this traffic through social media, which, yes, you should do it. We can talk about that, about that a little bit later. So for this client, for the shoe brand that we still work with, we manage we actually have something in-house called content management basically where your marketing are there’s can I go a little bit sidetracked there.

Josh Hadley 00:07:11  Sure. Let’s do.

Rafael Veloz 00:07:11  It. I was at this event in Hawaii, and this guy jumps in stage and starts talking about processes and all these things. I was like, wow, this is actually how companies should be running Amazon. Sellers are companies. It’s just that a lot of them started in 2016, 2017. The ones that are really successful, not all of them, but the OG ones and most of them ran into this by luck. And it’s beautiful. And then they stayed on top because they’re very, very smart. But I can still see some people that don’t have a marketing company, quote unquote marketing marketing department within their company because it’s very expensive, but they just outsource an image creation on, I don’t know, let’s say Shopify, sorry, fiber, for example. Right. Which is fine. But if you’re making really 100 K a month, 200 K a month, there has to be more in depth than just like a pretty image, because pretty images don’t work, even if it’s an AI, if it’s real, if it’s whatever it’s made out of somewhere in a basement in some country, or the highest tech lab in Palo Alto, it’s just it’s not going to work.

Rafael Veloz 00:08:06  Okay. So there has to be a process where you analyze the market, where you understand what’s going on your listing, tracking competitor’s listings as well, meaning their reviews. Something that we do is that every month we go in and we look at the last reviews that our competitors have for our clients. And we, we, we understand their emotional triggers. We’re human beings. We buy based on emotions. So we’re like, okay, these people are getting this, this and this. Maybe for this seasonality, we should offer this. What we do is that we create a bunch of min images, even if that one’s already good, and we test them outside of Amazon, there are a couple of tools that we use. You can I’m pretty sure Josh has a bunch of codes for them and you can get really good discounts. These are the ones that we use in Tel Aviv. It’s pretty good pixel product opinion. We also use other ones, but these are the top ones that we use. We don’t stay there.

Rafael Veloz 00:08:54  It’s very important that you test on Amazon because at the end of the day, Amazon is the last site. We use Amazon experiments and we go in and we’re like okay test this A and B against this one. And we’re always always always testing these guys in the in the in the pink in the shoe space. They were ranked number one for a very long time. And they’re like that’s really ranked number one. And then I quote from Kobe Bryant came in. It was this commercial I don’t know if anybody remembers. It’s like Kanye, Kanye West, but I’m gonna read the best I wanna be the best selling artist. What can they do? And Kobe says, are you the same beast but the different animal? It helps. Like, that got into my head for such a long time. I was like, are you the same beast but a different animal? So in each level of life, right, you need to have like this. All right. I’m a Chihuahua right now. I’m a beast in Sichuan.

Rafael Veloz 00:09:38  But now I can be a pitbull. Okay? It’s not. You’re the same beast, but you’re just a different animal, right? So I guess that taking that analogy into it or that metaphor, your listing should be always optimizing, not just the main image, but also the commercials, also how you’re driving traffic. So one thing is TikTok or Instagram or social media, but also something, for example, streaming TV, the club, the baseball club, the classic baseball World Cup just happened. Venezuela was champion, by the way. We beat the USA. Just saying. Just saying it out there. That was beautiful. Tried a little bit with my family. and imagine that you’re selling, I don’t know, glove and you’re selling baseball glove yourself. I don’t know, a training for your kids or baseball training for for, I don’t know, for your five year old, etc. softball, if you had that somewhere in that space within that time frame that could have increased sales or at least traffic, because streaming TV ads is top of funnel drastically, which is what we did for these guys.

Rafael Veloz 00:10:30  So I would say content management have a team in place. If you don’t have a budget for it, at least hire somebody, me or somebody else that is constantly checking on that, you know, tweaking it. It’s like going to the gym while I speak a lot.

Josh Hadley 00:10:40  Man, I love that. No, I think what you touched on though, is extremely important, which is you need to have a system set around this. And so what I’m hearing from you is like, you should be testing on a regular basis, at least on a monthly basis. You should be changing out your main images. And I love the kind of like hack that you mentioned, which is go read some of your most recent and competitor reviews and go ahead and see, like what are people liking that’s attracting them to that competitor’s product. And then maybe take that use AI to say, hey, here’s my current main image. These are the reviews for my competitors. How else can I maybe revamp my main image to make it even better, to appeal to these customers that are leaving these reviews on my competitor’s products? So I really like that.

Josh Hadley 00:11:26  But most brand owners just do it themselves, and then they have a bunch of agencies that they work with. Whereas I’m a big fan of like building internal teams and being able to execute all of this on my own. And it turns into like systems and processes so that you’re always on top of it, because that’s what the best brands do. They’re not just solo entrepreneurs that are crushing it. They actually have systems and processes. So I’m curious though, Rafael, like, if I’m to give my let’s say I do have a team right now, what’s the system or process or maybe some hacks that you would share with me of like things that are working for main images right now.

Rafael Veloz 00:12:01  Okay. I would like to use the word hacks. It’s just I feel like we’re like we’re in the in the now big boys club. And I know no offense to anybody out there that just had the word hacks. It’s okay. But I feel like that term is is it’s like, I don’t know, it’s deluded so much into the system into our internal solopreneur mindset.

Rafael Veloz 00:12:19  You know, like you said, systems are very important in building these systems and these teams. It’s extremely expensive, especially if you’re you’re saying, I don’t know people in the US. So that’s why a lot of people go into and they hire somebody in the Philippines, somewhere around the world that’s way more affordable because technology and all that. But now people are starting to like, okay, realize, okay, we need to hire more people within here so we can actually have an office, etc., but just cost a lot of money when building these systems. One thing that I found my company is 30 plus people. I have a team that of five people, 5 or 6 people that just their sole intention is to make sure we’re up to date and anything has to do with AI or Amazon systems. For example, Amazon rolled out or announced a logo that’s going to charge you 1400 bucks, I think, or something like that for a for the API connection. That’s which is, you know, it is what it is.

Rafael Veloz 00:13:03  It’s Amazon. They do whatever they want with their technology. The way we created the system is trying to keep top of mind. We have one person, which. So the only thing that this person has to do is be creative. How do you hire somebody that’s creative? How do you know this person can think outside of the box? Right, right. So like for me, it was so hard because I’m a creative person. I didn’t even go to entrepreneurship school, quote unquote, or study business until I was like, I don’t know, like 2 or 3 years ago, but I was like five years into my company, six years into my company, and I actually got it, I don’t know, luckily they just offered me a scholarship. If not, I would have never attended. So how do we build these systems? I think the best way, if I have to go back, is to find somebody that’s already been doing it and get coached, right. One thing that I can tell you for the hero image is listen to the market.

Rafael Veloz 00:13:45  literally listen to the market. Five from your top five competitors, you should be tracking their rank. You should be tracking the reviews. Negative. Positive. You should be tracking their their images. What are they changing? Did they change the eye for you? Did they change the color green for the color purple? Like you should be tracking everything that they’re doing to see what’s going on, but always looking into your own thing. Obviously. Look what’s going on around you. Great. But also. But be mindful of your own reviews and your own your own feedback. That’s the first thing I would be doing. I wouldn’t focus too much. Sorry, that’s not the right word. I wouldn’t focus only on the hero image. It’s very important, but I think that I learned the amp when I jumped into the Amazon space in 2017. I was working on Nickelodeon at the time, and I had to share a studio already in the works. Actually, ShareIt Studio was created because we were supposed to create content that’s shareable for social media, so that’s where I share it.

Rafael Veloz 00:14:33  When I jumped in the Hamilton space, people were just looking at the hero images, and when they were starting to run PPC, they were burning a bunch of money on PPC. And I asked myself, why are people just having one image or one video for all their campaigns if there are different intentions. Oh, no. Baby wipes. Baby wipes for sensitive skin. Baby wipes for X, Y and Z. Baby wipes for demographics. Baby wipes for pH levels I don’t know, there’s so many long tail keywords. One thing that really helped our clients, at least the ones that are working right now, is where the PPC is. We try to mitigate how much money they’re leaving on the table. By this I mean, when you run an ad on Amazon and you get a click, you’re spending money. It doesn’t matter if they convert or not, you’re already burning cash. Okay. It’s $5. Click. Well, you just lost $5 because I clicked on I’m sorry. The less clicks you get, but the more conversions you get.

Rafael Veloz 00:15:21  I think it’s better, right? You get more money. So if you create an ad with a scroll stop or seen scroll stop or seen, it’s something that has it’s like a clickbait. What we did in the beginning or something that makes you stop. At least try to understand a little bit more about this. That helped us a lot. So I wouldn’t only look at the hero image, which is very important, and look at all those data points, but also look at your PPC. What’s your PPC saying? Because that’s that’s where a lot of people are losing and just burning a lot of cash flow, which is bad. And then, you know, go into outside traffic, etc..

Josh Hadley 00:15:52  Yeah. Rafael, I think those points were like really well noted. And what I loved that I picked up here is you came into the Amazon space as an outsider working at Nickelodeon, and your first thought was like, why in the world is everybody so focused just on like spending PPC? And that is the only like marketing lever that anybody is like really pulling on Amazon.

Josh Hadley 00:16:14  And still today, there’s a lot of people that got started on Amazon even a few years ago, where the only thing they’re doing is just focused on Amazon PPC, and that’s it. And what I love is like, you’re now kind of getting back to your own roots, which is like shared studios. It’s like making it more socially shareable. So talk to me about that, because I’m sure that the brand you talked about that went from 400 K per month to 1,000,000.2 per month. Like, I’m sure that a component of that was brand awareness coming from the social engagement. So talk to me about like how you’re doing that with your clients to not just get good main images, but it’s about blasting social to really grow your brand. How are you doing that today?

Rafael Veloz 00:16:55  That’s that’s I’m actually putting up something right now so I can show on camera. That’s actually I have so many compressed feelings of what you said right now. So it’s got to be my like my therapy right now. When I got into the Amazon space within a few years, I think something called Amazon posts launched.

Rafael Veloz 00:17:10  I don’t know if you remember that. And then Amazon, I think it was Amazon Inspire. I think it was called something like that. Remember, I was like a TikTok kind of thing. I don’t know if it’s still on. Right? I think they canceled not too long ago. Yeah, they did because ruffles took place in the in the lower band, right here, right place there instead of the Amazon Inspire which was a little light bulb. So this is my way of thinking it. Somebody gets buy something. Whatever online puts it on Amazon automatically sells like this is a gold mine, brother. So you mean that if I put a freaking bottle of water up and just use this keyword. No water for distilled water for babies. It’s just water. They’re going to buy it because it’s for babies. Mostly, yes. Okay. This is like 2016, 17, 18, right? Where we were just used to Amazon giving us to traffic. As things evolved, traffic got way harder to get.

Rafael Veloz 00:17:58  Why? Because competition got involved. You’re like, oh, crap. Now I have to also get my own traffic to the point that Amazon now rewards you if you get your own traffic, right? Because you’re promoting the website, etc., you’re driving traffic, all that stuff. So this is what I believe that we should be doing. I got a bunch of points here. One thing is, don’t get stuck only on Amazon and only on PPC. It’s very important. Obviously, PPC is what’s going to make you drive traffic to your listing on Amazon because it’s literally you pay per click. So it’s even it’s even better. Make sure you get the right clicks for that right view. But one thing that I’m seeing in the space is that now we’ve evolved so much that people are also not considering PPC anymore, and they’re just focused on TikTok now. Like tick tock, tick tock. Tick tock. Tick tock is important. Yes, you can make millions, but still. Either way, if you put your whole basket of acts, most likely 70%, 50, 60% of those eggs are coming from Amazon.

Rafael Veloz 00:18:46  So why would you, you know, if there’s the parental parental law 8020 rule, right? From the Italian economist. Economist where if this is what’s giving you money. Yes. Also be driving this so you can at least maybe at some point be 5050 not depending upon the Amazon, but if you are if Allison is still your main source of income, you should also optimize that, which then I’m going to go after this, I’m going to go into the external way of driving traffic, what we’re doing. But I’m going to focus on Amazon right now and then go into the other one. Guys and girls, the way we do it on Amazon is for these guys, at least for the shoe cleaning brand, is that we created content that connects it to the exact keyword or exact intent by an intention with when we created that content for that exact buying intention. And then we did a little bit of their strategy because we we don’t do PPC internally on my studio. But I mean, we do PPC internally in studio.

Rafael Veloz 00:19:34  We don’t do it externally, but we have a lot of we have to we have to consult them. Because one thing that I, that I saw in the Amazon space when I was working in New York, in agencies over there, there was called media buying. Okay. So you go in first time of the year. There’s a month specifically before the year starts and you go to these places and you buy media. I’m buying X amount of minutes on Fox. I’m buying X amount of minutes here I’m buying. So you don’t do it like a week before you do it. Like with time. Then your medium by your department goes into your creative department like, hey guys, we just bought bazillion minutes on Fox News Prime time. What should we do? Right. They just don’t come up with like, oh, let me just put this here. No, there’s a strategy because those minutes are very, very expensive. Okay. And that there’s a strategy within their creative board. They go to their creative.

Rafael Veloz 00:20:20  They’re like, okay, we’re going to spend this much on commercials, this much on, I don’t know, billboards, etc. in the Amazon space. Completely different. They’re like, okay, I’m just going to buy this image and just put it up and see what happens. There’s no intention behind it. That’s what I got into the in 2018 2017. That’s how I saw it. Now people are starting to realize, oh, okay, our PPC, our media buying arm should be connected to our creative arm so they work together. That’s the way marketing department should work. That’s what we’re doing with this pink miracle with shoe brand. That’s why we got in so much traffic one way that we got in traffic. And now I’m going to go into the external traffic is we’re doing streaming ads, okay. We’re doing a lot of other ads that Amazon helps you get or offers that a lot of people are not using, because maybe they’re just scared of trying something new, or one thing that I’ve seen a lot of Amazon sellers is that if this app doesn’t get me money automatically, I’m not going to invest into it.

Rafael Veloz 00:21:13  Like, if this app doesn’t convert into this, I’m not gonna make any money. You’re thinking only bottom of the funnel. A funnel has almost three stages, right? So awareness consideration and decision making. So that awareness type of funnel where a lot of people come in you need to feed it, especially if you’re already selling us, making more than 50 K in revenue a month, your marketing department should be getting at least 15 to 20% minimum. Okay, if you look at the big companies and in the poultry companies, you can actually use Claude and be like, okay, what’s the budget for this company? What does that represent for the annual revenue? And you’ll see that’s like 15, 20 or 30, sometimes 50%. So if big companies are doing it, companies are worth billions of dollars. Why aren’t you doing it? Even if your 20% is $2,000, at least look into it. How to spend the 20% the best way possible. That’s the way we did it with these people. We tried to.

Rafael Veloz 00:21:58  We worked with their buying arm, their PPC department, their PPC agency as connected as possible to be able to offer something really good. And we did. We started converting more and more and more conversion rate increase by like 10%. When it’s thousands of dollars, that’s very important. A cost lowered when it costs lower or we did okay, we’re getting a little bit more cash flow. Let’s invest that into something more. Top of funnel is going to come down. Then once we get that data we optimize it to convert. It is going to come down. Now we have a little bit more money. Let’s invest in more into the funnel. So on and so forth. That’s how we got them for 400 K to 1.2 from the external routing. This is what we’re doing. AI is amazing. It’s beautiful. I was actually very scared of it. I think a lot of people were, but I read an article last week that a guy in Australia cured his dog’s cancer using AI, which is insane.

Rafael Veloz 00:22:44  So imagine how many things were going to be able to do in the creative space. There’s a lot of cool tools they’re using, but it’s not the tool, it’s the person who’s using the tool. So one thing we’re doing for for our client right now and for ourselves, we’re creating personas online. If you’re listening to this and you can watch it on YouTube, where else can they find it? Josh.

Josh Hadley 00:23:01  Yeah, it’s on YouTube and all the podcast platforms. But if you want to look at our beautiful faces and Rafael is going to show something on his phone here, come check us out on YouTube and watch the video version.

Rafael Veloz 00:23:12  Yeah. So this is Abby. Abby Hall. Abby is an avatar we created January 14th. We upload our first video. Let me see the actual date. And January 14th was the first video. February 10th. Less than a month, we hit our first million views on a video. That’s not bad. Less than a month. Four days before the month. And the way we did it was understanding the tools, leveraging the tools, and leveraging our I mean, I have a I have like five video editors.

Rafael Veloz 00:23:41  So it’s easy for them to like understand this. Right. The way we’re doing it is we’re trying to create community before we even launch a product now. And if a buyer or one of our clients already has a product establish, we create a community for that product. People usually latch onto other humans because of connection, emotional connection. That’s why, you know, Elon Musk is so popular, right? Or you got other other people in the space that are so popular and so popular within our entrepreneurial community. Gary Vee, I can go on and on. So we’re trying to create community or accounts that engage and educate people and try to create all the levels of content creation. Meaning there are videos just to drive traffic, meaning views, there are videos to get conversion meaning followers conversions also into Amazon. So I’m dividing this into stages for this for for this account at least. And is first we’re going to create a laboratory okay. Then we’re going to create a enough content to see if we can get the actual views after we get to the views.

Rafael Veloz 00:24:35  Phase 2 or 3 is. Are we going to get clicks? If we do get clicks, are we going to get bias? Okay. Once we get. Bias. Now we’re in the game. Now the ball is rolling. Right now we’re in the clicks. So last month we got more than 1000 clicks from products we shared on this platform. Thousand clicks is not bad. We haven’t seen many conversions. We have. We’ve seen like 7% conversions, which is not optimal. I would like to get like a if we get like a 15% conversion, that’s crazy. That’s what we’re shooting for. We’re trying right now from those clicks from this account only. And this is just starting out to our goal. So one thing that we’re doing to drive traffic is creating community outside. And yes, you can do TikTok influencers. You can use all these other tools. There’s a cool, cool, cool tool called Yuka that we use where they connect and monitor your TikTok influencers. You can also use the TikTok shop.

Rafael Veloz 00:25:19  You can direct traffic to your Shopify page as well, which is what we use for our clients as well. It’s less. It’s less. Consumptions of fees Amazon fees are just insane every time, so the more money they can save, the better. That’s what we were doing it.

Josh Hadley 00:25:32  Love it. Rafael. On that note, how are you? Like the video that went viral. 1 million views. Like, who’s taking the time to, like, script the videos and add them into like, Vo three and things like that to actually create the content.

Rafael Veloz 00:25:44  So this is why we do it. We grab I have a studio, we have, I have a producer. Hey, what do you call that, an English, a director of photography and a video director in general. So these three are like the key people that we just got. One assistant, one PA production assistant, general assistant. So they’re the ones that have to think of the scenes and all that. So there’s somebody in my team that only strategize, okay? They’re like, okay, this is the product we’re selling.

Rafael Veloz 00:26:06  What what are people saying? What are people looking into? And you can do a lot of things with AI, but right now at least you do need to have a human at the end making the decision. This is just what I my experience so far. If you have an open cloud, you have an agent that does everything for you and you trust it. Great. Right now I still need somebody to look at it from a human perspective. And when this person has a strategy, we’re like, okay, we’re going to make a commercial that’s going to say this and we’re trying to sell this. As I say this, we develop a script. We developed a storyboard based on that. We’ll shoot some things organically. For example, if it’s. I don’t know, let’s just say it’s a bottle of water falling. I’m saying bottle water, bottle water next to me. And we want to make it look as real as possible. It’s easy to shoot. We’ll do it organically. Why? So we can also make the video feel like it’s real.

Rafael Veloz 00:26:54  And that’s all AI. A key word here that we need to listen to is feeling okay. Unfortunately, we’re all very much emotional beings because we’re humans. We need to feel like it’s real. We need to feel like it’s not going to hurt me. So we use a mix of AI tools, AI, video, but also we use a mix of organic, real videos because at the end of the day, it just just makes them feel like, oh, this is real. This is not just AI’s love.

Josh Hadley 00:27:16  I love it. Rafael. So many ideas here, and I’ve got lots of lots of great notes that I want to share as like takeaways for our listeners. But Rafael, is there anything that you feel like we haven’t touched on yet that you feel like the audience needs to hear about.

Rafael Veloz 00:27:30  The only thing that I would say that I think we touched a lot. Actually, I hope they listen to it because I talk a lot. Hopefully I didn’t lose it, many of them.

Rafael Veloz 00:27:36  Honestly, the biggest thing that happens to me as an entrepreneur is that that fear of maybe I’m not doing the making the right decision, the right step. It happens with me in AI. So I was like, you know what? If I don’t do something to adapt with AI, it’s going to just kill me, literally put me out of business. So what I did is I hired two people, literally just for AI. I hired a kid that just graduated college from system engineering or computer engineering, and a dude that was just no degree, but was had street cred, like Gary Reed called street cred and the professional ambiance that’s his only job is to look at AI tools, play with them, geek out literally, and just tell me if I think we should try this or look at what I found right now. I’m gonna help. I’m making him geek out on Open Claw, for example. Right. So that’s the only thing that don’t be afraid to just try new things. Don’t think that AI is going to solve all your problem is not the.

Rafael Veloz 00:28:22  The CEO of fiber said what was impossible before. What was easy before is done for now. Well, it’s impossible before. It’s going to be. It Was hard before. It was going to be easy. Now it’s impossible. It’s going to be hard now. So just think of AI is a tool. But. Keep in mind that at least for now, you need to have at least pair of eyes to look at that.

Josh Hadley 00:28:40  Totally agree. Really well said on that, Rafael. I love to leave the audience with three actionable takeaways from every episode. Here are the three actionable takeaways that I noted. You talked about this, but one of the big case studies that you had is going from 400 K to 1.2 million a month, and that primarily happened because of social content and creating that brand awareness. I love that you approached Amazon coming from Nickelodeon and seeing these big corporations in the budget that they spend on marketing. And you’re right, they they look at marketing as a three tiered funnel rather than just like, hey, like bottom of the funnel, get this click, get the conversion.

Josh Hadley 00:29:17  Was that efficient or not? And most of us as entrepreneurs grew up growing up on Amazon. Like that’s all that we focused on. And the big brands that are going to thrive on Amazon are going to make this change. And so this is my action item. Begin looking at your marketing advertising as the following. Remove the word tacos. Remove the word ACOs and begin. Well it’s begin. Begin adding this phrase. This acronym is Myrrh Marketing efficiency ratio. So now take hey, what is the amount of like influencer like samples that I’m giving away? All right. Add that as a cost to the marketing line item. How much are you spending on your creative team or creative assets to go create whatever social posts that you’re doing? Maybe it’s PR that you’re doing. There’s a number of ways that you could be amplifying the overall, like top of funnel stages, but you add all of that together along with your Amazon PPC, and then you look at your Mur and then you say, oh, my marketing efficiency ratio is I’m spending about 25% of my revenue, right? That is what you want to be getting to.

Josh Hadley 00:30:23  That’s the ratio that big brands are using that are going to smoke you in the next five years if you don’t begin to adapt that into your methodologies.

Rafael Veloz 00:30:31  I have one thing that I didn’t miss is because we launched it this month. We’re doing PR management. So one thing that Amazon, I mean, I haven’t met anybody yet that’s not at least making more than ten, 15 million a year in revenue. That’s that’s doing it like less than 15. I haven’t met anybody more than 15.5 met a couple there aren’t doing PR management. So on Amazon PR management and outside of Amazon PR management. So PR is just public relations. How brands people, even your own company within sees you and perceives you. Okay. So anybody listen just in case.

Josh Hadley 00:31:03  Love it. Great great service and definitely something I would highly recommend. Action item number two is to create a system for testing your main images. So again main images. We didn’t dive into the intimate hacks of of main images or the strategies that you should deploy other than go look at your competitors.

Josh Hadley 00:31:20  And for reviews, use AI to then generate new ideas of different variations and ideas that you could test. And again. My favorite thing is test it on Amazon. We’ve got all those testing services. They’re fine. However Amazon customers vote with their dollars. They’re real hard earned money. Whereas anybody taking those surveys or getting paid to just click a button, they they’re not really as invested. So take it for what it is with a grain of salt, but make sure that you are testing those on Amazon on a regular basis, not just when you feel like it. My third and final action item here is to hire a creative team member and somebody to lead your marketing on your team, because if you don’t, you’re sorely mistaken and you’re going to get beat. The most important aspect of any brand is the marketing team. And so if you could, if you’re listening to this and you’re like, oh, I don’t have a marketing team, that’s where you need to begin. Because what this marketing team should be doing is, yes, they can be managing your PPC ads, but the most important team member is going to be somebody that’s thinking creatively, like a creative director and thinking of the different angles that you can then bring into your marketing, from your main images to the copy that you use, whether it be on your website or on Amazon to actually sell the customer.

Josh Hadley 00:32:35  And this is a mistake that I made in the past. In the past, we would hire somebody from the Philippines at ridiculously low rates and say, hey, come out with some main image options for me. Well guess what? I had my lowest paid team member focused on arguably what is the most important thing for an Amazon based brand. And so that’s the takeaway is if that’s still your M.O., that you are outsourcing this to somebody extremely cheap on Fiverr, or you’re outsourcing it to even an internal team member that’s at a low wage and you’re like, oh, this is great. I’m just I’m checking off the box of testing the main image. This is arguably one where I would pay six figures for the right person to come in here, because if somebody could make just a if they could double your conversion rate and double your click through rate, imagine what that does to your business. So, Rafael, those are my three action items. Anything else? Anything else to add or you feel like I missed there?

Rafael Veloz 00:33:29  No, I just wanted to double down on the last thing you said.

Rafael Veloz 00:33:32  It’s incredible how the most important aspect of the business we consider is the least important, right? Because at the end of the day, like, yes, you’re pricing all these things matters. But if people what they look at, they don’t really feel connected to it, why would they buy it? So you’re completely you hit it right on the on the on the head. You did.

Josh Hadley 00:33:47  Awesome. Rafael, my final three questions for you. What is the most influential book that you’ve read and why?

Rafael Veloz 00:33:53  I would say traction. It taught me more about business than going to Babson College.

Josh Hadley 00:33:56  Fantastic recommendation. Question number two. And you’ve got team members that are focused on this. So I’m anticipating a good laundry list of answers here. But what is your favorite AI tool that you’ve been using and how have you guys been using it?

Rafael Veloz 00:34:08  Okay, if I have to use one for like just one, everything else gets wiped out on the face of the earth. I would say claw for two reasons. One, they helped get our dictator capture being captured, which is amazing.

Rafael Veloz 00:34:21  Two, it’s actually in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal article. You should go read it. It’s amazing. I love that article. And the other one is, which is Claude. I’m talking about Claude. And the other one is it’s helping you with at least agents for get open. Claude. There’s actually Claude called work. Okay. You can use now. You can use it from your phone as well. Just leave your computer on, which is amazing. So it’s going to help you a lot. And the third one, it’s the data that it gathers is really, really good and gives you if you open up the umbrella a little bit. lovable is amazing. I really like lovable so far. If you have a student ID, you get 50% off, which is amazing as well for if you still have your student ID over there, just do an email. I mean, and those are the Claude will be number one. Claude, definitely.

Josh Hadley 00:34:59  What’s your favorite way to use coworker right now?

Rafael Veloz 00:35:01  Coworker not my email spam.

Rafael Veloz 00:35:02  I’m so bad at emails and organization with it. It just goes into my Google company, Google Drive and just does everything that I asked. So one thing that I do, for example, is I record all the meetings that I can and I just ask them, okay, you’re going to put this into a notebook element. And then from here you’re going to create talking points or follow ups. And then if I have to schedule anything automatically schedule that call for this person. So automatically does all this stuff, which is really freaking cool. That is literally the wage of a executive high level personal assistant that speaks English perfectly and is awake 24 over seven. You don’t have that. Yeah.

Josh Hadley 00:35:33  Love it. Yeah. The executive assistant tasks definitely are the easiest ones to, like. Get off your plate first.

Rafael Veloz 00:35:38  Yeah, yeah yeah, yeah.

Josh Hadley 00:35:39  That’s fantastic. Third and final question. Who is somebody that you admire or respect the most in the e-commerce space that other people should be following and why?

Rafael Veloz 00:35:46  Josh Ali.

Rafael Veloz 00:35:47  Just kidding. Nebraska is in here. dude, I would say apart from you because I really like your talk BS. I won’t lie. There’s a couple of people, man, my one of my favorite people I actually call them mentor is Carlos Alvarez from Wizards of Ecom. He’s a really cool guy. Has helped me tremendously. Like, a lot, a lot, a lot. And we don’t just talk about. So I have different businesses. I have and I have like an Instacart of Venezuela doing a bunch of other stuff. Venezuela I have I have two restaurants, brands on Amazon. I do my agency. So Carlos is actually one of the people that I talked to, not just for the e-com space, but outside of the e-com space and can give you really good recommendations. Knows a lot of people connections. I would say that for sure.

Josh Hadley 00:36:23  Awesome. Rafael, this has been a fantastic episode. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and wisdom. If people want to learn more about you and follow you.

Josh Hadley 00:36:30  Where’s the best place to do so?

Rafael Veloz 00:36:31  Hit me up on WhatsApp. No, honestly, sure it’s ShareIt Studio. Like you share something on social media? Sure it’s ShareIt Studio. We actually start creating content for Instagram. Not so long ago I was trying to understand more about AI before I jumped back into the social media space, which I know sounds crazy. So we just hired a bunch of people in the company. We’re about to kick off our social media again, so follow me there if you have any questions. Honestly, just my email. Hello at ShareIt Studio. You want to have me jump on the call? Just tell me you’re coming from Josh and I’ll give you 30 minutes of my time for free.

Josh Hadley 00:37:01  Wonderful, generous offer. Rafael, thanks again for your time today.

Rafael Veloz 00:37:05  Thanks, brother. I appreciate it man.

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