In this episode, host Josh interviews Rafael, founder of Share It Studio and a 3x Telly Award-winning Amazon marketing expert. Rafael shares strategies for building a successful brand on Amazon, emphasizing the importance of understanding your target audience, leveraging Amazon’s brand analytics, and creating high-quality, authentic content. The discussion covers Amazon’s evolving brand-building tools, including A+ content, brand stores, and social features like Posts and Live. Rafael offers actionable tips for optimizing listings and highlights the value of investing in content to boost trust and sales. Listeners also receive a special discount on Share It Studio services.

Chapters:

Introduction & Rafael’s Background (00:00:00)
Josh introduces Rafael, his achievements, and Share It Studio’s success with Amazon listings.

Mentorship & Entering Amazon Marketing (00:00:38)
Rafael discusses the value of mentorship and how he transitioned into Amazon marketing.

The Importance of Brand Building (00:02:36)
Josh highlights Rafael’s results and asks where sellers should start with brand building and content.

Identifying Your Amazon Audience (00:03:09)
Rafael explains the need to analyze data and understand the differences between Amazon and other e-commerce audiences.

Using Amazon’s Brand Tools (00:04:02)
Discussion on Amazon’s brand analytics, content tools, and the importance of creating a brand experience.

Amazon’s Social Features & Custom Content (00:05:22)
Rafael emphasizes using Amazon’s social features (Posts, Live, Follow) and creating custom content for holidays and trends.

Three Actionable Takeaways for Sellers (00:06:57)
Josh summarizes three key actions: analyze data, update content based on findings, and prioritize/testing content types.

Content Quality Reflects Product Quality (00:10:03)
Rafael stresses that high-quality, authentic content signals product quality to buyers, especially for sensitive categories.

Final Thoughts & Influences (00:11:17)
Rafael shares his admiration for Gary Vee and Carlos, and the importance of helping others in the e-commerce space.

How to Connect with Share It Studio (00:12:55)
Rafael provides contact info, offers a complimentary consultation, and a special discount for podcast listeners.

Closing Remarks & Bonus Offer (00:14:00)
Josh and Rafael wrap up, highlighting the 15% discount for listeners who mention the podcast.

Links and Mentions:

Tools and Websites
Share It Studio 
Amazon Brand Registry 
Amazon Live Videos 
Instagram 

Contact Information
Email: hello@shareitstudio.com

Influential Figures
Gary Vaynerchuk (Gary Vee) on LinkedIn

Transcript:

Josh 00:00:00  Today I am super excited to introduce you to Rafael. Rafael is the founder of Share It Studio. He is A3X Telly Award winning entrepreneur in marketing and film. He has 13 plus years of marketing experience, five of which are specialized in Amazon marketing. Sherritt studio sets itself apart as a boutique agency with a high level, data driven approach and bespoke full package services. The studio boasts 500 plus successful Amazon listings, with an average sales increase of 77% within the first month of launching. So welcome to the show, Rafael.

Rafael 00:00:38  Josh, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. What you were saying about finding somebody to help you. it’s the best way I found out. I did the exact same thing with my mentors. Is Josh Nelson right here? Okay, so what you’re offering is actually very, very, very good. I highly recommend that anybody that’s, you know, listen to this. I met Josh in person. Super cool guy. you should definitely at least talk to him.

Rafael 00:01:02  maybe you’re not ready, but maybe within a month, you know you’ll hit the target and you’ll be ready to to to, you know, reach out to Josh and he can help you scale your business. But if if somebody has a blueprint, why would you want to, like, go sideways if somebody knows what it’s going to happen? He’s going to tell you, like, hey, you might run into this and this is what you have to do instead of you bouncing your head against the wall, you know?

Josh 00:01:27  So true. Rafael, I guess I need to pay you that $100 now. Slide that under the table there.

Rafael 00:01:33  No, this is not paid advertising. In no way whatsoever. It’s just that I really I was I was super I am so stubborn that I, when I had my company, I was working for Nickelodeon at the time, and, I was, coordinator for post-production for Latin America. And I’m like, you know, at that time, my ego was just stupid.

Rafael 00:01:55  and I was like, no, I don’t need anybody’s help with this. I can do myself, blah, blah, blah, blah. I’m just gonna apply for all the awards. I’m just gonna get all the awards and, you know, blah, blah, blah blah. And at some point I was like, oh my God, I’m really struggling, I need help. And a friend told me, a friend who’s very much more successful than me with an agency. He’s like, hey, man, I reached my million dollar mark, but I can’t. I can’t grow anymore. I don’t seem to be growing. And he does completely different marketing. He does marketing for cleaning companies. I met this dude, and I really think you should meet him, and, you know, yada yada, yada. And Josh is the the the one of the reason why I went into the Amazon space.

Josh 00:02:36  Well, Rafael, you’ve got a lot of experience obviously, in marketing. I mean, the statistics that you shared that, you know, as you’ve worked with over 500 different Amazon listings, you’ve been able to increase sales by 77%.

Josh 00:02:50  That’s a large amount. What should an Amazon seller or just an e-commerce seller? They’re on the on board with you in terms of like they know they need to build a brand, but where do they even begin right to in terms of building out their content? They believe that brands are important. So like where do you start with all of this?

Rafael 00:03:09  yes. That’s a great question. It’s a great, great question. it depends on the at what stage of your Amazon journey you’re at. but if, let’s say you’re a seven figure seller, so you definitely have some, some, some data. even if you’re selling an e-commerce or Shopify, you have data there. social media, which are your top followers? The tricky thing is that the the people who buy off of Amazon are not the exact same people who buy somewhere else. So even though you kind of simulate, some of my clients actually have a complete buyer persona on Shopify, then they have on Amazon.

Josh 00:03:46  Interesting.

Rafael 00:03:47  Yeah, it’s super interesting.

Rafael 00:03:48  Interesting. So if you have a seven figure seller on Amazon, you definitely have brand registry, which gives you brand analytics. Now let’s understand the actual consumer. Who’s the consumer who’s buying from you. is it is it a male or is it a female?

Josh 00:04:02  The first step is for you to identify who this audience is, right? Like who is the buyer for this particular product, because then that’s going to change the way that you’re merchandising your product, right? The images that you’re creating. And then you also kind of dove into, you know, utilizing those tools, that Amazon has now done, I think, over the last two years, like Amazon has been pumping out tools to help us as brand builders actually truly build a brand on Amazon. So it’s a better experience at the end of the day. Amazon wants the experience to be good for their customers because they’re customers, but they know that a better experience is instead of having just a flea market of random sellers just selling a bunch of crap.

Josh 00:04:51  So actual brands that are that are selling good products with the story and an experience behind it. So, Rafael, I’d be interested to have you explain to our audience, like, what are some of the tools that Amazon has given to brands to actually build their brand to tell a brand story on Amazon to win that customer, to make it feel more of an experience than, again, you’re your Chinese competitor that only cares about price and that’s their only, you know. Competitive advantage.

Rafael 00:05:22  Yeah, yeah, 100%. If you have a bunch of main images do they. Be testing. You know, we give our clients a bunch of main images with the data from pixel. So they run test okay. This is going on this this is helping. This is not helping. And Valentine’s day. things change, and we create custom content for holidays, for example. Holiday season is great. So you have to create custom content. So you want to make that connection. Hopefully, you know at least a lot of us can can can go up to, to Ellen’s height.

Rafael 00:05:55  But either way, start with something. That’s the idea after brand, after Amazon store. I would say definitely go social. You should, you should, you should have already gone social. social outside of Amazon but also social on Amazon. People are not taking into consideration. Amazon’s going social. They have the follow button. They have Amazon posts. They have Amazon Life videos. Yeah. Like if Amazon is giving you all this. Amazon is one of the most, avant garde wealthy companies out there. if they’re launching this, it’s not because they’re like, oh, maybe we can do this. We have thousands of people who are paying, getting, getting paid millions of dollars, which are way smarter than us. Understand the next trends. If they’re doing this, it’s not because they’re like, we have nothing to do here. Let’s just do this. Whatever. No, there’s a reason behind it. Take into consideration it’s like when your mom tells you, don’t jump off that table, you gotta get hurt.

Rafael 00:06:54  Boom. Broken up.

Josh 00:06:57  Right, right, right. Well, Rafael, this has been a lot of content that you’ve shared. excuse the pun. Right, but this has been this has been a wealth of knowledge, I think, for all of our listeners. One of the things that I like to do here, I love to leave the audience with three actionable takeaways from each episode. So here are the three takeaways that I noted. Rafael. Let me know if I’m missing something. But first of all, an actionable takeaway for any seller, regardless of what level you’re at right now and in regards to your sales is number one. Go take a look at your data. Use the brand analytics data that Amazon is giving you. Understand your customer demographics. Understand who it is that is purchasing your product, and you can even understand that through the reviews that you’re getting. Read what people are saying and say, oh, I bought this as a this was the perfect, perfect birthday present for my husband, or a perfect Christmas present for my father or whatever it is.

Josh 00:07:59  Start to understand that and it’s going to then lead into action. Step number two, which is implement those findings that you learn from that data and that research into your listings and primarily into your main image first right and then into your lifestyle images, your secondary images of infographics and lifestyle images, which bleeds into your A+ content and your video. And then finally, the third actionable takeaway is you need to keep testing. And the way that you do this is you prioritize everything. And Rafael, you did such a great job prioritizing like which content people should pay attention to the most. Number one was your hero image. That main listing, image number two is those lifestyle infographic, those secondary images, the listing images on Amazon. Number three your A+ content, the brand story that’s a part of that A+ content viewer. The words the better you know. Be visually telling. And don’t just copy your main images or your secondary images that are already higher up in your listing, like come out with some brand new custom made A+ content for better effect.

Josh 00:09:13  Fourth, you know you get now you’re getting into your videos, right? You can and have two separate videos like you mentioned. One that’s there on your listing that can be more detailed and is meant to convert the customer. But then your advertising video needs to stop people in their tracks and say, hey, what is this? I need to dive into this and pay attention, right? You’re just you’re just trying to drive traffic from the from the ad. Fifth, you mentioned the brand store. Sixth, you then talked about social media, not only external social media, but utilizing Amazon’s internal social media, which is they have the Amazon posts, they have that follow button. And there’s and you can go live on Amazon, right. There’s so much that you can be doing on Amazon. Rafael, did I miss anything and kind of summing that up?

Rafael 00:10:03  No, you did great. I actually missed something extremely important. And it’s the quality of the content equals the quality of the product in the eyes of the buyers and the and the the listing is the content.

Rafael 00:10:18  The content is the listing. What do I mean by that? if an image is photoshopped or we know what we use as a, Photoshop lifestyle, for example, you are imposing an image on something else. Buyers already know. They understand that it feels fake. They won’t say why exactly, but they’ll understand it feels fake. So if you’re selling, for example, pro, supplement extremely important supplements, supplements is something that’s going to go inside your body. Guys, would you take something that you find that it’s going to help? It’s going to be a little bit like, fake or a little bit that it’s going to be, you know, make you feel bad, you know, you wouldn’t. So organic imagery, organic means just taking it with a real life model. It’s a little bit more expensive, but usually spending at least $5,000 bringing the things from China or whatever, like you have to like. But you can just sit it on Amazon, you know?

Josh 00:11:12  That’s so true. Yeah, I think that’s a that’s a fantastic point.

Josh 00:11:17  You can’t just skimp on the content like it. Dial it up. pretty. Take it to the nines. Last question I want to ask you here, Rafael, who is somebody that you admire or respect most in the e-commerce space?

Rafael 00:11:34  I would say, there’s two people who I admire dearly. Dearly. one is Gary Vee. super super Gary, right? Like, super inspirational dude. And a person that, that I really is also, Carlos Carlos is from become such a humble guy with so much experience and so much success, and he still helps out people who are just starting to people who are really, really successful. I really I’m all about helping each other. I believe that there’s enough room on the table for everybody to eat. you just have to take your game to the next level. And he’s is exactly like that. He has a marketing agency of his own, and he still, you know, prefers me, which is like, dude, that’s that’s amazing. so. Yeah.

Rafael 00:12:17  Carlos was awesome.

Josh 00:12:20  Yes. And I’ve I’ve heard Carlos’s podcast. He does a great job there as well. So, Rafael, you’ve dropped a lot of knowledge with all of us. You’ve shared some wicked smart ideas and how we can uplevel our content and actually turn our our business on Amazon into a real brand, because that is what’s going to be most important. As you look into the future of Amazon, it’s only going to get more competitive. So double down now get your content in shape. And Rafael, if people want to learn more and maybe even work with you, where can they find you?

Rafael 00:12:55  just look for us Share It Studio just like you share something on social media. S h a r e it studio. ShareItstudio. Instagram handles the same. are my my personal emails. Hello. At ShareItStudio, I’m very easy to remember. Share. It’s like you share something on social media. that’s the fun behind it. And what else? yeah. That’s it. guys, we do a complimentary marketing consultation.

Rafael 00:13:21  You can come in, we can look at your listing if you want. It can give you my tips. Even if you don’t work with me, I can still tell you what I believe you are doing wrong so you can go and do it if you want somewhere else. If it’s with me, great. Because even though if you’re going to do it somewhere else, you’re going to come back at some point because you’re like, oh, this guy was right. I’m going to go work with him. So that give, give, give. You know, jab, jab, right hook, everything.

Josh 00:13:42  I love that sounds like you’ve been following Gary Vee,

Rafael 00:13:45  Yeah, for a while.

Josh 00:13:48  I love that. Well, that’s very generous of you, Rafael. And I encourage our listeners to go check out your website and learn a little bit more about you. But thanks again for joining us today on this episode.

Rafael 00:14:00  Oh, quick thing, if you guys come from this episode, just say I came from Josh and I’ll give you 15% of this.

Josh 00:14:08  Hey, there you go. Look at that added bonus right there. Little gift at the end. 15%, discount or bonus, right? Yeah. for you guys. So mention Josh Ecomm breakthrough podcast. You heard, Rafael here. So thanks again, Rafael.

Rafael 00:14:28  See you guys. I’m going.