In this episode of the Ecomm Breakthrough Podcast, host Josh Hadley conducts a live strategy audit with eCommerce brand owner Charlie Mckenzie. They discuss advanced Amazon sales strategies, including keyword optimization, targeted PPC and product targeting ads, and leveraging Google Ads to custom Amazon Store pages for higher conversions. Josh emphasizes the importance of product innovation, catalog expansion, and understanding customer intent. Charlie receives actionable advice on improving ad efficiency, refining product listings, and sourcing new product ideas from platforms like Etsy. The episode offers practical tips for boosting Amazon performance and sustainable brand growth.
Chapters:
Introduction and Brand Overview (00:00:00)
Josh introduces Charlie and outlines the brand’s focus on a single main product with size variations.
Keyword Research and Organic Ranking (00:01:05)
Discussion on keyword research, current rankings, and strategies to move up to top organic positions.
Amazon PPC and Product Targeting Ads (00:02:07)
Advice on using PPC, especially exact match campaigns and product targeting ads against same-color competitors.
Leveraging Google Ads and Storefront Landing Pages (00:03:11)
Strategy for using Google Ads to drive traffic to custom Amazon store landing pages to improve conversions.
Reducing Competitor Distraction and Conversion Optimization (00:04:41)
Importance of removing competitor distractions on landing pages to increase conversion rates from external traffic.
Charlie’s Takeaways and Action Items (00:05:40)
Charlie shares his main takeaways, including storefront creation and renewed focus on product targeting campaigns.
Testing and Optimizing Product Targeting (00:06:51)
Guidance on setting rules for product targeting ads and turning off underperforming campaigns.
Product Innovation and Brand Expansion (00:07:34)
Discussion on the importance of ongoing product launches and not relying solely on “home run” products.
Marketplace Research and Arbitrage Opportunities (00:09:49)
Charlie discusses using marketplace research and arbitrage to identify new product opportunities.
Finding Trends Outside Amazon (00:10:48)
Advice to look for trending products on other platforms (Etsy, DTC sites) and bring them to Amazon.
Keyword Research and Listing Optimization (00:12:06)
Charlie emphasizes his focus on keyword analytics and listing optimization for organic ranking.
Focusing on Customer Needs in Sales Copy (00:12:53)
Advice to highlight the root problem the product solves, not just compare features with competitors.
Actionable Strategies Recap (00:13:46)
Summary of key strategies: product innovation, customer-focused sales copy, and price testing for profit.
Closing Remarks (00:15:47)
Final thanks and well wishes as the episode concludes.
Links and Mentions:
Tools and Websites
Amazon PPC (Pay-Per-Click Advertising)
Google Ads
Amazon Store Builder
Data Dive
Podcast Episodes
Tyler Gregg of Ampd on LinkedIn
Transcripts:
Josh 00:00:00 Welcome to the Econ Breakthrough Podcast. I’m your host, Josh Hadley, where I interview the top business leaders in ecommerce. Today I’m speaking with Charlie Mckenzie, and we have recorded a live strategy audit session for you today. Charlie, welcome to the podcast. Thank you very much for having me on, Josh. I’m excited to be here. Awesome. At this point with Charlie Charlie’s brand, he’s got one skew. Well, he’s got multiple skews because he’s got some size variations in there, but he’s got one product that is generating the sales for this brand. One of the first things that we looked at, for your brand, Charlie, was keyword research. And you’re doing a great job of implementing the right search terms in your product title. In fact, you’re crushing, you know, the competition in terms of the exact match keywords that you’ve got implemented in your title, and therefore you’re actually ranked on the first page for many of those keywords. However, you’re not in the top five positions right on most of those keywords.
Josh 00:01:05 And so we then went through and discussed. All right. So what are some strategies that we can employ to. You’ve already got traction. You’re obviously indexed for some of these big keywords. How do you move them up into that 1 to 5. You know organic ranking position? One of the things that we talked about was PPC. And Charlie, you know, you’ve started dipping your toes in the PPC waters. Initially we talked actually a couple of months ago, and you were not running ads on Amazon. And, you know, I told you like, hey, you should definitely start running some ads on Amazon because it is going to impact your organic ranking. You’ve been dabbling a little bit in that. My recommendation to you from our session was that, you know, create some exact match, keyword campaigns for those keywords that you’re trying to rank for number one. But then number two, one of the things that we’ve found a lot of success with in our business is product targeting ads on Amazon.
Josh 00:02:07 And so rather than just throwing it up against because with your particular product, there’s there’s other competitors that have different design variations, right. And so rather than just saying, hey, mine’s beige, I’m going to go advertise on this pink one or this blue one. You the customer that’s looking for a pink, product. They have a specific thought in mind. Right. Same thing. If somebody’s looking for blue, like there’s a reason why they clicked on the blue listing. So when it comes to setting up your product targeting ad campaigns, one of the things I would definitely recommend is only targeting those competitors that have the exact same color that you have, and you’re going to get better performance that way. And what Amazon loves to see is if you can steal sales from those competitor listings, you will shoot ahead of them, on the organic ranking side, and that will allow you to increase your ranking a little bit faster there. In addition to that, we talked about some external marketing that you could be using and that is Google Ads.
Josh 00:03:11 I know you’ve tested this in the past, had about a 200% ACOs there, which isn’t great, obviously, but we talked about an additional tactic that you could use that could increase that performance because Amazon is definitely rewarding external traffic, right? in my prior one of the prior podcast episodes, we had Tyler Gregg of Amped on the episode, and he shared some fantastic strategies of how to create Google ads and the best way to maximize, you know, the return on investment on those. One of the big takeaways from that episode is that rather than just driving traffic to your current Amazon detail page, it’s going to be better to create a store landing page for yourself. But in that store landing page, you recreate almost the exact way that your detail page looks on Amazon, and there’s a specific section on the store builder page that allows you to basically recreate that detail page. That’s exactly what you’re going to want to do. And the beauty of driving that traffic to your store landing page that is literally identical to your detail page, is that you’re able to remove all of your competitors because one of the tips, or I guess, one of the statistics that Tyler shared on that podcast episode, is that 30% of external traffic going to Amazon or from the Google ads ended up being purchases on Amazon.
Josh 00:04:41 But of that 30%, I would argue to say it was probably 5% or less. We’re actually buying the product that they first came in to Amazon looking at. Instead, they got distracted with other competitors or ended up finding something completely different on Amazon that they ended up purchasing. But there’s a lot of high search intent or, you know, a lot of people that will convert on Amazon from external traffic. That’s proven in the data. But what you need to do is remove as much of that competition as possible, and hopefully that will increase some of some of those conversion rates. Charlie, we also talked about, you know, product images, product copy. And we’ll dive into that a little bit further. But I want to hear from your perspective after we went through that strategy audit session. What were some of the big takeaways for you or moments. Some of the action items that you’re going to be implementing. Yeah. Well thanks. That’s all great advice. I think one of the biggest things that I think that could provide value to.
Charlie 00:05:40 Me and my scenario with a relatively low skill count catalog, we’re expanding out now, but creating that storefront and running the Google ads specifically to that storefront, recreating the detail page in order to be able to maximize conversion and not pay, you know, for Wasted ad spend. When people click off of your. Your listing is definitely something that I think that could help. I know Amazon is focusing more on valuing external traffic in terms of being able to rank organically. So yeah, definitely creating that storefront even with a low skew count. you know, I’m going to get on that. And then targeting campaigns haven’t had the best of luck with them. But at the same time, they, you know, if you’re stealing sales from top competitors, as you mentioned, Amazon is going to, to be able to reward you and rank you a better if you’re able to, to, to compete on those other competitors listings. So getting back into the product targeting campaigns and as opposed to just exact and auto.
Charlie 00:06:42 yeah, I think we’ll really, be able to help us scale up and as we move and grow our catalog and, get more effective at PPC. So, yeah.
Josh 00:06:51 Yeah, those are some great takeaways. And, and as it relates to product targeting. Right. Is that always the silver bullet. Not necessarily. Right. It’s always worth testing. But one of the important things is that as you add competitors into your product targeting ad campaigns, one of the things that you can do is set up your criteria that says, hey, if I get 30 clicks from this competitor in no sales, I’m just going to turn it off. And so with us, we have 1300 SKUs like so we’ve had to create really strict rules and guidelines. Otherwise, you know, it would just be sifting through the weeds for us on an ongoing basis. And so create those rules. And guess what? If it doesn’t meet the criteria, then you turn it off and you’re like, hey, at least it was worth the test.
Josh 00:07:34 I’ve done this for all of the competitors, so just have some guidelines whenever you’re you’re conducting any tests. Charlie, knowing that you have, you know, a low skew count right now, you talked about that. You’ve got other variations that are going to be coming in that you’re going to be setting that up. But we also talked about product innovation, right. and how We don’t want to just create kind of like me two products. Right now you’re at the very early stages of your brand. It’s an exciting time, but one of the best ways to build out your brand is launching products on an ongoing basis. Like whether you’re a seven figure, eight figure seller, one of the best things you can do to grow your business is keep launching new products, new product, new product, new product, and getting into different, you know, spaces with inside that brand, right. What are some related products? Because as you do that, you know, ideally when you’re first starting, you know, start with some of those products that are cheaper and obviously have lower milk so that you can just test test stuff out real quick, see if it works, and your risk is a lot lower that way.
Josh 00:08:41 Now the returns might not be that that huge, but don’t be so determined that you need to have a home run or hit home runs on every single product launch. If you can hit single after single after single after single, like you’re going to score some runs here. And that’s honestly how we built our business to begin with. Our first, you know, 3 or 4 years, we didn’t launch any home run products whatsoever. There were not there. We didn’t have any hero ations in our business. Rather, we had a lot of products that we launched that were only making like 2 to 3 sales a day. Like for most of the audience, they. That’s kind of laughable numbers, right? They’re like, oh, I would never support a product like that. But like because we were hitting those singles and doubles on occasion, it allowed us to gain more profit, then start investing and getting into some of these much more competitive categories where we have been able to take some home run swings and actually hit some home runs at the same time.
Josh 00:09:40 So, Charlie, going back to kind of that, that product innovation conversation that we had. What were some of the takeaways or moments that you got from that?
Charlie 00:09:49 Yeah. Well, being introduced to Amazon and kind of coming from an arbitrage background. you know, being able to look across marketplace and understand where the arbitrage opportunities lie on Amazon. You know, it’s tough because like you said, if you’ve got a particular niche and group of people there may be looking on, you know, on very specific domain websites for very specific styles that they want, you can take a look at those, those domains and figure out what’s working well on those sites, and then look at the arbitrage opportunity and look to see if there’s, the same thing going on in Amazon. If there’s not, then, you know, you, have a very higher likelihood of success by knowing that, that there’s an opportunity there that’s currently selling on another marketplace that you can bring to Amazon and innovate your brand through. So that’s definitely great advice.
Charlie 00:10:40 And I think Etsy and, some of the bigger specialized domains looking at what’s working for them, will help me take my brand to the next level.
Josh 00:10:48 So yeah, I completely agree. And I couldn’t recommend this more whether you’re listening to this or for you, Charlie. Specifically, you know, go to where the majority of your customer audience is hanging out, right? Where do most of them shop now? Again, a lot of customers do shop on Amazon. But what I found is, like, Amazon is probably one of the last places to get product innovation from. Right. Like, there’s actually not a lot of unique, cool ideas that come to Amazon first. Instead, what you find is like you have direct DTC websites, right? Shopify stores or Big Web, you know, corporate websites that have been around for a while. Those are where, you know, new ideas first come to the market. Same with Etsy. Right. That’s where new ideas and anything that’s like design driven for sure is going to come to the market.
Josh 00:11:43 And so one of the best ways to to really grow your brand and start dominating in any marketplace, especially on Amazon, is going and finding something that’s trending somewhere else and bringing it to Amazon. We have done that with repeated success time and time again. What other research have you done? You know, Charlie, for yourself and new product ideas.
Charlie 00:12:06 just, you know, mostly keyword research. I love data dive. I, I would consider that to be my specialty is just, focusing on keyword analytics and understanding how to write the best copy into the best places onto your listing in order to be able to redeem the maximum amount of raking organic ranking juice potential, out of your listing. So that’s why, you know, we’ve got a relatively, you know, lower review count compared to the top ranked, competitors on the first page. But we’re able to still somewhat hang with them because of great listing design. And I think, yeah, that’s that’s where most of my research has gone. I definitely need to focus on developing the catalog and understanding where there are gaps in the in the market based on style and functionality and add some, some products like that.
Charlie 00:12:53 So get my my brand store built out as well. And one of the another thing that you mentioned that I thought was great advice was, don’t focus on being the best version of your competitors, but focus on the root of the, you know, the the root problem that your product solves. So right now, I don’t think we’re doing a good enough job of, really reaffirming the purchase intent behind why, the original reason why that customer came to Amazon and looks for a product. we’re doing a lot of comparing ourselves based on features to our other competitors, which is something that I, you know, really wanted to emphasize that we were better than our competitors. But at the end of the day, we need to to to emphasize and reaffirm why the customer is coming to purchase our type, our type of product to begin with. And so implementing that into some of the, the image stack, I think, was a great, great tip that you gave me.
Josh 00:13:46 So actionable strategies. I think that any seller can kind of walk away from this conversation with is, number one, Product innovation is key.
Josh 00:13:56 One of the things that you need to continually be focused on, if you have an E-com brand and you’re selling on Amazon and other marketplaces, is continuously launching new products because the shelf life of certain products, you know, I think get shorter and shorter as more and more competition, comes on board. And so being able to stay ahead of that by consistently launching new products and not just launching me to products, we had a great conversation today talking about how do you differentiate your product, how do you go find what’s trending on other platforms and bring it on to Amazon? And that’s really where you’ll find a lot of success. Number two, we talked about, your sales and in your sales copy on Amazon. Understanding the customer. Why what are they hiring this product to do for them in their life? identify that problem and then state how that product is going to be the solution. We use the example of never miss an important date again for desk calendars. So implementing that into your listing images and immediately on in your bullets it will help increase the conversions as well.
Josh 00:15:05 And then finally we talked about price testing and maximizing your price for profit, not just for, you know, the highest conversion rate, not just for the sales velocity per se. You want to make sure that you are generating the most profit at your price point. And so for anybody that wants to increase your profit, go and increase your prices. Start testing it out. Even if you sell fewer units, you might actually be making more money. So run the numbers, run those tests and isolate those variables. Well, I think you’ve dropped some good knowledge bombs on us, Charlie as well. Hopefully this was helpful for yourself and for the audience. Thanks again for joining us.
Charlie 00:15:47 All right. Thank you very much. I wish you the best of luck with the with the podcast. So it’s very helpful.
Josh 00:15:53 Thanks, Charlie.
