In this episode, host Josh interviews Mina Elias, a seven-figure Amazon seller and founder of The Trivium Group. Mina shares advanced strategies for Amazon PPC, emphasizing the integration of advertising with product optimization and the importance of main images, pricing, and reviews in boosting conversions. He discusses using custom analytics software, My Real Profit, to track key metrics, and stresses the need for continuous testing. Mina also shares his favorite book, productivity tools, and business inspirations, and offers listeners a free Amazon PPC audit through his agency.
Chapters:
Introduction to Mina Elias (00:00:00)
Host introduces Mina, his background in supplements, Amazon PPC, and his achievements in the industry.
Statistical Analysis & Analytics Tools (00:01:01)
Discussion on using Google Sheets and custom analytics software for tracking PPC and sales data.
Custom Software: My Real Profit (00:03:01)
Mina explains their custom-developed analytics tool, My Real Profit, for streamlined data analysis.
Main Image Optimization Tips (00:04:00)
Mina shares what makes main images effective for conversion and how to showcase value propositions.
Price Testing Insights (00:05:55)
Analysis of how price changes can impact conversion rates and the importance of continuous testing.
Three Key Takeaways for Amazon Sellers (00:07:49)
Host summarizes actionable tips: integrate PPC with product optimization, optimize main images, and always test pricing.
Centralized Analytics & Continuous Testing (00:10:30)
Mina emphasizes the importance of a unified dashboard and ongoing, one-at-a-time testing.
Most Influential Book: Who Not How (00:11:38)
Mina discusses the impact of the book “Who Not How” on his mindset and business approach.
Favorite Productivity Tool: Monday.com (00:13:09)
Mina highlights Monday.com as a game-changing project and task management tool.
Most Admired Figure: Grant Cardone (00:14:05)
Mina explains why he admires Grant Cardone and lessons learned from his business approach.
How to Connect & Free Audit Offer (00:15:32)
Mina shares how listeners can reach him, learn more, and get a free Amazon PPC audit.
Links and Mentions:
Tools and Software
“Google Sheets”: “00:01:28”
“Custom Analytics Software”: “00:03:01”
“PickFu”: “00:08:55”
“Monday.com”: “00:13:09”
“Zapier”: “00:13:25”
Websites
“Trivium Group (triviumco.com)”: “00:15:32”
Books
“Who Not How by Dan Sullivan“: “00:11:47”
“Be Obsessed or Be Average by Grant Cardone“: “00:14:19”
Influential Figures
“Grant Cardone“: “00:14:05”
Social Media
“Instagram (@theminaelias)”: “00:15:32”
“LinkedIn (Mina Elias)”: “00:15:32”
Transcript:
Josh 00:00:00 Today I’m super excited to introduce you all to Mina. Mina is a multiple seven figure seller in the supplement industry. He’s an investor, Amazon PPC expert, and the founder of the Tribune Group, an Amazon advertising agency. Mina excels at developing cutting edge supplements for different target audiences and combines his passion for supplements. His background in chemical engineering and chemistry, and his expertise in PPC to crush the competition on Amazon. He has spoken on every major stage in the Amazon industry, consulted over 400 brands, consulted three aggregators worth 1.2 billion combined, and has been on over 100 Amazon and e-commerce podcasts. To share his knowledge and continues to be a leader innovating the Amazon advertising space. His goal is to change the way people perceive Amazon PPC and empower them to take back, control and dominate their ads. So with that introduction, welcome to the show, Mina.
Mina 00:00:59 Josh, thank you for having me. I’m excited man.
Josh 00:01:01 Mina I’m also curious. I mean, you’re talking about statistical analysis now, right? And not many Amazon sellers are known for their statistical analysis skills.
Josh 00:01:11 where, like, are you doing all of this and just, you know, spreadsheets or Google Sheets or are you do you have a software that’s helping, you know, run these numbers and statistically prove that this was a, you know, conclusive test? Yes. Swap it out.
Mina 00:01:28 No, we we don’t have any software. This is all standard. you know, I mean, this is all, like Google Sheets and stuff like that. We do have a software that. But all that software does is analytics software, and it shows us our PPC spend, our PPC sales, our total sales sessions, cost per session, cook rate, conversion rate, cost per click, and profit. Day by day across all of our different products. So having that view is really useful because you’re no longer looking. you know, I was just talking to someone earlier, and, they use like a PVC software and stuff like that. And I’m like, show me how you’re looking at things. And they’re like really looking at like trends of conversion and trends of impressions.
Mina 00:02:11 And I’m like, it’s so hard for you to, you know, make a decision based on like looking looking at the data like that. So I think that’s where our analytics software helps a lot is we can see the week on week changes and I can see, okay, the ad spend changed like increased by 10%. What happened to my sessions? What happened to my cost per session? What happened to my click through rate or my peak spend was the same week over week. I changed my main image. What happened to my click through rate week over week? Or like okay, here’s all of the click through rates. Document them, here’s all the sessions, document them, and then go look at like the you know, Google Sheets just do equals average and equals STD dev which is standard deviation. And then it gives you the average and standard deviation is.
Josh 00:02:54 I love that. What software tool are you using to gather that data at a baseline right. On a daily basis.
Mina 00:03:01 That’s my real profit.
Mina 00:03:02 So we did we did custom development. So if you want if you want to see our exact analytics, you know you can do it through us. They can sell it to you. It’s because it’s IP. But my real profit is amazing. And you know because of our size, like, you know, we have 130 something brands. So we decided to just custom develop everything that is like the most streamlined for us to be able to like see the data and very quickly take action.
Josh 00:03:28 Yeah, yeah. Makes a lot of sense. I love that. All right, Mina, we’ve got just a few minutes left, but because you’ve statistically seen that the main image and price are your biggest needle movers for conversion rate. I’m curious if you can give us just some quick tips in terms of what type of images have you seen performing better than others, and is there kind of a general rule of thumb that you could point towards, although it may be kind of product specific, but any general rules of thumb of what continues to win?
Mina 00:04:00 Yeah.
Mina 00:04:00 Okay. I also want to say, like, I know I talked about the biggest needle movers. reviews. If you go from a four star to four and a half star, that’s a massive needle mover, too. you know, obviously, if you’re going from like 300 to 500 to 700 review, it’s like a slow burn. But if you go from like your your 3000 reviews, four star to four and a half star, that will have a huge impact. okay. Things that I’ve noticed work really well in the main image is if you can, if you can sell like the value propositions right in the main image. So sometimes like you look at a supplement, you know, like an electrolyte supplement and you’re like okay, what makes this unique? What makes this better than everything else? And then you have this other one that says, zero sugar, keto friendly, 100 servings, you know, and it’s like, whatever, you know, in your face or like delicious sun, you know, you have the fruits and all that stuff.
Mina 00:04:53 So you’re kind of communicating why this product is better than everyone else right there in the main image. you know, like there was like a pots, pots and pans won and it was like the size of it was right there in the main image, even though it wasn’t actually on the pan like measure, like, you know, it says 54 on the pan, whatever. like that wasn’t really in the pan, but you can see the size, you can see the nonstick. You can see the like the, the omelet, like flying very smoothly out of the pan. So you in two seconds you visualize that this is like a very, you know, attractive pan for me because it’s super non-stick. It’s this it’s that like all in one image. That’s where we’ve seen like the, the biggest, you know, impact is if you can like if when I ask you like you tell me, hey can you buy my product? I’ll say what makes your product better than everyone else? And you’re like, well, this thing and this thing and this thing, if you can showcase those things in the main image, I think that’s what what causes, images to win.
Josh 00:05:55 I love that, I love that. All right. Now following up on the price aspect, what have you seen in regards to price. Is it just lower? Lower price always increases conversion? Or have you seen the opposite where you could actually increase price, not lose conversion or conversion rate actually increases? What’s been your analysis on price testing?
Mina 00:06:17 Yeah, so we’ve seen it go in both ways. So we’ve seen like drop the price increase conversion rate drop the price decrease conversion rate, increase the price decrease conversion. You know what I mean. And so the conclusion that I have is is test test. And obviously Chad with prophecy Chad Rubin is doing that, you know, on a massive scale through AI. We actually are starting to use him for MMA nutrition. But I think that at the end of the day, like there’s no consistency that I’ve seen across brands. So I would test, you know, and I think I was just talking to a friend and they launched a like a competitor to a very famous protein powder.
Mina 00:06:57 That protein powder was $60 and there was a low end protein powder, $28. So they came in at, you know, 20, 27 or something like that, like very close to the low end, but not the high end. And they were the exact same type of product, same ingredients and everything. And that product didn’t do well at all. So, you know, it’s really hard like to, to know what the market’s going to do because they might be like, yeah, I don’t want to buy a $28, you know, meal replacement protein powder. I want the $55 one because that makes me feel like this is going to have like good ingredients. There’s no way it’s organic and healthy. If it’s only $28, something like that, you know, and because it’s so hard to tell, I would just test and get the data.
Josh 00:07:37 Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, I love that. Well, Mina, this has been a super valuable conversation. I hope that our listeners have had some mindset shifts because I know I have.
Josh 00:07:49 but before we leave our audience, I’d love to leave the guests with kind of three actionable takeaways for our listeners. And here are the three takeaways that I noted. Mina, let me know if you think I’m missing something here. But first and foremost, you need to stop seeing PPC as just a PPC strategy and slowing your focus on PPC. Like Mena talked about, you need to kind of change your mindset and see that PPC is just as important as your product optimization, and they go hand in hand. You can’t have PPC doing whatever it wants without talking to the product optimization team, because when you look at your data to try to conclude, was that worth it? Did I drive? Did I move the needle? You won’t know the answer if the PPC team is not on the same page. So that’s takeaway number one. Integrate your PPC with your product optimization. Takeaway number two is start dialing in. Just what you said. Mena your main image. That’s your first easiest low hanging fruit in testing that.
Josh 00:08:55 So go look at some of the best case studies there or some of the best competitors in your product category. And even go experiment, look and see what’s ranking on Google Images right in Google Shopping. What’s ranking on Etsy. Get different ideas that you could bring to the market. Go test them out on pick Foo and many of the different poll services. But what I love is that you would mention in your main image, try to showcase what are your three differentiating factors or whatever it may be, that why should I buy your product over the rest? And can you convey that in that main image? And it can be toss compliant if you kind of photoshop what your product packaging is. Right. So there are so many creative strategies you could test there. And then third, last but not least, I think it’s paying attention to your price and always testing. I am been very surprised with the number of sellers that have only continued to decrease their prices when they see that they’re losing market share, and what’s happening now is many people are losing their shorts with margin because Amazon has increased their fulfillment fees, and sellers are getting worried if they see year over year declines in their numbers, they start lowering the price without actually doing a test and determining is that increasing or decreasing my conversion rate.
Josh 00:10:17 And so if you don’t pay attention to that, you’re only going to kind of damage your business and your profit margin at the end of the day. So test, test, test is kind of the name of the game there. Mina, is there anything else you would add?
Mina 00:10:30 That’s perfect man. That that is really that sums it up perfectly. It’s, you know, having that centralized dashboard that shows all of your analytics and stop separating PPC and, you know, and conversion or, you know, conversion rate, it’s it’s all connected. It’s like they’re literally like, you know, married and, you know, the mom is the ads, the dad is the conversion rate and the the child is the, the sales, you know. And so it’s it really they are they are really connected. And you can’t, you know, stop blaming PPC or stop always looking at PPC without, you know, looking at the conversion, In, you know, KPIs, which is cooked there and conversion rate and seeing it.
Mina 00:11:14 It could be that that week, you know, there’s some sort of seasonality happening and conversion rate is down. And that’s why your PPC is not working. And not that it is just like, oh, maybe something’s wrong with the PPC. And then everything else you summarized is the main image, the price always testing. and, you know, constantly have like the next test ready, the next test ready. and one thing at a time, always one thing at a time.
Josh 00:11:38 I love it. Great summary. Now me and I’ve got to ask you our three final questions here. Number one, what’s been the most influential book that you’ve read and why?
Mina 00:11:47 I think it’s who, not how. And, you know, as an engineer and someone who’s their whole life learned how to do things and how and how and how and I’ve become really good at doing a lot of things. I started realizing more and more that the answer is always who and not how. And it’s not like, how can I do this? Or how can I, you know, do that? It’s more like, who is the best person that I can hire that can do this? Or who’s the best person that can teach me this? Or who’s the best person I can learn from? And, you know, it’s just been one of the biggest, again, mindset shifts that I’ve had is when and I think I’ve had this mindset shift late because I’m not one of those entrepreneurs that is not smart to, you know, like textbook smart or whatever and can figure things out.
Mina 00:12:35 And so it’s like, okay, who can help me? I’m able to figure, you know, so many things out. And and that was my biggest, like Achilles heel, which is it always held me back because I’m like, oh, I can figure this out on my own, or I can figure this out and I can do it myself, versus just immediately saying, I have no time to figure this out. Who is the right person for this? Who can I, you know, get in that seat ASAP.
Josh 00:12:57 I completely agree with everything you just said. me and the next question. What has been a your favorite productivity tool or new software tool that you’ve recently discovered that you think is going to be a game changer?
Mina 00:13:09 I mean, I don’t think this is a new thing, but Monday. monday.com has been a game changer for us. We use Monday for project management. Task management. It’s really nice, clean, easy, like to see everything. It’s color coded. There’s a lot of automation.
Mina 00:13:25 So when you when you finish something you know can go to somewhere else. It connects with Zapier. So it can like send you email updates and this and that. And so for me that’s, you know, we were trying to make click up work as like, you know, project management and task management and documenting all of our processes in like a company wiki basically. Then we tried notion. Then I realized that it was so much easier to have Monday for project and task management only. And then notion as a company wiki.
Josh 00:13:55 I love it, I love it. All right, last question here. Who is somebody that you admire or respect the most in the e-commerce space that other people should be paying attention to and why?
Mina 00:14:05 I mean, so not not really in the e-commerce space, but I love Grant Cardone and I think, I think Grant Cardone, is someone you know. I mean, a lot of people talk shit about like, you know, what he’s selling in this and that and all this stuff.
Mina 00:14:19 But at the end of the day, what he’s doing and how he’s doing it, he’s created a way for him to essentially, you know, make money in any way he wants. And, when him and Frank Kern created an advertising agency, they were able to go from 0 to 1 million a month in revenue within six months or less. And, you know, that just speaks to, like, the ability, like what he’s doing and his social presence and the ability to make money. Now, obviously, I’m not saying that he offered a great service or didn’t offer a great service, but I think he there’s a lot of things, you know, I can learn from from Grant and how he’s doing, what he’s doing and how he’s positioning himself. He also has a very, very, very strong mindset. and it’s, you know, I read the book be of sister and be average. And now it’s mandatory for everyone on my team to read that book when they join the company.
Josh 00:15:11 I love it.
Josh 00:15:12 Those are some great anecdotes I love it. Well, Mina, I know this has been super valuable. Thank you for your time. If people want to learn more about you and your advertising agency, where can people reach out to you, learn more about you? And I know you’re also giving out a free audit to our listeners as well. So tell people where they could learn more about this.
Mina 00:15:32 Yeah. So the free audio, if you just go to trivium.com that’s tr I viu mco.com. Just get a free audit. And basically someone on the team will go into your, your account and we’ll go through everything like, you know, your portfolios, your campaign names, the different ad groups, the keywords, organic ranking everything and give recommendations on how everything can be improved and why, why we recommend that stuff. And then, my Instagram is at the Amino Elias and my LinkedIn is Mina Elias. So feel free to message me there. Any questions that you guys have? If you listen to this podcast and have questions on how to do anything we talked about, feel free to to reach out.
Josh 00:16:12 Awesome, Mina, thanks again for your time.
Mina 00:16:15 Thank you for having me. Josh.
