Stefano Pretto, the CEO of Nomadz, a PPC profit-focused agency and coaching company helping Amazon sellers optimize every dollar of their ad spend. With a team of seasoned Amazon experts, Nomadz provides PPC management that rivals the best in-house PPC teams, all backed by data-driven insights and a commitment to transparent, caring partnerships.

Whether you’re looking to build a personalized roadmap for growth or just tired of wasting money on inefficient campaigns, Stefano’s approach is all about action, clarity, and results.

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

In this episode of the Ecomm Breakthrough Podcast, host Josh Hadley interviews Stefano Prieto, CEO of Nomadz, about optimizing Amazon PPC campaigns. Stefano shares common mistakes sellers make, such as overspending on ineffective ad placements and inconsistent campaign management. He offers actionable strategies for budget allocation, emphasizes the importance of consistent PPC oversight, and discusses when to transition from agency to in-house management. The episode also covers best practices for hiring top PPC talent, building strong teams, and leveraging data-driven approaches to maximize profitability and scale Amazon businesses efficiently.

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

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

I started Hadley Designs 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.

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Stefano 00:00:00  And it’s, you know, like my our first app. It’s always to see how they are doing with their PPC. And it’s amazing to see the new like the people that come to us, they are making always the same mistakes over and over again. And the first big one I would highly suggest to everyone who is watching this video to analyze.

Intro 00:00:19  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 00:00:33  Are you ready to learn the best Amazon PPC strategies working right now, or are you ready to learn whether you should bring PPC in-house or let an agency do it? Welcome to the Ecomm 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 nine plus figures on my journey to nine figures. I bring you unfiltered conversations with the smartest minds in e-commerce.

Josh Hadley 00:00:59  Past guests include Kevin King, Michael Gerber, and Brandon Young. Today, I am excited to welcome you all to Stefano Prieto. He is the CEO of Nomadz, a PPC profit focused agency that and coaching company that is helping Amazon sellers optimize every dollar of their ad spend. With a team of seasoned Amazon experts, Nomadz provides PPC management that rivals the best in-house PPC teams, all backed by data driven insights and a commitment to transparent, caring partnerships. So whether you’re looking to build a personalized roadmap for growth or just tired of wasting money on any phishing campaigns, Stefano’s approach is all about action, clarity and results. With that introduction, welcome to the show, Stefano.

Stefano 00:01:49  Thank you so much, Josh. Excited to be here and excited to share some knowledge with the audience.

Josh Hadley 00:01:55  Hey, I’m super excited to have you on the show, because PPC is one of the biggest expenses on every e-commerce business owners, profit and loss statement, right? Especially if you’re selling on Amazon, PPC is the biggest line item.

Josh Hadley 00:02:14  So changes like 1% changes to your ad spend percentage make could make $100,000 difference in somebody’s like net profit in the business. So what you’re going to be sharing today I’m like, I know you’re going to be delivering a lot of value to our audience. And just so everybody knows, I’ve personally worked with Stefano and my team, to train my in-house team on the best PPC practices. Stefano’s agency comes very highly recommended. And that’s how we got, engaged with you all. And my team has had nothing but good things to say about you. And our ad spend is more efficient now than it was when when we first started working with you all. So there’s my testimonial for you, Stefano.

Stefano 00:03:00  I appreciate that, that was amazing. And you built a great team, which is, I guess, one of the most challenging parts. When you want to manage PPC in-house, and I guess we will speak later on in this conversation.

Josh Hadley 00:03:14  We’re going to be yeah, we’re going to talk about that today. So Stefano, I think like let’s start maybe right here.

Josh Hadley 00:03:21  Where are the what are the top three places that you see, sellers wasting ad spend on like where’s the most inefficient ad spend as you’ve audited thousands of Amazon accounts at this point I’m sure. What are those? And then we’ll kind of segue into, hey, is it better to actually have in-house PPC team? Is it better to go the agency route? How do you navigate that, being that you provide coaching to in-house teams and you also have an agency service as well. So but tell us What are the three most wasted ad spend places for Amazon sellers right now?

Stefano 00:04:00  It’s funny you ask that because I think I had, I think ten calls with the new possible clients this week in the previous week. And you know, like my our first app, it’s always to see how they’re doing with their PPC. And it’s amazing to see the new like the people that come to us. They are making always the same mistakes over and over again. And the first big one I would highly suggest to everyone who is watching this video to analyze are the placements.

Stefano 00:04:30  So placements for your sponsored product campaigns. Most of the time you’re overspending on product page placements. Most of the time, like we see that happening over and over again. And when we start working together. Josh, I think your team was already optimizing really well the placements. So kudos to your team. But most of the time, every time we analyze a new brand, the sellers tend to overspend on product page placements, and it’s a very simple analysis. You can run, you can download the sponsor product placement report, see the data. Aggregated data with a pivot table and see how much you’re spending in terms of percentage, and see if that is the right amount or not. And also see the ACOs and conversion rate on these placements, because most of the time you will see that you have the highest echoes and the lowest conversion rate on product page placements. And the fact that it’s challenging to analyze this data, you need to download some files. If you do that, you can save thousands of dollars every single month, which is amazing to see.

Stefano 00:05:32  You know, like I consider all the problems are opportunities. So this is a massive opportunity. If you are watching this video and you want to quickly see if you can save money every month. So this is by far the first one.

Josh Hadley 00:05:43  So why is so why is that like what. What’s happening with the product page placements. And what’s your recommendation? Like, should it be more top of search than or tell me like where where are you adjusting the spend? How are you cutting that off and making it more efficient?

Stefano 00:06:00  Yes. So here depends on the campaign. And because of course, for example for ranking campaign, most of the time we want top of search as we all know. And but for example, if you go for discovery campaigns or phrase match abroad match automatic campaigns, most of the time you will see the rest of search is the one performing the best and overall for most of our clients is very unlikely and likely that we see the product pages performing really well. And so overall across, I would say 80% of the brands that we audit and we manage most of them outperforming product pages.

Stefano 00:06:37  So I would highly suggest to redirect the budget to resource search or top of search based on the goal of the campaign. And let’s say we are aiming for profitability. Let’s say for example, for S2 search. And let’s control the bit. So that is how I would manage that. And again depends on the the type of the campaign. As you know you have hundreds of campaigns in the account. And so some of them they are trying to aim for top of search. Some of them are trying to aim for research. And but overall I think by starting as a high level view and then you go deep in the data and you see what is the problem and you fix that if it makes sense.

Josh Hadley 00:07:15  Love it. Yeah. So immediate next steps is obviously have a purpose behind every campaign. Number one. But number two like yeah focus on the goals of those campaigns. So if it’s a ranking campaign boost up the top of search, remove the product page placements or push the the budget towards the the rest of search place.

Josh Hadley 00:07:36  So awesome. Love love a good actionable tip there. So that’s number one. What else.

Stefano 00:07:43  The second one I would say is a Campaign and budget allocation. So as you know, like on Amazon there are. There is an automatic campaigns, manual campaigns, most of the brands. And I was actually speaking with the company from from the UK, like right before this call, they are spending around 220% of their total ad spend was going to to sponsor display CPM campaigns. So audiences. And that is painful for me to see when I see these things, because it means that we are not thinking strategically on how we are allocating the ad spend. For example, let’s say that you are aiming for profitability. It doesn’t make sense to go to much top of funnel. It’s better to stay on the bottom of the funnel. So sponsor the product manual campaigns and automatic campaigns. And what we recommend the most of the time is that you want to have at least 80% of the ad spend on sponsored products, and the remaining you can split between the sponsor brand, video sponsor brand and specifically.

Stefano 00:08:46  But for most brands, there are very few cases where a sponsored brand is sponsoring video. They are bringing the most of the ads in. But overall, we highly just to focus on sponsored products and analyze this percentage of ads and see if we are locating the budget correctly. Because in the end, I like what Alex Hormozi is always saying. In the end, our job as an entrepreneur is to allocate the resources correctly, and PPC ad spend in the end, is just a resource that we have. It’s money and we want to allocate that correctly to maximize the return. And I like that. I feel like it’s very strategic. For example, for your brand, George, like most of the span, is going to sponsor campaign and automatic campaigns. We like that and we are very profitable and we have lots of SKUs as well. So I think that is something I would highly suggest to analyze in your account, and making sure you’re not overspending on top of search too much, especially if the goal is profitability.

Josh Hadley 00:09:44  Yeah. I think that’s such an important like point that you bring up, because I think there is a lot of confusion with people. And Amazon’s trying to push more top of the funnel like ads because they’ve already like they’ve frankly maxed out. It seems like there’s probably more that they’ll squeeze out, but they’ve maxed out their ad placements on their search pages. And so they’re like, how do we make more money? We’re going to get these sellers to go spend more money off network. That’s why they created that kind of like, I guess, the integration or partnership with Pinterest. And then they’re creating some another partnership with Netflix and they’re just like they’re creating more ways to just say, like, how can we spend more of your money, more of your money, or just awareness? So do like those campaigns do have a place like they truly do, but your business needs to be arguably a much bigger brand. I would say you’re easily over eight figures and you’re on your path to nine figures, and if that’s part of your goal, then yes, like brand awareness campaigns at a high level, kind of like TV ads.

Josh Hadley 00:10:57  Like it’s not driving a direct conversion, but you are believing that, like, hey, it’s going to create more brand awareness. People are going to search for us. We’re going to be able to remarket to them. And naturally, like the brand will continue to grow up. But if you’re a seller going from 7 to 8 figures and even early eight figures, like it’s probably not the place, like just be profitable, be as profitable as you can. And so you’re right. So I think the the action item here is like be aware of like what campaigns you’re running, whether they are bottom of the funnel like on Amazon. And I would say like bottom of the funnel on Amazon would just be like anything that’s like a search result type of page write or stealing it from your competitors page as well. Write is still bottom of the funnel, but anything outside of that, like you’re going further up the funnel. so just be aware of that. So really good point.

Stefano 00:11:55  Yes. well, I agree with you.

Stefano 00:11:57  Like I see it, Amazon is trying whatever they can to explain you that these outside platform, they are working with Amazon Marketing Cloud. They will soon introduce a new metric that we’ve seen in our biggest account to try to explain that these are working, but to be honest, for sale, as you said, if you are, if you’re aiming for eighth year, I’m not sure you really need this. Unless you’re in the consumable products and you want to think more long term. but there are very few cases, to be honest. so yeah, I agree with you, Josh. And the third one, I would say, the most common one for sure is consistency. Like, sometimes like, what? I notice that, maybe let’s say that there is a client, they come to us and maybe they do the things correctly, but they don’t do that consistently. And most of the time it’s because there is someone who is not leading this department or is not responsible of this parliament. So maybe the founder is jumping on the PPC once a week or maybe once every two weeks.

Stefano 00:13:05  They fix a few things and in two weeks time they forget what they need to do. So they try to come back. They change a few other things, so there is a lack of consistency. One example is a search term coverage. Let’s say that we get search terms that are performing really well. I see that most of the time most sellers are not doing a great job in terms of coverage in their search term. So then if a search term is getting clicks in an automatic campaigns, most of the time I said they’re not targeted in exact or the The keyword research is not well done. Well done. And the main issue here is that the yes is a PPC skill, but is PPC issue, but is mainly a accountability issue. And who is responsible of this environment? Because most of the time the founder is trying to do everything. Or maybe the person who is managing the PPC or is not the right person, or is not trained enough, or they need more accountability. It would be one of these, I would say.

Josh Hadley 00:14:04  Yeah. And frankly speaking, I think it’s a it’s a sign of like the business is growing and they’re not putting it up. They, they don’t have the ability to put enough time and attention to PPC anymore. And so now it’s actually suffering, right? Because once upon a time it was sufficient enough for you to like dive in maybe is a few minutes every day. But now the business is growing, so now you can only do it once a week. but now that, like, you’re losing a lot of efficiency See with that, which I think Stefano, this is a great segue into like how brands should grow their PPC team. And I think what’s so unique about the the service that you offer is that, you know, you do coaching for those that want to bring this in-house, but you also offer it as like a standalone agency service that like you can help brands with. So Stefano, I think you even have slides prepared for this. But like I’d be curious, like how do you see it from your perspective, knowing that you cater to both sides with all the brands that you’ve worked with? What are your recommendations to help sellers determine when they should outsource PPC to an agency, versus when they should bring it in-house?

Stefano 00:15:22  Okay.

Stefano 00:15:22  Great question. So I we created this offer like I think two years ago. and the main reason is that, I was reading some books and said that you always need to do what’s best for the customer. And so I was speaking with our with our clients, and some of them they didn’t want to have an agency was clear for me that they didn’t want an agency. So I said, okay, but why are we always trying to pitch the agency? Like if if I was a seller and I was in the past, but if I was a seller today, most likely I don’t want an agency for my PPC because I like I’m a very analytical. I know how to hire people and I know how to keep them accountable. And I want to control. So since I’m this kind of person, I want to keep it in-house. On the other side, let’s say that I’m a company this green really fast. I don’t have the time to manage PPC now, so I don’t have the time to hire someone, and I actually don’t want to hire someone.

Stefano 00:16:20  And, I said he’s working with the with an agency, and I want to keep working with the agency. In that case, an agency can work. And so I think like it depends on the person and that is what I will explain in. During my short presentation is that I truly believe that it depends on the business owner and what they want to achieve. If we have a client is funny that we are on the 1,000,001.5 million a month. he’s a he’s a loan, so he’s managing everything. He’s working a few hours every day. And he said, I don’t want to hire anyone. You know, I want to spend my time with my family. And, And so I hired an agency to take care of this because he knows what he wants to achieve. You know, I feel like that is if you understand what you want to achieve, I think it’s much easier to understand what is the best solution for you. I will share a framework in my presentation. but this is how I see.

Stefano 00:17:16  How do you see that? Josh, what do you think from your side?

Josh Hadley 00:17:19  Yeah, I think that from my perspective and my recommendation for anybody is that as you’re first getting started, we personally we started with an agency. It got to a point. I was the one managing PPC and within a year I was like, no, like I used to be able to do this once a day. Now it’s down to weekly and now Amazon’s just getting more and more complicated. So like now I’m starting to lose touch. So we hired an agency. But like you had said like we wanted more control. We wanted more control of like where the brand is going in the future, to get to grow to nine figures. And so we said like, it is worth bringing this in-house. But like so an agency was part of our stepping stone. Alex Hormozi has a great analogy with this or a, I think a great framework that he talks about, which is he will work with the agencies, but when he works with an agency, he goes in and says, like, we will work with you, but I’m here’s the team member that I want to eventually oversee this.

Josh Hadley 00:18:25  Are you okay with them training you or training this person with your processes so that eventually, like we’re not a long term client, but you’re training them at the same time. So that is definitely my recommendation. Like if you work with an agency and that’s what I think makes you unique. Like I could easily come to you, Stefano and be like, hey, I need help, but like, I need you to help me for like six months to a year, but I’m going to hire somebody and I want them, like riding along with your team. Teach them. Train them so that we can build this in-house. It’s not every agency is going to offer that. But like, you can find them and then it’s a win win situation I think for both brands. So that’s my recommendation that I give, to anybody that’s like with that internal debate.

Stefano 00:19:14  I love that. Yeah. And that is fine that you said this, this journey, because this is exactly what one of our clients did, and was amazing to see say how happy they were after they finished the program and after they moved from the agency to in-house because they were able to manage the PPC themselves.

Stefano 00:19:33  So they had the knowledge to do it themselves. And for me, that is amazing to see, you know, because most of the time for the agency, it looks like it’s a black box. We try to not do like that. We try to be as transparent as possible with our clients, but it’s amazing to transfer the knowledge to our clients and to their team in-house. And at an event last two weeks ago. one of our clients from training program, he told us that we changed his life. That is not something that I hear many times. so, so yeah, I, I love this transition. I think doing that kind of transition from agency first and move it in-house if you want to control I think makes 100% sense.

Josh Hadley 00:20:15  Yeah, I love it. Well, walk me through your framework then so that you guide people through.

Stefano 00:20:22  So,

Outro 00:20:23  Let me share my screen. Okay.

Josh Hadley 00:20:26  So those of you listening to the podcast, if you want to see the framework that Stefano is going to be sharing here, make sure you come check us out on YouTube Ecomm Breakthrough on YouTube and subscribe to the YouTube channel while you’re there.

Stefano 00:20:42  Thanks to me. okay, so here we are. So this is the framework. I would like to share with you. And this is based on revenue and, technical skills and how much control you want. So, as Josh said before, when you are below 500 K a year, roughly, this is what we see. Usually we suggest to do it yourself, or maybe with, with an agency or maybe with a virtual assistant in-house to give them some SOPs. But when you are below 500 K, most of the time you don’t have the resources to hire someone in-house with, let’s say with the high technical skills. So most of the time what ends up doing like you start to manage it yourself. But when you start to go 500 K or above and what we see that, then if you don’t have much technical knowledge about PPC or you don’t want at all to have to deal with PPC, most of the time people go with agency. So and so when you have a revenue around 500 K or more and you don’t want to manage PPC in-house, or you never manage PPC in-house, you don’t like the data and you don’t want to, you don’t want to have nothing to do with PPC.

Stefano 00:22:00  Most of the time what we see that people go through agencies, but when people even at 500 K or more in a yearly revenue and if they want, if they have already quite a lot of knowledge on PPC and usually this happens because to scale to 500 K or more, let’s say, let’s say seven figures. Most of the time you need PPC knowledge. As you said, you started by doing PPC yourself. So you had PPC knowledge and you went through the agency to learn from the agency, and then you brought it in-house. And what we see that when you go above 5 million, most of the time, we always suggest that to go in-house if you want to have control and if you like the PPC side, and also if you feel like the agency cannot give you the support you need, for example, let’s say let’s say let’s take your example, just like you have a massive catalog, very challenging for an agency to manage. But if you build a team in-house, much easier to stay on top of everything on the other side, like let’s say that your, your, you have, you have multiple brands and you are scaling fast and you just want to take some you don’t want to control PPC in-house for now, maybe managing, Maybe hiring an agency for now could be a good idea and later on move it in-house.

Stefano 00:23:23  And again, this also depends on the on the pricing side of the agency. Obviously since that as a as a wait. But overall like this is what we suggest. So when you are small, do it yourself. Or maybe have someone on your team helping you when they start to go above 500 K, we would suggest maybe hiring an agency or keep it in-house, but maybe start to hire someone. And when you go above 5 million, most of the time in-house for the agency, if you feel like is not the bottleneck of the business and you don’t want to deal with that. So this is the framework we like to use also for us to understand what’s the best for the client and during our conversation with them.

Josh Hadley 00:24:04  Yeah, I love this framework. And I think this is like I would agree 100% with everything that you just recommended there. and I like that revenue threshold I think above 5 million. I think is is really good. But at that point, Stefano, like the skill set that is needed to do in-house, it requires like you got to be able to hire.

Josh Hadley 00:24:28  You also need to be able to manage. So I think that’s the other big component here is like, look, if you’re just thinking like, hey, this is just lifestyle business, I don’t want to have direct reports. I don’t want to have to keep people accountable. That would be the argument for just like maintaining it with an agency. however, both you and I, Stefano, are on the exact same page where it’s like, I want more control. I know how to hire team members. I know how to keep them accountable. I enjoy that, like operating system structure that we can implement in our business. Because here’s what I believe. I believe that your team can be your greatest competitive advantage on the marketplace. Okay. And this is something that nobody else is talking about right now. Nobody’s talking about your competitive advantage being your team. But I would argue this can be one of your biggest competitive advantages. Because if you can have a team that eats, sleeps and breathes Amazon and PPC optimizations and just every hack and opportunity that we can take advantage of on Amazon.

Josh Hadley 00:25:41  If you can do that, then you will beat your competition. Yes, you need to have the basics of having a differentiated product. That’s a given. Yes, you need to have good creative like marketing. So good main images and good bullet points and secondary images like that’s a given. But I think to build a brand that’s going to last for the next 5 to 10 years, your core competency has to be building a team. And if you don’t and if you consider this a lifestyle business for yourself, just know that the decision that you are making is that you are going to get out competed with over the course of five years by a brand that actually has an in-house team that is executing day to day, looking at things that you’re overlooking because you don’t have enough time to do so. I have leverage with 35 plus team members, and so I’ve got 35 call it 70 eyeballs now, right, that are looking at at everything on a day to day, hour by hour basis to make micro adjustments as soon as possible to react with inside the market.

Josh Hadley 00:26:54  And that’s going to allow us to win. So if it is a lifestyle brand, these are the perfect brands to like. You better have an exit strategy over the next year or two, because if you don’t five years from now, I would argue like your brand is going to die unless like unless you’re good at launching products fast enough, that can outpace the amount of losses that are going to come as competitors start to eat your lunch. So there’s my framework or my mindset on that. Like agree or disagree with that?

Stefano 00:27:25  Stefano 1,000% agree. Yeah. In the end like I’m running a service business. So for me people is my biggest advantage in the market. Like without my team I would be nothing you know. So that is a I’m always grateful about them. And I agree with you, you know, because when you have someone who cares about your business and every day is taking action to improve your business and the you know, now that we we have also AI as a, as a as a skill, they are much more powerful.

Stefano 00:27:57  Your leverage is much higher, you know, especially if you empower them to take action with these new tools, with training, with whatever. Like when you have people who cares about your business, it’s amazing what you can achieve. Like, I’m always amazed to see the people that I started working together like four years ago. We’re still working together. How much they understand their business, how many problems they see, and they’re fixing the problem themselves. You know, that’s the beauty of that. It’s like. And so I 100% agree with you. Maybe e-commerce brand they don’t think is such a big leverage because you don’t hire many people. But I will say like is even the opposite. You know, since you don’t have as many people as a service business or a B2B business like ours, you have, if you are a top player, this top player can change your business. Like and so that is something that I always try to share with the clients as well, because I 1,000% agree with you.

Stefano 00:28:57  Josh.

Josh Hadley 00:28:58  Such a good.

Stefano 00:28:58  Point.

Josh Hadley 00:28:59  I truly believe, like my team is our biggest competitive advantage. and just 11A level player can change your business. Imagine five a level players and that are leadership bringing direction to your brand. Like that’s game changing for you. So Stefano. All right. So let’s say people are like yeah okay I get it. Like I should I should hire people. Like I get the leverage. So walk me through Stefano. You’re hiring PPC experts left and right. For you. It is your core competency. You’ve got to be able to spot people that are good at PPC. So maybe. Can you walk us through like what is your hiring process look like? How do you spot, identify, recruit, and ultimately decide who you’re bringing on to your team? And maybe these can be some takeaways for our brand owners that want to build their own in-house team.

Stefano 00:29:53  So first of all, in the description below, I think Josh and the team, they will let the PDF where you can see what is our framework on how we, on how we hire a team members and we will share the job description and everything we do.

Stefano 00:30:08  The first thing that we always do is, and still, by far the best way we have found to find the players is to start with, outreach on LinkedIn. So the first step by far is to generate demand. So we want to, start by, let’s say, attacking the market and try to find as many candidates as possible. We wanted to have, we don’t want to, to be in a place where we just speak with three people and then we take a decision on these three peoples. Like, that is a common mistake I see that I was also making in the past. I was just speaking with like 2 or 3 people and I said, okay, I need to find someone. Let me hire this one at the beginning. You want to have options because you don’t know what you’re looking for at the beginning. And the best way that I’ve seen for me to understand who is the person I’m looking for, is to have volume in my in my calendar and to speak with many people so you can actually see what what is the difference between good and great.

Stefano 00:31:07  And so that is the first step I would say like a focus on volume at the beginning because you most of the time most e-commerce founder the the event hire many people in the past. So maybe you don’t have a clear idea on what you’re doing. And I think, with with volume, you can decrease the chances that you will hire a bad person. That is my my hypothesis. So that is the first thing I would do. and if, let me share my screen so I can share what we usually suggest to do if you decide to hire in-house. So let’s say that we want to hire someone in-house. And we know that when we hire someone in-house, there are some advantages and disadvantages. We we know that. We know that the right PPC manager could be a game changer for you. As you said, Joshua, like the your team is your biggest moat of your business. But the wrong one could be a nightmare because if you are you’re in the wrong PPC manager, they could make some big mistake on your PPC account and that could lose you could make you lose lots of money.

Stefano 00:32:11  So I also like the phrase from this. The co-founder of LinkedIn, which is the team you build, is the company you build. And the PPC manager, I would say is a key role in an e-commerce brand, especially on Amazon brand, because Amazon PPC, as we said at the beginning, is driving, let’s say, 50% of the total revenue, 50 to 60% of the total revenue is coming from BBC. And we discussed that, okay, we want to bring PPC in-house, but what are the advantages and disadvantages. So the advantages that we have control, we have focus. We have one person who is analyzing our account every single day. We have specificity. So we know that this person is focusing on our account only and it can go deep in the account. Long term could be cost savings. So we know that if we have someone in-house, most likely we would cost less than every UN agency or outsourcing this. And we can also have SOPs and processes in-house. So let’s say that in the future we need to sell the business.

Stefano 00:33:09  If we have SOPs and processes, the person who is buying the business can quickly replicate what we are doing on on the disadvantages that we need to search and hire someone. We need to train them. We need to keep them accountable. We need to keep them so we cannot lose them. We need to make sure it’s a cultural fit. So we need to make sure that they embody our values and they will need some support when things go wrong. Again. We think we can attack these disadvantages by adding some skills. As we discussed before, if you know how to search and hire PPC manager, that is not an issue anymore. If you know how to train them, that’s totally fine if you know how to keep them accountable. And if you know how to, make sure that they know they are not leaving. So if you don’t treat them badly. So try to make your best to, create a good environment for them so you can fix all of these. And the foremost Amazon sellers, I will say like, a PPC manager is enough.

Stefano 00:34:12  I know Josh, you have a bigger PPC team, but also you have, a massive catalog. But I will say, like for most sellers are doing less than 10 million a year. A PPC manager is enough to manage the PPC. And if you want to maximize the PPC manager time, you could leverage a PPC assistant to give them to delegate to the PPC assistant some of the tasks, for example campaign creation and some repetitive tasks, and so on. And the PPC manager is the most strategic. I don’t know if you agree on having I don’t know, at the beginning when you hire, your first PPC manager, if you started, if your idea was to hire a multiple PPC manager was just to hire one. I’m curious, what was your journey at the beginning?

Josh Hadley 00:34:58  Yeah, with our large scale account. I’ve always known that like this is going to require multiple people. Yeah, but I wanted to hire somebody at the beginning that I knew had the leadership potential to grow and to be a leader that could oversee the entire account.

Josh Hadley 00:35:16  But they need other team members that will sit underneath them and report up to them. So I hired one rock star to begin with that, you know, could manage the whole account. But then I knew they would get stretched thin, at which point I would need to hire other team members underneath them. And for me, like one of the most important things as you grow your team is you should be seeing it as like a pipeline. Every hire you bring in, arguably every single one of those needs to have leadership potential, especially if your brands go into nine figures, because the worst thing that you can do Is hire somebody that is the perfect fit for the job right now, but only that, right? It’s like, hey, they’re they’re good at this. I think they could plug the hole right here. But I think there’s limited upside, right. Like they’re not they’re probably not going to be a great leader. But they can plug this hole for me right now. If you choose to do that know that you are stacking management debt in your business.

Josh Hadley 00:36:23  So there’s always financial debt or there’s there’s also knowledge debt, right. If you don’t know what you don’t know. And then there’s also management debt within a business. So you are stacking management debt if you’re like I just need the cheapest person over somewhere. Outsource it $4 an hour, $5 an hour. That’s a massive win. I laugh at that. To most brand owners that say they’re patting themselves on the back for getting somebody at $4 an hour, and I say, Now I want leaders, and I’m willing to pay for leaders that are above market average. But because of that, they can rise and grow with the business. They’re not just filling an immediate hole in the business. So I think that’s my recommendation. Stéfano is like, as you start and you have bigger aspirations for your brand to go grow, make sure you hire like your first person needs to be like they’re almost better than the current role that you’re giving them, so to speak. Does that make sense?

Stefano 00:37:27  Yeah, I like that.

Stefano 00:37:28  And, that is, that is, what I’m also trying to do for my own business. Like, if I look back in the end, like the first few hires and the PPC manager most of the time is one of your first hire because you are dedicating lots of time on the PPC and it’s so important. And after the skill with you, they grow with you, understand your brand. They can take over a more, more task from you. You can focus on other parts of the business. So I agree with you. Like that is sometimes what annoys me as well. Like especially on the PPC side, you cannot aim for just someone who can follow some SOPs. You don’t want that. Like I don’t feel like that is the solution to your problem. You want someone with critical thinking what we call a level three, which is a problem solver, or more which are in a second this framework. But when I agree with you, like I don’t like who I was speaking with another client, like another possible another seller who wants to work with us.

Stefano 00:38:33  And yes, I ask him how much you are paying your PPC manager. And I was shocked, you know, like because it was so low. I said, how do you expect, you know, like so that they can perform and they can keep growing. Your brand is like. And he was shocked when I told you how much we usually pay? And so I want to agree with you. Like you cannot overpay for a top talent. That is what I like to say.

Josh Hadley 00:38:57  Yeah. And here’s here. So as you pull that up, here’s the other important thing I think people need to know. They are managing your biggest expense line item in the business. So why outsource that to like the cheapest rate possible? Right. Like I’m always like okay it’s great find if you can find somebody that’s maybe undervalued but has massive potential. Okay. But that’s few and far between. You’ve got to kiss a lot of toads along the road to find somebody that’s undervalued, but has massive management potential.

Josh Hadley 00:39:30  so with that, I guess, like my question to you, Stefan, I was like, what’s the typical going rate, for you and your team and what are you recommending for even other brand owners?

Stefano 00:39:42  So it here depends on the location, as we all know. we most of the Amazon brands that are hiring in Europe. I would say Eastern Europe or Asia. So that is what I see. For Eastern Europe, I would say between 2000, 2500, $3,000 a month. That is what I usually see is the average salary for a PPC manager in-house inside one brand and for the for Asia. So this depends on the country. It could be Pakistan, India or Philippines. We see that this could could vary from I would say the lower end is $800 and the higher end could go to 2000 $503,000. And so this is what we see overall. Like this is the range. And does it does it look good to you. Josh I know you hire quite a few people as well.

Josh Hadley 00:40:33  Yeah I mean it definitely like we’re in the ballpark right.

Josh Hadley 00:40:38  with that. And then you’re right, I think the key thing is like, do you have different levels in your business? Right. Because the key aspect would be this do you have like you need to have? You need to be able to hire junior people, but only after you have your senior leader in place. So then you could like. All right, I’m going to take a bet on this person. Maybe they’re starting at like a lower level but have bigger upside. So you’re right. It depends on the countries. It depends on the level that you’re bringing them in at. but if you’re looking for a rock star, like I would always argue, like take a look at that and add an extra grand or so. Right. If you want. Like and and Alex Hormozi talks about this as well. Again I take from this playbook that’s like do you want the best talent in your business. This is the biggest leverage point. So why not pay them above market average?

Stefano 00:41:35  I agree, yes, as you said it depends on the seniority.

Stefano 00:41:38  It depends on also how much they can help you, how much you need to train them, how much you believe they can grow in your business. And so there are different factors. and I think here would be great if I share this framework that I found it really useful when hiring people. And that I stole from, from my first medium podcast. And, I forgot the name of the host. but, is the triangle of talents they call it. And it’s, I would say, like, it’s it’s pretty useful to understand, when you speak with, with a PPC manager, what you’re looking for. So they define as, each person inside an organization as a level. So we have level one that even if you tell them what to do, they rarely do it. So they’re not reliable. The level two is that they you tell them what to do and how to do it and when to do it, and they will get it done. So this is let’s say it’s a VA someone you can delegate admin stuff.

Stefano 00:42:38  So great for this kind of roles. And and then we have a level three, level four, level five. Obviously the higher the level, the more we will need to pay them, the more impact we need to give, the more impact they will pay. They will have on the business. And usually the higher the level, the more freedom and trust you need to give them. And what we like to suggest for a PPC manager is that you want to have at least a level free with the potential, as you said before, Josh, to go to level five. So with the potential to be a superstar in your business and you want to have, at least on the PPC side, someone who is a problem solver so they know you need to tell them what to do, but they are able to figure that out. The rest of the details, especially on the PPC side, you don’t want to have someone. You need to explain how to create campaigns or how to change the bids.

Stefano 00:43:26  Like you want someone who can figure it out like that is what I like to say. Like someone who can take ownership of the platform. And if you tell them what to do, they were able to do it, at least at that level. They are at a level above. Is the system a thinker where you tell them the problem, they set up the system to figure it out so people plot processes and they will be able to fix the problem. So the idea is that here you are still be the you’re still the one telling them what is wrong in the account, but they will be able to stop some system to make sure the problem is not happening anymore. And here you need the someone with a deep understanding of the platform, and also with a sense of ownership of the of of the marketing department. They understand that you’re giving them the trust and they can take action in the account. And the final one, the these are what we call a superstar. So these people, when I think about my team and I think about the superstar and you are shocked because you see, wow, these people really gave me back so much time.

Stefano 00:44:28  They improved the product. They improved the PPC. That was a much better job than me. So, we like to use this framework because during an interview I like to, to say, okay, I think this person is a person number level three. But he’s eager to learn and I think he can go to level four thanks to our training or thanks to our internal training. So this is a framework we like to use to define also where where I where our team members are and try to tell them, okay, I think if you want to go to to level five, this is what you should do. And I have so so yes fantastic framework.

Josh Hadley 00:45:06  I absolutely love that. And I think like those listening and watching like pay attention to that. Like it is true. And again go check out my hiring process. I have a seven step hiring process that we vet people through. And part of that is like understanding where at what level people are at. And I have very certain things that I have them do as part of the application process that allows me to peg them in terms of what level that they’re at.

Josh Hadley 00:45:36  so I think that is super, super important. Stefano, I’m curious about this question. Sourcing is always like one of the most difficult things. My recommendation for anybody ever hiring is you need to have at a minimum 1000 applicants, because if you don’t have 1000 applicants, I don’t think you found the the A level talent, the the diamond in the rough, so to speak. it it requires that level of volume. Some of my earlier mistakes in business were like, hey, I need a warm body tomorrow. So I list something on Upwork, and then I’m just like the first one. That applies with a good rate. All right, you get the job. Like, those are the worst mistakes I’ve ever made. Here’s the cadence that I’m seeing. Expect it to take at fastest, maybe 4 to 6 weeks at the longest. I mean longest, like maybe six months, maybe indefinitely. I don’t know, but, you know, on average, I think you’re looking at, like about two months to go.

Josh Hadley 00:46:38  Feel like to find a quality applicant, to vet them, to truly test them, to bring them in. Like you’re looking at a two month process. So a that means you need to be planning ahead. Be it also means you need to exercise some patience which entrepreneurs really struggle with. so Stefano but like the key thing is like, so how do I fill the top of my bucket? You talked about reaching out to people on LinkedIn. Have you seen anything else like are there good online groups or communities that you’ve you’ve found that have been good places to search for, or what would what’s your recommendation that way to get to a thousand applicants?

Stefano 00:47:18  Okay, I like the 1000 applicants. One metric that I check that I track personally is like how many course I have in my calendar with candidates, and I try to have a Wednesday afternoon only for hiring calls. So when I have a 15 minute call with the candidates and I try to budge them. All of them there. And, because I agree with you, you need the vote.

Stefano 00:47:40  I made that mistake so many times. But you just have a call with a candidate. You are excited. You are obviously like, we are all, optimistic. Maybe too much. So you take action fast because we like to take action fast. But after two weeks, I said maybe it wasn’t the right decision. I took action too fast and I’m not sure now. Like that happened to me so many times. so I like your approach. With 1000 applicants, I on my side, I check more than how many calls I’m having in my calendar, and I know that will tell me if I’m going to achieve my goals. And and I agree with you. Like, it takes time. Like it’s it’s it takes time to find the top talent. So that is something that, takes time and to find these people, like, this is what we do. So LinkedIn outreach by far still the best place. So cold messages, especially from the CEO profile. So if you’re the founder user, you’re you’re LinkedIn.

Stefano 00:48:39  And you can have your assistant to help you to send a massive amount of outreach here. And I would say, don’t do it with our agency, please, but go and check other agencies, find the people who are working on these agencies and maybe reach out to them. and that is one strategy. And another strategy is, online jobs. pH. pH. That is by one platform that we use at the beginning. And I see that I was getting quite a lot of applicants, and I found, one of my best team member, Genesis. And, he’s, he’s a rockstar. And I found him there, and he grew with us for the past four years. So online job pH. I would say, like, if you can find the communities that are training PPC and there are quite a few in Asia, there are quite a few in Europe as well. Go to the UN and you can find them in the Facebook communities. We have a list of this. And you usually set up a call with the owner and we ask them, hey, do you know anyone that would be interested? Most of the time they are interested because it is on their interest to make sure their their students are finding a job.

Stefano 00:49:50  So they’re trying to do their best to, to help us. The other one is agencies. I know that there are some agencies that are helping you, and to only if you hire PPC manager and you find a good one and you will need to pay. And I actually never use them, but I heard the really good things from our clients use them, some of them. And so this thing are the topic. I use a bit of Upwork, but I never found great success.

Outro 00:50:13  There.

Stefano 00:50:13  To be honest with you, Josh, I don’t know what is your experience with Upwork, but I always struggle.

Outro 00:50:18  And that on that platform.

Stefano 00:50:21  So these I would say like these are the top two that we use. So out outreach Communities reach out to the owners of the communities. And another big one is referrals. Like we give a good amount to our team members if they if they know someone else and if they refer us, someone else. So that is what we’ve seen is.

Outro 00:50:44  Working the best.

Josh Hadley 00:50:45  Love it. Yeah, I think those are great recommendations. Upwork has actually been a really good one for us. But here’s here’s the secret tip I would give you for Upwork. You don’t want people that have been on Upwork for a long time that have long like high reviews. They’ve made a lot of money on Upwork. You don’t want those guys what you’re looking for and you can do this. It’s called Rising Talent Select. I only want to look at rising talent, which means they’re new to the platform, which means this they’re either leaving some other job and they’re trying their hand at this whole gig, you know, work contract, work thing. So what we do is we find them, identify them, and then pull them off. So they’re never. They never actually begin an actual like true upward profile and never really actually start working there so that now they’re there just with us. And we spot really good talent that way. But we do not go through the proclaimed PPC experts that have thousands of reviews on Upwork.

Stefano 00:51:46  Yeah, yeah. And it’s funny you say that because, my first client, actually, I found it on Upwork and I was, without any reviews. So I was one of these guys, you know, at the beginning. And they found me on Upwork. Interesting. That’s. That’s funny. Yeah, I love that.

Josh Hadley 00:52:03  All right, Stefano, this has been awesome. I love to leave the audience with three actionable takeaways from every episode. Here are the three actionable takeaways. You let me know if I’m missing something. Number one, I would say your actionable takeaway is understand the importance of PPC in your business And put enough resources behind it to actually show that you you care and you understand the importance and gravity of it. For any Amazon, for anybody selling on the Amazon platform, Amazon ads will and and continues to be the biggest line item and expense. So don’t put your worst team members over there. Don’t put your cheapest team members over there. And also don’t neglect it. Understand that if you want to have success, even if you hate PPC and you don’t love data, blah blah blah.

Josh Hadley 00:52:58  It is so important that if you want to win, you’ve got to overcome that hurdle. And in the game of business, it’s all about just conquering different levels of the game, right? And so one of those hurdles you have to conquer if you’re going to have success on Amazon is PPC. And it’s got to be a core competency in your business. So that’s action item number one. Get that mindset straight. Action item number two is if you’re currently drowning in PPC and you don’t have a good process already in place, I would highly recommend going with an agency that has a good track record and go into that agency knowing that you’ve got somebody that you’re either hiring or soon to be that is going to train alongside them so that you can bring it in-house as your business continues to grow. And then my third and final action item is make hiring a core competency of your business. Because no matter if it’s PPC, if it’s supply chain sourcing, FBA, fee optimization, right, could be new product development.

Josh Hadley 00:54:05  If you bring in rock stars to those areas of your business, it can literally be game changing and allow you to build a massive moat around all of the overseas brands that are trying to knock you off and all. The only game that they know how to play is just hey, how low can my price be? Those brands are not going to survive. the low cost brands never stay alive long. And so your job is to maintain a moat of really, really good talent. And that also allows you to command a premium price in the market. That also allows you guess what that allows you to do with higher profitability. Go higher. Even better a players with better a players. It allows you to do bigger and better things, to grow your brand, to actually become a significant player in the marketplace. That’s how brands are becoming nine figure plus brands. That’s how brands are exiting for billions of dollars. That’s the playbook. Stefano, what else was amazing?

Stefano 00:55:03  That was amazing. I would maybe add one thing because, like, I know that most of the listeners, like we are all biased to action, mainly founders and entrepreneurs like we are.

Stefano 00:55:14  We want to take action fast. But, we like we. I made these mistakes so many times. And on the hiring side, I would take things slowly. So that is the last piece. Like if you have the hiring skill and you have a bit of patience to it, that is you will be what I call a beast after a while, because you can build a team that, it will be your biggest moat moat around your business. So. Yeah, but I love these three takeaways.

Josh Hadley 00:55:45  Awesome. All right, Stefano, my three final questions for you. Number one, what’s been the most influential book that you’ve read and why?

Stefano 00:55:56  Personally, I will say in the past I was smoking. I read a book, How to Stop Smoking If You Know How to Do It. That changed my life was four years ago. That changed my life because I stopped smoking thanks to that book and I started reading. So that gave me a that changed my behavior on okay, now I need to read because I know I can change my life by reading.

Stefano 00:56:17  And so that I will say personal. Professional. I would say, becomes so good they can’t ignore you. Like, that was one of my masters, like at the beginning of my journey when I was really struggling and they said, I really need to improve myself, I need to get better. And that was a really good one for me. So, Be so good. I can’t ignore you. I really like that too.

Josh Hadley 00:56:42  Awesome. Great recommendations. What’s your favorite AI tool that you’ve been using? And if it’s ChatGPT, what’s your favorite prompt?

Stefano 00:56:52  right now internally we are using, a lot of Manus, Manus AI to develop a first MVP. I highly suggest that this tool is so powerful. And when we create a simple MVP with Manus, for example, let’s say we want to create a Chrome extension to simplify a process. After we take this concept and we put it on lovable. So lovable. This platform where you can develop a front end software mainly, and you can build a front end software to quickly save time to your team.

Stefano 00:57:24  Like we build a tool that saves like around ten hours a week for our team members. For us. For us was massive. So if you combine tools together, you can really build cool stuff. So highly suggest AI and lovable.

Josh Hadley 00:57:37  Yeah, that’s a great recommendation. All right, final question. Who is somebody that you admire or respect the most in the e-commerce space that other people should be following?

Stefano 00:57:46  And why I say buy. And when I started my journey, like to learn PPC the most. There was a this person that no one was watching. I was watching all his YouTube videos. He had like 20 views on YouTube, Dr. Ellis, and he’s he’s really knowledgeable, but he’s not really into social media. So, if you go under at that bill, or at least he is really good and he really knows his stuff. And I highly suggest to check. Check him out.

Josh Hadley 00:58:23  Awesome. Great recommendation as well. Stefano, this has been a lot of fun.

Josh Hadley 00:58:28  I think you have some other info to share with the the audience. Tell us about Nomadz and what can you do to help?

Stefano 00:58:36  Yeah. So, if you need help to build an Amazon PPC department in-house or you want to outsource your Amazon VPC, feel free to contact us at Amazon.com. We will do a free audit. We will be super transparent and honest with you on if we can help or not. And what is the best solution for you?

Josh Hadley 00:58:53  Love it. All right Stefano. Well, thank you again for your time today.

Stefano 00:58:57  Thank you. Josh, it was a pleasure. Thank you so much.

Outro 00:58:59  Thank you for listening. Visit Ecomm Breakthrough Comm for more information. If you’ve enjoyed today’s episode, the best way you can show your appreciation is by clicking the subscribe button and quickly leaving a review. See you again next time!