Today’s guest is someone who’s on the cutting edge of Amazon growth strategy and tech innovation. I’m thrilled to welcome Jonathan “Jon” Tilley, the CEO and Co-Founder of ZonGuru—a powerful, AI-powered software suite built by Amazon sellers for Amazon sellers.

With over a decade of experience in branding, digital strategy, and now SaaS leadership, Jon has helped thousands of serious sellers optimize their listings, scale profitably, and build businesses that last. Under his leadership, ZonGuru has grown into a globally trusted toolset, known for being Amazon Rufus-optimized, data-driven, and designed to boost revenue and conversion.

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

In this episode of the Ecomm Breakthrough Podcast, host Josh Hadley interviews Jon Tilley, CEO of ZonGuru. They discuss how AI-driven search engines like Amazon’s Rufus are transforming e-commerce. Jon explains the importance of structuring product listings with new schema standards and focusing on brand storytelling to connect emotionally with customers. The conversation covers optimizing for AI algorithms, leveraging social platforms for visibility, and preparing for conversational commerce. Jon also shares practical tips and tools for sellers to future-proof their businesses in an AI-powered marketplace, emphasizing adaptability, authenticity, and deep customer understanding.

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

Special Mention(s):

Related Episode(s):

Sponsor for this episode…

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.

If you’ve hit a plateau and want to know the next steps to take your business to the next level, then go to www.EcommBreakthrough.com (that’s Ecomm with two M’s) to learn more.

Jon Tilley 00:00:00  At the very heart of that. I think it’s truly understanding how to technically structure your listings for these new intelligent algorithms. And there is a very specific schema that you should be applying to your listings, whether it’s on Amazon or whether it’s on Shopify or where else you are. you know that schema? The good thing about it is it is evolving around what that schema looks like and what influences that those algorithms. But, there is a lot of similarities in terms of the schema across the different platforms. So that I would say is is number one.

MC 00:00:38  Welcome to the Econ 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 00:00:52  Do you want to know what the future holds for the future of e-commerce and agent ecommerce? Or do you want to know how to stay ranked and relevant on Amazon as SEO dies and AI engine optimization takes over. Well, today’s guest has built Zone Guru to help sellers like you do exactly that.

Josh Hadley 00:01:11  Welcome to the Econ Breakthrough Podcast. I’m your host, Josh Hadley. I scaled my own brand from 0 to 8 figures in sales, and now my mission is to take it to over nine figures on my journey to nine figures, I bring you unfiltered conversations with some of the smartest minds in eCommerce. Past guests include Kevin King, Michael E Gerber, author of The Myth, and Matt Clark from ASM. Today’s guest is someone who’s on the cutting edge of Amazon growth strategy and tech innovation. I’m thrilled to welcome Jon Tilley, the CEO and co-founder of Zone Guru, a powerful AI powered software suite built by Amazon sellers for Amazon sellers. With over a decade of experience in branding, digital strategy and now SaaS leadership. Jon has helped thousands of Sirius sellers optimize their listings, scale profitably, and build businesses that last. Under his leadership, guru has grown into a globally trusted toolset. Known for being Amazon, Rufus optimized, data driven and designed to boost revenue and conversion. With that introduction, welcome to the show, Jon.

Jon Tilley 00:02:18  Hey what’s up Josh? Good to be here. And, dude, that’s a serious, skill set you got there. And, the introduction. Very, very cool. I can’t do that, that’s for sure.

Josh Hadley 00:02:29  Well, I appreciate it. And, hey, it’s easy for me to talk about all the accomplishments of other people, so, it’s just always good to hear about yourself. But, Jon, I’m excited to have you on the show today because you were, like, you were immediately close to, like, what is happening on Amazon and Rufus and what’s happening and evolving on the AI commerce side of things. And I think we are in for massive disruption over the next few years. we’ve seen how much AI has already changed the world over the last few years that it’s been out, and I can only imagine what things look like 3 to 5 years from now in the e-commerce space. So maybe that’s where I would love to start with you is look into your crystal ball. What do you see happening? What does e-commerce look like 3 to 5 years from now?

Jon Tilley 00:03:21  I don’t think we need to worry about 3 to 5 years from now.

Jon Tilley 00:03:23  I think we need to worry about the next six months and see, see what happens, right? Because it’s moving so fast. But, yeah, I mean, you know, you know, maybe, you know, you get those unpopular opinions, right? I would say right now, you know, almost the home page of Amazon doesn’t matter anymore, right? AI is is really the new homepage. You know, initial touch points for, for customers looking for products. Right. and whether that, you know, is, is engaging with Rufus or with the AI, that is really, a critical step in, in the user journey that has to be considered. and, getting the visibility and, and the position in that and, and structuring things in the right way for these new intelligent algorithms is a massive opportunity and something that’s going to be disrupted, ongoing for the next little while.

Josh Hadley 00:04:19  Yeah. No, I completely agree. So with that being said, Jon, like, what are you encouraging sellers to do that you talk to? Like how how should they be positioning themselves now knowing that things are going to evolve dramatically and quickly over the next months to years?

Jon Tilley 00:04:37  Yeah, it’s an interesting question.

Jon Tilley 00:04:39  And I think there’s so much that can be tackled, around that I would say at the very heart of that, I think it’s truly understanding how to technically structure your listings for these new intelligent algorithms. and there is a very specific schema that you should be applying to your listings, whether it’s on Amazon or whether it’s on Shopify or wherever else you are. you know that schema. The good thing about it is it is evolving around what that schema looks like and what influences that those algorithms. But, there is a lot of similarities in terms of the schema across the different platforms. So that I would say is, is number one. Number two, there is a strong optimistic part around it in that, you know, you again, have a better opportunity of being able to showcase your brand, your USP, your product differentiator. you can start to speak more to that. part of it, because the AI algorithms are intelligent enough to map you to the relevant keyword. So gone is this idea of having to have an ingredient based listing that’s keyword stuffed.

Jon Tilley 00:05:50  and that era is for sure. Gone. and now it’s more about how do I really position my, my, my communication or my brand and product differentiation in a way that connects better with customers and leaning into that, which is awesome for us as brands. Right? and so if you technically understand how you should structure your listings and then you can lean into this idea of like, how do I really communicate my product differentiation and how to better connect with the emotional side of customers? You’re going to be in a really strong place. and AI can help you to get there in a better way because it’s so good at deep research as well. So very cool stuff there.

Josh Hadley 00:06:32  You know, Jon, as you touch on that, I think one of the significant things that you touched on, which is you got to know your customer and ideally you need to have a brand message, right? Or are you just hawking products on Amazon? And I think that’s what’s going to evolve Probably the most is those commodity products that don’t have a brand that don’t.

Josh Hadley 00:06:54  That aren’t really differentiated. They don’t target a specific customer and serve them. I think those are the types of brands, or lack thereof, that are really going to be challenged over the next few years. As things continue to evolve, whereas the people that lean into a brand message and that know their customer and their ideal customer profile, their ICP, right, they will be the ones that are able to take advantage and be poised for success and growth as things continue to evolve. One of the things, though, that I would call out, Jon, is a lot of people think that like, hey, from day one, I need to know exactly the mission and the the vision for my brand and what I’ve come to learn. And even speaking with a lot of other brand owners is that if if you don’t currently have a brand message, like it kind of evolves over time and over time. If you’re looking at your data, you’re going to identify what are the types of products people are buying, and then what’s the subsequent products that they’re buying from me.

Josh Hadley 00:08:01  And as you lean into like understanding who’s purchasing your products, you could then come out with a better like brand mission and story. And the reason I say that is because most, most brand messages, almost like they stumble into it over time and they figure it out over time. It’s it’s not something set in day one. And I’ll give you two examples. Number one, you have like poppy soda, right. Poppy soda went in all in on a single brand message. And this is who we are. These are our values. And we’re going to we’re going to, like, crush it or we’re going to die trying like they were force feeding. Like, this is our mission, right? On the opposite side, you have like a nine figure e-commerce brand in, simple modern right? That sells a lot of kind of drink ware, cups, mugs, etc.. Simple. Modern was started by three three guys and their initial approach to simple modern was not like, hey, let’s go serve the 25 to 45 year old woman.

Josh Hadley 00:09:04  It was as they launched products they began to see like, oh, this, this is who’s gravitating towards our products now. They like these type of design colors. So we’re going to come out with more of them. And oh by the way now they’re looking for stuff for their kids. So their brand message evolved over time. And now they’re really leaning into like who their their ideal customer persona is and speaking to that ideal target customer. And so that’s all I would say to like the listeners is like, hey, you may already have like a dedicated mission that you’re after. And if that’s great, similar to Pop Soda, that’s fantastic. Like keep keep running with it. If you’ve kind of launched a lot of maybe like non congruent products on Amazon and you just have like a hodgepodge of stuff on there. Well now it’s time to lean into like what are people buying who seems to be like the consistent consumer so that you can lean into that and actually create your listings that are tailored to that ideal customer persona.

Josh Hadley 00:10:05  Because if you don’t, it sounds like that’s where you’re going to get beat as AI evolves. Would you agree with that statement, Jon, or how would you approach that?

Jon Tilley 00:10:14  Yes. So I would agree with that. I think, you know, the if we if we just look at Amazon as a platform in the history of it for, for a second, you know, when Amazon’s launched this platform and came about in the last let’s just say 20 years, right. It’s given us as individuals, basically a platform that’s allowed us to compete against some of the biggest brands in the world. Right. And how we competed, you know, was was obviously optimizing and, and, you know, getting as much visibility as as these other products. but also we we researched against that. Where are the product opportunity insights, right. Like, what’s the trend that’s happening in the space? Can we launch something quicker than other brands get some traction. Those are like product based businesses, right. That did really well on Amazon.

Jon Tilley 00:11:02  and what we’ve said over the years like, hey, this is great. You’ve got a leg up and you’ve you have a product, but you haven’t created a true e-commerce brand. Right. And we’ve been saying that I’m sure you’ve been saying that. And we’ve all been saying that for years. Like, this is your opportunity not just to be a product that gets sold on Amazon, but to truly become an e-commerce brand. How do you do that? Well, you know, again, it’s leaning into the idea of, you know, understanding your target audience, investing time into truly understanding them. What what makes them tick, what’s the emotional side of it? How do I truly understand what I’m trying to solve for, and then come up with a creative way to connect with them in a better way? What’s happening now with AI is we’re almost getting a bigger leg up on. How do we how do we use, you know, how do we use AI in an intelligent way to get those deeper insights that we might be missing, or that only bigger brands like Coca-Cola could do with like massive budgets and big research? You know, teams right now we we have those tools on, on, on the surface where we can do deeper research and figure out interesting ways to, to angle, you know, to create angles around our product that could give us a leg up in the marketplace and connect better with customers.

Jon Tilley 00:12:14  So those things, when you go back to some of those brands you talked about, maybe they ran into that opportunity through luck, right? And they just nailed something. Right. And they kind of evolved in that. Or maybe they did have an intelligent way of repositioning their products, right? And or positioning their product. That gave them an opportunity in the market, like like puppy soda. Right. but now with, you know, the ability to access AI, you can get that deep research. You can connect on that better way and you can, you know, get visibility on Amazon. But you can you can start to create like a true brand and a position in the marketplace. that takes that factors in a lot of deep research that you couldn’t have done before.

Josh Hadley 00:12:58  Jon, I love that. So talk to me more about like, what are those tools that you kind of reference? Like, hey, now with AI you do have tools and data at your fingertips that at, you know, five years ago, only big brands like Coca-Cola could have access to to get really, really dialed in on who that target customer is.

Josh Hadley 00:13:18  What are like what are the tools you’re recommending, like sellers use and like, what data are they dumping into those tools, and how are they building and getting to know their customer through these AI algorithms?

Jon Tilley 00:13:31  Yeah, I want to I want to answer that piece, but I want to preface that first with saying, you know, the the, the beauty of AI is like the strategic input that you give into it. The better that is, the better output you’re going to get. It’s purely a tool at the end of the day, right? So you’ve got to be really careful about how do you figure out the strategic input that you want to put into AI or the system or the tool that you use to get the right output? Right. And so one of the most important factors is not the tool that you use, but how do you structure the strategy around what you’re going to put into this AI platform or tool that you’ve got? And, you know, we’ve had some really good results of late because we are thinking about the strategy of what we’re trying to get at the end of the day from AI and really thinking about how to input that in the right way to get the best results.

Jon Tilley 00:14:22  So, for example, you know, we think about an Amazon communication or an Amazon listing about figuring out what we almost call the sweet spot, right? Which is this the sweet spot between truly understanding customer sentiments, what our customers care about truly understanding a brand’s USP and how they are differentiated and their tone. And who are they as a brand. and then, the third one, what are all competitors talking about? Right. What are the commonalities that they are talking about on there? And if we can truly understand those three areas and pull that information from AI and do deep research on that, bring those together and then do deep research on what that sweet spot is. We then just start to surface something that’s unique, that we can then apply to a listing and really stand out and communicate and connect with customers and everything. Right? But if we don’t do that hard thinking up front, which can be assisted by AI, if we don’t do that, then we’re not going to get the output that we need from AI, right? so I want to preface that and say like, you know, this is not this is not we’ve seen these themes over the years.

Jon Tilley 00:15:27  This is not like, hey, this is a shortcut. And and, you know, it’s a quick fix and we can just use AI and get the results, like the true experienced thinking that comes from the human aspect of us being subject matter experts is more critical than ever. Right. So this is your second piece. You know, the types of tools that we’re using is, you know, you can there’s going to be off the shelf products. And certainly it’s worth looking at. We’ve chosen to build them ourselves. Right. So we have a genetic platforms that we’ve built with multi agents in platforms like ND, n you know, to, to, to pull in all of the data that we need, whether it’s, you know, AI agents that go and do some research for us, you know, on the web or wherever it is, or on Amazon listings or whether it’s first party data that we pull or agents to build on top of agents, like we built a multi-agent, a genetic model, that has all of these multiple agents that work together to collectively solve on a problem.

Jon Tilley 00:16:30  And we’ve chosen to go that route because at the end of the day, we’re a technology company. And if we’re not on the cutting edge of that. We’re screwed. Right? So, So that’s what we do, is we we we’ve we’ve built all of these ourselves and and, Yeah, it’s changed for sure. The dynamic of of our, our engineering team and how we work and, and you know, every engineer is now, you know for sure an AI expert and, and has to be using, you know, AI in the right way because the pace that we move at is phenomenal compared to where it was. Right, I think I think a couple of weeks ago someone was like, yeah, we we’re using the system, but that’s out of date. You know, this was released two months ago. It’s like, that’s the pace that we have to be there right now, right?

Josh Hadley 00:17:14  Yeah. It’s, it’s not easy being in the SaaS space right now. Jon, you talked about this, but there’s like a specific schema that Amazon’s going to be looking for.

Josh Hadley 00:17:24  And even other AI search engines like OpenAI. What’s the schema that you’re recommending? And maybe like your tools help support Amazon sellers so that somebody’s listening to this. It’s like, hey, this is the scheme I would recommend for your titles, for your bullets and your descriptions right now. What is that?

Jon Tilley 00:17:45  Yeah, it’s a good question. And where where Amazon is in in this application of this new AI algorithmic technology versus other platforms like ChatGPT perplexity Gemini, you know, is is a conversation in itself, right? notoriously, you know, Amazon is a technology company, but it’s notoriously pretty slow in keeping up with, with, you know, some of the things that are happening in the technology space. In this case, they have to they have to move a lot quicker. So I think that’s that’s worth discussing. but what we’re also seeing is the, similarities in terms of the schema on, on Amazon and other platforms specifically related to these AI platforms and how they read and map you for, for.

Jon Tilley 00:18:34  For the conversations that are happening out there. Right. And I think at a high level, A9 is what we know on Amazon, right. That that is really about intent based keywords, right. And, you know, creating a listing that is almost an ingredients based listing of different keywords, exact match, broad match, synonyms that Amazon and prioritizing how you would place that in your listing title bullets description back in search terms. And they’re having a pretty straightforward, you know, archaic style algorithm that would find those keywords. And depending on where it is in your listing, give it more relevance. And if you had conversions come off of that, giving it more juice towards the algorithm. Right. that is now shifting to, to, you know, both on Amazon and other platforms of this, this AI, a more intelligent algorithm that is being built that can read your listings almost as a knowledge graph, right? It can understand like you know, what is your content talking, talking about. And then based on certain technical mapping then say, okay, well, we can now match you to the universe of keywords, conversations, you know, intent based keywords or experience based conversations and map you to the relevancy of that universe and make sure that you’re being visible where we’re where it’s going to make Amazon more money, or these other platforms give you more visibility, right? So that’s the shift of what’s happening.

Jon Tilley 00:20:04  And Amazon solutions, that is called Cosmo, which is like the technical mapping of your listings. And then obviously Rufus, which is the answer engine, you know, you know, chat interface that you can have. Right. And we know today, like there’s one use case I can go to ChatGPT and I can say, hey, tell me how to find, you know, tell me, you know, I’m looking for a I had knee surgery. I’m looking for the best knee knee brace. Can you tell me what I should be looking for and blah blah blah. And you have this ongoing conversation. It comes back. It gives you recommendations that ask you questions. You go back and you work on it and you find something you like, and then you probably jump on to Amazon and you keyword search that. You find it and you buy it, right. Like that’s kind of the general use case that happens today. That’s going to evolve very quickly. Because obviously, you know Amazon is now a chatbot is launching their the, the instant e-commerce, you know, platform right where you can you can buy products directly in those conversations on ChatGPT perplexities coming out of the two.

Jon Tilley 00:21:07  and then on Amazon, you have Rufus, which is supposed to be the similar thing where you can have these conversations back and forth. Right. And so Amazon has to keep up in that front. And so if they don’t give you a similar kind of experience to where everyone’s getting a better experience on chat, you see they’re going to be left behind. So they have to move really quickly. And part of that is a schema mapping that needs to happen, around your listing so that that AI intelligence, you know, can can give you visibility in the right way, both on questions, answers, you know, reviews, schematic, mapping. Right. So I just want to kind of explain the broader picture of what’s happening. You know, and I think that’s going to evolve a lot more on Amazon, where the search experience is fundamentally going to change and be more reliant on this conversational way of, of, of, of talking with Amazon, which, is left to be desired at the moment with Rufus, but it’s going to have to move pretty quickly.

Jon Tilley 00:22:01  Yeah. so that’s, that’s a general I, I, you know, I can talk, you know, I’ll give you a chance to respond there. But, you know, I know I haven’t talked specifically to the schema so I can talk more to that in a second, but yeah.

Josh Hadley 00:22:13  Yeah. No, I love that. And I think that’s the interesting thing is you’ve got multiple AI platforms that you almost need to optimize for, right? You’re saying that you’re seeing similar patterns, but between open AI you’ve got perplexity. You then have, you know Rufus as well. And Cosmo, that you’re the you know, Amazon seems like a little outdated, almost behind the curve a little bit. So with that being said, Jon, if knowing that’s the landscape, what are the what’s the schema you would recommend our listeners implement into their listings saying, hey, this is going to be the best way for me to be the most optimized I feel like I can be until there’s further clarification, just so that I do show up, whether it be an open AI or perplexity, or in an Amazon AI search.

Jon Tilley 00:23:02  Yeah. so you’re optimizing used to optimize for the Serp, right? The search engine position. Right. And now you’re almost optimizing for the answer. Right? So, you know, what does that mean? I think on the schema side, there’s a thing called semantic triples, right? Which, is present on what? To back it up for a second. Amazon released the white paper, you know, a while back for Cosmo mapping and technical mapping, which is like they gave you like a table and they said, hey, if you can map your content for function for use case for experience, you know, they gave you all of these kind of technical areas, like if you can make sure that you cover these areas in your copy, therefore, Cosmo can map to that and then map you to to the relevant keywords in the universe that’s out there. So they’ve given, you know, a basic understanding of what they are technically looking for in the listings, right? Great for us. We can take that and we can technically map on our end.

Jon Tilley 00:24:00  and what they’re talk about there is like and this is also presence on, on other AI platforms is like, semantic triples, right. So, you know, it’s it’s technically it’s almost like, there’s objects, there’s experiences, there’s intent. and if you write your sentences in a way that can match that triple. Right. And this is Kobe as well, which is like, I buy this product with this product, I buy coffee with beans, right? Or coffee with cups and that kind of stuff. So there’s, there’s there’s the, the, the Kobe, mapping, which is important for Amazon because they make more money off of you. So having Kobe experiences on there is important because then it can actually say, okay, this coffee and and and beans are things that we can recommend together on Rufus and that kind of side. And then there’s the triples of, of stretching your sentences in a way that works with the technical, triples that are out there. And if you structure your listings in that way, you know, again, it will give you the visibility you need.

Jon Tilley 00:25:05  so that’s number one. Number two, that allows you if you follow that structure and you map it in the right way, which AI is very good at doing for you. Right. the other piece is then you can write your bullets in a way that is more, benefit feature related experience. Related. Hey, I’m using this at weddings or these things or, you know, kind of allowing you to be a little bit more free with how you write your copy. and not just, intent based ingredients lists. Right. So you can then write from your brand perspective. So those those are ways that you really need to focus your copy around Amazon. And then now with regards to title and and you know how to write those. Yes. It should be shorter and it should be more, you know, not not keyword stuff etc.. But where we take an opinion right now is that we still lean more into the A9 way of, of structuring titles, which, you know, at least at a high level, making sure that we are, you know, broad matching.

Jon Tilley 00:26:10  There’s probably 1 or 2 exact keywords that you would match on, which is your main by keywords, because people are still intent based searching on Amazon probably in the majority of way, but making sure that we’ve got that relevancy of broad matching for your topic, relevant keywords is still critical, right? Because we’re we’re still leaning into like Amazon hasn’t fully shifted to this new way. There’s still this A9 aspect of it, and no one’s exactly 100% clear. So we’re future proofing by saying, hey, we’re still matching in a in a strong way for, you know, your most relevant keywords in a broad match way. But then we’re layering on this technical mapping, that is needed within your listing content. So, it’s not. And then one other thing I would say is, is an executive summary, probably in your first bullet or up front in your listing really just kind of stretching like, hey, what are you really about? is is important and that’s really good off of Amazon as well. Like AI is looking for like an exact summary in your, in your, you know, your Shopify listing etc. like, hey, give me, give me the, give me the 101 straight up front.

Jon Tilley 00:27:12  Right. What makes you what what are you who are you? What makes you unique? Get that upfront as much as possible. so yeah, those are, those are some critical things that are on listings. We haven’t talked about images. And that’s another big piece in your ABC content. But content wise and your listings, we’re seeing we have a new tool called Cosmos Transformation Service that does this right. And what we’re seeing from from launching these listings into the Amazon world is, you know, keyword ranking and indexing is, is, is staying as is or getting better, which is great. But what we’re seeing is the conversion rate of listings is going is going up. and mainly that is because AI is doing such a better job at truly understanding how to connect with customers, surfacing the best way to position your product and communicate in a way that connects emotionally with customers and that improves the conversion rate, which helps you on rank and everything else as well, which is which is pretty awesome. So, you know that that’s what we’re seeing from from doing the content piece outside of images.

Josh Hadley 00:28:18  Is it the fact that your the the content from even the images and the bullets in the title? It’s more kind of like solution oriented. It’s like, hey, we know you have this problem. This is why we’re the solution. Is that more of like what it’s leaning towards because you talked about that. Like instead of just optimizing for keywords, it’s like you’re optimizing towards like the solution. Like people have this question, you’re optimizing towards the solution. Is that what you’re finding through all of this is that it’s more like talk to them about why this is the solution to this, this, this and that problem or what what are you seeing on that side? Like what changes did you see in the images that made it different? Was it more lifestyle images or what?

Jon Tilley 00:29:09  Yeah. So so you’re optimizing for the answers right. And what are those answers. It is it is the practicality of the product and what the product can solve for, but is also understanding the emotional aspects of of the, the customer and answering those.

Jon Tilley 00:29:25  Right. And those sometimes are more subtle or hard to find. Right? So, we give an example on this, on this, new product that we’ve developed right where we give you, we show you an example that we’ve optimized. Right. And we took an automated cat feeder, which, you know, is a dry food product that, you know, gives us certain portions of products in a, in a timely manner during the day. Right. But what the research started to show is that there’s an anxiety that customers have around, like, are they feeding their the animals on time? Are they giving them too much food? How do we portion control? What happens if I’m out working for two days and I can’t do it? How do I feel like this thing’s taken care of of of my cat, right. So tapping into the the emotional anxiety part of it and how you can position those future benefits. But wrapped up in this idea of like, hey, we understand your problem as a human and a cat lover and a mom of this cat.

Jon Tilley 00:30:24  And don’t worry, we got you. And this is why we got you. That is what makes the huge difference in terms of conversion, because they’re like, oh, this is speaking to me from me as the target audience. Yes, I understand it can be programmable and I can do portion control, but it’s not a word in a way where it’s like, hey, we understand your anxiety, we’re solving it. Don’t worry. We got your we got you here. So, so you love it. And if you can connect on that level, they’re like, oh, I’m buying this over that. No problem. Right. So so that’s one of the biggest differences that we’re seeing around how you wrap those benefits from truly understanding your target audience at a better way. now how we do that, and this is the cool part of again, going back to this idea of like, you know, you can use AI to do a lot of that deep research, but you know, how how do we strategically think about how to use AI.

Jon Tilley 00:31:13  What we’ve done in our system and how we build it is yeah, we use AI and first party data and we pull it all together. But in our process, we give the brand owner the opportunity to weigh in and input data into, into our model. Right. So, there’s a brand intake process that goes in where you can strategically talk about your brand and what matters. There’s, there’s a there’s a product summary, features, benefits, what to say, what not to say. There’s these ways that we’re using AI to to surface that data, but then give the brand owner the opportunity to input into that because they know the brand best. Right. And how much input that then influences the output of the AI. So we’re, we’re we’re tapping into AI, but we’re also giving the, the human, the brand expert the opportunity to weigh into that and influence that AI intelligent being that’s created like we have an, you know, an agent that is there just to understand your brand and every nuance of their brand.

Jon Tilley 00:32:08  It’s going to understand quite a lot from the space and from your listings and everything else, but giving the opportunity for the brand owner to to input into that is critical. Right. So we do that as part of our step as well.

Josh Hadley 00:32:19  Fantastic. Love that. What a great idea. Great tool as well. so Jon, I’m also curious to as e-commerce evolves into agent ecommerce, what does that look like? How do you increase your search ability or your discoverability? Right. How do you make sure that in open AI or perplexity, when somebody is having a question and they’re trying to find a product, how do you make sure, like your products a indexed that open AI or perplexity or even Amazon has you like, crawled enough to be able to serve you up? I’ve also heard of like, well, make sure you get into like Reddit forums because, you know, perplexity gets a lot of info from, from Reddit. So make sure you’re diving deep there, even like Wikipedia, right? Make sure you’re talking about your products there on Wikipedia.

Josh Hadley 00:33:12  So give me your take. Like how would you recommend people like just start bringing awareness. So like right now if you’re just on Amazon, how does OpenAI know how to recommend you?

Jon Tilley 00:33:27  Yeah. So I think the first piece I’d say there is like as a brand owner, I would I would be thinking about how to how to get more visible with, with these AI platforms, which, you know, you’ve just asked and we can we can answer. But I would also say the inherent way of how to get more visibility there is to is to gain use AI in a way that can you can do deeper research on your product, how to differentiate, communicate that and connect with your with your audience. Right. You just mentioned earlier again like some of those unique and we’ve seen in history like that guy was so smart. How do they position their water in a way that just completely took the market by storm, right. or whatever it is. you have that opportunity now. So if you lean into that and if you get that right, that’s ultimately going to give you more visibility through virality and everything, which will give you more, more visibility in those platforms.

Jon Tilley 00:34:20  Right? So don’t discount that piece of how you can use AI to get deeper and to think of different ways and creative ways that you can communicate and, and, and, you know, communicating a natural product to the world. on the second piece, which is like, how do you get more visibility with, with, AI platforms, open AI, etc.? you know, the schema is critical. So, you know, making sure that schema is, is matched up on Amazon and other platforms is important. And the other piece is going to be about, conversations in communities. Right. And so you talked about that. And I think we know that AI is AI, but AI is only as good as its input. Right. And if it’s not getting an input from the source, which is like what the conversation is happening in the community. It’s not going to have as much of a good output. And that’s why things like Reddit, you know, YouTube, etc. are so critical. and other platforms are so critical for, for exposure and then and then visibility in this AI platform.

Jon Tilley 00:35:23  So as a brand owner, I would lean into those and use AI to make sure that you can get exposure in all those platforms. So and that’s easier now than ever. Right. So how do you use the efficiencies of AI to, you know, up your posts on LinkedIn? You know. you know, you know, how do you get into Reddit, YouTube, like, you know, putting up, you know, videos around your content on YouTube, you know, Instagram, etc.. These are, these are. I think the more you can have a presence in social conversations, the more you can have it. I’m sure TikTok is going to be a play, a big part of that as well, right? So, Just kidding. You know, I think Alex was right. Which is which? You know, he’s he’s one of the most important sales guys or voices in our space, right? You know, he’s a saying like, hey, like, at the end of the day, if you can turn your, you know, your your exposure, if you’re doing one post a day or one post a week on Instagram, if you update to ten post, there’s a there’s a correlation between that and how much exposure you’re going to get and how many sales are you going to make, right? So AI is very good at helping you with efficiencies and, and and getting more, more data out there.

Jon Tilley 00:36:36  Right. So yeah, I would use that to get more exposure.

Josh Hadley 00:36:39  Yeah. Fantastic. And here’s what I see happening, Jon, is like, I think the social commerce world and the Atlantic commerce world are going to collide. And they really mash together really, really well because I think that Agent Commerce is like it’s it’s crawling everything. Somehow it’s going to crawl Facebook groups and Instagram and YouTube content and Reddit forums And everything. Right? And then it’s going to like, be it’s just listening for everything that’s out there. So you’re right, the more content that you put out there or the more creators, the more affiliates that you have talking about your product or service and reviews and their experience with it, I think then like get you in the know for these AI algorithms to be able to recommend you. Right. And so I think like, yeah, all the effort you put for that I love the like. Alex Hormozi ten x like don’t just do one post a day. Do ten posts a day, see what happens.

Jon Tilley 00:37:39  Yeah. And I think, you know, the piece of advice I just put out there and put it out there to myself as well, right with our business is like, you can do that, but don’t lose the human essence of who you are as a brand and and that you bring that to these platforms. Right? If you if you replace that with AI. Right. I think you’re going to you’re going to lose, visibility in these marketplaces, and you’re not going to be as valued like in all this noise that’s happening. People who are ultimately are consumers at this point, they’re not here. But yet as much as it might be down the road. But people right now are looking for, you know, authentic content, right? And so, yes, you can use AI to get that out there, but you can’t lose your authentic authenticity of who you are. And you need to lean into that more. Right? So as a brand owner, you ultimately have to up your game.

Jon Tilley 00:38:32  On being the subject matter experts on being that authentic true source and then using that to expose yourself across that. If you’re just going to lean into like, hey, I’m going to write and use that and use AI to write the whole thing. You know, you’re going to you’re not going to get the visibility to, I’m going to go into YouTube and just post a bunch of AI videos. You know, you’re going to you’re going to lose visibility. So you’ve got to whatever that stick is for you lean into that. It’s the creativity of humans that is going to surface at the end of the day, right? Like we’ve seen it right now with our newsletter, like we’ve leaned more into our newsletter than we have ever in the past, because people are looking for content that is curated from a subject matter expert and not just like blasted AI stuff that I’m getting all day out into my newsfeed or into my into my inbox. Right. And so, the opportunity out of all of this is to surface yourself as a is a much bigger, authentic human who’s a true subject matter experts.

Jon Tilley 00:39:29  And if you can own that, you’re going to make a big difference in this space.

Josh Hadley 00:39:33  Yeah. It’s interesting. There was a study done that, they had humans like, read AI written content and then human written content, and they said, like 80% of humans were able to, like, sniff it out, like it lacked some emotional pull within them that they’re like, this seems ai written. And so I do agree with you. I think, like in the future, the biggest differentiation is going to be like your human involvement, right? As everybody is like all on the AI bandwagon, but like, who’s actually communicating, who’s building connections with people? I think that goes over really far a long way in that new world that we’re living in. Jon, what else? Is there anything else that we haven’t touched on today that you feel like our audience and listeners need to understand?

Jon Tilley 00:40:18  Yeah, I mean, I think we haven’t talked too much about it, but but it is such a critical part, and probably even more critical is your images and your carousel and your ABC content on Amazon, and using that same kind of deep research, and we do it as part of this cosmos transformation, we serve as insights onto what should your image be? What should the narrative be told across your image? Carousel set? What should be the primary message that you should communicate in each of these images? you know, and that just again, is so critical for conversion and how you, again, emotionally connect with, with customers.

Jon Tilley 00:40:53  So your content is important, but your images are more important, probably in terms of helping with their conversion. And AI does a really good job. And the research or the tool that we’ve built does a really good job of surfacing those insights and helping you to, to to, you know, separate yourself the forest from the trees and to be able to look at this and say, hey, what should I actually be communicating as my core message across my images? And we actually give you, we’re not we’re not by far recommending using AI as a, as a creative solution to put into your images. you know, we still lean on creative experts and graphic designers, but, you know, we create a creative brief that is all the information that and insights that a creative person needs to be able to execute and make your final images. And so with all that hard work or that some of that talent that might be missed when they’re not strategically thinking about how to how to create the messages around your brand.

Jon Tilley 00:41:48  We’re solving that with with our output on, on on this cosmic transformation service. and then importantly, you know what? Your narrative is told across the carousel on your ABC. But how you, what content copy you put into your images that’s read by AI and images is critical and alt text on the back end, like these are all things that are important and are going to evolve. And I would say down the road, you know, you know, how you the, the big play in, in the AI space is, is this, structural metadata behind images that tells the AI, hey, what is the context of this image? You know, I’m looking at a, at a landscape of New York City, right? Like that’s a picture. But like, there’s a thousand years of history that culminated in that image. Right. And and that’s all built into the metadata behind that teaches the AI around what the skyline of New York means. Right. And so there’s going to be parallels between that and like, what structure you can put into your images on Amazon and other platforms that can help to give AI the context around that.

Jon Tilley 00:42:52  Right. And I think that’s going to be a really critical play. in the future as Amazon catches up. Around that. So not only structurally on the front end and what’s being told and how to read that, but the deep research and metadata on the back end is going to become an area of of blue sky that we can play in in the future, for sure.

Josh Hadley 00:43:12  Are fantastic insights with that. Suffice it to say, we’ve got our work cut out for us. It requires a little bit more work and effort to understand your customer, what their pain points are, and to be able to properly communicate that to them. but those are going to be the brands that survive. this is where these are going to be the hard things that you have to figure out right now, but that will allow you to survive in the future. So, Jon, as we begin to wrap things up, I’d love to leave the audience with three actionable takeaways from every episode. Here are the actionable takeaways that I noted.

Josh Hadley 00:43:47  Number one, I think that focusing on your brand mission and honing in on whatever your brand mission and your statements are is one of the most important things that you can do, starting right now. Because if you begin leaning into your brand messaging, it’s going to allow you to a understand who your customer is so that you can identify what their pain points are, so that you can then curate all of your product listings, your images, to be able to speak to that customer. In addition to that, as you look at launching new products, if you know what your mission is for your brand, you could then be purposeful with your new product launches instead of being product first, which a lot of us on Amazon that we just hey, here’s an opportunity, keyword opportunity. we’re going to go into this product niche, right? Instead of leaning that way, I think what’s going to be required is to lean into like an actual customer avatar and specific suite of products that you’re serving them with in their journey as a customer.

Josh Hadley 00:44:53  That’s also going to be a timeless e-commerce principle to, if you want to have success off of Amazon, created a real Shopify brand, like you’re going to need a customer lifetime value. So like, you’re not going to make all your money on the front end sale of a $20 product, right? You’re going to need to be able to nurture them and and help them progress in whatever that journey is that they are on. So that’s action item number one. Action item number two is I would recommend anybody that’s not done this yet, but go request access to those programs in perplexity and open AI to be a registered brand when they begin opening those things up. So if you’re not, like, be at the cutting edge as soon as OpenAI begins letting brands in and scrolling your feed and get that set up, I think you’re going to have first mover advantages here, just like we all wish we could go back into Amazon circa 2010 and sell back then. I think that the same thing is about to happen with OpenAI and with perplexity, and where a genetic commerce takes us.

Josh Hadley 00:45:56  So be on the cutting edge of that. And as soon as open AI actually releases that, and you actually see brands and transactions happening there, make sure you’re one of the first ones there. My third and final action item for our listeners is to begin preparing your listings and to utilize some of the tools that you had mentioned. Jon, you guys have a lot of them there at Zen Guru to analyze your images, analyze your listing, get feedback, and begin kind of like tailoring your bullet point your images to be AI optimized, right? It’s the AI engine optimization so that you show up in the right place at the right time, especially as Rufus and Cosmo and all of these platforms evolve. You want to be doing the best things now to set yourself up for success. Jon, those are my three action items. Anything you feel like I missed?

Jon Tilley 00:46:51  No, I think those are good. And I think it’s, you know, on the last one, I think even on your Amazon side, outside of, you know, registering with, with these, these AI shopping platforms, you know, and you’ve got your Walmart, your Shopify, you’ve got to be schematically structured.

Jon Tilley 00:47:04  But, you know, I truly believe that if you schematically structure your listings correctly on Amazon, you are going to get more visibility on these on the organic results of these, you know, AI platforms like perplexity, ChatGPT, etc.. Right? Because objectively, those platforms have to give an experience to give you the plethora of recommendations or products, right? Whether they are incentivized through their instant shopping cart, integrations or not, they have to give the right experience to customers. And that inherently means Amazon listings need to have visibility there. Right. And so and your Shopify outside of just the integration. So future proofing your listings by making sure that the schema matches what is needed on Amazon for the AR algorithm, but also for these other platforms, is something that you need to do now. For sure.

Josh Hadley 00:47:57  Love it. Well said Jon, as we wrap things up, I’d love to ask every guest the following three questions. So first of all, what’s been the most influential book that you’ve read and why?

Jon Tilley 00:48:06  Oh, I think the latest one that’s been really good for me is ten is better than two.

Jon Tilley 00:48:13  you know, that book is so critical for for brand owners, for founders and and thinking bigger than you are. but in the right way. Right. So, you know, if you can start to build in tactics and strategies into a business that are aligned with you being ten exercise that you are, you ultimately will get growth. you might not ten x, but you are not too x your four x or five x, right? And I think that’s been a really critical, book for me. And it’s very short and worth reading. So I would, I would say that. Yeah.

Josh Hadley 00:48:47  That’s a great book. And Benjamin Hardy, he’s the author, came out with also a new book, Science of Scaling, another really, really good one that will entirely shift your paradigm of understanding how to scale and grow your business. So great recommendation there. All right. Next question. What is your favorite AI tool that you’ve been using and how have you been using it?

Jon Tilley 00:49:10  yeah. Interesting question.

Jon Tilley 00:49:12  actually the one that I’ve been playing around with just this week is one called Raycast or Raycast. However, you said with the accidents. funny enough, it’s it’s a, it’s a product developed out of Bulgaria, which is where our engineering team is based. We have a we have a company in Bulgaria that is longer in Bulgaria. and it’s a Bulgarian based technology. and really it’s a, it’s a operating system for, for AI. So, you know, you can have it on, on MacBook or, windows, And it ultimately is just like this. This dashboard way of using a bunch of AI tools and surfacing everything you do into one kind of dashboard, visual screen, and a pretty interesting hard work. So, instead of me having a bunch of apps that are open, I’ve just had one and, and I’m working straight off of that. So that’s the one I’m, I’m focusing on right now, which is interesting.

Josh Hadley 00:50:06  Interesting. I have not heard of that one before. What’s your best use case of like how it’s helped you the most?

Jon Tilley 00:50:13  I think just, one efficient dashboard that I can look at, and instead of having different apps open, it’s surfaces there, and, it will remind me of things that I need to do.

Jon Tilley 00:50:23  So it’s just a much more intelligent dashboard that you have on your screen. So I think I think that’s it’s one place to look at and, and, where everything comes together. Yeah.

Josh Hadley 00:50:33  Fascinating. Very exciting. Just looking at that now. 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 and why?

Jon Tilley 00:50:44  I mentioned him earlier. Alex Hormozi, I think. I think, you know, he’s he’s obviously very sales driven, but I think as a founder of any business, you know, you can be creating products and product differentiation, but if you don’t have strong sales skills, you are falling short of what you can achieve. and inherently I think everyone has that. But, sales is really just about energy and, and attitude and, it takes confidence. Right. And I think, he’s very good at it, at helping you develop that skill set. and, you know, worthwhile. He’s got I mean, you know, he’s podcast, YouTube, you know, you can find him anywhere, but, Instagram, I think even just his highlights that he has is really interesting and significant.

Jon Tilley 00:51:32  So, crazy guy, but, but definitely puts a lot into it. So. So check him out.

Josh Hadley 00:51:39  Yeah. Awesome recommendation there as well. Jon, this has been a fantastic episode. If people want to follow you, they want to learn more about the Zen Guru tools. Where’s the best place for people to go?

Jon Tilley 00:51:50  yeah. You can go to com and right on that home page, you’ll, you’ll see that Cosmos Transformation service, and you can kind of find out more about what that’s about or just sign up for our tool sets. you can get me on LinkedIn. I think it’s my handles. Jon Tilley. Jon. No, h t I l e you know, I post a lot on there. and, you know, you can email me as well. Jon. It’s on google.com and, we can connect there as well. So happy to connect on all those fronts.

Josh Hadley 00:52:21  Awesome. Jon, it’s been a pleasure having you on the show.

Jon Tilley 00:52:24  Thanks, Josh. That was awesome.

MC 00:52:25  Appreciate it. 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!