Rolando Rosas 4:14
Oops, let me try. Let me try it. There you go. Hey, there we go.
Josh Hadley 4:20
You got the audio or I got it.
Rolando Rosas 4:21
I got it. I got him to work.
Josh Hadley 4:24
About Rolando has his own podcast that we recorded an episode last week I was like, I was in the reverse side. I was the guest there and that I told you Rolando, I love the sound effects that you have going on in your podcast.
Rolando Rosas 4:37
You know what I’m here to you know what, go get a stream deck, go get it and call me and I’ll help you set it up because it took me a while I left it in the box for quite some time before I actually started using because I was a little intimidated. I’m not an AV guy or anything like that. But you know, like alright, let me add 123 And I was like, oh, and now I’ve got a couple of those buttons.
Josh Hadley 5:00
I love it. I love it. Well, Rolando, I’m super excited to have you on this podcast. And why don’t you give people just kind of a quick journey, you’ve been doing a lot in entrepreneurship, we could probably spend the entire episode just talking about your entrepreneurial journey. But talk to us most specifically about your journey selling on Amazon. When did you get started? And, you know, how did it get to where you are today?
Rolando Rosas 5:26
Well, let me let me take you back to when I started before Amazon, it was 2002. They weren’t the add to cart and buy, we had the throw things on a website, where you actually call the call the phone, or you sent us a fax. And then we took your credit card over the phone or looked at it on the fax machine, and then sent you the product. And I kind of backed into that by accident, you know, I didn’t, couldn’t be like you said, in 2002, I started but I got let go for my job. And when the telecom bust happened, and by sheer coincidence, I still had a bunch of boxes left over my garage. And I had to customers that wanted some. Okay, instead of throwing them in a landfill because that’s what I want to do after you get fired, you know, you feel bitter, you feel angry? Why would you want to keep that crap around? So I wanted to light it up in a bonfire. And if it’s, it was, luckily, this customer said, you know, I should add anymore. And I thought, Hmm, maybe I have a business here. So the journey started with our own website, way before Amazon, then another 10 years later, we jumped into Amazon since 2013. And, you know, the first year was awful. We only made $10,000. That’s on from a scale perspective, that was nothing. But it was a smallest channel at the time, we thought, yeah, maybe we may dump this programmer or not. The second year, we thought, okay, let’s look at this differently. It’s not like our own webstore. It’s not like running Google ads. It’s not like nothing like that. So once we did that, we made that pivot sales started going up. And instead of making 10,000, that year, I made 10,000, the first month and year number two, and then the no 20 and then 50. And it just kept climbing and then six figures within a month and then mid six figures. And then it just kept growing, the more we started adding the playbook to what Amazon needed for us to go rather than than the old playbook, which was from our website and using Google ads from that time period.
Josh Hadley 7:33
Interesting. Tell me a little bit more about the difference, right where you were selling products on your own e commerce website. And then Amazon was kind of a different animal, so to speak, what were those differences in tell us more about the strategies you were employing to generate sales on your own e-comm website, versus the strategies that you needed to start implementing in order to succeed on Amazon because they are definitely different beasts,
Rolando Rosas 8:00
you have to look at Amazon like an intent platform. When you’re searching on Google, there’s a wild variation of intent from simply just finding out if this product exists, too. I’ve got my credit card ready, or my wallet ready to buy today at this moment in Amazon has a lot more of folks that are closer to that other side of the spectrum, their middle of the funnel, kind of I’m intending to buy two all the way I’m going to buy right now. And I needed my Nana, there are folks doing research, and there are folks doing just browsing around. But we’ve found especially more lately, that mid to bottom funnel customer is fully on board with the Amazon ecosystem and going after those and then it’s kind of I wouldn’t have known that back then. But once we started changing the keywords, the title, the description to fit more of that that persona of that person that has a higher intent to buy versus browse, that made the world a difference.
Josh Hadley 9:08
Yeah, I would echo everything that you just talked about. Amazon definitely has a whole different feature or use of keywords than what you’re going to be utilizing on Google right Google, you’re definitely people are more browsing, exploring, researching. But on Amazon, people come in with very longtail keywords, right that are like, absolutely need a, you know, I need a basketball that’s yellow and green and size seven for toddlers. Right? Right. You’re gonna get stuff like that on Amazon, whereas on Google, that’s definitely more of a rarity,
Rolando Rosas 9:44
right? And then Google everybody in their grandmother’s searching, but when it comes to Amazon, because if we think about the office space for a moment, mid mid level, business, even small and large enterprise, the profile of the person in our life In a business, that is going to be looking that’s actually doing the looking. And buying actually is different than the, the the on Google side where the looking and buying may get done by a different person within the office, a person that has different responsibility versus that person that’s doing the exact same function. But on Amazon.
Josh Hadley 10:21
Interesting. Yeah. So also the your target audience, right, that you’re trying to speak to is going to be very different. Those are some awesome key points that you’ve highlighted there. So Rolando, you are in the kind of electronic space on Amazon, is that that’s right. That’s right. So I would assume that comes with its own complications, there’s been a lot of overseas competitors, that have recently been kicked off the entire Amazon. Oh, yeah. You know, one question I have for you, in the electronic space is a very competitive marketplace, you’ve got a lot of overseas competitors, that can make these things really cheaply. And then they’re going to just, you know, really lower the entire prices of the marketplace. Overall, they just continue to drop price over and over again. So how do you stay relevant with maintaining a good, you know, profit margin in a very competitive and saturated category?
Rolando Rosas 11:19
You know, you’re you’re talking the language of CPG, when you’re talking about that, and every prior to doing e commerce, I knew nothing. I didn’t know anything about cards and PPC, I didn’t know any of that stuff. I worked for Marlboro, or the parent company, Altria, they sell premium products that just like Unilever, and Procter and Gamble, you’re gonna pay for tide, tides, the premium product you want, maybe not like tired, but still within that family, you’re gonna buy the stuff at the bottom shelf at the supermarket, right, the no frills brand, or the private label brand that they have at the store. There’s always room for premium. And let’s call it generics. Just to keep it simple. I like playing in the premium side of things because there’s more money, there’s potential for higher cells, and the customer isn’t as price sensitive. There’s price sensitivity, but maybe not as much. Yeah. So what pool Do you want to play in the one that has more cash, like the big CPG companies do? And you know, all right, you need the no frills, we got that too. And so from a Strategy perspective, when you’re talking about Chinese sellers, there’s the impounds of the world. And I wouldn’t call anchor and like impel but anchor is a Chinese brand. It’s an American, that that’s got all of their offices in China. It’s hard to compete, but there’s always something that they’re missing. In it’s your mission as an entrepreneur to find out whether it’s candles, or electronics, or of other goods that are being sold, what are they missing? Well, they don’t have a silver colored one or a globe, gold plated one in once you find that out, start there. But I would say even before that, make sure that you jump into Amazon, knowing something about the product rather than going on Alibaba because some influencer told you do so are going to Helium 10. Because an influencer told you to start there on your search and your journey. Don’t do that. That’s the fast way to crash and burn because Amazon is not passive. And it’s not for the weak. Right? I’m sure you’d agree with that, Josh.
Josh Hadley 13:37
Oh, that 100% true statement. I think we’ve all seen the Facebook ads, the YouTube ads, the Tick Tock ads of everybody that says I can I print $1,000 Every night while I sleep. Because while I sell on Amazon, just go to Alibaba find this and slap your name on it. And bam, you’re printing money passively. And it’s like, Oh, that is so they’re selling
Rolando Rosas 14:00
a course at the other day those people are they’re interested in selling the course. And my interest is to let people know, you can be on Amazon, you can sell you can have it print money for you. But it won’t be because you’re laying down somewhere every single day on an island in the Caribbean and not touching your computer. That’s not a reality. That is totally not reality, especially early on. You will be grinding if you want to like it’s just like a rocket they spent a lot of fuel getting off the launchpad and a lot less one there in space. It’s the same way on Amazon a lot of fuel a ton of energy as soon as you start maybe that first second or even third year, but after that it starts getting maybe just a little easier than just a little easier. You round out a team member you bring in somebody else you outsource this you all you start understanding the different scenarios and pillars that you need to be successful in the platform. arm, and then maybe the printing machine starts rolling a little faster, right? Rather than normal back here, Josh, I’m gonna go back on that couch. I’m gonna just let it fly for a couple of weeks without checking in on what’s going on. Totally, totally not. I want to see something else you asked me about Chinese sellers, competitors electronics, the other thing that a lot of people have a misconception that you cannot be a drop shipper on Amazon that it doesn’t work. And I just want to clarify that because A, we resell electronics, and B, we also have our private label. But in order to be successful, a both or either one of them, you have to understand the dynamics that are going on on Amazon, you can’t drop ship from Walmart, to an Amazon customer, you can’t scale you can have 1000 skews and not have a good management system for it for receiving orders and for your suppliers to ship them out. If you don’t have those things, as a drop shipper, you will fail. If on the other hand, you want to do your own private label thing, you have to know how can I eke out something within that platform to compete against either the Chinese brands that are maybe more direct, or another incumbent that’s really big, bloated, and is really not paying attention to the marketplace. And so, whatever side of the spectrum you want, you have to know understand, understand those dynamics. Otherwise, you’ll sit on inventory that will not move anywhere.
Josh Hadley 16:29
Yeah, totally agree. And those are some great ideas for anybody that’s into the dropshipping world, I have no experience with that. So Rolando is your man, if you’re in let’s rock
Rolando Rosas 16:40
I’ve been I’ve got a lot of bruises, over 20 years of doing that. And you can do it, you can totally do it, you just have to know how to do it efficiently and correct. Otherwise, you will crash and burn.
Josh Hadley 16:53
So Rolando, I want to take us back to what you talked about earlier, if you have a lot of overseas competitors, that the only thing that they know how to do to compete on is price, you talked about creating that premium brand, what goes into the creation of the premium brand to where somebody is willing to pay even double the price for your product, compared to the cheapest alternative from another competitor,
Rolando Rosas 17:18
the easiest thing you could do right now today to test that theory is look at your main image and look at your competitors main image. And what you’re going to find is that there are some some items that look a lot alike, right, you know, you know, an orange ball, it looks like this, or other orange ball looks like the other inch ball. But you know what, what if I took that orange bowl, ball ba L L and made it bigger, so it occupied more of the space. And you could see the grain on the ball, when it comes to search. And it’s a nice clean image of that orange ball, you’re gonna be like, Wow, I could see the individual, if it’s leather, I’m just leather, grain and all that stuff, those little details, the Chinese sellers may or may not be doing that your competition may or may not be doing that. The other thing you could do is take that main image and create a 3d render. If you don’t have, you know, access to photography equipment, the technology right now for 3d rendering of images wasn’t what it was 344345 years ago, it’s much easier, much easier for somebody you to source somebody and they create a beautiful 3d rendering of your image. And that’s also going to stand out more versus your competition to guarantee not a lot of them are doing that today. But it’s out there. And it’s a lot cheaper than it used to be.
Josh Hadley 18:44
Interesting. Interesting. What else? So are there any other listing optimization, I guess, strategies or tactics that you’ve been able to implement that allow you to separate yourself in terms of being a premium brand? Yes.
Rolando Rosas 18:57
Customers want to know that you’re active on that platform, that you’re just not a seller that just got a listing a few pictures and a video to see if you have engagement in the way of questions and answers, which are on the product listing and you respond to those with text and video. You’re building trust and confidence for your brand in a way that I guarantee you the competition doesn’t really focus on because it’s just seen as Yeah, just some questions. Yeah, just you know, we just kind of respond to it whenever we get to it. But Amazon takes that very seriously those words on that q&a, those good index, and those can help you rank better, just from one thing. The second is the customer itself. They know this seller is active and they’re responding. And then that leads into if you’re a smaller brand, I’m going to try it, see how it goes. And I know from my own buying be havior there’s stuff that I buy on Amazon all the time. I’ve never heard of the brand. But it worked. Because I’m looking at not just the reviews by see, okay, 50 questions answered. Yeah. Okay. So either that impression. I mean, it’s gotta be important. Think about this for a second, Amazon places things at the top, because they view them as important because they have seen the metrics and probably a heat map that shows where customers hover, where they’re spending dwell time. So if that is important to be at the very top, then there’s something in there, whether it’s psychological, quantitatively that you can measure or has an influence on the purchase. So if that’s the case, I want to pay attention to it. Yeah.
Josh Hadley 20:45
No, that makes a lot of sense. And I think that’s a wicked smart Strategy. You just barely slipped the these two things in here. But there’s two wicked smart strategies that you shared, Rolando, that I want to call out, number one, that is the fact that the answers the question, as well as your answer those keywords there get indexed on Amazon. And so you know, the Strategy here is if you’re playing in a, in a space where, you know, you can’t use certain terms, maybe it’s, you know, I think the term we used prior to hitting this podcast recording was the CBD, mine, the CBD, CBD, right? You can’t use that in your listing. But if you have a customer that asked that question, well, guess what, now you’re going to start ranking for CBD. There’s another a couple other keywords that
Rolando Rosas 21:38
I mean, not in the supplement space. But I guarantee you there’s a bunch of prohibited words you cannot use on the listing. Amazon will shut it down. But it’s totally kosher. To put those as part of the question, for example, use CBD. So if you have a supplement, and somebody wants to know, does this have CBD in the main ingredients or ingredients? That can be a question that is legit. You can respond saying, No, my supplement does not contain x in in this case, it’s CBD. Or I think the other one that got a lot of tension was just there was this this like, not jinxing, but this kind of energy? Or that a federal? No, we cannot put a Phaedra in our supplement. totally kosher? Because you’re responding to that question. And you’re saying Nope, we don’t use a federal we don’t use CBD. And you know, people look for those keywords, even though they’re prohibited. People are still searching for those keywords on the platform.
Josh Hadley 22:46
Yep. And it’s also a really good way for people to ask questions, including your competitors, brand names. So if you want to try to rank like for your competitors, brand name terms, such as, hey, how does this compare to the Melissa and Doug? toy set? Right? Yeah. How does the quality compare to x brand name?
Rolando Rosas 23:10
Right? I wouldn’t I would liken that to i for us would be iPhone. Because if you put iPhone in the title to so much drama that goes on with iPhone or iPad as a term Apple best totally legit for electronics miss it is a question. Right? Yep. Oh, I love that. I love that. Wait a minute, hold up a second. Give that a clap.
Josh Hadley 23:32
There you go. Love it. Love it. All right, Rolando. The other wicked smart Strategy that you shared in there is that you’re responding to these questions with videos, not just the you know, hey, let me give you my copy and paste statement here that I normally do for all of our FAQs. Tell me what impact have you seen videos do to that FAQ section.
Rolando Rosas 24:00
Wow, we so we tried this. And when we first started with video on a product that was not a best seller for us, it was in the top 10 or so we put in like eight video responses to eight different questions and just watched it. Now. Nothing happened overnight, like boom, like, but what we saw was a slow burn more and more every week. So we went from, let’s say 50 units a week to 52 then 52 to 55. And now 60 And now 64. So it’s cumulative, right? And that’s what you want it because that’s more sustainable. Now when you’re at these higher levels of selling you as a seller can also sustain that better than if overnight it tripled. Now you’re in a world of hurt. Maybe your supplier can’t keep up maybe you can’t get it in fast enough. And now you’re out of stock right in which is also bad. I heard. Stephen Pope had a really good one on this one. Rule number one, never run out of stock. Rule number two, check rule number one. Right? So true. So if it all of a sudden, and sometimes that happens, right? I’ve heard people say I had an influencer, help us win. Overnight, we sold, you know, 100%. More, that’s great. As long as you have stock, yeah, we’re not a stock, you lose all that momentum. And I was talking to somebody at Amazon. And I asked him, I said, so what happens when go out a second, here’s what they told me, the more competitive your category, the less likely when you come back into stock, that you’re gonna go right back into your BSR position, essentially, your ranking, the less competitive, the, the quicker, they will put you back, because there’s not a good substitute that was the word used. So if you’re in the candle space, right, just, there’s a bazillion people and seller selling that image a little bit longer for you to get back to the original position and ranking like you were before velocity. But if you got, I don’t know, handcrafted, made in Africa, no elephant and we didn’t kill and it’s such a niche. Again, I don’t know the candle space. So just making this hypothetic. But you’ve got a niche, you know, that is that is very few competitors, you’re gonna pop up much easier. So never run out of stock. So but But getting back to your question, make gateway. So we were able to see this product start moving better and better. And I think we’re now like five months since we started that. And we’re at a much higher level of better velocity, but our run rate since implementing that, and we did not change anything else. And then we then started supplementing that with better secondary images. And that also helped kick in the net new gear, more like have a premium look like as if you’re, you know, you know, more earthy tones, we found out Mason nugget, we did a couple of tests using Amazon post chi, and we took products, and we put them in environment, like a lifestyle image. And we found a pattern that kept holding, there was a certain type of lifestyle image. If you incorporated these elements, it got more clicks. So then after a while, I said to my team, take images that we know on Amazon posted gets more clicks, start creating secondary images that have some of those elements. And guess what? It’s working in the products where we’ve done that, we’ve been able to see better click through rates and better conversions.
Josh Hadley 27:41
Fascinating. Why do you think that customer engagement has has helped you said that you did nothing else you added in secondary images later. But you first were replying to Q and A’s with just videos. And you believe that that’s what started ramping up your sales? Why do you believe that’s the case?
Rolando Rosas 28:02
Well, one, the numbers tell us that. So the data, the data is telling us that Sessions went up, we see the unit session, which is what Amazon measures kind of their conversion number that went up. And so after like month number three, a my person that orders our stuff for this particular line said, What are you guys doing? I’m ordering more. And I knew we were onto something because I didn’t tell her what we’re doing. She didn’t know. And so I said, it’s working. So my people telling me that this product, they’re having to order more than a business like I had, I can’t believe I ordered just a month ago, we normally good for two to three months. I said, Okay, let me tell you why. And what oh, she was like, okay, so we had to ramp up our buying of that particular product line in order to keep it in stock. So that’s how I know it was working. And then we added secondary images. And then we started adding a plus content and proving that to give using a plus premium. So a few other things now that we know that at least at the fundamental level, the video and engagement piece is there, we start adding all these other elements to try to see if we can increase sales.
Josh Hadley 29:15
Amazing. I love that. All right, Rolando, there’s another really wicked smart Strategy that I want you to share with our audience that you shared with me prior to hitting the record button. And this is your amazing PPC Strategy that I have never heard anybody else talk about this other than yourself. Everybody’s always heard of day parting. Right. And that’s kind of the new hot PPC term. But this isn’t day parting. This is something I think even more intelligent than what day parting is. So I’ve laid out the red carpet for you there Rolando give us the gold nugget
Rolando Rosas 29:51
yet, right. So day parting is just simply ad scheduling, you know run up an ad on a schedule. Nothing new there, but What if Chad? Chad, I was just talking to Chad? What if Josh, we could map or have ads show up? When we have our ideal customers on Amazon? How can we do that? Can we pull it off? And can we save money? While we’re doing it? That’s really what we wanted to find out. Turns out, there is a way to do it not easy, not clean. But there was. So we went in pulled data from our orders for 12 months. And we used seller labs, product that they have or service that’s called Data Hub. And it pulled in all that data, right? It’s our own data. So we didn’t have to do all these crazy reports from Amazon pulled it all in. Once they pulled that in. I said, Wait a minute, guys. I’m not a mathematician here. This is a spreadsheet with a bunch of numbers, can we do something better? So then we put together something that everybody could easily use in the organization, we put together a heat map, so that you can visually see the data. And you know, dark green means good, red is bad. And guess what we found golden hours every day of the week. Also golden months. Also, patterns within those months, for example, summertime for our products, which are mostly office related products after 4pm. On a Friday, we’ve virtually had no orders on the summer months. So if I’m a betting man, why would I run PPC after 4pm? If we’re not getting any orders. Another one was when on the weekends, you hear people say this all the time. And now that I have the data for our stuff. I know it’s totally wrong. You got to run ads on Saturday and Sunday, because people browse Saturday and Sunday and buy on Monday. The evidence does not hold that up in our case, because in our case, most of our activity, nearly 85 to 90% of the purchases came Monday through Friday. So if I’m advertising, why would I want to focus on that five to 10% Doesn’t make sense, it’s not going to move the needle, let’s focus on that 85 to 90%, that can it can move the needle and dump money into that. And now, for the last 90 120 days that we’ve been doing it, we’ve been able to improve our tacos, we’ve been able to improve our sales with the ad spend that we were using, we’re also able to improve the organic. So in all three metrics, the intelligent way of using ADS throughout the day is better than blanketing that money every single day of the week. That just doesn’t make sense.
Josh Hadley 32:57
One thing as you talked about that Rolando, I think one of the key metrics that you could start tracking is almost like, what is your tacos? At a daily basis? What’s my tacos on Monday, compared to tacos on Friday? Right? What’s my tacos on Saturday and Sunday. And probably even though you’re going to spend less money on Saturday and Sunday, and I’d be curious to hear you know, if you have data or you know, even just ballpark of what that data might have been. My hypothesis is that on Saturday, Sunday, you’re spending less but also there’s a lot fewer orders happening. So your tacos actually be a lot higher. On Monday or Saturday and Sunday, the row
Rolando Rosas 33:41
as was really bad on the weekend, I gotta tell you, so it was double up. Sorry. So it was be the reverse. So row as was half. So let’s just use round numbers. If our row S was 10, Monday through Friday, it was five on the weekends. Right. So again, another reason why the weekends were so bad. And I just gotta believe that the customer, they again, get back to our discussion about intent platform, the customer on the weekends, maybe has lower intent, maybe they’re browsing more, and the ones on the weak days, which are probably our more ideal customers or those that are closer to the bottom of the funnel that are ready to hit Add to Cart are probably shopping Monday through Friday versus Saturday and Sunday
Josh Hadley 34:33
and specific days. specific days and then specific times of the day. Correct. So right so you kind of layered in day parting to an extent on right so
Rolando Rosas 34:44
most most of the partying stuff right now we’ll just let you turn it on and off you know for a certain time, so 3am no reason for us to be be the late night show at 3am and get clicks. We saw too few orders. You know at those extreme times are their opportune. I just heard somebody say something the other day that I think we can try for those hours that you’re not advertising on. So let’s, let’s just say we do Monday through Friday 12 to 5pm, and just 12 to five, all those other hours, we’ll run a low bid Strategy to try to see if we can get some of those clicks going into that. And I haven’t tried it yet. But this person said, he heard me talk about day parting a couple of weeks ago, and it worked for him. And then he tried this low bid Strategy in the off hours, as we’ll call it, that’s working for him too. So I haven’t tried it. But I heard somebody else say, this is something they’ve augmented with something that talked about recently.
Josh Hadley 35:45
Fascinating. So with that, then if you’re trying to advertise between the hours of like 12, and five, are you juicing up your top of search adjustment for those specific times of day? And then my follow up question to that would be, how are you doing that? Because that sounds like it’d be a very manual effort. Do you have software that automating this,
Rolando Rosas 36:08
the you know, it’s manual right now. And basically, because it’s there, we’re trying to find a formula, you know, a plus b equals c, right? And it doesn’t work that way, very cleanly, right? So to get it to scale, you really need to find shortcuts. So one of the shortcuts is we have things in the portfolio side, right? So we can group things together, these are these group of products. And when we look at that, oh, yeah, this one has 20 ROI, versus this group of products. Now we have a much more an easier way to get at trying to manage that. versus, you know, I have a phrase campaign, I have a broad match campaign. And then if you’re looking at Seller Central, or some software, you know, you get a list of 100 campaigns, Oh, crap, which one’s important, which ones not to bring it to portfolios was a really smart way to do it? Yeah. Regardless if it’s broad match, and exact and all the rest. That’s that’s kind of the shorthand that we’ve been using in order to get at trying to manage multiple campaigns.
Josh Hadley 37:13
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Now, one thing before we kind of wrap everything up, one thing I wanted to touch on, you talked about feeding all of your data into the seller labs, Data Hub. Yep. Is there any other ways that you’re using that data intelligently, for your business? And is that something that you would recommend other sellers do and you know, for somebody that isn’t a data nerd and doesn’t geek out on data? Would that still be a useful tool for them? And what type of insights could they find?
Rolando Rosas 37:46
So, yeah, you’re gonna have your own data in Google Sheets, so you can play with it, massage it, turn it upside down. And if you are a data geek, or you have some of those on your team, they’re gonna love it. I heard the other day, some folks like better aggregators that are trying to do all this stuff like that, that that helps them too. So they have a lot of data geeks. And if you’re on the other side of the spectrum, and you’re the business owner, or you’re somebody that’s maybe not a data nerd, you can get from them something like templates. So they just feeds into a template. And then your data is there and populated. And you’ll be able to see it in you know, you want it like almost like a QuickBooks style manner where you’re looking at profit and loss. It makes sense. You’re looking at PPC, it makes sense. You want the heatmap it makes sense. So whether you’re a data nerd, or you’re on the other side of the spectrum, like I am, and you’re not as much of a data nerd, you’re like, Okay, now it makes sense, because I visually see it rather than just long columns of data. So I wouldn’t be intimidated. If you use templates mean, if that’s what they’re there for, to try to make your life easier. So you can get other data. Yeah, I think they do a bunch. I mean, we have we’re only scratching the surface with this. And I think, Josh moving forward, data science, data analytics, and artificial intelligence is what’s going to lead the way for his Amazon sellers. Without those three things. You’re going to be stuck in where we were maybe four years ago, you’ve got to have those three. That’s part of the playbook. Yeah,
Josh Hadley 39:26
I completely agree. I think that the AI data science being able to sift through all of the data that Amazon is giving you, it’s very rare to attend any presentation at any conference and hear somebody say, hey, so pull up this report, this report this report, do these manipulations and outcomes this miraculous, you know, picture of data that is sharing actionable insights, that you can really move the needle on in your business, but if you can help out team that does that. You’re Want to just start running circles around the other sellers that are paying attention to their data?
Rolando Rosas 40:06
Right? Don’t tell it. It’s a firehose right now and it’s been getting bigger and bigger. I would say for the last 12 months, it seems like every week or every other week, there’s something new, whether it’s a report or some visibility into other metrics that we didn’t have before. And if you’re not prepared, think about it. Well, I don’t know if you said it, or somebody sent it to me the other day, we’re in the Google Ads phase of when Amazon is letting these metrics today, Google ads is complex there. You can need a Google specialist or somebody that’s focused in on the Google ads and knows how to use it. Well, because so many metrics, Amazon is that inning number one, when it comes to metrics, and I know they’ve hired a lot of Google people to be in their advertising department cuz they want to get their where they can get their platform to have all these metrics, like Google goes today.
Josh Hadley 40:59
Yep. That is what we talked about last week.
Rolando Rosas 41:03
You’re right. You’re right.
Josh Hadley 41:05
All right, Rolando. As we wrap things up, I love to leave our audience and listeners with three actionable takeaways from each episode. Here are the three actionable takeaways that I’ve noted Rolando, let me know if you think I’m missing something. Okay. But number one is adjusting and tweaking and refining your main image, in order to be seen as a more premium option in the marketplace. This is easy, low hanging fruit, to where you just need to evaluate what is the competition look like, most of them all look the exact same. So go do something a little bit different. And, and a good way to do this is go look at the premium brands that are out there, go to you know, Tiffany Co, go to a Louis Vuitton and Gucci and look at the images that they create for their products, and take, you know, take what’s working for them and apply it into your own product. So I’d be action item number one, action item number two, is if you’re not already doing this, go ahead and be more diligent at responding to the customer questions that come through. That’s number one. Number two, if you’re already doing that, start testing out by replying to those questions with videos. I think we also talked about this last week in your podcast, where the video takes up even more space than what is taken up just with a simple text reply. So now you’re talking about taking up even more page space, which is why people do digital bundles on Amazon. And everybody’s talking about how do I occupy more real estate, adding videos to that q&a section pushes your competitors further away.
Rolando Rosas 42:50
Right? Amazon’s a game of Monopoly, you know, you got to own more digital real estate and videos and all these other things we talked about will help you take up more pieces the board and take them off, take the competitors off the board, so to speak. That’s what you want to do with that.
Josh Hadley 43:08
I love that analogy. I love that. And then last but not least with that Strategy is start juicing some of the keywords that you can add into those questions and answers, right? So is are there any prohibited terms that you can include in your listing? But it’s totally within the TOS of Amazon? To have a customer ask that question. And for you to answer that question with that keyword. You could do the same thing with brand terms if you’re trying to rank for a branded search term. So there’s some golden nuggets there. Take action on that. Last but not least, the third actionable takeaway. And I’m going to kind of roll this up into one big one. But it’s start analyzing your data. And if you’re not currently doing that, use tools such as Power BI, or use, you know, seller labs, Data Hub, and start looking at the data. Then if you want to take things to the next level, do what Rolando talked about and create a heat map. When are your customers purchasing? What times of the day? What the days of the week are those orders coming through? Then go ahead and layer on your ad spend over those different times of day days of the week? And then calculate what is your return on adspend during the each of those different days and times, right, then you can become more intelligent turning on and off your ads at specific times, and even specific days of the week. So Rolando,
Rolando Rosas 44:37
I would say there that for those people that are doing that. You feel a little afraid about making changes to your ads. Take one campaign or two campaigns and do that with see what happens let it ride for a few weeks or a month or two. And you’ll have more confidence about rolling it out because that’s what we ended up doing ultimate. Let’s do this with a handful of campaigns out of like almost 100 that we’re running, what happens then. And then, over time, we migrated almost all of our campaigns over to this intelligent ad scheduling.
Josh Hadley 45:09
Awesome. That is good input and good advice for our listeners, start small. With all of these strategies, you don’t have to go redo all of your main images start with one SKU, right? You don’t have to do all the Q and A’s start with one SKU focus on it, see what happens. Look at the data. Use all of those data points that Rolando previously talked about that will tell you yes, this is working. Or it’s not Rolando, this has been an amazing conversation. I’ve enjoyed it. I’ve learned a lot.
Rolando Rosas 45:41
I love to ask for you hold up. A There we go, Josh. Not for me bad Josh.
Josh Hadley 45:48
Hey, you can self promote yourself to give yourself a
Rolando Rosas 45:51
clap. Okay, I’ll give myself a double clap.
Josh Hadley 45:55
Now, Rolando, sharing wisdom, with us all dropping knowledge bombs. So Rolando, I’m gonna ask you the series of three questions that I like to ask every guest. Now, number one, is what has been the most influential book that you’ve read and why
Rolando Rosas 46:13
I’m gonna give you to Josh, there’s two that really kind of shifted my thinking. One is The Giza Power Plant by Christopher Dunn. Bottom line here is if you have a theory of valid theory, is one that can be proven from the letter A. And we use the Amazon term all the way to Z, all along the way. It makes sense. And you get to Z that conclusion, matches. And so whether it’s day parting and ad scheduling, if it is correct, and it works, then the data will show yeah, of sales went up, conversion went up all the rest, right, it’ll add up. So valid theories are those that add up all the way from beginning to end. And that really changed my thinking instead of if somebody tells you something. All right, I’m gonna test it. So there was a lot of missing pieces. And we didn’t really get to the end with a valid conclusion. theory doesn’t work, just like the Alibaba go to Alibaba, and sell on Amazon that doesn’t hold up. Right. The next one, I would say, the History of Eleven Rival Nations by Colin Woodard, would 100% recommended for everybody that wants to understand psychology, and why places like New York are identical in philosophy and culture, as it was 300 years ago, and a lot has happened. And that book really provides really good insight into what happened into these areas, when they were settled by the original settlers of that area. And why today, places like New York are still in a lot of ways. They were 300. In New York, people will sell you anything and everything. That’s the way it was 300 years ago, they didn’t care what color you look like this, that the other, they were all about trading, right. So bring your money over here. We like the money, we don’t care who brings it, bring it over here. And we’ll sell you timber and fur and all the rest. That’s how it was 300 years ago. That’s the way still is today. And then it goes into other examples about how this was this kind of concept is basically the same all over the country in 11 regions of the country that are still the same way today.
Josh Hadley 48:34
Fascinating. Those are two books that nobody has ever recommended on the podcast. So I appreciate you sharing something fresh and new.
Rolando Rosas 48:43
Everybody’s going to tell you about at Atomic Behavior and the 1% and all those because everybody’s reading that, and I’ve read that but these two game changers.
Josh Hadley 48:51
I love it. I love it. Well, speaking of that, what’s a game changing software that you’ve recently discovered or started using? And why you’d be crazy
Rolando Rosas 49:01
if you’re not using Open AI ChatGPT or some other intelligence software? Just in the fourth is the first month they reached 100 million subscribers. So it’s a game changing. We’ve been using it internally, we actually give ChatGPT a name, we call him Eddie. Eddie helps a lot of tasks. But I’ll tell you what, there is a warning for those that rely 100% We’ve found it to be inaccurate with some things. So you still need a human to like look at it. But the task of getting to computing, getting ideas, you know, take translations does awesome jobs, using it with Google Sheets or air table that takes it to another level. So ChatGPT, aka Eddie, is something I would highly recommend for anybody that’s selling on Amazon because it’s got a lot of ways for you to cut time and cut tasks. from weeks to hours,
Josh Hadley 50:02
completely agree, completely agree. All right, final question here, who is somebody that you admire or respect the most in the E commerce space that other set sellers should be following? And why?
Rolando Rosas 50:13
Whoo, there’s a lot. There’s a lot of guys, I like, Man, I’m just gonna give me a list because I’m no good. I’m gonna get angry emails, like, Why didn’t you tell? Why don’t you put me on. I really loved love Kevin King. He’s, he’s plugged into everything. He’s got a podcast as well. Chad Rubin, a good friend of mine, as well, he’s super knowledgeable. Or what else? Steven Pope, Steven Pope of my Amazon guy. Great, great, great wealth of knowledge as well. And then there’s just a couple of others I could probably think of, but those are the three that stand out in my mind. And if I left you out, don’t send me an angry text message that I left you out. It’s just what’s in my brain right now. I love you all, you know, you know, I know. I’ve got some friends that are gonna be watching this as well.
Josh Hadley 51:03
I love that. We’ve had all of those guests on this podcast, Kevin King has been on the podcast. Chad Rubin talked even more about ChatGPT. And how long is utilizing AI? And their new software? Right? Yeah, let’s see. So that’s a great episode to go listen to. We also had Steven Pope on the podcast as well. So those are awesome episodes, definitely encourage our listeners to go check those out. Now, as we wrap up Rolando, I think you have a special offer that you’re going to give our listeners to the first 10 that reach out. Tell us more about that and where people can contact you and follow your journey.
Rolando Rosas 51:42
Awesome. So I have a podcast called What the Teck and we interview some of those same people did you just mentioned, and they’re on circuitloops.com, or anywhere you consume your podcasts. I’m on LinkedIn, and Rolando Rosas, look for that. And you’ll you’ll find me there, you can get in touch with me there. As far as listeners and things that we would we’d offer your listeners, we’d be glad to give them a free technology audit. So we can discuss your hardware and software needs, and how those two can come together. So if you’re doing our technology refresh, or you’re growing, or you’re moving, a lot of times, this is the time when a lot of folks tend to do these kinds of activities. Normally, you would cost quite a bit. And sometimes you can’t talk to somebody that knows both sides. So we have both services and hardware under one roof experts that can help you do that. And we’ll do that for free for the first 10 guests because we can’t do that for everybody. Josh, you know, we got to make money around here. Right?
Josh Hadley 52:48
Well, and reach out to you through LinkedIn. Correct? Yes.
Rolando Rosas 52:52
through LinkedIn, and I’ll be glad to get that process started for those listeners.
Josh Hadley 52:57
Awesome. Well, that’s a very generous offer. Rolando. So I encourage our listeners to go follow through take advantage of that offer, and also give his podcast a listen What the Teck?. I was a guest of that last week. And he does a great job. It’s more entertaining with all the sound effects.
Unknown Speaker 53:17
Well, I
Rolando Rosas 53:18
don’t have my producer here. So he makes that all go it’s all him. You know, he makes a good shout out to Ory on that one.
Josh Hadley 53:25
I love it. Well, Rolando, thank you so much for joining us today. And I appreciate your time.
Rolando Rosas 53:31
Thank you, Josh. I appreciate for you bringing me in today. And thank you very much.
Outro 53:37
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