Josh Hadley 6:51
Vincenzo, I just want to back you up and echo everything that you just talked about launching new products and expanding your product catalog is honestly your biggest growth lever as an e-commerce brand owner, it genuinely is. There’s so many niches that you can dive into. There’s so many complementary products that can build out your brand, and expand the audience that you can communicate to as well. And the return is really, really quick, relatively speaking, it compared to all the other different levers that we’re going to be talking about. So in our business as well, our number one priority every single year, when we do our annual planning is launch new products, launch new products, new products.
Vincenzo Toscano 7:40
I mean, that’s the reality, I think the key on Amazon is we need to understand, listen, it’s a numbers game, it’s all about trying to throw as many things as possible to Amazon see what sticks as a reality or does the game right, and if we just guessed talking to, and you fell in love with the same product that you’ve been selling for 3, 5, 8 years now is like that’s it, I mean, you need to pause the page, keep adding new products, and that’s where I have found with my clients where we actually a bring the most revenue to the business. So that would be number one. The second thing that always when clients come to us are they always so afraid of and we actually found that being also some of the best resource when it comes to jumping from seven figures to eight figures is international expansion, right? So we work with a lot of brands from a USA that they come to us and they say, You know what, I already control a pretty big a share of my market by you know, I wanna control the whole thing in the USA, right? I’m most of the time when we do an analysis of their current niche. And let’s say they are already controlling, you know, a 70 60% of the market, the amount of money and therefore you’re going to spend on PPC, and all of that to get to that a 90% plus control of the niche, most of the time is going to take the same effort that try new marketplaces. And most of the time, what we have found that when we bring this product from the, in this case, the states to Europe, for example, first of all, you are diversifying your business, right. So one of the things I love about international expansion is diversification. Because we all know that on Amazon, it’s so risky to have all your eggs in the same basket. And what happens is that if you’re a seven figure seller and all your sales happen to us, you don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow if more competition come to the US which every single day happens or the CPC keeps going up and so on. If those things you know start over time taking all your control on the specific niches and your revenue from it one day, you’re not going to be any more the leader on the market potentially right? So you want to make sure that you don’t rely on one single a channel and that’s where international expansion is huge. Now, what happens when international expansion there is always this a fear because you know coming to Europe, you have all these new regulations. You have all these compliance with tax bases and all that And they know they saw this a this feed like, oh, what happens if I do this paperwork wrong or if I can get my pro into the country. And the reality yours is that we know that there is a ton of services out there that can do this for you in just a matter of pain, of course, the service, but it can easily be done, we have done hundreds of times with our clients. And I think at the same time, that’s a good thing to have, because it’s actually a filter. And what I mean by a filter, which we actually see with some clients, even Amazon, Japan, where you have such a high barrier to climb to enter into this market, most of the time, you’re gonna find that once you do that climb, and you go inside, the competition is much lower. Compared to the USA, it’s much easier, right? So yeah, international expansion, super huge, because it gives you a diversification. And at the same time, most of the time, if you’re coming from the US, competition is much lower. And if you have an amazing product, you’re gonna kill it for sure.
Josh Hadley 10:55
Yeah. So I have a quick question. With the international expansion, you mentioned that there are a lot of services that make makes the you know, especially in the EU, VAT compliance a lot easier. And Yang with all of that. Now, is that something you handle for the brands that come to you? Or do you work with one of those partners? And are there some recommended partners that you would encourage people to, you know, work with, that you think are vetted, right, that are credible partners?
Vincenzo Toscano 11:25
Yeah, yeah. When it comes to everything regarding a business compliance taxes on our data, we have partners that help us with that. So one of our closest partners, and we use for all our services is a Alaska if you want a recommendation, and basically they help our clients to do everything from A to Z. So let’s say we we tell them we have this brand, there are seven, a figure seller that they are selling, let’s say, a baby products, they need compliance, basically, to import this product, the taxes, they incorporation in Spain, whatever is the country, they want to do it, and they do it. And then we as an agency, what we do is actually focus on the things that really move the needle, which is the launch strategy, localization of the content, their images, PPC strategy, external traffic studies on those countries to make sure you hit the ground running. And then with the combination of these two things, that’s where we have found the most success for our clients.
Josh Hadley 12:18
Make sense? What type of revenue as a percentage of US sales? Do you see, you know, the European marketplace bringing and I know there’s so many different marketplaces, you got the UK in Germany and different ones, maybe what are the some of the top marketplaces that you would encourage people to go to first and then what percentage of their US sales should they expect from each of those marketplaces?
Vincenzo Toscano 12:43
Yeah, so I would say the one that usually we started the first with is the UK and Germany, right? The reason why those two is, first of all, those are the two biggest in Europe right now. And the second thing is because after Brexit, because the UK is not anymore power of the Pan European program, we basically do UK and Germany separately, because basically Germany, if we successful is going to be our hub to then allow us to do the expansion to the other countries with a Pan European right. So Spain, Italy, France and other countries. So we do UK, and Germany. Now, it of course, very important, I need to emphasize this, don’t assume that if because you’re doing millions of dollars in the US this sample is going to be a success in Europe, every single time we do an expansion International, it could be Europe, it could be Asia or any other marketplace within the Amazon ecosystem, we always do what we call an Amazon validation process, right? So we need to make sure that the pro actually has the right amount of market because sometimes we have found clients that they have a pro that sells very well in the US but we want to bring it to Europe for example because things such as weather right weather in Europe is so diverse. If your product is very sensitive to weather conditions or ces analysis around those kinds of things. You’ve probably could flop just because of that so those things are very important to check cultural things religion, a even the avatar on does country like a festivities all those things impact the performance of your product. And it’s very important you do that and not not just assume that because you’re doing very well in the US is going to be a success because we have seen also the dark side of that that people say oh you know I’m making minutes in the US I’m gonna kill it in Europe they go all in and put all the 10 plus countries a from Europe and then you have inventory all over the place and you realize that out of all these countries you launched in Europe, maybe just France and Spain were the right ones for you. So very important you know in terms of percentage when it comes to what you should expect compared to the US. Usually a is very important to consider the size of Europe as a whole is getting very close a to the whole size as USA as a whole in terms of size. Alright, so therefore if we compare percentage just at the country level, of course, is going to be much lower compared to the US, usually, let’s say if your product is a success in, in the UK or Germany, you could easily start eating around 20 to 30% a revenue size in terms of a while you were getting into the US if you do it properly, right. And journalist merely due to the fact of the size of the market. Now, because the product wasn’t a success, it just because you know, the size limits the amount of revenue you can make on those markets. However, a, I mean, we have seen the other side, when clients sometimes jump from the US to Europe, there are certain scenarios, not all of them, because this is very provincial, but we have seen clients actually, when they launch to Europe, and start doing all the countries as a whole, they do it better in Europe, the USA, but not because of the size different by many, because competition, sometimes they have a product in us is becoming very saturated by Europe. I mean, the reality is, when you compare Europe to USA, most of the reason why pros can be more successful in Europe is because when it comes to strategy, or when it comes to knowledge around how to sell on Amazon, I will say USA is a list, I will if I need to put a year amount, three, five years in advance in knowledge when it comes to PPC, external traffic, how to properly optimize listen images. And when you come to Euro with that, you know that hunger that you need to have in the US to succeed. Most of the time, you’re going to do prop, very good in Europe, because the reality is most of the sellers I have met have seen what they’re doing Europe, they are behind compared to the US. So that’s also an advantage you bring to the table.
Josh Hadley 16:40
Fascinating. I mean, it sounds like there’s a lot of opportunity. But like you mentioned before you just go all in, I think it’s important that you go and you look at the keywords in that marketplace, right. And you want to make sure that there’s you know, they’re still the same amount of search volume that you would kind of want to be expecting, right?
Vincenzo Toscano 17:00
Yeah, I would say another thing. And this is something that I actually came across the last couple of months, that is something that now we’re doing with our clients as well is when it comes to the actual a manufacturing of your product. So we have, for example, a client that we’re shifting all their manufacturing from China to Mexico. And I just by doing this shifting a this, this person is able to add between five and 10%, more profitability, because he managed to I mean, he was like a diamond in the middle of nowhere. But he founded a manufacturer in Mexico, that was able to produce this product cheaper and faster and China. So he was very lucky with that. And now basically he has the production next to us, that means he doesn’t need to rely anymore, when it comes to you know, all the issues that we see during code when you rely on China. And then now because the the manufacturer that he found due to the volume that he does, he also does big volumes, he is able to have that profitability increase, which for a seven figure seller, that’s huge. And now he’s using that extra profit, he’s actually not putting that profit in his pocket. Now with that extra money. What he’s doing is fully reinvesting that into PPC. And now he’s close to already hitting the eight figures because of that. So that’s a good example, how Don’t close your mind about oh, it’s all about images or listen, PPC, they’re things that like traditional things, which is the manufacturing, which is the essence of your business, which if we even by shifting where you produce manufacture, you can break that cycle of getting stuck in certain figures and job to a figures because you improve your margins. Yeah. And later,
Josh Hadley 18:36
I love it. I love it. So to recap, you’ve we’ve already shared so much valuable content. Number one, you’ve got expanding your product catalog that’s coming out with new products. Yeah, number two, we talked about international expansion. Some of the bigger marketplaces to get into would be the UK and Germany. And then number three, you just shared a great knowledge bomb on all of us. Regarding a if you look at potentially switching your manufacturer, you can shave some percentage points off of you know your cost of goods sold, which will directly impact your bottom line, and especially if you can bring it closer to the US or even find somebody potentially in the US that could be a game changer for your business. If you’re no longer having to wait 60 days or having the potential of something getting caught up in customs. Right. Yeah, I mean that could that could really shift your entire business, you’re not locking up your cash flow, as well. So those are great. I would say
Vincenzo Toscano 19:39
that that’s one of the biggest things that we found were clients that they get stuck in seven-figure. And they kind of get with figures is cash flow. Cash flow is king and the reason why people get stuck with cash flow is because your lead times are so long. Most people have 4560 days lead times and if you don’t have the porch or the cash in your bank To do the funding yourself of the PPC, more inventory expansion, you’re always going to get into a vicious cycle that you cannot grow because you need money for you as a profit. You also need money to keep the operations but also you cannot overspend because you don’t have the cash. And therefore, just by doing simple changes to your lead time, that could be the key to So jump from seven figures to eight figures. Yeah,
Josh Hadley 20:22
Yep. And I think we can dive down this rabbit hole and talk a lot about, you know, supplier relationships and terms. One episode I would encourage our listeners to go listen to is Afolabi Oyerokun. We interviewed him and he shared a lot about, you know, your supplier relationship, how to negotiate with them and get favorable payment terms, you know, get 60 days, 90 day terms to where you’re not paying for the product sell. Right. So I love it all right, Vicenzo. So we’ve got three, we’ll kind of wrap cash flow in with our suppliers. And that’s what’s a fourth strategy here.
Vincenzo Toscano 21:06
Yeah, so let’s say another thing that is also very important when you’re on that cycle of jumping from seven figures to eight figures, is that people are so so afraid to try new things. And what I mean by this is that it reaches that point. And we have found these certain niches, that the reality is PPC is not going to move any more than either for you, right? You start getting to that in that cycle, that you’re maximizing what you can do with PPC, and when you reach that, A, I have seen that people you know, don’t try things such as Google ads, or influencer marketing and things like that. And that’s something that has been paying very heavily for a client. So for example, one thing that we have started doing is, for example, Google ads for some of our clients, and that’s been giving good benefit for them. Because what we have done is for some of their specific keywords that they were advertising on PPC that had a very high CPC, and therefore, we’re always on that vicious cycle that they could improve, you know, their tackles and the profitability will then try to find certain long tail keywords or terminologies that were cheaper outside of Amazon, like Google ads, a even Bing, people don’t talk about Bing, but we can we have even try with Bing, I’m being funny enough, a, if you have a product, and this is something that we have seen that is kind of like a haggle said, I mean, most people when they buy a PC, right, and I will say more people have or 50 or 60, when they buy a PC, the default browser is Bing, right? That’s the one that they have a Windows right. And most people they don’t really know how to download google chrome or anything like that. And if you have a type of product that is for a dat bracket, like all people and and we had a brand, they were doing that a product is usually for people over 6070. He was killing it with being because basically, everybody was typing like whatever was the product being and his ads word in there and the CPC was super low. But that’s something that maybe you can explore as well, just as a tip there. Now going back to a Google ads, right, so we go at what we’re doing is that, yes, we’re trying to find basically CPC or cheaper compared to your PPC, but also because you need to understand that a depending on your product, there are certain type of product, people will go to a to Google and let’s say they’re going to put a best phone case for iPhone 2023 As an example, right. And you want to make sure that when people type specific phrases that basically trigger some kind of a behavior of action around your product, it could be the best phone case, it could be a phone case that doesn’t break or when it falls, these kind of phrases that try to explain a pain point around your product and they go to Google to find a blog or a way to find the best product you could start advertising on those placement. And we have seen a good result with that. So they think we will add I will say is not for everybody. But if your products a typical product people will first go to Google to clarify their their doubts around functionality materials, which is the best products out there Google Ads could be very powerful for you. But that’s the number one thing within external traffic. Then we have blogs, so blogs where we have down with a which goes hand by hand with a press release is basically getting in reach with this. Basically entities let’s say within supplements that what is the best vitamin C for 2023. Right? I will basically try to get a product A or clients product into those blogs and we have fine very good returns when it comes to doing these blogs because on top of that, you can use a brand referral bonus and you get the 10% for basically you know the traffic you send back to your Amazon account. So that’s a plus for you. And and definitely if you targeted write blogs again because there is a lot of blogs or a just like that clicks and the travel you need to make sure you do the proper filtering by if you find the right ones, a source of being helping a lot to increase the bottom line revenue. And the third one to finalize this idea will be using influencers. So influencers of course is a big a spectrum of options you have like Instagram, Facebook, tick tock etc. But they want us to be working the best for us is using YouTube. So what basically what we do with YouTube is we try to find a basically people that talk about a specific product, right, it could be like a review on the prod or like a using a day a like a blob, like a day of my life using this product, like I went camping and I use this product and idea for review. These kind of videos, we have seen the resend was very good, help you drive very a warm traffic, especially if the person behind the camera is known for doing product reviews like these guys a guide to for doing monitor reviews for gaming, right and your self monitor. So you want to make sure that your progress reviewed by this guy because people know about gaming, they’re gonna go to YouTube and see if this guy did a review about this product to buy it. So we’ve been doing that for some of our brands. And it’s also been working very well. And a good trick that you can do. So you keep them motivated, is most of them are going to have an Amazon influencer account. So they get a commission of person the links that they send to you. But sometimes what we tell them so they actually incentivize to send more is that we say whatever Amazon gives you, we’re gonna double the commission. So if Amazon leave the 2%, or 6%. And this basically allows to keep building that good relationship. So this guy basically becomes all sales guy within the niche without a really forcing anything. Yeah, that’s a good strategy. So I would say those three combined is very good as well, too, when you reach seven figures, and PPC is already your bottleneck, to try those three things to get to eight figures.
Josh Hadley 26:54
I love that. And I love that you preface that with once you’ve kind of maximized or optimized your PPC, that’s kind of the first area right, like if there’s still room to run with PPC, then now honing in on your PPC dial that in first because that’s going to be your easiest, like that’s the bottom of the funnel, people are on Amazon to shop, once you start moving up the funnel, like Google ads, where people are starting to research, it’s going to be a little bit harder, right? Your conversion rates going to be lower, you’re gonna need more clicks. And same thing with influencer marketing. But in general, I’m super curious to dive into like the influencer marketing in the blogs check, how are you reaching out to these influencers? And how are you negotiating, you know, payment for these? Because a lot of influencers, it’s like, you have to pay me 1000 bucks just to close. And then it will be on my story for 24 hours. And then it’s gone, right? And you’re like, wow, I’ve got to make a lot of money. I’ve got to make a lot of sales. Yeah. And those 24 hours to make it worth it. So tell me about you know, a how you’re finding these influencers and bloggers, and then B, what type of payment structure are you coming up with?
Vincenzo Toscano 28:12
Sure. So the first tip on this would be for you to a one thing that my team does. And of course, the only downside of this is that it’s very manual work. So it’s going to be time consuming if you don’t want to use a platform, but still is an option to do. So what you will do is you go to YouTube, and let’s say you want to do bittermens Here, right? So you’re gonna put all this the name of the product and then at the end, you put Amazon so it could be between, say Amazon or Tabata and see Amazon. And the reason why we put Amazon is because at the end of the day, YouTube is a search engine. And that is going to match us most of the time with videos, say top 10 beaten in series on Amazon, or even if it’s not title is going to match it with the link of the influencer. Because if these guys do include a half an Amazon influencer account, the links that they put in the description, have the Amazon word on it, therefore the search engine is going to match me with those videos. And that’s the first filtering I already know we transferred the guys that have been working with Amazon brands in the past, they know how the whole ecosystem works. And it’s easier than working with a person that you know, they just do blogs and they don’t even have an idea about what is a selling on Amazon. So I want to make sure they speak the same language. That’s the first thing. The second thing is when it comes to payment terms. So these are different ways you can do it. So the first a way of doing it is a matching the Amazon commission as I mentioned. So for example, if they do 3% or 5% for Amazon, we double so we give six 10% to them. And our option that we do is dry the matching the the Commission, we might do just a flat fee, right? Maybe initially when you know that relationship still doesn’t exist with influenza. We’ll do a flat fee which I know sometimes it can be heavier, as you mentioned, but again there there are many ways for you to you analyze the the actual YouTube channel, there are tools that you put the hashtag, and it gives you like the history, the views, engagement and so on. And that can give you like a good idea about how good this influencer is. And based on that, if this guy asked you for 1001, then you see that the average likes per video is like to likes, you see that traffic is fake. So that’s a red flag. And the third option, which is this is the most difficult to get by if you get this, I will say this one is the best way is basically you you be a transform this person into an ambassador, right? So an ambassador means that it basically they become like the face of your product. And they basically talk about your product, and pretty much every single video like it could be a banner at the beginning, or you’re sponsoring your your hair trips to let’s say she does hacking, and you sell like camping tents, right? So she used always your camping tent, all heard trips, and you basically sponsor a what we call some of their trips, that’s an option, or it could be also a hybrid, in terms of instead of paying a fixed amount on on on let’s say a one time video, it will be a commission but this commission rather than be the influenza one, it will be more a filter it down to a specific period. So let me give an example. Let’s say this person is going to do a trip to Spain and she’s going to do a one month of traveling and she’s she got she needs to commit to this of course she’s gonna commit to every single week she’s going to do two videos, a day of blogging, talking about the product cetera, then we do our reporting comparison of the traffic a of let’s say she did a trip on March and on February, we didn’t had an influencer, we compared increasing in revenue. And we can come to an agreement of giving an actual percentage of of sales of within Amazon again, this one, of course, needs to be done with somebody that really brings a difference. It’s not like I mean, you do this and then the person doesn’t really bring any any difference to us. But once we did a winner influenza, and just by doing this engagement with them, over one month, we increase around I think was 2020 something percent increase in revenue, just because a guy or the whole month was using the product into their Vblock a on the eastern stories and all that. And basically what we do so on that 20% incremental revenue, we get them a quarter percentage clean cut to him. So that’s another thing.
Josh Hadley 32:30
Interesting. Now, are you are you having them use your brand referral bonus link so that you can track that? Or are you using their influencer affiliate link? You know, like, what links are you giving them?
Vincenzo Toscano 32:44
Yeah, so for the we give the brand referral. So we get the 10% a commission there, by in some instances when that cannot be implementing in some a, like for example, Tik Tok doesn’t really track properly the 10%. And it’s not very efficient for them in in those cases, we just do. Basically they share the information within their account or reporting wherever they can share us. And we do some kind of match in there to see the reality behind the numbers. Yeah, that’s why this one needs to be a very good relationship, because sometimes they need to give you information that you from outside account, you kind of see.
Josh Hadley 33:19
Yeah. So ultimately, could somebody use their affiliate link and combine it with the brand referral bonus link? or No?
Vincenzo Toscano 33:29
So you mean, combining the influencer one in this case with the 10% commission, right?
Josh Hadley 33:35
Yeah, yeah. And I like so it’s kind of like double dipping, right, the influencers still going to get their affiliate commission. But then on my side, I’m also going to get the 10% brand referral bonus. Yeah,
Vincenzo Toscano 33:47
I think I think it’s not possible. If I’m not mistaken. I think you can. I think you can’t. It would be nice, I think you can’t.
Josh Hadley 34:00
So what are most of your influencers doing? Are they using their own affiliate links, then? Or? Because I know that’s how they’ve typically monetized all of their content, right is with their affiliate links to Amazon? Are you seeing people willing to say, oh, yeah, let’s not use my affiliate link anymore. Just give me your brand referral bonus link? And do you see people shifting that way or not?
Vincenzo Toscano 34:26
Yeah, I would say it’s always going to come down as well to what is the agreement you come to right? So if the agreement is based on for example, on the total revenue increase they can bring to you it can be that you know, let’s use a brand referral bonus we track a return to the link because they when you do the burn referral bonus, that link has a unique ID and you can track how much traffic goes to draw link. And you can also reward them with that information. You make it very transparent to them. But again, if the influencer sometimes is you know, it’s not open minded to do that. What we do is we use the influencer One, and then that 10% that we’re losing there, we try to, you know, negotiate that on into their commission or something like that. Yeah.
Josh Hadley 35:08
Okay, that makes sense. What are the you mentioned there was a tool that you use to look at the engagement for a YouTubers account? Like, do you know what those tools are that come to your mind?
Vincenzo Toscano 35:21
Yeah. So they wonder we use a, I think it’s called a I forgot the name, I think a blade a? Yeah, that’s a good one. I forgot the name. Let me see it. I have a here on my notes. So yeah, day one. So I will recommend per social, Snaplytics. These are some of the ones the team has been using lately. But again, there are so many tools out there, at the end of the day, what I will advise you to do is just try a different ones. Because at the end of the day, you may find discrepancies and what the team does. And that’s why I had so many names in my head is that we’ve we put a profile most of the time two or three apps at the time, they will conglomerate the numbers and we calculate an average because sometimes you might see some discrepancies on the calculation. Yeah.
Josh Hadley 36:07
Yeah. Makes sense. So what he talked about was Snaplytics. And again, we’ll have the links here in the show notes. So Vincenzo, that’s awesome. My last follow up question on the influencer stuff is, I know you’re not doing that. I assume you have dedicated team members because you actually have to build a relationship. And that’s what these people this is not a law, I signed up for this program. And then out came the result, right? This is a this is like, you know, creating an actual relationship and partnership, especially if you’re getting ambassador. So Vincenzo, would you mind explain to us like how many team members do you have working on this? And if we were to even do this for our own business? Like, what are the different roles that we would need to hire in order to kind of execute this influencer ambassador strategy?
Vincenzo Toscano 37:03
Sure. So if, for example, within our team, we have around 10, people just doing these influenza things, because the downside of everything I just mentioned, is it’s very manual, right? So if you want to do yourself, you need to have people that you know, reach out to these influencers, doing the filtering to the methodology, like for example, you to put in the name of the product, and Amazon find influencers and all that. And then on top of that, just to give you some numbers out of 100 people, you reach out on the on my team, we’re having a meeting earlier this week about this, usually just 10% get back to you. So add 100 people and so the conversion is very low, because you need to remember that this influencer gets messages every single day, like everybody was sent in as an adult. So you need to also make sure, um, we actually do that split test, the copy you send to them, try to be very self a orientated, we try to build a relationship with them. Because at the end of the day, you know, they’re also humans, they’re, they’re people like you and and you want to make sure that you actually made that connection before trying to oh, I want, I want you to give me this commission, I want you to do this video. And I’ll try to do that. So yeah, I will say, in terms of a time, you have two options. So the first option is try to hire, I will say for myself with a one or two ways you can do this sort of try to find a VA that help you do all the filtering. So filtering is basically finding influencers and using these tools, basically to find which are the best influencer, which are the ones who have the best engagement, try to analyze the analytics, and then have an ova that takes care of everything when it comes to reaching out to this influencer, which also takes a ton of time. So that means sending emails to then sending direct messages on their Instagram or Facebook, etc. And then with this combination, you have one person doing the baton, one person doing the communication, when once the communication goes on, basically get filled to a very nice stage. And that’s when usually you may have it could be you as the brand owner or in our case, we have a brand manager, which takes a call with influencer, explain what are the goals for the brand? What are we looking to achieve with this relationship and then try to come into an agreement. So that’s one option. If you don’t have the time, you don’t really care about managing people, you and I just go through as quickly as possible. You can use another tool which we have to use, and it’s called Referazon. Referazon.com And I’m gonna post a the link in the description
Josh Hadley 39:28
Referazon. Yeah, Referazon. Definitely one to check out.
Vincenzo Toscano 39:32
Yeah, so I mean, the downside is of course, if you need to consider that it’s a little bit more expensive, though. It’s a platform of course. But at the end of the day, it takes all the headache of what we need to do as an agency go manually find influencer communicating building the relationship. I will say using this platform is more if you want a one time thing like you just want a video gun, or you wanna certain campaigns during a specific period because the only downside of most platforms is that He doesn’t give you the freedom to build their, their relationship, person to person. So but yes, that’s, that’s, that’s the thing, I would advise you have those two options and any depends on your goals, you know?
Josh Hadley 40:12
Yeah, I love that. And, you know, you mentioned like, you’ve got to reach out to 100 people just to maybe hear back from 10. And then from those 10 that you even hear back from, how many of those even turn into kind of like, influencers or ambassadors? Is it like one of those 10 will even kind of agree to work with you?
Vincenzo Toscano 40:32
Yes. So when it comes to a conversion, I would say out of 100 people, usually the conversion rate is, is around 10%. So, a no sorry. So 100 People can people respond or not out of the 10? People? Usually you end up with three or five? So I will say three or five? Mocha Hurni? Yeah. So that’s why it’s very time consuming.
Josh Hadley 40:54
Yeah, so you ended up yet, ultimately, if you’ve reached out to 100 people, you get maybe three to four to five, you know, influencers that agree to work with you. So ultimate conversion rate three to 4%. There? Well, Vincenzo, I know, we spent a lot of time on that. But I believe that it’s super, super important. Because what I believe is going to change over the next decade with Amazon is the brands that are going to win are going to be the brands that bring the traffic Yes, I think Long gone are the days of just mooching off of Amazon’s free traffic. I mean, there’s still some there, right, and there’s different niches that you could get into. But over the next decade, things are definitely going to shift, you have bigger brands that are coming here and brands that are that are large and established. And they’re now directing traffic to Amazon, because they see the flywheel that it can create. And so I think it’s important that, you know, our audience hears this message. Because if this is not something that you see is worth your time, it’s like, Oh, it’s too much hassle. I don’t want to have to manage team members, I don’t want to have to manage relationship, you will lose at the end of the day down because you need to be progressing and growing. And that’s where Amazon’s heading.
Vincenzo Toscano 42:11
Yeah. 100% I think is super important what you just said then give evidence, start adapting with the things you know, are really important to your brand and it’s all the things we’ve been talking about I mean you you need to understand that a when it comes to these influencers and to basically incorporate this into your brand is things that most people are not doing right and you need to basically take the advantage of that so I’ve been in this relationship with these influencers and then once you bring them into your you know your family in terms of becoming your ambassadors then you know, they start using your product all around the different lifestyles, a I think that’s where you actually become into a proper brand because I think most people think that having a brown Amazon is just you know, having a logo and a nice packaging and that’s Eva no brand is actually a community you need to actually be that trialing a community that talks about your product, go to a party and test to their friend they followed their influence and doing tutorials around your product so you need to make sure that you serve in those those communities which for my clients those are they wants to have even seen getting the biggest multiples when they exited a basically their business some of them
Josh Hadley 43:21
fascinating so not only is it going to help your brand survive in the long term, but you’re also seeing an increase in multiple a lot of people have a lot what would be an example here
Vincenzo Toscano 43:32
so for example if you have fun a normal brand that doesn’t really have a community you just have a product on Amazon that’s it usually the multiples are in the three four times that’s maximum were you getting bought for declines that they had a community very strong that’s or Amazon what I’m talking here is like you go to the YouTube channel they have 1000s of followers you got to listen and dozens of follows scheduled as follows every single thing that they release on social media gets likes engagement comments people is crazy they share with their mom this kind of thing these are brands are getting six seven plus multiples right so it’s almost double and multiple and the reason for that is is safety because they fear is that imagine all your business on Amazon suddenly your listing let’s say it gets taken down or you get suppressed for advertisement is like you have nothing else to bring traffic to you don’t have anything outside of Amazon but with these brands investor have bigger peace of mind. You know what if my listen because taken down of I cannot advertise anymore for a reason. I can just say to my traveling community, You know what, we’re just not you’re a Walmart or we just have this new variation of the product or whatever. And that’s a you’re up and running much faster. And you have that diversification which most people on Amazon unfortunately don’t have and that’s why it’s also they’re getting the lower multiple Of course.
Josh Hadley 44:55
I love it. That’s a great use case scenario there in great case study. As to why it would be important to expand your brand, not only on Amazon but creating a community around your brand. Now, Vincenzo, we only really made it for kind of like these four strategies. Are there any other quick strategies that you want to kind of list off as ways that people can grow and explode their sales on Amazon?
Vincenzo Toscano 45:20
Yeah. So let’s say another thing that I know sounds simple. We have seen that a when doing a lot of audits when people come to us is that you might be surprised how many people are doing over seven figures. And the last time the optimizer lesson was in 2015, when they start going inside. When they’re using keywords that don’t make sense anymore, they’re not prioritizing placement on keywords, they’re not a doing a focusing on ranking, a power around the listing. And most of the time, I would say eight times out of 10. When we do even audits on seven-figure sellers, there’s always had ton of potential when it comes to improvement on listings. And that’s also, I mean, of course, not going to skyrocket the revenue as other things, but still is going to bring a good percentage of increase, especially if you’re not indexing or ranking for keywords that just because you haven’t done any more optimization you just left there hanging. And your competitors are taking those extra sales on terminologies, you know, because you didn’t stay on track with the market, you’re losing, right. So very important, try to always keep a process for your business where you keep re optimizing your listing, for example, for our clients, every two to three months, we optimize listing from scratch, right. And we only have this process in mind, because at the end of the day, we need to understand the Amazon is a very dynamic market. And ABS every couple of months or so, a the trend around specific key or specific phrases, even keywords that you discover in your PPC that you didn’t even have a clue that it also just Helium 10, etc, didn’t allow you to find. Now you’re able to keep always re engineering the data over and over again, even data from Brian Analytics, you make sure that you have always a top notch listen, because if you don’t, you know, you’re always gonna then leave money on the table for keywords that you’re not taking advantage of. Yeah,
Josh Hadley 47:18
So is the main thing, keyword optimization. And when it comes to, you know, just general product optimization, because there’s a lot of things you could focus on A+ Content, videos, secondary images, main images, bullets, copy. The list goes on and on. What would be like, if you could only choose two things to optimize, what would they be? So I
Vincenzo Toscano 47:39
think that we have seen the biggest a results in into when we do case studies comparison is the copy. And when I mean copy is, is on the effect, it gives you in organic ranking, more than conversion. But on the conversion side of things is the main image. And that’s huge. So main image, we try to do a lot of split testing. And we use, for example, a tool called peak flow. And we do that a loss of example, every single time we see our conversions going down, we ask our designers to come up with four or five variations of the image, we get invalidated with PickFu. Then we do split testing with the option that Amazon allows you to do split testing your main image to then find which one is better. And then that also even if it gives you you know, three, five points up in conversion, if you’re a seven figure seller does take money, right? And then you can use that to basically reinvest in our things, right.
Josh Hadley 48:30
Yeah, I love it. Great quick wins. All right, anything else Vincenzo, we got to knock five strategies, product optimization, anything else?
Vincenzo Toscano 48:40
So let’s say when it comes to other strategies that you can think of when it comes to to Amazon is also within the PPC sell thing, right. So a lot of things I have found as well is I know people always like to sponsor pro because that’s where you get the biggest return on your money and I totally get it but at the same time, all this new pay type of advertisement I have been releasing within sponsored brands and sponsored display specially sponsored display with audience retargeting and all of that this huge potential die see a lot of seven a figure sellers are using it, especially we had a brand right that they were they’re selling supplements, right. And this kind of is a typical supplement that basically you buy every 30 every 30 to 45 days. That’s usually the winner you buy the supplement, I went inside their account, I was shocked by the fact that they were not doing anything when it comes to retargeting. And just by doing simple campaigns, I mean with the simple campaigns such as retargeting people that I have seen the problem in the last 30 days with the campaigns are our retargeting people that have seen their competitor products in the last 30 days because maybe somebody saw let’s say you’re selling vitamin C and they’re selling another brand vitamin C in 30 days if you put your phone in front of them and maybe you have their pricing, more reviews better images, you might steal that purchasing behavior from an urban and bring it to yours. Other things such as, for example, a lifestyle like for example, these, these, a brand new of decline was all about having a super healthy lifestyles and in the outdoors and of that, we started targeting people that does a lot of outdoors activities and things like that. And your small change, like the broke up big chunk of extra revenue that they had, just because they weren’t using sponsored displays. So I know it sounds basic, but a lot of people they they get because some of them, you know, have started only with sponsor Pro, which is why you must do it initially. But they don’t do the extra effort to experiment with or things such as sponsored brands and display, which I think if you probably strive for that, it can be a big increase in revenue to your business, which is going to contribute with all these other strategies to break in the seven figures or enter into eight figures. Now.
Josh Hadley 50:53
I love it. Vincenzo, this has been an awesome episode, you’ve shared a lot of value. My last follow up question before we wrap it all up here is this. There’s a lot that goes into, you know, the influencer outreach, you’ve got 10 team members that do that listing optimization that in and of itself requires a lot of research and data and somebody overseeing it and making decisions. So how big is your team so that sellers can understand that you need to hire people in order to actually execute these like, this is not something that just one person can do. So what’s your team structure look like, Vincenzo?
Vincenzo Toscano 51:33
Yeah, so when it comes to structure, we got the team that does a PPC department. We got the ACL department which is our copywriters, translators, we got our graphic design department, which is also photographers and video maker. A we also got a the team that does the influencer marketing. And then we got our analytics thing. So those are the ones make sure all the you know the reporting on there a manipulating data to make all the presentation of the data for decline, making sure we are hitting our targets, objectives, and so on. And then you had the brand managers, which basically make sure there is the right integration of these team members with their brand, communicating everything with every single client. So I will say overall, if you combine all these people, right now we’re over 30 people. So it’s a big thing. And basically, this makes you and the nice thing for Timmy sauce is very spread around a different kind. So we’ve got people in Europe, people in Asia, people in Latin America, in the US. So that means when someone is sleeping there, when it’s working when they are when it’s working, there’s living the that also gives the flexibility of you know, working with clients in the evening different countries, you know, by Yes, I mean, at the size that we are right now, of course we need a all these team members, because I mean, the reality is, is not true. I mean, you can be good at many things. But in other day, you really want to have the expert for PPC just for PPC, the expert that does graphic design just for graphic design, because I feel like if you don’t if you try to have a person to do many different positions a in one go is going to struggle, especially if you know, especially PPC is a huge monster that every single week even when I go to LinkedIn, every single time there’s a new type of ad there’s a new type of target and it’s a new strategy. And and yes, you’re going to show us so you need to make sure if you’re selling figure seven, you want to scale four, I know that most founders when I have this conversation with them, they tell me yes, I have tried to help people, but they don’t have the same passion as me. They say that they don’t have the same motivation. And it’s true. I mean, it’s not their business is your business, by your your your your basically your objective, as a founder and the owner of the company is to create very clear SOPs, very clear structure in terms of what they have to do and what they have to deliver. And you just need to basically make sure you give the work to them, and you’re traveling into a way that avoid micromanagement. That’s another thing I’ve gone to this a huge mistake of seven-figure say when they start hiring is they want to make sure I need to track every single second every single me that they’re being as efficient as possible. That’s a huge mistake. I try to be more open with a with the people you bring on board. Because another day, I haven’t met any eight-figure-plus seller that is just himself. I haven’t personally, I think when you reach that level is a lot that you’re going to be able to have all the resources just by yourself to do this again. And I think that that’s where you need to start building a team around your business to reach the next stage on your journey. Yeah.
Josh Hadley 54:33
Yeah, Vincenzo, I think you wrap that up really well that yeah, it’s easy for brands and you hear it all the time. Somebody’s got to seven figures on their own, but I am yet to hear somebody that’s like I made it on my own because I made all these amazing hacks and you’re not going to get there. You’ve got to start building out a business. And you also need to reflect and say, hey, you know, if you have aspirations to build an eight figure brand, but you don’t want to hire team members, then maybe you need to start looking at that exit, right or partnering with somebody that is going to want to take on that operational load, to grow the team and to grow things. So those are some important takeaways. Now, Vincenzo, as we wrap it all up, I love to leave our audience with three actionable takeaways from each episode, we probably have about 100 actionable takeaways from today’s episode. But here are the three key takeaways that I noted Vincenzo, and let me know if you think I’m missing something. Number one, well, even before we get into these three takeaways, I’m gonna go back and kind of recap all of the strategies at a high level, you have number one, expanding your product catalog on Amazon, that’s kind of your first lever that you can touch that will provide an outsized return for the time that you’ve put into it. Secondly, international expansion starting may be more in the UK in Germany. So make sure you do your keyword research, first and foremost. Then strategy number three to increase your sales is, or profitability is actually finding some new manufacturers and making sure that you have good payment terms, right. So it may not be that you need to find a new manufacturer, but maybe you’re paying 50%, up front, and then 50% Once it gets on the water and right, if you could change your payment terms to where it’s 10% up front, and then you don’t pay for 90 days until after it shipped. And you’ve already started making sales on it, then you pay the remaining 90%. Imagine how that can change your business. Yeah. Then you’ve got strategy number four, external marketing. We talked about Google Ads. We talked about blogs, we talked about influencers and brand ambassadors even being number five, go ahead. Sorry, Vicenzo we cut out real quick. What were you gonna say there?
Vincenzo Toscano 56:54
Yeah. So yes. Now I’ll ask the same very quickly. So talk about Bing, which is good area to implement.
Josh Hadley 57:03
Yes. Yeah. So with the external marketing, yep. Bing. You shared an amazing hack, especially if you have a product that reaches an older age demographic, right. So yeah, back everyone. Listen to that part. Number five, we talked about product optimization primarily on updating the copy with correct keywords. And then your main image is definitely like your biggest lever to pull there. And then last, but certainly not least, is PPC, if you’re only doing sponsored product ads right now, and you haven’t, you know, Amazon’s continuing to update Amazon advertising on a regular basis. And if you’re not actively taking advantage of some of the new, you know, features that they come out with the word, the new, you know, ad spots that they’re promoting, then you’re going to be left behind. So there’s so many things, if I were to wrap them up into give us three actionable takeaways, Vincenzo, I think it would be number one, every business needs to prioritize launching new products. Yes, that’s first. And then secondly, I would say, you’ve got to dial in before you even get into external marketing, or before you get into international expansion, make sure you’ve really dialed in your product optimization and PPC processes. Those are your first like, you’ve got to bring that internally, you’ve got to hone that in. And once you do that, then you can rinse and repeat that in international marketplaces, right. But if you go into international marketplaces first, and then you’re trying to, you know, take on, you know, doing product optimization and figure that out. And PPC and figure that out in multiple marketplaces makes it that much more challenging. And then I would say, final action item, if you’ve already got that dialed in you, your third action item would be focusing on your external marketing, creating that community, building a team of of ambassadors and influencers that are going to drive traffic, because like we talked about in the next five to 10 years on Amazon, the brands that are going to win are going to be the brands that drive traffic to their listings outside of the Amazon. Yes, Vincenzo. Did I miss anything?
Vincenzo Toscano 59:18
Now you killed it? You did it perfect.
Josh Hadley 59:21
All right. Yeah, you set the bar high.
Vincenzo Toscano 59:26
Yeah, I think I mean, these things, of course, are easy to say, but difficult to implement, and I totally get that. But please take all these steps. And somehow, you know, you don’t need to do all of them at once. But try to start implementing some of these slowly into your daily operations. Because every single time that you know, we have encountered clients that they come to us and they’re stuck into the seven figures, and we start implementing at least three or four of these all the strategies that we will implement a talk about the episode. We have seen them breaking the The cycle of getting sucked into the seven-figure. So I think is you need to be patient, you need to understand that this is going to take time and effort. But I can guarantee you that if you do these things, which, again, sounds simple, but most people it’s not doing, you’re going to be able to get closer to that cluesive eight-figure Club.
Josh Hadley 1:00:17
I love it. Now, Vincenzo, as we conclude, I like to ask each guest the following three questions. So let’s start from the top. Number one, what’s been the most influential book that you’ve read and why.
Vincenzo Toscano 1:00:28
So some of the books a, one of the books I actually liked the most, and it’s very business oriented is one called Profit First, right. And this book was very good for me, because I think one of the issues we enter as intrapreneurs, when we launch a business, is that we always focus, oh, we need to just increase the revenue, regardless of what happens, I need to keep expanding, and so on. But the issue behind that mindset, and I actually went to that mistake as well, is that then you don’t build a structure on your business to actually be profitable. you scale your business with the mindset and the system to generate revenue. And that’s it, but not really with the margins that have to have the business to be healthy. So very good book I would recommend, especially for Amazon sellers, which I know we all care about, oh yes, I need to sell get sales velocity, and we never cover profits. There, we have a look at this book, which is gonna allow you to make sure that you design the right systems, so your business can be profitable, long term. Yeah,
Josh Hadley 1:01:28
I echo that. All right. Question number two, what’s your favorite productivity tool, or maybe a software tool that you think has helped you?
Vincenzo Toscano 1:01:36
So I tool I’m being using a lot for internal projects and private projects, and also in my agency is monday.com. I don’t know if you have heard of these one by super useful software. I mean, it’s so good, because you can put all your basically, milestones, objectives, you can make it very accountable in terms of things that you have to do on a day. And if you use this software very efficiently, which by the way, has even an app for your phone, which gives you all the notifications and anything. I mean, the efficiency of our team right now on my private business is being pretty significantly by using this tool. So check it out.
Josh Hadley 1:02:16
Yeah, I love it. Yes, we use ClickUp. But Monday is another great alternative.
Vincenzo Toscano 1:02:20
It’s a competitor. Yeah.
Josh Hadley 1:02:23
Okay, but it is super, super important getting in a project management platform in your business essential to execute on many of the strategies we talked about today. Yeah, all right. Vicenza last but not least, who is somebody that you admire or respect the most in the e-commerce space that you would recommend other sellers follow? And why?
Vincenzo Toscano 1:02:42
Yes, I if I have to choose somebody, for sure. It will be my first mentor, one of my first mentors in the Amazon space, which is Bradley Sutton from Helium 10. So I’ve been following him from the very beginning. He’s an amazing guy, I know him and I think a cheese contents very good. So I think especially for those, you know, want to find content without any bullshit, as we call it, like very clear, to the point and making sure that it’s actually what they’re implementing on a daily basis, is one of the top guys in the space, of course, side by side with you, Josh, you’re awesome.
Josh Hadley 1:03:20
I appreciate that. Have to slip you that five under the table. Now. Vincenzo, this has been amazing. Now you’ve shared so much value, I’m sure our audience is going to want to hear more from you. Maybe even hire, your consulting firm, and maybe to help execute on many of these strategies. So where can people go to find you and learn more?
Vincenzo Toscano 1:03:42
Sure. So if you go to ecomcy.com basically in there, you get access to our website, we will basically share all the services that we can offer you as a full Amazon brand management agency. And we offer a 30 minute free consultation, no strings attached. So if you want to ask us any question like around external traffic, or anything around how you can be efficient with external international expansion, more than happy to jump on a call, see what things are wrong in your business and be able to give you some guidelines about how you come forward into your journey.
Josh Hadley 1:04:14
Excellent. Well, Vincenzo, thank you so much for your time today. And thanks for joining us on the podcast.
Vincenzo Toscano 1:04:20
Thank you, Josh. It’s a pleasure. Okay, have a nice one.
Outro 1:04:24
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