Colin Raja has been deeply immersed in the Amazon industry for nearly a decade. Over the years, he has developed 2 7-figure brands, and now he is focused on helping other brands achieve similar success. His approach is entirely data-driven and recently, he executed a $4 million launch with just one product.

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

In this episode of the Ecomm Breakthrough Podcast, host Josh Hadley chats with Colin Raja, a veteran Amazon FBA seller turned consultant. Colin shares his decade-long expertise in launching products on Amazon, emphasizing a shift from traditional methods to a data-driven approach centered on keyword optimization. He discusses the importance of backend optimization, understanding Amazon’s browse nodes, and aligning product types for improved visibility and ranking. Colin also provides actionable strategies for optimizing product listings, leveraging PPC data, and continuously monitoring performance to enhance product launches. This episode offers invaluable insights for experienced Amazon sellers aiming to scale their businesses.

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

1. Optimize Your PPC Campaigns:

   – Action: Regularly review your PPC data to identify high-performing keywords and adjust your strategy to focus on these. Use the insights gained to refine your keyword targeting and improve your product listing’s visibility.

   – Why: This helps in effectively leveraging the data to drive more targeted traffic and increase conversions.

2. Ensure Accurate Product Categorization:

   – Action: Verify that your product is listed in the correct category and browse node using Amazon’s Browse Tree Guide. Regularly check for any changes in categorization that might affect visibility.

   – Why: Proper categorization ensures that your product appears in relevant searches, enhancing its discoverability and ranking.

3. Utilize Customer Reviews for Keyword Optimization:

   – Action: Monitor customer reviews for frequently mentioned keywords and integrate these into your product listings. Run targeted PPC campaigns using these keywords to boost visibility.

   – Why: Engaging with reviews and incorporating relevant keywords can improve your product’s search relevance and ranking on Amazon.

Special Mention(s):

Related Episode(s):

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

I started Hadley Designs in 2015 and grew it to an eight-figure brand in seven years.

I made mistakes along the way that made the path to eight figures longer. At times I doubted whether our business could even survive and become a real brand. I wish I would have had a guide to help me grow faster and avoid the stumbling blocks.

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

Josh Hadley 00:00:00  Welcome to the Ecomm Breakthrough podcast. I’m your host, Josh Hadley, where I interview the top business leaders in e-commerce. Past guests include Kevin King, Michael Gerber, author of The E-myth, and Matt Clark from ASM. Today I am speaking with Colin Raja. Colin is a veteran Amazon FBA seller turned consultant, and today we are going to be talking about all the secrets to launching products successfully on Amazon.com, the world’s largest online marketplace. This episode is brought to you by Ecomm Breakthrough, where I specialize in investing in and scaling seven figure e-commerce companies to eight figures and beyond. If you’re an ambitious e-commerce entrepreneur looking for a partner who can help take your business to the next level, my team and I bring the hands on experience, the strategic insights and the resources needed to fuel your growth. So if you or somebody you know is ready to scale or looking for an investment partner, reach out to me directly at Josh at Ecomm Breakthrough. Com that’s E-comm with two M’s. And let’s turn your dreams into a reality.

Josh Hadley 00:00:47  But today I am super excited to introduce you all to Colin Raja. He has over ten years of experience working with many private label companies, including his own brands on Amazon. His forte is in launching products on Amazon and he does that for other brands as well. So welcome to the show, Colin.

Colin Raja 00:01:02  Hey, thanks for having me, Josh, I appreciate it. Definitely. That’s a great intro. Amazing.

Josh Hadley 00:01:05  Well hey you everybody is like, oh, that’s always a great intro. And I’m like, dude, I’m just reading about yourself, like, this is all you. So. But I’m glad it’s great. we always try to highlight our guests and you’re doing some wicked smart things. Calling, launching products. You’ve got some amazing results. And so I want to dive straight into this episode because you’re talking with very experienced Amazon sellers. They’ve already got seven plus figure brands. Okay. they want to know the actionable tactics. They want to know what’s working on Amazon. So Colin, why don’t you dive straight on in.

Josh Hadley 00:01:36  What is working today launching products on Amazon.

Colin Raja 00:01:40  So the traditional method of like how you usually launch the product, it’s it’s if you’re still following the the large amount of giveaways and all the things, it’s all directly right now you need to be make sure you read the data properly, and make sure that you follow the data in a way that you take a tone accordingly. So usually what we in the past, what we does is like, you know, take a couple of keywords and run the launches. It’s no more like that actually. So usually what we does is right now at this point we first face of our launch, it’s basically to test. We get the data from Amazon or whatever we’re giving in terms of like, you know, PPC clicks and all the things. What were we doing in terms of like optimization, whatever backend in the front end would be done? we literally trying to get the data from Amazon, like, would they are getting more relevant for what we are we getting a place, what keywords we’re getting placement for and where are we getting like a higher place where we’re getting a higher conversion.

Colin Raja 00:02:25  So if you saw that one, we called this as a keyword linking strategy. So we use the data as a primary source and use and then start using the data to launch any keyword actually. So this is not a product launch. It’s after this. It’s like a keyword launch. That’s what we need to start saying after this. What. Because it’s the most important thing is like each and every keyword needs to be act and treat separately completely. Then you will able to see a bigger level of success in your launches. If not, if you treat this as like a completely like a one keyword method or a couple of keyword method, if you’re using it, you end up in like a basic money and basic time, and you end up in like a basically a whole bunch of inventory what you have. so treat this as like a keyword launch. It’s the most, most important. And second one is like a user data to make sure that you drive the launch and take a turn properly.

Josh Hadley 00:03:10  Love that. Okay. So mindset shift right there. I hope everybody just heard that right. It’s not a product launch. We’re focused on keyword launches and following the data. Okay, Colin, that sounds great. I’m on board with your strategy. Give me the nitty gritty details of how am I launching. Like how am I launching these keywords, what data am I looking at and how, how and what optimizations should I be making?

Colin Raja 00:03:34  So basically the first level of the launch, which is like your backend optimization, so you need to make sure your listing is ready for a keyword launch actually basically. So the first thing first right now Amazon. It’s my pure testing. So Amazon has the keyword based category based keywords right now, which is if you’re in a certain category you can rank for certain keywords only. You cannot go into. You cannot go into like a the mobile phones and then try to launch spatula or whatever. It’s not going to work. So you need to be in an appropriate backend in a proper way.

Colin Raja 00:04:06  So that’s where all the problems comes in. I have been informed multiple times. You have no idea how many people reach out to me for this, specifically because the backend is like not really like very understandable. It’s so technical because what are you showing in the frontend? It’s a category and also the browser node. Actually, if you don’t know how to look for a browser node, you just take, take down your canonical keywords there and you have to do like amazon.com slash slash your ass. And then you find a browse node. Until then you are not able to find the browse. So sometimes you browse node and then category could be different actually completely. So those are the data is what we need to identify. First of all the first the browser won’t identify the browser. If the browser node is right then you need to find out there is something called item type and product type. So the item type and product type is basically it’s in the tree. Actually, maybe let me share my screen.

Colin Raja 00:04:49  I will show you literally what does it looks like.

Josh Hadley 00:04:52  For those that are listening to the audio, make sure you come check this out on YouTube. Because I know when we start talking about the back end of Amazon, you know you’re like, oh man, that’s thing is constantly being updated. So I think this is going to be super valuable. Sharing your screen, showing us what we should actually be looking at. so let’s let’s dive.

Colin Raja 00:05:08  So this is what it is basically when it comes to a browser node, it consists of three categories. One is like a this is a browser node. It’s called the pattern node. And the second one is like a branch node. And then one is like a leaf node. If your product is supposed to be all the time in the leaf node, it shouldn’t be in the branch, it shouldn’t be in the kitchen, it shouldn’t be in the root node actually. So if so, that’s what it is basically. So this is what it consists of.

Colin Raja 00:05:29  If this is not available, if your product was pulled up here you end up in like not going to index. Even if you put up like all the whole keyword, you’re not going to index and you’re not going to get rank for it at all. So you’re supposed to have your product needs to be in the basically the. So what are the important terms. What we need to understand here, which is like a browse node, product group type, our product type, item type, refinements and attributes. These things needs to be aligned properly with your listing. If you does not aligned properly with your listing, you’re probably going to have like end up in like it doesn’t matter how much you spend, you’re probably going to rank, but you’re going to drop it because there is like something called, your keyword, your category based keywords you compete with all the categories. For example, if you take like a cell phone, your cell phone accessories, and you have your ranking for iPhone cases. So this has to be aligned actually completely.

Colin Raja 00:06:14  So you have a scorecard for each and every keyword, each each keyword scorecard each belongs to like one to 100 or 1 to thousands actually. So the lowest the highest the scorecard you have, you get the lowest ranking, the lowest scorecard you have, you get the lowest ranking. So if you are not under the scorecard, you’re not gonna be able to rank at all. You’re not gonna be able to see anywhere. You’re growing at all your keywords, even though there’s one other. One of the method was basically on the scorecard is like a sales velocity. Initially, when the sales velocity people run the traffic crazy like a database and also run external traffic, traffic or anything, they usually get spiked really crazy good, and after that they will fall down. It doesn’t matter. Even like a week of time, you will able. You will fall down completely like crazy. so setting this up, it’s going to save you tons of money and save you tons of time and save you like your product basically, and save your business.

Colin Raja 00:07:00  I have seen optimizing the back end itself saves a lot of time. And then the business like bring back your sales. It’s a pretty, pretty, pretty important thing what you need to do actually. So with that said, right, this is what the browser, what I was talking about. If you usually when you have the listing, when you click on the listing, this is how you will see your, you’re not able to see anything here. When you remove the canonical URL, this particular URL you will automatically see the browse node here. Okay, so when you take this browse node and go to the Amazon and then upload in a upload project upload thing and you will be able to find out here what is the product type. What is the item type actually at this point. So you take this information under, you go to the under called BDG guide which is like it’s going to look like this. really, the guide is like a browse tree guide node. You go to that category and then download your browser guide what it looks like.

Colin Raja 00:07:50  When you download this, you’ll able to find out all the node IDs and then a root node, branch node and leaf node. So you will able to see what is the node ID and what is that item type looks like. So you just need to make sure if the price node and the product type and item type are matching perfectly well actually. Okay. Right. So sometimes you may have a cross node, sometimes the product could be in the office and also could be in the home and kitchen as well. So that’s where you can hack the system, which is like wherever you have the lowest BSR you are able to opt in there. But it’s as if it’s a shared node, it shares the keyword perfectly. You don’t have any problem with that one. So you place your keyword category accordingly to make sure that you don’t have any problem in terms of like ranking a keyword. So if you take a look at this, see this is a root node. And then a browse node is never going to have like your search query.

Colin Raja 00:08:33  But it would be great at completion like this. So you should not place your product in any one of the great art space. Actually.

Josh Hadley 00:08:41  How do I know that? Where am I getting this from?

Colin Raja 00:08:43  So this is from the Browse Tree guide. Actually, you go to the Amazon in the Health Type guide and you will able to see this information.

Josh Hadley 00:08:50  And how do I know which category I should be in that’s going to help me rank better for my keywords.

Colin Raja 00:08:56  The best way, to identify your best category is to check your competitor, your competitor who has ranked number of highest keyword. That means he has all the leverage for that particular category. So you take top 20 products and check how many keywords you ranked for top 15 positions. So then you’ll able to identify where the browse nodes are, what are their product type ID and what is the item type ID looks like. Then you choose to be in that place actually completely. That is the far best method I found. We can able to get there.

Colin Raja 00:09:29  But the trick is let’s say they are in the office category, but there is like a share node of like a home and kitchen. Then you can able to go to the home and kitchen to occupy the same thing. But your browser node you, you could be play around with the BSR thing at that point, right. Right. So at that point you you’re competing with the people who’s like a who’s competing in the office keyword, office category keyword. But you’re going in like a home and house or health and household or home and on that category. So you have like a very much better advantage to rank much better than anybody else, actually. But it’s not all the time it happens. It’s like a very rare cases you have like a shared note at that point. Okay.

Josh Hadley 00:10:03  Makes sense. Okay. What else. So we’ve gone through the back end. You talked about browse nodes. What else?

Colin Raja 00:10:10  So when we talk about product type, item type that’s that’s all we know right now. Right.

Colin Raja 00:10:14  So the best way you can able to also go which is like a you go there’s something called a GL actually did I mentioned here. Okay. So yeah the product type which is called the product group type called the product GL is like something is basically for it’s it’s a general ledger actually. It’s created for creating a fee for your listing. Completely. What is the Amazon fee? That’s how they define using the GL. If the GL is not matching with your product in your browser node, which is like okay. For example, if you’re like if you’re in a kitchen category, right, you should be have like a GL kitchen actually completely if the GL kitchen is not, it’s like sometimes it would be like GL home actually it would be like a GL office. So if that’s not matching that’s also the most important thing actually what we need to be focused on. And also there is another called duo so called display on website. when you go to the I’ll show you I’ll show you here. What does it looks like.

Colin Raja 00:11:03  We go to the inspect page and the inspect under here source. And you can type, you can able to find the product apart using that. And second one is like you can type here display underscore website. You will able to identify what is the geo. What does it looks like. It should be said home underscore Display. Underscore. Website. Actually. Right. If the GL and then a W does not match, you may miss the BSR for that particular category. Particular listing couple link. If your BSR is missing any point of time, it’s because of the GL and then the issue actually. So you need to be like a these these need to be aligned properly, which is like a GL, a w a browse node, product type and item type. It has to be aligned properly. And then the other element which is like what we need to talk about, important thing is like which is called refinements actually refinements and attributes. When you talk about refinement, refinement is nothing. But here you go.

Colin Raja 00:11:51  I’m going to show you the refinements. Exactly. This is how the refinement looks like. This is like a 15 percentage of search come from the refinements actually. Which is like why? Because we have like so much data, so much products available. People like very specifically want to go and and check the second product. So this is like in the browser node you in the in the Amazon search result you will able to see okay material features biodegradable cycle on whatever it is. Right. So for this product the refinement is when you go to the guide in the query you will able to see the refinement of the site. So this is how it’s going to look like this, how it’s going to look like. So how this is going to look in the front end. You know, this is a friend how it looks. And you need to match the exact value what we have here completely. the variables now.

Josh Hadley 00:12:32  Yeah. Where is this in the back end of your listing I guess is my question.

Colin Raja 00:12:35  It’s in the browser node. If you go to the browse node. Hold on. I’m gonna see if I can have a look. This is a refinement actually.

Josh Hadley 00:12:41  Okay. Is this am I downloading like a bulk file in order to find this?

Colin Raja 00:12:47  Then if you download the guide, okay, you will find all the node path and the query and everything. Search everything on the left side and the right side. You will find the refinements completely. The refinement is going to look like this. When you click on that it will automatically looks like this. Okay so what are the refinements. For example on this on this query basically. So these are the refinements what we have which is like a sublimation paper under Flipkart’s Flipkart Sublimation papers. What are the values. What we need to be match accordingly for that node ID completely. It will allow us. So for example here the material features. Right. So yeah material features renewable water soluble compostable plant based biodegradable recyclable. If you don’t have none of this that’s where the problem comes in actually when they selected the product.

Colin Raja 00:13:27  Yeah your product is not going to show up there at all. So most most important things, it’s not only for the refinement, it’s also for building the characteristic of your listing, which is like a semantic core approach and also like an NLP model, what we have at this point. So if you don’t fill up this information, Amazon will not take your product in an appropriate way actually correctly.

Josh Hadley 00:13:45  So if I want this the TG right I download do I download the file and then I re-upload it back to Amazon?

Colin Raja 00:13:52  No. You download it and then review the the data is actually completely you review the data.

Josh Hadley 00:13:57  What if I needed that. What if I need to add like a refinement right. What if I need to say this is the it’s biodegradable or whatever. How do I tell.

Colin Raja 00:14:05  You to do that, that you can do that in your listing itself If the listing doesn’t have the data. So you download your, category listing report and upload it directly using the app. Sometimes, you know, you don’t have the facility to update the new listings at that time.

Colin Raja 00:14:16  You need to go back to your category listing report and and download it and upload all that to use. The most, most important thing is like there are like a required attributes there and optional attributes and the preferred attributes there actually. So you better fill it up as much as possible if that that information is not valid for the name or something not applicable. Why? Because when you left it open, when the search results you’re getting from search, when you’re getting the search in your listing and you’re getting a purchase in your in your listing, Amazon could update your listing. If the value is not filled properly. then it’s not in your hand. You’re not in control. The whole purpose is to be, why are we doing all these things? It’s. You don’t have to do this 1 in 2017, right? Why? Because Amazon don’t update your listing in the back backpack of the day. Right. And after that right now Amazon I don’t trust you. I don’t want I don’t trust you that you’re gonna update your browser, right? I don’t trust you if you’re gonna update your category.

Colin Raja 00:15:04  Right. So they freeze the listing completely. They don’t want to they don’t want you to touch it at all. Once you upload how many times you go through the Amazon, you’re, like, not able to even update your browser node. Yeah, like live data there. Your current data is there, but you’re not able to see what’s going on there. You’re not able to update the pictures because Amazon freeze your listing. Once they take the once they update your listing, they take the winning contribution. And you need to go through like a five level of approval, which is like if you go to the category listing, the category listing, you need to go to the listing team and the browse node you have. There is a separate team, and if you have to update any one of the images or any one of the things you need to go for the brand registry. And there are so many teams separated and they don’t even know who to contact. If you don’t contact the right person, they will end up in like I don’t know.

Colin Raja 00:15:42  It will update in 72 hours, 72 hours. The case will close. The new will have to create the new case and go through that all over again. Yeah, but usually it will take only like if you connect with the right person, they will finish it in like a like 30 minutes. You will see that in maximum two hours you will able to see the results completely. So so your.

Josh Hadley 00:15:57  Recommendation is like from day one, make sure your backend is set up correctly. Then you don’t have to deal with all the Amazon support issues down the road.

Colin Raja 00:16:04  Exactly. You check. But it’s not only that. They could also change it. Okay, but keeping monitoring process is the most, most important thing. This is what happened to me. I did one launch, actually. what happened to the launch? We set up the listing properly. We corrected every single thing. Right? And, under what happened? We launched the product. The launch was we have the data to show, like, okay, if the launch is going good or not, in the first three days, we were able to see if the data showing in a positive result.

Colin Raja 00:16:32  If that’s not showing a positive results, we will say no, we’re not going to spend any more money. We cannot stop the launch and we’re going to like review the listing, what’s happening. And then we’re going to we’re going to do the launch again actually. So at that time, what happened in the three days we don’t see the positive results. We’re setting sales. The rankings are not coming up like how it’s supposed to be. So what we did is basically like, okay, you know what? This is not right. So when we check the data completely in the back end, Amazon change the browser node, Amazon change the product type. The item type is not aligned. That was changed. It was a whole mess. What we created because we uploaded the image and based on the image also, they take the data and then try to be like an updated listing, but based on that completely. So it was a mess. And after that we changed. We completely optimized it back in again.

Colin Raja 00:17:10  And after that our keywords are ranking pretty good actually.

Josh Hadley 00:17:13  Interesting.

Colin Raja 00:17:14  So the important aspect is make sure you know your share. And also monitor is the most important thing. It’s like your product launch should be like. It should be like it’s like a child actually. You need to be take care of it for the next 120 days. Completely like crazy. Measured every single data. That why the conversion conversion is coming up right now. Why the keyword this keyword specifically not conversion is coming up. Why this keyword relevancy is like much better. Why are the other keyword relevance is not much better? There’s a different level of stage you go through step by step to figure it out. And also there is like a different level of ranking method, what you need to figure it out to make sure that you can rank certain keywords. Yeah.

Josh Hadley 00:17:48  Makes a lot of sense I love that. Okay. So we’ve got the back end. What else Colin. What’s what’s the next phase if I want to rank these keywords and what am I making once.

Colin Raja 00:17:58  You first week? As I mentioned before, it’s typically for testing. The first week is to make sure what Amazon understand my listing actually. So right now what are we doing. Oh my god last month what we have done this month. What you’re done is completely different actually. So there is something called, you know, you know about the product sitting right. The keyword sitting before what we have done.

Josh Hadley 00:18:15  No. Tell me about it.

Colin Raja 00:18:16  So when you call the Amazon the if you have the Amazon reps, actually you call them and tell them that, oh I want to exactly mimic what are the keywords they ranked about? I want to get a relevancy for those keywords for this new us. Exactly. So they called us as a seeding as well. So when you give the Asian competition, they see all the keywords. So you will able to see all the relevancy for that keyword will be increasing. Before we have a hack or hack in the listing, you can able to find out all the relevancy for your keyword in the browse browser.

Colin Raja 00:18:42  In the in the in the HTML, you are able to find out. Right now this hack is closed actually completely in that we found when they do the sitting, your relevancy score is like increasing for multiple keywords like crazy. So we found recently it’s like a product targeting. It works like a seeding completely. Okay, it is not only taken as a string for that keyword. The as an as a keyword. And running this as like a, as a as a just a keyword. Actually, it takes this as, like a, you take the attribute of that particular Asin completely, and then you’re taking all the keywords from the keyword as the relevant keyword. So how do we test this? It’s basically go through the you run the auto campaign and find out. Run all the keywords. Find out what are the keywords. Are you getting a positive impression like higher displacement? what is it called? Higher. Click through rate? No. Higher. Oh my God, I forgot the particular term.

Colin Raja 00:19:32  Actually. A higher displacement, actually. Right. You’re showing the product at the top, actually. Completely. So you take those products. That means those products are Amazon giving a higher relevancy for your keywords specifically based on what you have done. So we take those keyword and where it’s like we’re showing up to some of the keywords is not going to show up at all. Some of the keywords will show up like crazy. So based on that, you take those keyword and use it for your phase one, phase two, phase three launch. Actually, we already defined what is the phase one keyword? What is the phase two keyword? What is the phase keyword? For example, let’s take it as like a cell phone accessories, right? iPhone five phone case actually. Right. Or white phone case. Let’s say that if that works, that means Amazon taking more of your product is like a white color, phone case accessories, actually. So then we download all the keywords, which is like a white phone and case relevant product keywords.

Colin Raja 00:20:19  Actually take that one and run that as a launch completely. Yeah. So it’s like you take the data from Amazon and accept the data and take the data if it’s like a relevant data, if it’s a relevant data, take the data and run the launch. We have found doing this way you reduce the CPC cost like crazy and you’re able to rank much like 30 or 40% higher than ranking better than other keywords you try to rank. But of course, you have to make sure that that keyword is relevant if in case that if that product if the keyword relevant, it was not showing up. That means that you messed up something in your listing. So go back and do your image optimization and your keyword optimization for your listing properly. and then run it again, the same loop actually. See that if it’s showing up again. Trust me, we have done it multiple times. It works much better for us. And that’s how we that’s how we segregate the keywords. So we run this launch, which is like a wide cell phone case, iPhone, iPhone case.

Colin Raja 00:21:11  then we have like another one was like, let’s say that there is a classic, let’s say that your your cell phone case is like a classic look. So then let’s say that classic white cell phone case, but then we take the classic and check how many keywords we have there for classic, and then combined with like a classic iPhone with other keywords, then that’s what we call this like a keyword linking strategy actually. Okay. So that’s like a given us higher advantage for rank. Much better than anybody else actually right now is I love that.

Josh Hadley 00:21:38  So you’re doing a lot of this is through PPC. Then what we do a.

Colin Raja 00:21:42  Lot of things.

Josh Hadley 00:21:42  Yeah. What are the like campaigns that you create like day one? What are some of your PPC campaigns that you come out with? Sounds like product targeting is a good one.

Colin Raja 00:21:49  Yeah, product targeting is a product targeting and auto campaign completely. And then the third one is like a maintenance campaign. So after two, three days, we started the maintenance campaign, which is like the maintenance campaign is just to make sure we have like a separate, we, we keep that maintenance campaign forever, actually.

Colin Raja 00:22:03  So that’s never going to be stopped. But the what the product targeting and then and then, the auto campaign would stop after the launch and then we have a launch campaign, which is like based on the auto campaign results, what is coming up. And we already have this aggregate, as I mentioned before, we already segregate the phase one, phase two keyword. So let’s say that my keyword comes up like a phase five keyword. And I can able to make like a 20-30 sales based on the phase by keywords initially to build the momentum. So then I used as a launch. So which is like a 7 to 10 keywords I will have, what I would do, I spend like minimum 50 to $100 on the launch budget for each keyword completely, and make sure that we run that launch completely for separately for the next seven days. Okay. With that way, we can able to accomplish the higher ranking. And also we make sure that when we differentiate the phases, we also make sure that which is like a highly converted keywords, making sure that those keywords are like highly converted, not like a browse keywords for taking all the keywords that are the most important thing.

Colin Raja 00:22:56  the when you run a browse keyword, you really burn out of your completely on your budget in a, you know, two hours if you like running a browse keyword, which is like, let’s say the cell phone case, if you’re running for a cell phone case, people don’t know what what cell phone case. It is like, you know, they are coming for iPhone six, iPhone seven or whatever it is, right? So you take the browse keyword and underline all the purchase keyword. If you rank for the underlying purchase keywords, your browse keyword automatically rank for it. So that’s the another data point. What we try to keep in a 7 to 10 days. If you rank for all the purchase keywords, your browse keyword needs to be ranked properly. If does not happen, that means that you missed a couple of purchase keywords. So then we go on and analyze like what are the keywords we missed? Then we add that in our launch and then make sure that we’re going with like a purchase.

Colin Raja 00:23:37  We make sure that our browse keywords are coming up in the top ten positions. Then we run a browse keyword launch. Actually at that point after that. Okay.

Josh Hadley 00:23:44  Love that. Love that okay.

Colin Raja 00:23:46  Which is like this process is going to repeat until we launch for like a 3 to 4 phases of launch until we accomplished like the level of what number of sales, what we need to be accomplished. Okay. Then you talk about the Q and A if you want, if to some of the keywords, the more or less the strategy is the same actually. But the issue is what shows up actually in the middle. It’s like if your relevancy is not going to be good for certain keywords. So you need to build the relevancy. So for that we need to go into like a Q and A actually respond to the Q. And if somebody is like ask a relevant question. So you respond to that with the keyword with that Q&A. So you build a relevancy for that one. Or certain keywords are now coming up really well.

Colin Raja 00:24:21  Then you put it in an image actually, you put the image, you know, about the Amazon, recognize your, you know, you know about Amazon, right? Uhhuh. So, so you put it up there and then see that if the keyword is showing up there for you. So if that’s not showing up, so make sure that you add the appropriate attributes there on that image. Make sure that that image is showing up and for example organic. So you put up like a green leaves or something there. You will automatically rank for index for and also get relevancy for organic keywords completely. So you don’t even have to have that, keyword in your listing. You automatically get higher relevancy for your keyword as long as it’s in the Q&A or it’s in the images, or it’s in the reviews. Those are the most important aspect of what we focus on. the next part is the most important part, which is like a, we focus on reviews actually, which is like, when we saw the reviews and somebody posted the reviews with a certain keywords.

Colin Raja 00:25:14  Go back again for a launch, actually that keyword, you get higher relevancy with that keyword, what they mentioned in the reviews actually. so we shift. The keywords are in the launch. If I found the keyword, which is like, okay, if somebody talks about like a, okay, somebody talks about like a classic iPhone case, this is like a classic iPhone case I ever had. Actually, if that keyword exist in your list, actually go back and, add that in your list and run the launch because you have a very limited time to build the relevancy. You run the run the relevancy. At the time, you were able to rank the keyword super fast at that point.

Josh Hadley 00:25:45  That makes sense. So how important do you feel like the keywords and reviews are they like not.

Colin Raja 00:25:51  It’s you know, it’s it’s it’s not required until you until your listing is not able to show it for certain keywords. For example, if the classic keyword is not able to get higher relevancy, your CPC cost is higher.

Colin Raja 00:26:06  then it’s the most important thing is like if someone is like updated listing with that classic keyword, then you can able to do magic on that listing actually with that keyword.

Josh Hadley 00:26:17  Okay. So do you recommend I mean, right out of the gate. Do you recommend on any product getting as many vine reviews as you possibly can? Just using a.

Colin Raja 00:26:26  Line is the best strategy. What we have initially, when you have the wine, it’s you will get a bunch of not one. Wine is not for review. One wine is now for review. One wine is for. I don’t care about if I’m getting a negative review out of wine. but wine is specifically for building your relevancy on your listing, actually. And there is a data point on it, actually, which is like, let’s say you put up the Asin and then your wine is now filled up in like a in a three days. Actually, that means that there is something problem in your listing. Especially when the listing is like a very optimized value, like a backend optimized properly, your wine will be like gone in like 3 to 4 days, completely like straight.

Colin Raja 00:27:03  Sometimes it happened in a one single day, 30 days, 30 product will be gone in a single day. But if that’s not happening, that means that your listing as a serious issue, you need to take care of it.

Josh Hadley 00:27:13  Yeah. Love that. Okay, Colin, this has been a lot of juicy information, and I think a lot of people, their heads are probably spinning. They’re like, are you talking about a lot of stuff. So Colin, if we could like, let’s simplify, let’s boil all of this stuff down into if you’re talking to, you know, let’s say it’s an inexperienced Amazon brand owner and they’re asking you, how do I get my product launch successfully? Let’s explain it in layman’s terms, along with like some actions they can take along those paths.

Colin Raja 00:27:40  Okay. That’s very tough for me. I don’t know why actually. Very honestly, I’m like, I wish I could see basically, okay, the one thing what you need to make sure is like your, your category is right.

Colin Raja 00:27:50  You choose the category, right? Amazon. Right now it’s helping you in a lot of different way. That’s the first step. The second step is like you just have to have your conversion and click to rate better than your competitor for each and every keyword.

Josh Hadley 00:28:01  Okay. How do you know what your competitors conversion rate and click through rate are then?

Colin Raja 00:28:05  Okay. So there’s a way to find out that, one, if you’re not in the top three, if you’re not in the top three, you can if you’re in top three, you’re able to see that in the analytics. If you’re not in the top three, you go to the search query performance and you click on the keyword. You were able to see who is the top ten if you want to be. Of course, anybody will want to rank and they want to be ranked in the top ten for sure. If you’re not in the top ten and you click through rate, you’re probably not going to be rank for top ten or top ten positions actually at any point.

Colin Raja 00:28:30  So you just need to make sure your conversion, your click through rate is the most important thing on the first week of time actually. So you can click through rate is like a better than your competitor. That’s how you find it. And if you are an end up in like a top three positions so you are able to find out your conversion rate actually whether it is like optimized, it’s like better than the top 3% actually. So that’s pretty much basic stuff. What they have to do in terms of like all the technical aspect packs and clicks, acts and the tricks. What we talk about this is a basic what you need to cover, which is like you need to have a better conversion, a better click through rate, and better optimized listing. you don’t do keyword stuffing. keyword stuffing is completely negative right now. I don’t do it. So make sure that you’ve following through the NLP model, which is like natural language processing. model, which is that your listing is up here for not for the Amazon algorithm.

Colin Raja 00:29:18  It’s also for the customer who can able to understand what it is actually. Okay. If you follow the simple steps like this, you will able to be successfully able to rank keyword in a much better way.

Josh Hadley 00:29:28  Okay. It makes a lot of sense. My question would be on this. How do you do you as you’ve been consulting with other brands? What if they what if you make a bunch of optimizations and you’re not seeing that click through rate be better than the top three or the conversion rate? At what point do you like say, all right, screw this product. Move on to the next.

Colin Raja 00:29:48  So at this point, it’s like I tell them. So one product we deal with, we rank crazy three phases really well. We stay in like top ten position like top 5% for major keywords, top 10% for like all the most important keywords actually. Right. one point of time. What happened is we were saying we’re telling the brand owner saying that your keyword is not converting, your keyword is not converting, and your click through rate is like going down, actually, which is now good.

Colin Raja 00:30:11  So we need to do a couple of things actually. We tell them, okay, let’s do product pooling. Actually find out what is the best image. What is that people want and find out what is the best way to represent your product. And the second one is like do the price optimization. Like they want to have a premium price. I understand that, but reduce the price, see where the customers are premium about your product. Like okay, give it like $35 product. I will bring it down to 25 and then slowly trying to increase it. Right. But still we’re not able to convert much better actually. Which means that the images and all the things are not representing the product very well. So we tell the brand saying that, hey, we’ve done enough. We have worked with you in terms of like we work with them like almost 3 to 4 months a period. Actually. We told them that we need to do this one. If not, your ranking is going to stop.

Colin Raja 00:30:51  Actually, I’m going to give it to you. Why? Because they are not taking any responsibility. And like we were like, okay, if you want us to do it, we will do it. But you know, I need the inputs from you. We need like a tools and all the things, what we need to do. But the point is we need to initiate either you hire somebody else to do this or you know, or we can help you. But let’s do something as soon as possible. But they’re not ready to take an action at that point. Interesting product is done. Yeah.

Josh Hadley 00:31:11  So what are you what would you recommend are some of like the best optimization levers to influence click through rate and conversion rate. You you briefly mentioned like maybe your main image right. Yeah. And going to polling software and Tel Aviv pig fu, product opinion, etc.. talk to me about you. And you talked about price. What else? What are some other levers I can pull to maybe optimize my list for?

Colin Raja 00:31:33  For a click through rate for you to increase your click through rate? Are we using a product opinion right now? It’s amazing for us.

Colin Raja 00:31:39  which is like what’s happening is like we first we put up like a stimulation campaign stimulation, which is like we tell we tell them, we tell them pullers to To go on and say, okay, go on and check this keyword and find out what product you love to buy and why. So we collect a whole bunch of data for that one first, and then after that we go and then like take 20 products or ten products, which is like go on and check which product you would buy and why we ask those questions. So they answer the questions like which product on the top, bla bla bla bla bla bla and second third campaign which would be after that we based on the collecting data, we give it to a designer. The best, the best hack is go to the 99 designs and, give the exact report to them completely. These are my competitors I want to come up with, like, a best image, actually. So they compete like crazy and they give, like a best image for you actually.

Colin Raja 00:32:23  Completely. And you take that five image of it, run the pool again. Right. The best image and the best image you got. And then run the pool with your competitor. So as long as you get like a more than 30 or 40% above, the clicks, then any other people will get like a 50% above hike in, in the, in the pool. Actually, before we were like 18% and they got like after optimized and everything, the image optimized, we got like 56% actually. Really. So those are like a freaking amazing moment that what we got. So we need to go through like a 5 to 6 level of campaigns. What you need to set up to make sure that you get the perfect image what you want and click uploading.

Josh Hadley 00:32:59  Okay, so main image is like crucial. Are you like on. So you’ll go through product opinion. You will say hey which these are the competitors right. Run that scenario. You ask their feedback. Then you send that you kind of take download all that information, create a 99 designs like is it a contest?

Colin Raja 00:33:16  It’s a contest.

Colin Raja 00:33:16  Yeah.

Josh Hadley 00:33:17  And so then you’re going to get a bunch of different people creating main image for your stuff. And then you could even take what? Then you award the winner and now you’ve got.

Colin Raja 00:33:25  Yeah, we get we take like a five images first and then run the pool again. We don’t select the winner. The pool is again, select the winner and then take that image and then ask that, the last the the designer. Hey, we want different variations. Can you create a different variation. So you create a different variation as well. So we give it to the we can put it in a competitor compared with the competitor completely. Again run the pool we get like a crazy results man. It’s like amazing. Actually. What we got is like we I’ve done it with like a couple of products like that. It’s a very good results. What I got out of that. So that’s the image is the first thing. The second one is like uprising. Most of the people, most of the brand I work with, they want like a model, like say I want a premium pricing.

Colin Raja 00:33:59  We are not like that kind of guy. Cheap product. Yes, I understand, but are you ready to spend a premium money? It’s like you cannot spend $1,000 and look for a premium brand. So how much you want to spend for external traffic? How much you want to spend for sending a traffic on Amazon. So at that point, if you want to, if somebody is like selling for like $20 and you want to charge for like $40, that means that you need to double your PPC budget, actually. Right? So but at that point, you need to be like, you don’t determine the price you based on what is what you determine is like you lower the price, give the coupon code actually right, so that you don’t, you know, you don’t mess with your pricing, actually give the coupon code and reduce the coupon code all the time, actually. And you will able to find out the point that your, your sales is like lowering going down or going up or whatever.

Colin Raja 00:34:41  Based on that, you change the you change the pricing strategy every year, as I’m saying. So that’s how we define the price. Sometimes we do the the coupon, sometimes we reduce the pricing completely. Like, we initially we start with like a $40 product and after a couple of sales we reduce it to like a, $35. So we get like a, you know, staggered price as well. Completely. So then we see how it’s going and then, you know, we do like a multiple strategy, which is like, okay, the first we do that one, the second one is like we reduce it to like a bottom, which is like, okay, $40 product, run it for like a couple of days, giveaways and all like PPC and purchase. And after a couple of days we reduce it to like a $90. So we get like a 50% straight to price actually completely. And then slowly, like from their point, we’re going to be increasing the price like a dollar after the phase one and phase two launches a complete.

Colin Raja 00:35:23  completed. Okay, so we tell brands saying that, okay, we need to wait until the phase one, phase two keywords are completed. And after that we’re going to be like increasing slow. We have done a launch actually one launch, which is like the cost was the product, which is like a the competitor was selling $179. Okay. So he’s breakeven cost. I’m not I don’t remember that. But we put it for $110 actually. Okay. And we put up like a $20 coupon code. Right. It’s almost close to a break. Even cost for them, but for the brand. So then what we did is basically we rank really, like crazy. We rank really crazy. we increased $20 every. Every week. We increased $20. So right now we’re selling it in $150, $159 price point. We almost the product is going to make this year 3 to $4 million. On the Prime Day I think they got close to $200,000. Well if I’m not wrong. Yeah. So it’s like a you need to think in a long term.

Colin Raja 00:36:17  Not in a short term profit a long term. Some of the brands comes in and is like they are only $5,000 budget, but they want to go into like a biggest category, like a crazy category, like a spatula or some kind of category like that. I was like, what is the differentiation? You don’t have any differentiation. You just do a private label, completely copy the other product completely and then making it in your brand, and you want a premium cost and you don’t want to spend a premium money. And how can I help you out?

Josh Hadley 00:36:41  Yeah. Are you saying, how long are you saying that people should be willing to to bleed in order to rank successfully? At what time are you saying it’s six months? 12 months later, you’re making a profit. How long?

Colin Raja 00:36:52  It’s a okay. It’s it depends on the product. Again, if they’ve done a product right, let’s say that the product is like completely like crazy good differentiation there. Actually They really like have worked on images very properly, like, and also they have done a all the listing very clearly good actually.

Colin Raja 00:37:06  Right. I, I would say if the product is like that, you will able to recoup the money in a 30 to 60 days of time of the launch cost. Okay. If the product was like a very general product, it’s like one of the supplement, what you want to launch. it’s like, then it’s going to take like close to 4 to 5 months for you to bleed, actually. And after that, no, 3 to 4 months. Our average actually 90 days is an average. You will bleed on the five fifth month, six month if the launch is pretty good. Fifth month you will have a break even cost six month onwards. You make money actually.

Josh Hadley 00:37:38  Okay, interesting. I think that’s a good. I think that’s a good mindset shift, for people to have an understanding, like if I’m going to go all in, how am I going to? How long am I willing to do this if I want to get?

Colin Raja 00:37:51  It’s not only the product class product is only like what, 20%, 15, 15 to 25%? That’s what the product cost is.

Colin Raja 00:37:56  It’s all of the 80% is cost is come from other things like expenses for your launch, PPC and all of the stuff actually. So you need to make sure that you have a budget. So a couple of couple of launches, like I talked to people, which is like they come back with like a ten products and but they have only like a freaking 20, $30,000. budget to launch, like a five products. Actually, I was like, there’s no possible you don’t have any differentiation of the product. You don’t have any kind of like a they don’t have like a there’s no way you can able to spice it up that product. There’s no way you can able to spice it up because your product sourcing was really done by it actually. Completely. So you’re gonna it’s a 5050 chance that you’re gonna make money, actually. Yeah. So I literally tell people like, I don’t select all the products. I literally tell them like, okay, this is what is going to happen. I’m like, this product is going to take this much amount of money, but there’s a 5050 chance that you’re going to make money, actually.

Colin Raja 00:38:43  Okay. Right. Or this product will work. Good. We’ll work on it actually. Or I cannot take this product, some other product like a spatula. No, I don’t want to work on that because it’s crazy. Like it’s insane that you’re going into that category. and without no differentiation, you’re just like adding a different colors, actually. Like, it doesn’t make any sense for me to be work on that kind of thing.

Josh Hadley 00:39:03  Colin, this has been super valuable. now, I love to leave each episode with three actionable takeaways. Here are the actual takeaways that I noted. You let me know if I’m missing anything. Colin. All right. Okay. So number one, I would say you’ve got to go in to any product launch, making sure that the back end of your listing is set up properly. For me, I think like the, the refinement attributes, that’s something I don’t think I’ve been paying enough attention to. And so having somebody on your team that is an expert with like those bulk files, making sure you’re constantly in the right category and like you said, you’ve got to be monitoring this, you know, almost daily over 120 days.

Josh Hadley 00:39:38  And because Amazon can make changes at any given point in time. But like you said, you might start getting ranked. But if something goes wrong in the back end, you can start falling really quickly. So that.

Colin Raja 00:39:47  Is correct. No, it’s not only 120 days. We do it for all the time. Right now we’re doing it for a couple of brands. We’re doing it manually, like 360 checkpoints, actually 360 checkpoints to monitor what it is. A couple of listings, just making like a half 1 million or $1 million product, actually. I’m like, if you don’t monitor it, I mean, if you don’t know why your sales are going high and why your sales are going down, you are in like a ferret. You’re in like a lot of land. Yeah, it’s like a but with that data, with the we created the data for ourself actually completely. We build it, we build it on a one. We’re working on a SaaS actually on that one. I’m not sure when it’s going to be completed, but at this point we offer it to a couple of brands.

Colin Raja 00:40:22  We don’t have a lot of large capacity, so we tested that one. We could able to tell exactly like if the product scales down, we know exactly why it’s went down.

Josh Hadley 00:40:29  Yeah. Makes a lot of sense. All right. Action item number two is when you launch one of the best ways to seed your keywords for that launch is by number one, going hard with vine reviews. And then number two, it is doing product targeting ads. So put in your best selling competitors and light up product targeting ads. Day one. And you get to start you know you’re telling Amazon, hey, I’m like this guy, right? So keep a very refined list of assigns that you want in that product targeting campaign. And then last but not least, the third action item is on a daily, weekly basis. You should be paying attention to that click through rate and conversion rate. And Colin shared some great strategies of how to manipulate that that main image, utilizing 99 designs and utilizing polling software and then using price is another big lever to help you get ranked so that you can have that wow factor.

Josh Hadley 00:41:17  You can increase that conversion rate, and slowly over time, you can build up that that price to your ideal price point. But you’ve got to be willing to bleed at the beginning. So those are my three actionable takeaways. Calling anything else you would add that I missed?

Colin Raja 00:41:29  I think you covered exactly what you what needs to be taken actually. Sure. Love it. And data data approach I would say yeah. Just make sure you measure the data every single time. And based on that you take a decision not just by, oh, somebody told me this, I’m going to do this one. Somebody told me this, I’m going to do this one. No, it’s based on the data completely. Yeah.

Josh Hadley 00:41:48  Love it. Colin, I’m going to ask you the final three questions that I love to ask every brand or every guest that I have on number one, what’s been the most influential book that you’ve read and why?

Colin Raja 00:41:58  Okay, the first book, I would say Unthreaded Unthreaded Unthreaded. So actually, I was in a crazy depression one point of time I like three years ago, actually.

Colin Raja 00:42:07  Oh my God. I think every single human being needs to go through that book, actually. which is you’re like, my biggest takeaway on that book is like the God gift is one of the biggest God gift is like emotions actually. Yeah. So the emotions is to feel, not to suffer. So most of the people take that emotion and suffer and make other people suffer as well. So one of the biggest learning, one of the biggest thing what I implement in my life is like, you know, you, you you don’t suffer out of emotion. You just, you feel it and you’re just like, you know, completely not suffering. Suffering is not a suffering is not a gift actually feeling. It’s a gift actually what we need to have. So the book will teach you about the different emotions and different environments and everything, what you need to go through. It’s it’s every entrepreneur, not entrepreneur. And if you’re an entrepreneur, you’re a guy who’s like a crazy going through a lot of emotions actually, I’m sure you have to read that book, actually.

Josh Hadley 00:43:03  What’s it? Spell it out.

Colin Raja 00:43:05  un u n t e t h e r e d. Until it’s all thanks to The Untethered Soul from Michael Singer.

Josh Hadley 00:43:17  Untethered soul. Love it. Yeah. Love it. All right.

Colin Raja 00:43:19  If you’ve never watched a movie called soul and also in and Out, it’s a it’s a. What is the movie? It’s a cartoon movie. You should watch that movie. Two movies. Actually, it’s multiple movies.

Josh Hadley 00:43:28  All right, Colin, I love it. The Untethered Soul I have now written that down on my future book to read list. That’s awesome. All right, Colin, what is your favorite AI tool that you’ve been using that you think other people should be using?

Colin Raja 00:43:41  I use a cloudy, cloudy AI a lot. I trained my cloudy AI for my team, basically. Not like I trained my body for my team for any kind of questions they want to ask. They’ll respond to that one. I’ve done a crazy custom GPT on that one. For cloud AI specifically, I get more number of I can do optimization.

Colin Raja 00:44:00  We can even put up like a keyword which is saying that, okay, I have this many keywords. I can you create a title based on semantic or, mapping, keyword mapping, and create a listing in such a way that the NLP. But I want to rank for this keyword. So basically add all the relevant keywords which to rank for the certain keywords. So create all the title bullets and the description completely to focus on that particular two keywords. Actually what I want to rank for. So that one is pretty much very good for me and it works really well actually at this point.

Josh Hadley 00:44:29  I love it. Great tool. All right, last but not least, who is somebody that you admire or respect the most in the e-commerce space that other people should be following and why?

Josh Hadley 00:44:36  Oh, damn. Okay.

Colin Raja 00:44:38  The one guy I was so much in respect with this, I, I inspire, start and inspire everything. Like what he talks about, which is someone called Josh. No.

Josh Hadley 00:44:47  Okay.

Josh Hadley 00:44:48  I don’t think I’ve heard of him.

Colin Raja 00:44:49  Oh, yeah. He’s run. he run a one of the biggest, he run, one of the mastermind called, I forgot the name of it. He’s going to kill me for sure. it was, his thought process are different. It is like, the I ship my I should my thought process before I met him. Like, I’m like a guy who try to be. I’m a big problem solver, actually. I mean, people come to me to solve problems, but I cannot solve my own problem. That’s a different issue. So it’s like, for me, it’s like, when I go when I talk to him, he’s like another big guy to focus on solving problems. Actually, it’s like he comes with, like a different, different perspective, different view on things actually, which is like amazing when I feel myself actually, you know, I feel my energy when I sit and talk to him, which is like very genuinely want to help somebody who genuinely want to give, not for looking for anything.

Colin Raja 00:45:37  That’s how I operate in my life. It’s not about like taking. It’s all about giving. You automatically get it back. It doesn’t matter what you do in your life. That’s how I feel about what I inspire. Inspire me a lot.

Josh Hadley 00:45:46  I love that Colin. This has been an awesome episode. If people want to follow you, they want to hire you for your consulting services. Where can people find you out at?

Colin Raja 00:45:54  they can find me on Facebook. Colin Raja. And also I have like a lot of, whatever we talked about, we have I have a detailed videos of each and everything so they can go through it if they want. the presentation, what I was shared, hit me up in my LinkedIn. Actually, it’s also called Raja. I can share the presentation.

Josh Hadley 00:46:09  Awesome. Colin, thanks so much for your time today.

Colin Raja 00:46:12  I appreciate it, man. Thank you. Have a good day.