Matt Kostan is the CEO of ProductPinion, and he revolutionizes brand growth through real consumer insights. His platform transforms shopper feedback into sales-driving strategies.

A serial entrepreneur with over a decade of experience, Matt has scaled multiple seven-figure brands across Amazon, Kickstarter and retail.

From product development to market domination, he is renowned for sharing actionable advice for e-commerce sellers through his engaging talks on world stages.

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

In this episode of the Ecomm Breakthrough Podcast, host Josh Hadley interviews Matt Kostan, CEO of Product Pinion. They delve into advanced e-commerce strategies to help 6-7 figure business owners scale to 8 figures and beyond. Matt shares actionable insights, including the “million-dollar image hack” for creating standout product images based on competitor analysis. He introduces “Variations,” a new AI tool for generating effective Amazon listing images. The discussion emphasizes the importance of consumer feedback, continuous testing, and leveraging AI tools to enhance product visibility and drive sales. This episode is a must-listen for ambitious e-commerce entrepreneurs.

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

Action Item #1: Implement the Million-Dollar Image Hack: Focus on creating standout product images by analyzing your competitors and leveraging AI tools for creative differentiation. Test multiple image concepts in a controlled environment to measure click-through rates and select the most effective one for your Amazon listings.

Action Item #2: Leverage Consumer Feedback for Listing Optimization: Collect feedback through customer reviews and surveys to identify relevant keywords and descriptors that resonate with shoppers. Continuously update your product listings to reflect these terms, improving search visibility and relevance.

Action Item #3: Adapt to Conversational Search: Optimize your product titles and descriptions for natural, conversational queries. Use consumer insights to identify commonly used phrases in your niche, and ensure your listings are tailored to the evolving search behavior of shoppers.

Related Episode(s):

Sponsor for this episode…

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

I started my business 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 email me at josh@ecommbreakthrough.com and in your subject line say “strategy audit” for the chance to win a $10,000 comprehensive business strategy audit at no cost!

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 Stephen Pope from My Amazon Guide. Today, I am speaking with Matt Kostan, the CEO of Product Pinion. And today we have some amazing hacks. We’ve got AI tools that he’s going to be sharing with us. We’re going to be talking about how you can boost your organic ranking, especially as Amazon transitions to more AI generated search results. And he’s got he’s going to pull back the curtain and show you exactly what is working today. This episode is brought to you by Ecomm Breakthrough, where I specialize in investing in and scaling seven figure ecommerce businesses 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 hands on experience, strategic insights, and the resources needed to fuel your growth. So if you or someone you know is ready to scale or looking for an investment partner, reach out to me directly at Josh at Ecomm Breakthrough dot com.

Josh Hadley 00:00:50  That’s e-comm with two M’s and let’s turn your dreams into reality. But today I am super excited to introduce you all to Matt Kostan. Matt is the CEO of Product Pinion and he revolutionizes brand growth through real customer insights. His platform transforms shopper feedback into sales driving strategies. He’s a serial entrepreneur. With over a decade of experience. Matt has scaled multiple seven figure brands across Amazon, Kickstarter, and retail, and from product development to market domination. He is renowned for sharing actionable advice for ecommerce sellers through his engaging talks on world stages. So with that introduction, welcome to the show, Matt.

Matt Kostan 00:01:22  Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it, and I know that intro was a mouthful, so thank you for, for having that, out there.

Josh Hadley 00:01:28  Matt. You’re right. You’ve, you’ve spoken on world stage stages around the world. You and I met in Hawaii officially at the Billion Dollar Seller Summit. I loved your presentation there. And, knew that you would be an excellent guest on our podcast because I think you have some amazing insights to share with our listeners today.

Josh Hadley 00:01:44  So to our audience, make sure this is an episode that you you tag. This is one that you’re going to want to go back and rewatch relisten to. Because, Matt, we’re going to I want to dive into before we hit the record button you went through, I’ve got noted seven different hacks that I think literally are game changing, and hopefully we can get through all of them today. But, Matt, with that being said, let’s cut to the chase. why don’t you actually give people a brief overview about what product opinion is, and then we’ll dive into the rest of the stuff?

Matt Kostan 00:02:11  Yeah, totally. So product opinion is like a complete platform to get the consumer insights. You need to be able to compete with the big brands. Right. So fortune 500 companies spend billions of dollars to to get insights. Because at the end of the day, it’s all about making products that that are, that are amazing. And the best way to do that is through feedback of the shoppers. So we enable Amazon sellers to get the insights they need to to make those decisions, to move the business forward and ultimately make more sales.

Josh Hadley 00:02:35  Love that. So basically, for those of you that are very familiar with like pick food in Tel Aviv. Product opinion is an alternative to those. It’s actually the one that we have been using the most. So with that being said, the focus of this episode is not about product opinion, but I think that provides the background for all the hacks that you’ve been able to learn, because you’ve seen lots of brands come through, you’ve got some amazing case studies to share, and I think this is really going to inspire a lot of people. So, Matt, the first thing that I want to talk about is that what is the $1 million image hack?

Matt Kostan 00:03:03  Yeah, totally. So one big takeaway that I hope everyone gets after after watching or hearing this is that, you know, your main image. The success of how many clicks you get isn’t how beautiful it is. It’s relative to your competitors. So a lot of people dive in and have, you know, their designer, whoever they’re working with, come up with a main image that’s beautiful and beautiful is good, but it doesn’t necessarily get the click.

Matt Kostan 00:03:25  So what I talk about in terms of making $1 million main image is how to basically, figure out what your competitors are doing and how to make something that stands out like a sore thumb. And the best example I can give you is actually a it was a thumb sticking up that that made, you know, as one brand that did over $1.2 million in just over a year. And the way to do this, it’s actually really dead simple. So all you do is take a picture of the search results for your main keyword and jump into ChatGPT. And I can give you guys in the show notes the the actual prompt. But it’s nothing, you know, nothing crazy basically. Asks ChatGPT. Okay, looking at this image of search results on Amazon, I want you to tell me what each image has similar, what are the things that they’re doing, that sort of thing. So then ChatGPT will spit out, hey, you know, all of these things are, are all similar. So in my example, I was selling mosquito repellent bracelets.

Matt Kostan 00:04:13  So you do that screenshot and it tells you, hey, there’s multiple colors, they’re all stacked in a pile. And, you know, there’s all these common traits because we all kind of are guilty of doing this too. When you’re first selling on Amazon, you just kind of see what other people are doing. It’s like, hey, it looks like it works for them. They’re doing 50,000 a month. I’m just going to do the exact same thing, which is okay to get started. But if you really want to make a difference, you want to make it different. So, ChatGPT tells you it’s all similar. Now here’s where the fun happens. You then ask ChatGPT to be like, what can I do based on this? What are some ideas that are different? How can I make the image, different? So if you don’t have that creativity mindset so it’s hard to even figure out what could be done. ChatGPT does the thinking for you? So in the instance of this mosquito repellent band.

Matt Kostan 00:04:55  Some of the suggestions were, hey, can you show it on someone’s wrist? Right. I can use some lifestyle imagery. Can you make it a solid color instead of these circus multicolor wristbands? Can it be a solid color? And interestingly enough, that’s you know, I’m looking at it in retrospect because this brand was like, you know, five years ago before ChatGPT, but we did all those things. And crazy enough, that’s what kind of, helped get the brand noticed. So we had an image of a mosquito repellent band with the guy with the thumbs up, and it got all the attention, it got the clicks, and that was one of the I think it was probably the biggest factor in that brand growing so quickly. when we, when we launched it. So really, really easy to do, literally ask ChatGPT, hey, how can I make something that stands out, make it different, and you’ll get so many ideas that you can then send to the designer. Then you can, you know, get some, get some things created that will actually stand out and make make a difference.

Josh Hadley 00:05:41  Man, I love that hack because I think that this is a prompt that you could give to your graphic designers and have them you could systematize this out. So, Matt, if you will make sure we will, put these prompts in the show notes, because we all know that WeChat kept its crap in, crap out. So, we want to get your magic, keywords and phrases that you’re using in order to get amazing insights, because I love that. And I think that the way I use ChatGPT is it’s just a source of inspiration and idea generation. It’s not a copy and paste type of, you know, I think I tool for myself. It’s more of a tool to get my interest going on something, spark an idea or two, and then I can run with it the rest of the way. So totally love that, Matt. All right. So Matt, there’s a new tool that you’re going to be releasing. AI tool that is going to be, in my opinion, game changing when it comes to creating main images on Amazon.

Josh Hadley 00:06:32  In addition to that, you’re working on getting a patent for this because it is so revolutionary. So, Matt, why don’t you pull back the curtain and let us know what you got work, what you’re working on right now?

Matt Kostan 00:06:40  Yeah, I appreciate that. So essentially, one of the biggest hurdles to doing split tests from a seller is, hey, I got to create new designs. Right? So it’s and it can be a bit of a challenge coordinating it with the designer, hiring someone. If you don’t have someone on on staff. So we got to thinking like, how can we make it so that it’s dead simple to create these main images that actually get get clicks and, you know, there are a lot of tools out there. Obviously there’s Canva and Canvas. Great. I mean, obviously, you know, use that if you know how to use it. But we figured we felt that there was like a lack of a tool that could actually be specific for, you know, making toes compliant main image variations.

Matt Kostan 00:07:13  And that’s what we ended up coming up with. So it took about, you know, 7 or 8 months in development to get the models right and that sort of thing. And in a nutshell, it’s called variations. And what it’ll do is you take your, you know, your main product and it can generate one of the cool things is it can generate AI assets on the fly that don’t have the background, so you can manipulate it as you see fit and very quickly and easily create these compositions of main images that look great. And what’s more, obviously it’s it’s integrated with product opinion. So in a click you can also run a test to see which of these variations will, will work. And I can show kind of a rough idea of what it what it looks like and what it can, can do. let me just share the screen here.

Josh Hadley 00:07:50  So to all of the listeners, make sure you go check out the podcast on YouTube so that you can see Matt and I, not necessarily for our beautiful faces, but for what he’s sharing here.

Matt Kostan 00:07:59  Yeah. So variations. Com and essentially in a nutshell, this is what it’s, it looks like. So it’s not just the I asset. So for example right now for everyone listening basically there’s a canvas. It has a baking pan. The the product we’re selling here is a cookie baking pan. We generated a stack of delicious chocolate chip cookies right there. So I mean if you’re selling this baking pan, you’re really selling the end result, which is the cookies. but in addition to the AI stuff, we also do things to make, you know, all the best practices really easy. So, for example, you know, putting your keyword on the image, your main keyword is super important. So sometimes that includes having packaging. So that wrap, for example, was put on by our tool so that you can easily write out, you know, cookie baking pan right on it. So people know when they’re searching. This is the one I want. This is the one I’m going to going to click.

Matt Kostan 00:08:41  but say for example, you want brownies instead, or you want to do a test to see if the cookies versus the brownies will move the needle. with this AI asset creator, you literally just say, hey, I want some brownies. And it generates the brownies. So another hurdle that we’ve heard from, from customers, even just with AI in general. No one wants to become a prompt engineer. That’s not my gig. I want to be able to say, hey, I want this thing, give me this thing, and that’s it. So we’ve tried to make it drop dead simple. Literally just put, hey, what’s the eye candy thing that you want in the main image? And we will generate it. And behind the scenes we actually have some prompt stuff going on to do the best to generate something, generate something interesting. So now we have these beautiful brownie images, and we have this nice up close shot of this brownie. If you’re looking at the webpage, it’s like good enough to eat pretty much.

Matt Kostan 00:09:21  which really, I mean, hey, I’m looking at that and I’m getting hungry, right? another aspect of it, we have an AI drawing tool, which this is, this is other tools have this, but it makes it very, you know, for this type of purpose where you want, maybe you have your main image, you just want to change a little thing or change the color of something or, or make something slightly different. You just highlight it with the, with the pen and say, hey, I want to transform those cookies into brownies. And then boom, it gives you some options to select from from there. the other part that’s really cool. Like I mentioned as well, is it lets you create these variations really easily. In one click, you duplicate it, you change something, and then once you have these variations, obviously because it’s integrated in product opinion, you click Create Test and you’re off to the races to create a test. So there’s other AI examples that were generated on the on the page here.

Matt Kostan 00:10:04  But it’s actually pretty. And it took a while to get the models and to get all the things kind of lined up to make it actually work the way we wanted it to. And it’s like, it’s really good. I’ve been using this more and more and I absolutely love it. I think it’ll be a lot of fun for for sellers to make make things to, to win the click.

Josh Hadley 00:10:18  I think that will be genuinely game changing because we have a dedicated graphic designer where her entire job is doing exactly what this tool is going to be able to do. And then she runs the polls for us right now. And so this I think people need to understand, like how impactful this could be. Like, this genuinely is like a first of its kind. And so now I love this. I know you’re kind of in beta mode. And by the time this episode airs, hopefully that thing’s going to be rocking and I look forward to that. So yeah, thanks for pulling back the curtain and showing us something cool that you’re working on right now?

Matt Kostan 00:10:48  Absolutely.

Josh Hadley 00:10:48  All right. Matt, another thing that you talked about. That’s been very valuable for your own brand, and maybe you can share some case studies, is you’re using kind of these, these polling software tools, whether it be Pickfu or in Tel Aviv, product opinion to say, hey, here’s the product. How would you describe this? Tell me about that. Why is that important and how does that how does that change anything for you and improving sales.

Matt Kostan 00:11:12  Yeah, totally. So everyone knows or at least you should know that the the way search is happening now is changing. So search is a heck of a lot more conversational. We have Amazon’s Rufus you know, hey what do you want to buy. And people are being accustomed to you know explaining in more detail what specifically they’re looking for. Also with perplexity like I use perplexity now more than more than Google just because of the, you know, the results. But then also it’s conversational. So something that you can do, which is unique with product opinion, is a feature we call pinyon.

Matt Kostan 00:11:39  Ask where you don’t necessarily have to have people actually select an option. If you’ve ever used Google Forms, then you already know how to use opinion. Ask and you can get feedback, right away on any number of questions. And you can ask multiple questions. So one really good way to kind of get a feeling for if you’re listing, you know, is going to be ready for for AI is just that ask people how they would describe it or what are the most important qualities of your particular product. So one example that I did, which blew my mind is I showed a picture of one of my products, and I’ve had this listing for eight years, and I think I’m doing a decent job of optimizing it the best I can. You know, I’ve done all the keyword research you can imagine. I’ve used all the tools to make sure that I was hidden everything. But then when I asked people, so show the picture of the product and I asked, I think it was 50 people, like, how would you describe this? Or what’s the most important? In this case, it’s a luggage tag.

Matt Kostan 00:12:26  So what’s the most important aspect of the luggage tag? And their response was like, I mean, people had obviously a whole bunch of different responses. So they’re telling me all the adjectives that they would use. And in this case, they use the word sleek and modern. And the thing that blew my mind was I didn’t use the words sleek and modern at all in my in my listing. So with that, you know, showed me is there’s a big gap like, I got to fix this. And I feel like when we start thinking of our listings in terms of how people are going to be searching, we really need to up the game and just realize how important these adjectives are going to be. Yes, I smart enough to get the sentiment analysis of like, you know, sleep might be the same as like, you know, good looking, whatever. But if we have these keywords natively in the listing, we’re that much more likely to be recommended by by all of these, all of these searches.

Matt Kostan 00:13:07  So quick and easy way. This literally takes like ten minutes. And you don’t even have to use a tool to do this. Use Google Forms, you know, ask 20 people, 30 people. How would you describe this? And then all of a sudden you’re getting real. So not just artificial intelligence, which kind of goes to the lowest common, you know, safe way of describing things. You’re actually asking real people, getting real intelligence on what they’d be searching for, the, for the product. So, I mean, I want everyone to do this because even with me thinking I’m like, hey, I optimized everything perfectly, you still find gaps that you don’t otherwise find in traditional keyword keyword research tools.

Josh Hadley 00:13:37  Yeah, I’d love that. And I think anybody that has a lot of different variations for a product, whether it’s a theme that’s like, oh, this one’s like a mermaid theme, or maybe this one’s like a rainbow or something along those lines, right? Sending that out, you would have.

Josh Hadley 00:13:51  There may be different phrases that people use instead of, you know, rainbow. Maybe somebody, maybe most of the comments are like, I love the multicolored version of this, right? And it’s like, oh, I was referring to it as rainbow, but instead I’m going to switch this to multi-colored, right? Or something like that. So I think that that I love that, especially as Amazon changes the game with AI and just having that keyword, at least somewhere in that listing, is going to help you get recommended that much easier.

Matt Kostan 00:14:16  So it’s also I was also going to say too, it’s wild what actually gets the click to. So another feature that we let you do is watch people shop. So you can literally see as people we record people screen like when they’re on Amazon, say looking at search results. And they’ll answer questions out loud like, hey, which one would you click into and why? And another example where this made a big difference is, there’s one particular product where it was an eyelash cleanser and, one of the ones that they were losing clicks to was a competitor that had in the title.

Matt Kostan 00:14:43  It was vegan and cruelty free, and that resonated so much with the target audience that they were clicking on that one just because of that. And if you did the traditional research of, you know, helium ten, Jungle Scout, that sort of thing, you would never see any volume for those kind of keywords. But they resonated with the with the audience and they were winning clicks because of that. So doing the qualitative research really kind of gives you another layer to make sure any gaps are filled.

Josh Hadley 00:15:04  I love that that’s a great case study. I love that. All right, Matt, so another thing you talked about, especially as it relates to AI, right? As things shift and more people start using perplexity or ChatGPT instead of Google, how do you make sure that your products get recommended in those tools?

Matt Kostan 00:15:20  I love this, this is like my favorite thing because it’s also it’s also one of the easiest things and one of the things that we should all be doing right. Because again, we’re not build, we’re building brands, we’re building real brands.

Matt Kostan 00:15:28  We’re not just Amazon brands, right. So a big part of that is, is doing is getting press, is getting coverage in for your brand outside of, you know, you spend a lot on PPC. We spend a lot inside of Amazon marketing. But it really helps to to take it to these external sources, because it turns out that these external sources are used by by I to recommend products. So what makes it easy for, for brands like us is that there’s sources that literally are asking for products like their whole role is to like recommend things and they get paid an Amazon affiliate commission when it when it when someone clicks and buys. And every major publication has one of these. So New York Times has Wirecutter Forbes has vetted, CNN has underscored, I have a list of these that I’ll share in the share in the, in the, in the notes as well. And essentially all you do is you reach out to these journalists and you say, hey, notice that you covered, you know, the best luggage for short travel, whatever.

Matt Kostan 00:16:20  And hey, my product is different because of XYZ. We should all have a differentiator in the product, and these roundup posts of products do just that. They literally they list like the best in every single category. But these categories are made up and you can make up whatever category you want. So if one of my locks, for example, is keyless and they made up a category for me where it was like best keyless lock, well, there’s no other lock that does what I do. So perfect. I win that category. But the most important thing here is not even that you’re you’re driving sales from these posts. I don’t even you do get sales. You get referrals from it. But what I care about is the mention. Because now when someone uses perplexity ChatGPT whatever it is and they say, hey, what are the best, luggage locks for for travel? My brand is coming up and beating Samsonite. These, these million dollar, billion dollar companies, because I have all these sources cited to my brand and this is what I is using.

Matt Kostan 00:17:06  Amazon had even said, Rufus uses external data as well. So obviously they have their own proprietary. They’re going to lean on that. But, you know, there might be some kind of going into the weeds of something else, but, yeah. Yeah, they, they can use external data as, as well. So by doing this, by getting your brand mentioned, I mean, not only is it just good business practice for any brand, like get on any list that you can possibly get your hands on, it will actually help you long term with it as well. And for one particular brand, we were tracking like an extra 203 hundred of visits to our to our store just from ChatGPT. And those are the ones we can track, right? Because otherwise it just shows up in direct traffic, because it’s not a not a direct if it’s a direct link. So it’s it’s something that every brand should be getting on and making it a priority to, to be mentioned with, with the eye searches.

Josh Hadley 00:17:50  Matt, this this is brilliant. And this is another game changing aspect. This is why I want people to go back and rewatch this. I myself, I’ve got a million notes here for my own team. What we’re going to be doing. but Matt, so on this note, so two questions. Number one on how do you know that traffic’s coming from ChatGPT to your website? Is this does it show up in Google Analytics that the refer is ChatGPT or OpenAI?

Matt Kostan 00:18:10  Yeah. So it’ll it’ll show up. But those are the only ones where so ChatGPT might just mentioned the brand and then it’s up to them to go, you know, find the brand itself. So these referrals are just the subset where they actually provided a link so that it can actually be tracked. So when I say two 300 visits it is from from Google Analytics okay.

Josh Hadley 00:18:26  Awesome. Very interesting okay. So next question is this. And this is the key. How do I get my brand on those lists. so walk me through like a step by step process to get on these lists.

Josh Hadley 00:18:37  because I also know that for a lot of these publishers, like BuzzFeed, for example, like their entire monetization model is advertising and driving affiliate revenue like pure and simple. And thus you have people like Levanta, you have Archer affiliates, you have all of those other platforms that supposedly create those relationships for you, but it’s pretty hard to still get some of them to actually take notice of your brand. So tell me what you’ve done with your own brand, and how easy or hard is it to actually get on any of these lists?

Matt Kostan 00:19:03  Yeah, no, I love that. That’s a great, great question. So, my philosophy with everything is like, how do I do stuff differently? So you have to put yourself in the mindset of a journalist. And this doesn’t just go for these lists, but it can go for like any time you’re trying to get PR and I’ve been lucky enough to eventually develop relationships with these journalists where they kind of give me an inside look. Have you even seen I’ve even seen someone’s inbox where they literally they call it being a pitch slap, right? So every day they get like hundreds of people just like, hey, look at me, look at me.

Matt Kostan 00:19:30  Especially if they have these big publications that are that are up there, so in eyeballs. so there’s a few things you can do. What I always like doing is, you know. Don’t just go to anyone and everyone. if I was getting if I wanted to get pressed, for example, for a Kickstarter project that I’m launching, I’ll then just look at the journalists that have kind of covered something similar, or at least in the same niche. And then the pitch is a lot easier, like, hey, I know you mentioned this. Maybe your readers will appreciate this, right? Because we’re different because x, y, z the next level of that, and obviously not everyone’s gonna reply. And it is kind of like a numbers game of follow up and that sort of thing. But the next level of that is and I’ve landed some really big, really big publications by doing a simple video and customizing it to them. So, you know, part of that is that doing your due diligence on the journalist themselves.

Matt Kostan 00:20:12  So in one case, I kind of was able to creep them a little bit on their socials. I found out some interesting stuff that they liked. I think in one example you like to go scuba diving. So I mentioned like, yeah, my wife and I go scuba diving. And, you know, you make some rapport, you send them a video and it’s a little different. I mean, obviously you’re still sending the email, but it’s, you know, the title is a quick video for you, whatever it is and the conversion rate, I don’t I didn’t track it, but the conversion rate, when you do these individual videos to these journalists versus just an odd email that they can easily ignore? Is is wild, right? Like they’ll they’ll appreciate that you took the time to kind of like get to know them, build that rapport. And, you know, as long as it’s on, you know, it’s a good match for them. Like, keep in mind their job is writing.

Matt Kostan 00:20:50  They have to write this. They’re looking for ideas. They’re craving ideas to, to to write about. So if you can make a match with that and make it personal in a way that’s not like overwhelming them with all the specs and details of why, whatever, your chances of success are higher. Now to get back more specifically for these product roundup sites so you know, you can contact the journalist. They’re they’re always listed like on Forbes, whatever it is. And sometimes you literally can just be like, hey, I noticed this list. We’re different because of that. And, you know, would you consider putting us in the next time you publish this? And that’s worked for me. That’s worked for me. But there’s so many other like, you know, you don’t have to aim for Forbes. There’s so many blogs and other sites that you can start getting mentions on, and it’s kind of like a snowball effect once you start getting mentions on these smaller blogs, maybe lesser known, and you’re kind of perfecting your craft of that pitch, then you know, you work your way up to to Forbes and New York Times and whatever else it is.

Matt Kostan 00:21:39  The other thing I’ve noticed as well is once you hit one of these, then the journalists, they’ll actually just look at the, you know, their competitors and then they’ll actually reach out to you. So in January or February of of this year, Forbes actually reached out to me, which was wild. And it was like, hey, can you send me a sample of the product that I’m like, for Forbes? Absolutely. You can get as many samples as you want. By the way, here’s the rest of my product line up, in case you’re wondering about those two. Right. So it comes with practice. You got to kind of just just do it. But always go from the frame of reference of, you know, what does the journalist want? What do you what do they need. And if you can, you know, have that empathy and have that thought process of how do I make their lives easier, you’re that much more likely to succeed with it.

Josh Hadley 00:22:17  Yeah, I, I absolutely love that.

Josh Hadley 00:22:19  Matt. Is there like a software tool that you’re using or anything to actually find these editors, their contact information.

Matt Kostan 00:22:26  So nothing. Yeah. So actually that’s a good question. So typically as a journalist you just you Google search them. They’ll have usually a portfolio site. You grab their email. I have used a tool called novio in the past as well, which can grab data from from LinkedIn. but for the most part, it’s just a matter of like, grabbing the just finding them, that sort of thing. And I do like to try to get their email versus DMing on social, and that sort of thing doesn’t usually get that much of a response. But yeah, I have used Inovio for that.

Josh Hadley 00:22:53  Awesome. I love that hack, and I agree, I think you briefly mentioned this that like as part of A9, Amazon’s A9 algorithm, is there a component of it, especially as they introduce AI? Is there a component of it that is crawling the web and looking for brand mentions? I you best believe it.

Josh Hadley 00:23:09  I like I would be very I would bet a lot of money on that that that’s factored in somewhere.

Matt Kostan 00:23:14  Somehow I feel like they almost have to because there’s a whole idea of like, you know, if if Amazon’s biased and only recommending their stuff and not taking into account there’s like there’s there’s going to be some trust issues around that, especially in the EU. Right. Where it’s like like Microsoft has had its issues with that. so yeah, it’s definitely taking that as a part. I mean, I’m guessing Amazon has said that Rufus does take external information as well too. I’m just guessing that of the level of importance that it will have, at least now or in the future, I think it’ll be even more, you know, more important.

Josh Hadley 00:23:45  So I think let’s double down on that then, because here’s the advantage. I think right now we’ve seen more and more competition from overseas sellers. Okay. And and they’re driving you know prices down. Right. It’s this downward spiral of everybody just dropping their prices because there’s overseas competition.

Josh Hadley 00:24:01  Now how does a brand a US based brand stay relevant, stay ranked even if you have a more expensive product? And in my opinion, you know, Amazon’s going to come out with their cheap crap to compete with Teemu and Shane and all that, that’s fine. But I think that will have its own place. A US consumer I think gets tired of the cheap crap and they want to, I think ultimately like 5 to 10 years from now, if I’m guessing I think it’s brands with a good reputation are the ones that survive on Amazon. So all of your overseas competitors that have stupid brand names that you can’t even pronounce. Like the fly by night shops that they don’t have a brand presence. They don’t know how to play the brand game. In fact, that’s where our overseas competitors are actually the weakest. They cannot, and they are almost like they can’t think creatively. So they don’t have a true brand story. And so my encouragement to our listeners would be like, lean in on that brand story, lean in on who you are and get get PR about your brand and you’re playing the long game.

Josh Hadley 00:24:57  Is this going to spike your sales overnight? Now, you might get covered in Forbes and it does spike your sales. That’s great that I would call that the cherry on top. But I think you’re more saying like I my brand still needs to be relevant five years from now on Amazon. And the search game, I promise you, is going to change drastically over the next five years. And so the more you just become like a well-known brand, I think the easier it will be to compete on Amazon. Matt, what are your thoughts on that 100%?

Matt Kostan 00:25:22  Honestly, couldn’t say it. Say it better than that. I mean, another philosophy that I like to talk about is, you know, instead of making marketing make kickass products. Right? And yeah, there’ll be competitors, cheap competitors coming and going. But I think for the long run, if the product you view your product as the foundation, you’re going to be in a much better, much better place. And someone else had said, like advertising is the is the fee you pay for an unremarkable product.

Matt Kostan 00:25:48  Like, obviously everyone needs to advertise and that sort of thing. But, if you view it that way, it kind of shifts things. It’s like, you know, yes, you can sell a ton of a crap product for a certain period of time, but if we’re in it for the long game, it’s, you know, it’s all about making that that product the foundation of your success.

Josh Hadley 00:26:03  Yeah, I totally agree. And I think the other mindset shift that I’ve experienced as well is that if you can create a product that is so good and that truly like helps people serving their need, whatever it is that they originally purchased that product to be able to do for them, they in turn will go and tell other people about it, but it’s got to be outside the box. It’s got to be amazing. It can’t just be an average product that just gets the job done. You’ve got to go above and beyond. And if you can create a product that is so refined like that that people can’t help but talking about it and showing it to their friends or family.

Josh Hadley 00:26:35  If you can have one customer that then brings another customer for you, they do all the marketing for you. and so I think that’s the other frame of mindset that you need to have is that, you know, yeah, marketing is the tax for not having an amazing product. But again, marketing has its place. You’ve got to have some of it. But I think that the more average your product is, the more you have to spend 100% advertising.

Matt Kostan 00:26:56  And then that’s where you come. That’s where you get to the place where if your own customers are doing your selling, price becomes irrelevant, right? So, oh, it’s $10 more, $15 more. But hey, my uncle recommended this. I gotta buy it. Your competitors become irrelevant, right? So that’s the play. Like big, big time. Make the product so good that people can’t help but talk about it. Surprise and delight. And you’re in the right, you know, right position for the long term.

Josh Hadley 00:27:18  And is that not basically exactly what TikTok shop is basically doing right now? I mean, it is social selling.

Josh Hadley 00:27:24  It’s people following individuals and if they recommend a product. I’ve. I’ve heard this over and over and over again. The product price for the same product on Amazon is higher on TikTok shop, yet they are driving more traffic and more sales on TikTok shop then they even are on Amazon. So to your point of having a higher, maybe a premium price product, they’re charging a few extra points of margin there on TikTok to handle the extra fulfillment or whatever it is, but they’re people are paying for it because it’s coming from a warm recommendation. Somebody they trust. They love the product, right? The influencers aren’t going to be posting about average crap. And so I like that mindset. And, you know, I think that’s where Amazon needs to figure out that piece of the puzzle, because I can’t tell you the number of times that when I buy cheap crap on Amazon, I’m like, yep, I learned my lesson. Like, that’s what happens when you buy the cheap stuff. And so how do you how does Amazon incorporate that like social selling aspect? I know they have like the inspire thing, but that doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.

Josh Hadley 00:28:21  But yeah. Anyways I love that aspect. Matt. Now I want to now turn our attention to a B testing. And now I want you to share. You’ve seen people do a lot of a B tests, but your overall perspective is that most people, let’s say 75% of sellers are a B testing incorrectly. So if they’re incorrectly testing, what is the proper way to do a B testing and then share with me some case studies?

Matt Kostan 00:28:46  Yeah, totally. So, you know, I mean, well, first of all, if someone’s doing any type of testing, hey, kudos to them because I think the majority of people, you know, set it and forget it. They ask their friends and family and, you know, good enough, that sort of thing. And they’re leaving a lot of money on the table. so the proper way to do a B testing, in my opinion, is within context. So you can’t just test concepts in isolation, like, hey, is this one better than this one without actually seeing how it compares to your competitors? So, your click through rate, your is solely dependent on your competitors and how everyone else looks.

Matt Kostan 00:29:20  So in my opinion, the best way to test this is first, do some concept testing. So have your main image. And this is where the variation tool kind of comes in where you create different concepts. So say you create three different concepts and you try to get a feel for you know which one resonates better with, better with your with your, your shoppers. Once you have a winning one, that’s great. And this is where a lot of people usually just stop. They’ll take the winning concept and they’ll throw that up on their listing, or then they’ll jump into the manage my experiments with it, which is good and a great, great way to get going. But you want to understand if what change you just made will make a difference, and or if it’s actually worth putting into management experiments because it takes so long to get a statistically significant result in there. So a product opinion, we’ve always had contextual testing where we actually mock up what an Amazon search result will look like. And that way you can kind of control all the variables and get some more accurate data.

Matt Kostan 00:30:10  But more importantly, you can also do a baseline test and figure out if the change if the concept you made actually makes a difference. So essentially step one is do the concepts. So see hey, maybe putting this box on the image makes a difference. Maybe adding some more eye candy stuff makes a difference. You know, test those concepts. But then what you want to do is a test where you simulate the Amazon search results and you get a baseline. You figure out, hey, based on these competitors, what’s my click share? Then you do another test with the exact same competitors and with product opinion. You can also exclude previous tests so you can get fresh eyes on it, which is also important because otherwise people see it again. There’s a bias. So you do the test again, but this time you replace your main image with the concept, the winning concept that you figured out in the previous test. Now all of a sudden you can kind of compare apples to apples. Well, hey, the original baseline was this click, click through rate this click share.

Matt Kostan 00:30:57  And the new one was this. And yeah, there was an example that we did just a little while ago where you know, we we created these concepts. We thought the concept was going to make a huge impact and a difference because it looked much better. Again, it was pretty, it looked good. But when we actually put it into the search simulation, it didn’t make a difference. And that kind of signal to us, well, hey, we got to rejig. We got to come up with another concept. So we went back to the drawing board, came up with another concept, put it through that same test again, and then found another concept that actually made a difference and, you know, would move would move the needle when once you find a winning idea winning concept there, then obviously you put it to Amazon and see how it affects sales, see how it how it works in that regard. But always be testing first and do some sort of high tempo test for sanity test to make sure it’s worth putting on Amazon’s tool as as well.

Matt Kostan 00:31:43  So so again, the big takeaway of this is your your click through rate is dependent. And your success is basically dependent and relative of what your competitors are doing. You have to stand out. You have to be different. It doesn’t matter how pretty the picture is, you need to make sure that it’s different and stands out to the to the rest of the people that you’re going up after.

Josh Hadley 00:32:01  Awesome. Matt. This has been a game changing episode in my perspective. But before we wrap everything up, I would love to hear from you if you have any other case studies, cool ways that people have been testing or changing things to optimize their listings as a whole that we haven’t yet touched on, but you think our audience needs to hear about maybe just some quick hitting wins in case days you can share with us.

Matt Kostan 00:32:21  Yeah, totally. So there’s another concept that that we like to talk about called the index image, where it works exceptionally well for like gift type products and like impulse buy kind of products.

Matt Kostan 00:32:30  And the idea behind this is you make your secondary, image kind of a laundry list of the four, maybe five points that you’re trying to hit home with the whole listing. So these 4 or 5 points, you’ll probably repeat in the listing later, like each other subsequent, image. We’ll talk about one point each, but this is like the main kind of like index of all the things you’re trying to, like, portray and get across. And, what you want to do there is there’s some nuances to it. So you want to number the reasons people want to know where to start. So just kind of like a drop cap in a novel, you know? Boom. That’s where I’m starting to read. You want to put that big number one? Hey, here’s the five reasons why this is the best. Number one, number two, so on and so forth. The other psychology part of that too, is once they start reading one, people kind of want to finish. So they they’ll, they’ll go through one, two, three, four, five.

Matt Kostan 00:33:13  The more content someone consumes, the more likely they’ll convert. Amazon shares this data all the time where they talk about how, you know, viewing in 3D and any more interaction with the listing doubles conversion rates. And that’s coming from right from, from Amazon. So anything you can do to get people to consume more is more likely to get them, to get them to convert in terms of the actual image itself, typically I would say like, you know, first 1 to 2 three points should be your key differentiators, like why is your product the best? And if it’s not, I mean, that’s a whole other discussion as well. But then point number four, point number five can be something related to. And this is really makes a lot of sense if you’re a USA based business. Our products are still, you know, probably made overseas. But you can mention like hey support a USA based business. And that’s not necessarily something that these other, you know, Chinese sellers can can say.

Matt Kostan 00:33:58  So you’re not saying that it’s it’s made in the US. But when you put the USA flag on there and you’re saying, hey, help support Small Business USA, it adds something to someone’s mind when they’re making that in the consideration set of buying. So one of the points I would highly recommend putting that in. I do it for all my listings. For people that do it, they you know, it works, it works well. And then I’ll also put in what I like to call a golden guarantee. and a nuance to this golden guarantee tactic is you don’t necessarily want to just say, 30 day money back guarantee. Everybody knows they can get their money back on Amazon, more or less for any reason. But if you can make an interesting guarantee, something a little different. So for example, with the travel products I’ll say lifetime never lost guarantee airline loses your stuff. We just send you a new one free. Right? So much more powerful, so much more impactful than just hey, 30 day money back.

Matt Kostan 00:34:38  So I’ll also have that point on that main index image as, as well. so index image is a great way to, to increase your conversions once they’re on the, on the listing. The other thing that I’m really pushing as well is just how do people understand the listing? So obviously right now I is reading the listing images so you can get an interpretation of how AI interprets your listing images, but do people actually get it? Do people get why or what message you’re trying to send across? So there’s a new test that we have relatively new testing product opinion that we have, where you can actually show one of your listing images for three seconds and get feedback on what people interpret as the main point. The main takeaway from that image. And if you run this through your images, chances are there’ll be a lot of confusion and it’ll force you to kind of like eliminate things and get it down to, you know, this image has one purpose. What does that mean? Purpose. And make sure people, real people can actually understand that, ingest it.

Matt Kostan 00:35:31  And, you know, again, more information. They understand more information that they get, the more likely they are to convert. That’s the name of the name of the game on on Amazon.

Josh Hadley 00:35:40  Beautiful I love those Matt. This is this has been awesome. We went through all seven of our notes that I have listed down of hacks, and you even shared a couple more. So hopefully our listeners have a list of notes and takeaways from today’s episode. But now as I wrap up each episode, I love to leave the audience with three actionable takeaways. So here are the three actionable takeaways that I noted. You let me know if I’m missing something. So Action item number one is going to be focusing on that main image. Your biggest lever that you can pull once your product is already published and it’s live on Amazon, is to impact your click through rate. And this is something that again, you mentioned. Probably not enough sellers do this. And the unlock in my mind came when I was looking at and studying other like Shopify based brands.

Josh Hadley 00:36:25  Right? What do they do? What is their secret sauce like? We know how to get ranked on Amazon. That’s fine. But what’s the secret sauce behind the Shopify brand? Do you know what it is? Matt? Take a guess.

Matt Kostan 00:36:35  Ooh, secret sauce to convert on on Shopify.

Josh Hadley 00:36:38  Yeah. What is that? Not necessarily on Shopify itself, but like what’s the magic trick behind their business? Like how are they getting their traffic.

Matt Kostan 00:36:46  Well, the majority I’d say is like Facebook ads. Yep. Right.

Josh Hadley 00:36:49  So exactly. So what that means, like their entire focus of their business is creative, period. They have to be constantly coming out with the latest, best like version of their ad because Facebook gets bored of the same thing running on repeat. You can’t have the same ad and let it run for five years or even one year. Like, these guys are refreshing their creative every 15 to 30 days. And if you listen to Alex Moses podcast, he talked about how that’s all they do in the e-commerce brand that they run.

Josh Hadley 00:37:16  They’re putting they are changing out and putting out new content, like up to 100 different pieces of content per week. Right. And so if you have that frame of mindset of like, okay, that’s what it looks like when you want to scale big, okay. How does that impact you? here and now. Right. And so that’s that’s what I would say. Focus on your main image first. So that’s my action item there. Action item number two is going to be using your $1 million image hack that you shared with us, which is, you know, grab the ChatGPT prompts that are going to be in the show notes and say, hey, this is what the search results look like on Amazon. Give me some ideas of how I can make our product image different, unique, better to drive that click through rate. And then last but not least, my final action item here is to use that variation Iser right. Brand new tool. or run some a B test. But you should constantly be changing out those images.

Josh Hadley 00:38:05  And that variation Iser can certainly help you scale up ten times faster and test more and more and more. And I think this is the this is the gist of this entire episode. Always be testing, okay? Always be testing. Just like you should always be launching products. I think product priority number one, and any e-commerce businesses launching new products and priority number two is always be testing to optimize the listings, optimize the titles, optimize those main images, optimize your creative if you’re driving outside traffic. Matt. That’s how I want to wrap things up today. Anything else you feel like I missed?

Matt Kostan 00:38:34  No, I love it, but you hit the nail on the head. And it also gave me the idea for, you know, with variations. Right now, obviously it’s main images. We could apply it to Facebook ads, apply it to other aspects too. So that’s that’s super cool.

Josh Hadley 00:38:46  I love it. You’re going to be the go to. All right, Matt, I ask each guest the following three questions as we conclude.

Josh Hadley 00:38:51  So number one, what’s been the most influential book that you’ve read and why?

Matt Kostan 00:38:54  Yeah. So this is probably cliche, but Four Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss. like I after reading the book, I pretty much hired by VA right away, and I’ve been working with them ever since. So I think it’s like ten plus years, which is, which is pretty cool in terms of a modern day kind of, kind of book. Dan Martell’s Buy Back Your Time. I’ve been following Dan for for years and years, and he’s been in the SAS space, and the whole book is basically how to, like, unlock your time, like realize or are you doing $5 an hour tasks. Right. So it’s it’s in the same lines. But he also gives a lot of like the same lines of the four hour workweek, but he gives a lot of like structure behind it. And to be honest, it’s something I’m still struggling with. I got to like I got I’ve read it twice and every time it’s like, oh, I gotta do something extra with, with this.

Matt Kostan 00:39:34  So yeah, highly recommend it for any entrepreneur. yeah.

Josh Hadley 00:39:37  That’s a great book, love. Buy back your time. All right. Next question. Matt, what is your favorite AI tool that you’re using that you think other people need to be using?

Matt Kostan 00:39:45  I’m super biased with this, but honestly, the variation Isaac tool variation Isaac’s, it is fun. It is a lot of fun. And we were just using it the other day just to see how many variations we could create for a particular big brand. And we were able to create like ten different main image variations in like, not even, you know, 15 minutes. And they all look really, really good. So I’d have to, you know, I have to say that one, the other one that I really like. And to be honest, I haven’t dived into it as much as I should, but the script is really cool. I really like the way they run their business as a software business as well. so it’s kind of partly inspired by it, but then also the tool itself is pretty, pretty awesome.

Matt Kostan 00:40:20  And descript just lets you edit videos as if you were editing like a word doc. It can clone your your voice. So if you need to like say an extra thing or whatever, you can do that and the studio sound. So if you do a recording and it’s not great. So sometimes we’re in a hotel or whatever, and the recording is not, not, not, not the best. It has the studio sound feature, which I don’t know how it does it, but it makes it sound perfect. So yeah, in terms of video editing and that sort of thing, that’s one of the ones that I use quite, quite a bit.

Josh Hadley 00:40:43  Love that. Matt, this has been great. Final question here. Who is somebody that you admire or respect the most in the e-commerce space that other people should be following and why?

Matt Kostan 00:40:52  So again, I’m biased, but my business partner, Andrew Sedlak, he is phenomenal at what he does. he’s he’s been he has the dream kind of story where he immigrated from Ukraine, started on Amazon.

Matt Kostan 00:41:03  Failed actually, and had to or had to sell his house, to be able to pay to get things kind of up and going again, and it ultimately led to a success story of him exiting a brand in a couple of years by by using consumer feedback, having a Facebook group to develop the product. So I absolutely, you know, super inspirational and very smart on on how to how to use, you know, feedback to develop amazing brands. and I have another one too, because, hey, why not? But, Dorian Gorski is like probably the smartest and most creative person I know in terms of, you know, conversion rate optimization. he’s been dealing with multiple, eight figure brands, seven figure brands, you name it, for like ten plus years. He used to work on with the Titan Network. And, he’s kind of seen all those brands and seen all he’s basically seen all the things. So if you’re looking for someone to to take a look at your listing and know like that, like how to increase the clicks, how to increase the conversion, he’s my he’s my go to by far.

Josh Hadley 00:41:55  Awesome recommendations Matt. This has been a fantastic episode. If people want to find you online, they want to follow your journey. Learn more about Product Pinion. where can people go?

Matt Kostan 00:42:05  Yeah. So obviously product.com. You can sign up for a free trial. just to see how it all works. My email will be in the show notes to just matt@product.com. I’m also on LinkedIn. And just before we go, Josh, if I may, I have a question for for you too.

Josh Hadley 00:42:18  Let’s hear it.

Matt Kostan 00:42:19  Okay. So the question is basically after achieving like a level of success, right? So for all the definitions of the term, you’re very successful. What keeps you motivated. Right. Because a lot of times you hit a certain, you know, extra hopefully an extra million dollars if you’re in that aspect. Does it make a difference in your life? So what is it that kind of keeps you going, keeps you motivated to keep doing all the amazing things that you do?

Josh Hadley 00:42:40  Yeah, Matt, I love that question.

Josh Hadley 00:42:43  so what keeps me going is having a much bigger vision for my own life in terms of, you know, my I guess I’ll pull back the curtain of what my intentions are right over the next 5 to 10 years. My passion would would be working with other brands, right, that are maybe hitting six figures, seven figures. And they’re they’re struggling trying to scale out their brand. My my whole give back in life. Would love to be watching them experience the same amount of success, right? And I’m a big believer that true happiness and true joy in life comes from serving others. There is no amount of money that is going to come to you and to live a life like Jeff Bezos, where you have the super yacht and all that crap. Like, to be honest with you, I don’t even want it. I don’t even want it. And I know that that doesn’t even provide happiness. But deep happiness comes from like, truly serving others. So that’s that’s the whole intention behind the podcast as well.

Josh Hadley 00:43:33  Right? Is like, how do I give back? I’m trying to share my knowledge. I’m trying to get smart people on like yourself, just give back. And that’s where my journey started, right? I distinctly remember working my 9 to 5 job, and whenever I would have to travel, I was putting in a podcast, and that’s where I was listening to the people that were having success on Amazon. What were they doing? And I would go implement those things. So trying to give back to somebody like myself, is the whole end goal there. So is that a sufficient answer for you?

Matt Kostan 00:43:57  Matt I love it. Yeah, yeah, right on the money I love it.

Josh Hadley 00:44:00  Awesome Matt. That’s been great. Thank you again for your time. And we’ll probably have to have you back on the show again.

Matt Kostan 00:44:05  I’d love to.