In this episode, e-commerce expert Norm Farrar shares actionable strategies for Amazon sellers to build and engage their own audiences. He discusses using insert cards to collect customer emails through offers like free products, warranties, and cookbooks, and emphasizes the importance of email marketing to boost revenue. Norm explains how to create and repurpose valuable content, such as chef-sourced recipes, across Amazon posts and social media. He also highlights the benefits of hosting live cooking shows on Amazon Live and using video creation services to enhance product listings, offering practical tips for optimizing Amazon sales and brand growth.

Chapters:

Introduction to Norm Farrar (00:00:00)
Host introduces Norm Farrar, his background in e-commerce, and his Amazon podcast.

Case Study: Email List Building with Insert Cards (00:00:33)
Norm shares a case study about a beauty company collecting 280,000 emails via insert cards but not utilizing them.

Insert Card Offers: Free Products and Extended Warranties (00:01:36)
Discussion of effective insert card offers, including free products and extended warranties to collect customer emails.

Meal Plans, Cookbooks, and Recipe Content Strategy (00:03:20)
Norm explains using meal plans and cookbooks to collect emails, and sourcing recipes from chefs and culinary students.

Repurposing Content: Newsletters and Amazon Posts (00:04:34)
How recipes and user-generated content are repurposed for newsletters and Amazon posts to engage customers.

Mindset Shift: Value-Driven Email Marketing (00:05:00)
Host reflects on providing value through email, not just sales pitches, and repurposing content across channels.

Amazon Live Cooking Show Launch (00:06:52)
Norm introduces their new Amazon Live cooking show featuring chefs and culinary students using their products.

Live Content Strategy and Product Demonstrations (00:07:45)
Details on using live cooking shows to demonstrate products, increase engagement, and gain followers.

Video Content Creation and Repurposing (00:09:07)
Norm discusses creating videos with influencers, repurposing video content for Amazon, social media, and YouTube.

Using Billo for Video Production (00:10:38)
Introduction to Billo, a service for affordable, high-quality product videos, and how to use them for marketing.

Three Actionable Takeaways for E-commerce Brands (00:12:57)
Host summarizes key takeaways: business planning, building an email list, and repurposing content.

Amazon Internal Tools for Listing Optimization (00:14:46)
Norm recommends using Amazon’s internal tools for listing optimization and growth opportunities to increase sales.

Closing Remarks (00:16:21)
Host thanks Norm for his insights and wraps up the episode.

Links and Mentions:

Tools and Websites
Amazon Live
Amazon Seller Central

Strategies and Concepts
Email List Building: 00:01:08
Insert Cards for Email Collection: 00:02:06
User-Generated Content: 00:04:34
Content Repurposing: “00:09:07
Listing Optimization Tools: 00:14:46

Transcript:

Josh 00:00:00  Today I’m super excited to introduce to you Norm Farrar. Norm specializes in providing e-commerce and online marketing services for brands. He has worked with fortune 500 companies such as Coca-Cola, Mercedes-Benz, and 20th Century Fox since the early 1990s. Norm has focused on helping entrepreneurs optimize their operations and unlock their businesses potential. Presently, he is the host of the popular Amazon podcast lunch with Norm. So welcome to the show, Norm.

Norm 00:00:32  Hey, glad to be here.

Josh 00:00:33  So, Norm, I wanted to ask, you know, what are some of the best practices that you see with that? And maybe do you have any case studies or maybe some examples that you might be able to share with us, just to kind of spark some ideas in people’s mind of the various opportunities that do lie in, you know, building your own audience off of Amazon from those insert cards.

Norm 00:00:55  Well, and it’s a good and bad story, but I know we were working with a beauty company who had built an email list up to 280,000 emails.

Norm 00:01:08  Wow. But he would not. He never. He thought it was inconvenient. It would inconvenience people if he sent them emails.

Josh 00:01:18  That doesn’t make sense.

Norm 00:01:19  280,000 emails. So yeah, that that that wasn’t, that wasn’t a smart move, but,

Josh 00:01:27  Attracting. I mean, how did he attract 280,000 people to give him their email address? Right. Like, do you know what the offer was?

Norm 00:01:36  Yeah. Well, different beauty products. So what it would be is you could go. You could go to the insert. It would go to a landing page. The landing page, would offer them one of his other products. So if you had the shampoo conditioner, you could have the, what’s called keratin treatment, or you could have, there was, some serums and stuff like that, but you were offered a free product. So in the $10.

Josh 00:02:06  In the insert card on the insert card, it says, hey, claim your free product I assume then yeah. Okay.

Norm 00:02:13  Yeah. So all it did was send.

Norm 00:02:16  He got the email address and the address because he had to send the product. So he had, he had it all and he did not and would not send out a single email.

Josh 00:02:29  Fascinating. Yeah. Which is you know, going back you kind of shared that stat that you think that people are missing out on 40% of revenue just by not implementing, you know, additional as. Yeah. Right.

Norm 00:02:43  You sell a million bucks, you’re missing out a 400,000.

Josh 00:02:46  Fascinating. Yeah. Any other stories or examples of, like, insert cards or, you know, ways that work to get people to provide their email address?

Norm 00:02:56  Well, there’s always the extended warranty. So that is something, again, going back to the knife company, extended warranty. So it’s a lifetime warranty. Okay, great. That’s a lifetime warranty anyway. Basically. But, you know, it’s a lifetime warranty. another one was just like I was talking to you about before. A knife with the honing rod. Okay, great.

Norm 00:03:20  another one that worked for that company was the meal plan and cookbook. So you can either download and get a weekly email. So what’s in that weekly email with the weekly plan? Well, there’s some sort of promotion. It wasn’t all the time, but there was either just some recipes. So this is something that we did as well. We went out and we, talked to chefs and we talked to culinary schools, and we gave them, very expensive knife. And so the deal was we’ll supply the whole class with these very expensive knives. if they provide us with a recipe and spread it out on their social media, tag us on their social media. So we got a ton of user generated content and we got a ton of Recipes. So what do we do on Amazon posts? We provided recipes. So that started to get a very unique following. And then because of that, we ended up getting all this really cool stuff that we could put onto this other page, fill in to the newsletter, and when people got their newsletter, they got recipes, which ended up being two full, really incredible recipe books.

Norm 00:04:34  So now we give away the recipe books. But we could peel off one recipe at a time, which people enjoyed, you know? And we didn’t do it, but you could have even segmented it further. If the person was vegan, you could just send them vegan recipes or vegetarian or, you know, whatever it was, you could you could drill down and even build a better profile. So now you’re targeting really specific things, you know, depending on what you’re selling later on.

Josh 00:05:00  That is super smart. And honestly, I think I had a mindset shift, as you were talking about, you know, leveraging those recipes into Amazon posts as well. So I think that’s a brilliant strategy, right? Like with the so to sum things up, people would buy this knife set. Right. They would get and they had the car that’s like hey, get, you know, 52 weeks worth of free recipes sent to your email inbox, right? They opt in, they give you their email address, and then you got really well, like you didn’t just go to Google and be like, oh no, I need a recipe and just scrape something off of Google.

Josh 00:05:40  You got them from professional, you know, culinary students, right? And then you have exceptional recipes. You’re sending them out via email on a weekly basis, right. So you’re providing value to the the customer right. Or your potential lead. And so that they don’t feel like they’re just being marketed to. Right. I think when people think about, oh, I can generate 40,000 or 40% more revenue from email. I just need to send sales emails like, no, that’s it’s not the way the the email game works. But I like the fact that like you’re providing value and then you repurpose that content from your emails into Amazon posts. that’s a big mindset shift because I think for people like, yes, you may still be focusing on Amazon, but as you open up this new, you know, email channel, like you’re still serving Amazon at the end of the day, and you can repurpose some of that. So I like that idea. I think we’re going to start taking some of that that away, like even our own newsletters.

Josh 00:06:45  Like what content should we just be sharing on Amazon posts like it’s it’s own social media channel, right?

Norm 00:06:52  Yeah. We went one step further with the, the culinary students and chefs, hasn’t started. It should be this week or next, but we have a cooking show now on Amazon Live.

Josh 00:07:05  Really? So are you. Yeah. Well, tell me more about that. I have a lot of questions about that.

Norm 00:07:11  Okay, so we got the chefs to come on and they’re going to be doing like it’s going to be a cooking show. And we didn’t know if we were going to have it in a studio that we would prep for. that would just be our studio, but we decided not to do it that way. it’s just going to be, it is in a culinary school, so we’ve got everything at our fingertips. And the tip is there going to be going and showing us how they prepped it. And then at the end, there’ll be a dish that’s already made and people will see it.

Norm 00:07:45  So it’s going to be some live content using the product. Because one of the things that Amazon wants to show you, wants to show is the product as a deal, and they want to show the product being in use. So it’s it’s selling, it’s promotional, but it’s also useful information. So I think that’s going to generate like the average person spends eight minutes on an Amazon Live. We can extend that out. That’ll be even better. And I think we’re going to get a lot of followers for them.

Josh 00:08:16  I think that that is a brilliant strategy. So to sum that up, Norm, the product you guys are promoting, so to speak, is it knife’s there. Same thing.

Norm 00:08:26  Yeah. It’s it’s a whole selection of kitchen utensils but primarily knives.

Josh 00:08:32  Okay. So kitchen utensils. So they’re going to be using multiple utensils throughout that you know cooking process then. Right. Yeah. Okay. So yeah they are featuring different, utensils. But rather than just hey, I want to show you this new spatula and look how nice this spatula is.

Josh 00:08:51  And how long do you want to listen to a talking head? Just talking about a spatula, right. You’re providing actionable and valuable content, like you’re going above and beyond. And I think that’s a brilliant strategy that I think people need to start thinking outside the box more.

Norm 00:09:07  That way people are looking for video. And don’t forget when you do this, if you have a YouTube channel or this is something that we don’t talk about it a lot, but this is a strategy that you can use for content, contents, everything right now on Amazon outside of Amazon. But if you have a video, even if you go to a company like below and they’ll put together a video for you for around 100 bucks, well, you can take that video, very well done. And then you can start taking screen captures. And now instead of having just a video where you’ve got ten images and you’ve got the video, and if you do that with five different influencers, then you can mix it up so it doesn’t look like it’s the same one that you’re using, or ten even.

Norm 00:09:52  What’s a thousand bucks when you’re, you know, when you if you can get ten different, ten different influencers and you get ten different shots from each influencer, and then you could even mix up and you can start adding like, just, like splice it together. In editing, you got countless amounts of inventory, not inventory, but content that you can put on your website, repurpose on all social media into YouTube. And just like this, you can actually take your Amazon Live, download segments of it and put it onto your YouTube and wherever else you want to show it. But now you’ve got multiple, multiple, multiple uses for your content. You can repurpose it all over.

Josh 00:10:38  That’s brilliant. No, I love that. What was the name of that software you said below? Is it b I l l o.

Norm 00:10:46  L l o.

Josh 00:10:47  Okay.

Norm 00:10:48  Yeah. Incredible. It’s it’s.

Josh 00:10:50  What is it? Tell us more about that.

Norm 00:10:52  Okay. So very simple. You go you. There’s a packages.

Norm 00:10:57  They’ve got a one pack, five pack, ten pack. So that’s how many videos you want. Okay. And they range. They say 59. But I seem to think that it was $89. Just over a hundred bucks, depending on if you want certain things being said. And you can pick from, a unboxing or a review. a testimonial. a demo, whatever you want. And, you have, you put it out to bid and not to bid, but to review. People will see it and they’ll say, oh, I want a knife. I want a knife, or I want some soap. They come back and you select out of the group which ones you want, and then they produce it and it’s very high quality. Now this is not an influencer network. You’re not going to get them to post it on their influencer sites. Okay. It’s something that looks like very high quality. You completely usable. And if you don’t like it, you can go back and get a revision.

Josh 00:11:58  Fascinating. Very cool. I’m going to have to take a look at that one. I have not heard about that software.

Norm 00:12:02  Oh my gosh, it’s so good.

Josh 00:12:04  But sounds like an amazing service. and you shared a great strategy of how you could then repurpose that content multiple times on, on Amazon and everywhere. You know, you’re on social media. That’s where we we’re talking about being more omnipresent, right? Having your own social channels and website and all of that. Here are the three takeaways that I noted. Norm. Let me know if you think I’m missing something. So number one, I think the basic thing that people need to do if they haven’t done this yet is actually take time out of your schedule to create a business plan and a business strategy. If you have not created your 3 to 5 year plan for your business and how you’re going to grow from where you’re at to where you want to be in the future, and the different levers that you need to pull when and where, then you need to.

Josh 00:12:57  You need to start working on your business, because there’s a lot of great tactics that we talked about today. And honestly, that’s been one of the mistakes that I’ve made in the past. When I was new into e-commerce was just whenever I heard something new and it was a cool, shiny object, you know, or new marketing hack, I would just go dive into it without seeing how that fits into the overall business plan and strategy that we are pursuing. So that’s first and foremost. Number two would be an actionable takeaway is that if you are not actively, you know, collecting your own audience off of Amazon, right. Whether it be through insert cards or through warranties or whatever that be. start doing that. Or if you are like the other seller that we talked about, had 280,000 people already on their list, but not utilizing, their that email channel, then that would be a next step. I think, you know, if people are a Amazon brand primarily right now, I think email genuinely is kind of your next stage before you start getting distracted and, you know, maybe big Shopify stores or, you know, Clickfunnels or anything like that, utilize email.

Josh 00:14:12  And then third, last but not least, you shared a lot of actionable strategies with some optimization tips that people could, could go back and listen to. But anything from product images to the question and answer fields to related videos. Take one of those optimization tactics that we talked about, especially as it relates to content, and start repurposing your content throughout Amazon. So those are kind of, I think, three actionable takeaways from this episode. Norm, anything else you think I missed that we should add in there?

Norm 00:14:46  Well, if they wanted to go one step further with optimization and check out Amazon’s internal tools for optimization. And one of them is called listing optimization, which is under your catalog. So when you go into Seller Central under catalog, you’ll see the listing optimization. I think that’s what it’s called now. Anyways. It’ll tell you, 4 or 5 different tips what you could do. Some of them are not accurate okay. But some of them are. The other thing is growth opportunities. So click on that and it’ll show you different ways and the amount that you’re missing out on in a 90 over a 90 day period.

Norm 00:15:28  I did it with one of my clients, and they were missing out on $40,000 worth of product. If we just did these little tweaks. And we did. I don’t know if it came out to that, but it’ll tell you. Need a video? Need a plus? Need this. Need that. And you do that. Then you can go over to your brand section. And you can take a look at your search terms and see if there’s any low quality terms that are going to generate you nothing. And you can replace those terms. They’re usually in pink. Replace those terms with something that will get you some extra traffic. There’s a lot of internal tools that Amazon has has now to help you out.

Josh 00:16:03  That’s brilliant. I think that’s great advice. And I have seen those recommendations before that. That’s an easy one that people should be paying attention to. But I think we also overlook very frequently. Norm, this has been so awesome. Thanks so much for the valuable insights and strategies that you’ve shared with us today.

Josh 00:16:21  Thanks for coming on the podcast.

Norm 00:16:23  Oh, it’s my pleasure.