In this episode, host Josh interviews Steven Yates, CEO of Prime Guidance, about strategies for scaling e-commerce brands. Steve emphasizes optimizing Amazon listings and leveraging all available tools before expanding to other marketplaces like Walmart or eBay. He discusses the importance of having a direct-to-consumer website, maximizing Amazon advertising, and using analytics tools to track performance. Steve provides actionable advice on when and how to diversify sales channels, ensuring brands grow efficiently and profitably while building a strong foundation on Amazon first.
Chapters:
Introduction to Steven Yates and Prime Guidance (00:00:00)
Josh introduces Steven Yates, his background, and expertise in retail management and e-commerce.
When to Expand Beyond Amazon (00:00:48)
Discussion on timing and considerations for expanding to other marketplaces like Walmart, eBay, Wayfair, and international markets.
Sales Lift Estimates from Other Marketplaces (00:01:28)
Steve provides rough estimates of sales lift from Walmart, eBay, and other channels compared to Amazon.
Importance of Optimizing Amazon Before Expanding (00:01:39)
Emphasis on being 80-90% optimized on Amazon before moving to other marketplaces.
Choosing the Right Next Marketplace (00:03:32)
Advice on analyzing where your customers are and not following a cookie-cutter approach to expansion.
Launching a DTC E-commerce Website (00:04:04)
Discussion on when and why to launch a direct-to-consumer website alongside Amazon.
Benefits of Having a DTC Website (00:04:38)
Steve explains the strategic advantages of having your own e-commerce site for brand building and customer retention.
Capturing and Nurturing Website Visitors (00:05:46)
Tactics for capturing emails and engaging visitors who land on your DTC website.
Key Levers to Pull on Amazon (00:06:21)
Josh asks for a list of actionable levers to increase sales and grow a brand on Amazon.
Detailed Breakdown of Amazon Optimization Levers (00:06:33)
Steve details optimization tactics: product pages, infographics, A+ content, pricing, assortment, advertising, and Amazon programs.
Amazon Advertising and External Traffic Strategies (00:08:05)
Discussion on types of Amazon ads, external traffic, and leveraging Amazon’s Brand Referral Bonus.
Utilizing Amazon Programs and Betas (00:09:11)
Overview of Amazon programs like FBA Small and Lite, brand store, Amazon posts, and customer engagement emails.
Order of Operations for Optimization and Traffic (00:10:31)
Advice on optimizing for Amazon’s algorithm and conversion before scaling advertising and traffic.
Three Actionable Takeaways for Brands (00:11:21)
Josh summarizes three key takeaways: maximize Amazon levers, focus on Amazon traffic, then expand to other channels.
Tools for Tracking Amazon Metrics (00:13:40)
Discussion on aggregating and analyzing Amazon data using third-party tools and Excel.
Brand Analytics and Bonus Tool Recommendation (00:14:59)
Steve recommends using Amazon Brand Analytics and nozzle.ai for tracking repeat purchases and customer lifetime value.
Where to Learn More About Prime Guidance (00:16:21)
Steve shares how listeners can contact or follow Prime Guidance for further help.
Links and Mentions:
Tools and Websites
Prime Guidance
Shopify
WooCommerce
Amazon Attribution Program
Amazon Posts
Helium 10
Nozzle AI
Transcript:
Josh 00:00:00 Today, I’m excited to introduce you to Steve Yates. He is the CEO and founder of Prime Guidance. Steve developed well-rounded expertise working for multi-billion dollar fortune 500 retailers such as Amazon, Dick’s Sporting Goods and eBay enterprise prior to founding Prime guidance in all industry consulting. With 30 years experience in retail management and 23 years experience in e-commerce. Steve and his team provide companies with strategic advice and innovative solutions that are based on real life experience working for industry leading retailers. He helps companies grow faster, smarter and more profitably by providing advice, mentoring and coaching for today’s busy executives. So welcome to the podcast, Steve.
Steven 00:00:46 Thank you. Josh. Thanks for having me.
Josh 00:00:48 One of the first questions I want to ask, just kind of selfishly for myself, because we’re looking to expand onto different channels right now with our business. We’ve grown to eight figures just on Amazon alone. But we’re we are looking to, you know, is it time to explore or double down more on Walmart eBay, Wayfair? Do we try to get into target? Do we go international right and start shipping stuff into Canada, Mexico, the UK, etc.? So my question to you here, Steve, is what kind of sales lift do you see from those different marketplaces? Right.
Josh 00:01:28 Like what do you estimate as hey you go to Walmart it best case scenario, you’re probably looking at a 10% lift eBay. Maybe it’s a 2%, you know, so on and so forth.
Steven 00:01:39 Yeah. So it’s a very tricky question because I’ve seen it wildly different. So interesting. I had to if I had to, to put a rough assumption across a lot of different categories and product lines, I would say Walmart is the very next marketplace you’re going to want to focus on outside of Amazon. And by the way, don’t do it until you’re what I like to say 80 to 90% optimized on Amazon. Don’t spend your time on these smaller marketplaces, because that’s oftentimes the shiny object that gets you in trouble when you’re doing a whole bunch of different things, you’re not doing any of them well. You’ve got to you’ve got to be really well positioned on Amazon. And when I say 80 to 90%, I don’t mean of your total opportunity for growth. But if you’ve identified all these levers you need to pull on Amazon, you need to have a good storefront.
Steven 00:02:26 You need to have A+ content. I need to have all of these different components pulled together. Do you feel good about how well optimized they are, and are they in place 80 to 90% of where they should be before you, you know, start migrating to another marketplace? Because if you don’t, you’re essentially lifting and shifting a catalog that’s not optimized to another marketplace. And now all of your optimization efforts are going to be that much harder because you’re doing full optimizations across a whole bunch of marketplaces. That’s a that’s always a risk. I would say Walmart is probably, in the number of 10 to 20% of the Amazon business, and eBay is probably the neighborhood of 10%, maybe 5 to 10% of the, of the Amazon business. but it really does differ quite a bit. I’ve seen some I’ve seen some people that actually sell more on Etsy than they do on Amazon because their product is sold out after on that website. I’ve seen people that do phenomenal on eBay, even though eBay is, you know, not not growing.
Steven 00:03:32 It’s. Yeah, it’s it just so happens that their customers there and that’s why I go goes back to, analyzing where your customers spend their time and money and make sure you’re present there, do it in the right order. But ultimately make sure you’re you’re present there. And where you go next is not a cookie cutter answer just because everybody else goes to this next Walmart, you know, Walmart next or eBay after that or whatever, doesn’t mean that’s the right cadence for you. So take a step back. Think about your product, your customer, where should you be?
Josh 00:04:04 And to piggyback off of that, let’s say there’s a lot of brands that have been able to, you know, build their entire brand on Amazon but really haven’t spent much time or they haven’t even thought about creating their own DTC website. Right. Whether it be on Shopify, WooCommerce, etc.. When do you recommend brands, you know, open up that DTC, you know, their own website? How important is that in this overall strategy? Because as you know, like that is a beast in and of itself and having to babysit yet again, kind of another channel that this one’s your own.
Steven 00:04:38 So I actually recommend an e-commerce store on like for example, Shopify. It’s easy, easy platform. It’s inexpensive. I would recommend that really early on. I think that should be launch on Amazon and launch on your own e-commerce website and pretty, you know, pretty good cadence together. And the reason being is it’s multifold. One if you’re planning to sell the business now, you’re not just an Amazon seller. You are a brand with multiple sales channels. You’re also able to then capitalize on the customers that go to Amazon say, I never heard this brand before. I wonder what they are. what they’re all about that end up going to your e-commerce website to learn more. Well, now you’ve got the cookie. You can have a pop up model to capture their email address. Those customers are going to be more valuable because those become the loyal brand customers. And then there’s ways that you can you can deploy with QR codes and stuff to say, hey, register your extended warranty here or learn how to, to assemble this here or, or find, you know, recipes, how to use it here or whatever.
Steven 00:05:46 Get them. Give them a reason. Some sort of a, a helpful type of content or program that would be useful for the customers that you ultimately get them to your website and before they leave the website, I recommend a pop up modal upon exit that hopefully is allowing you to capture their email address, and the more you can stay in touch, keep your brand front and center, the better. so to me, even though you’re not going to get a lot of sales velocity out of it, it’s the right cadence to set yourself up for taking advantage of something that otherwise would have been lost.
Josh 00:06:21 But, Steve, what are the. Can you give us a list of the levers that people can pull on Amazon that can influence sales and help them grow their brand?
Steven 00:06:33 Yeah. So I don’t have a list of those levers off the top of my head, but, I mean, I don’t have a list in front of me or anything, but off the top of my head, I would say the key levers are are you or are you? Is your product page fully optimized? And that’s a multi-part lever essentially.
Steven 00:06:50 Do you have infographics? Do you have. I’m kind of looking. Top of the page down. Do you have an optimized title? Do you have a video? Do you have a brand story? Do you have A+ content? Do you? Are you using any pricing and promotional strategies? Coupons? Sale prices? Promotion engine? those are the important things on page that are going to influence your conversion rate as well as your organic traffic. That’s a that’s a really big one. And it’s multifaceted. if you’re not doing those things, you need to be doing them. Or do you have all the back end keywords optimized? Do you have. Are you using Prime? Are you. Are you leveraging all of the right things to do within your assortment? So, for example, sometimes people put if they’re selling in multiple channels, they put their best sellers on a channel and assume that their best sellers are the same on every channel. That’s not the case. Are you testing your assortment to learn what works well, and where do you have good positioning and then adapting that? Could I come up with a smaller size? Bigger size multipack? Am I, should I have new products that I’m bringing to market? Those are all things to consider.
Steven 00:08:05 am I advertising? And within advertisements, am I doing those all the right types of advertising? Sponsored product ads are the no brainer. You’ve got to be doing that. it used to be an option on Amazon. It’s no longer optional. You’ve got to you’ve got to essentially, participate in advertising, because if you’re not defensively participating, your competitors are going to buy odds against you. And if you’re if you’re not offensively advertising and your competitors are, there’s a good chance that that is going to help them grow at a faster pace than you. That means more reviews for them. More traffic, more, more sales, higher ranking. You’ve got to participate in it. but are you doing all the different types of advertising? Are you using sponsored brand ads, sponsor display ads, and so forth? all of those would be considered levers. Are you using different programs that you should be leveraging on Amazon? So for example, Amazon has a program called the Amazon Attribution Program. And within there is a program called or an option that you can sign up for called the Brand Referral Bonus.
Steven 00:09:11 So that actually allows you to have a 10% kickback against your referral fees for any traffic you drive externally to Amazon. Are you leveraging that? Where could you be leveraging that? Your social media channels? Your e-commerce website? Sometimes it’s a good strategy to to put not only a buy box on Shopify, but a Buy on Amazon button to link them to Amazon. Because more customers feel comfortable with that, you might actually increase your sales and conversion rates exponentially. And yes, is it maybe maybe not as optimal, but at least it’s only a 5%. If it’s a 15% referral fee category, you’re paying 5% instead of 15%. So it helps augment that. so there’s a lot of different programs that you can be leveraging on Amazon. you know, if you’re, you know, small and lightweight, are you using the, the FBA, small and lite program? Are you, are you, in all the betas that you should be in that Amazon offers for advertising and different programs? Do you have a brand store? are you using Amazon posts? you know, the Amazon post is a free form of advertising that anytime you’re doing a social post on Instagram or Facebook, you should definitely be posting that on on Amazon as well.
Steven 00:10:31 It helps you gain followers the more followers you have. Are you sending customer engagement emails? you know, these are all things that add up and they should all be done in the right cadence. But if you’re not pulling all of these levers, you’re missing something. Just be careful. You put them in the right order. a little bit of advice is don’t drive a lot of traffic, whether it’s external or internal. On product pages that aren’t performing well. You’ve got to focus on what I like to say is first, focus on talking to the algorithm so I can get exposure. So, am I did I do all the thorough keyword research and did I incorporate that appropriately. And then how do I optimize it for conversion. And once that has proven that okay, now I’m getting the traffic and conversions. That’s when you start doubling down the advertising.
Josh 00:11:21 I love to leave the audience with three actionable takeaways from each episode. Here are the three takeaways that I noted. Steve. Let me know if you think I’m missing something.
Josh 00:11:31 action item number one. And takeaway number one would be you’ve got to maximize those Amazon levers okay. First and foremost would be focused on your product detail page. and looking at the data behind that, that would be the impressions the click through rate. And then ultimately your conversion rate. Make sure you’re focused on that listing to make sure that you’ve maximized everything right. Are we getting people to click on to the listing really well when people are on the listing? Have we maximized everything that we’ve just talked about in terms of how you can take your content to the next level? That’s the first thing that I would recommend any brand to. That’s going to be something that we do with our own brand. Because then step number two, and I think this is where a lot of this shiny object syndrome kind of comes, especially in the Amazon ecosystem, is kind of driving traffic, right. I think your first takeaway with in terms of driving traffic is focus on the Amazon traffic that you can drive first and foremost, right? Amazon PPC, Amazon posts, and the Amazon engagement emails that you can send out.
Josh 00:12:41 Right. focus on that first. Then start layering on the external traffic levers. You know, Google ads, TikTok ads, the list goes on Pinterest adds. The list goes on and on from there. And then last but not least would be to start expanding your sales channels, right? If you can say check on those first two takeaways, you’re like, yep, been there, done that. Then you can start considering, hey, now let’s go into the other marketplaces. Walmart being probably, probably the next best one in Etsy and eBay and so on and so forth. But maximize first your all the levers on Amazon because I think what you said really succinctly at the beginning is if you don’t and now you’re trying to optimize content on two different marketplaces, you’ve just effectively doubled your workload. and so I think it’s so important. So, Steve, how do you feel like I did in summing this up?
Steven 00:13:38 I think it was a good job. Josh. Thank you.
Josh 00:13:40 All right, Steve, there’s one other thing that I forgot to ask you that I did want to ask you earlier was in terms of tracking all these metrics, impressions, click through rate, conversion rate.
Josh 00:13:51 There’s a lot of data to be had in Amazon. It lives in a lot of different places. Do you use any tools to kind of aggregate that data and make it easier to see?
Steven 00:14:01 Yeah. So, we use a bunch of different third party tools, but I don’t say any of them are are. Most of them have a good snapshot of current state. What we generally do is export a lot of that information and look at it in our own Excel spreadsheets, so we can see pattern trends over time. I think that’s the most critical thing that people fail to do is maybe now your conversion rates at 15%, but a month ago it was at 18%. You may not actually pay attention to that, the fact that it went down. But if you see it on a trend line with a chart, for example, and you can see, oh, this is this is a pattern of something that I need to I need to pay attention to what’s going on here. that’s most critical. And I find that, you know, exporting the data and slicing and dicing it yourself is at this point the most effective manner to to to really analyze your business.
Josh 00:14:57 Perfect. That’s good to know. All right.
Steven 00:14:59 By the way, by the way, just on an analytics standpoint, I’ll just call out, make sure you’re using brand analytics. There’s a lot of great information in there that a lot of people do not fully utilize. And from a third party tool, everybody knows the the helium tens of the world and so forth, which are great. We love using them. but one kind of bonus tool that I’d recommend you try is called nozzle AI. And if you’re if you’re selling a commodity, something that people are buying again and again, that tool charges a very minimal fee. And by the way, there’s no association between us and them. they charge a very minimal fee. I think it’s like $77 a month, but they pull in the last two years of data and show you how customers have continuously bought again and again of your brand. So what’s the repeat purchase rates? What’s the the average? The lifetime value of the customer. And to me, that opens up the door to understand how much can I truly invest in new customer acquisition.
Steven 00:16:01 And it also really helps to understand of all the efforts you’re doing, what is driving new customer acquisition, because that should be your your biggest focal point is am I getting more and more customers? And then once I have the customer, my nurturing those customers, and if you have an e-commerce website, you’re actually able to do that in a more meaningful way.
Josh 00:16:21 Well, Steve, where can people go to learn more about you, to follow you? If they want to hire you, where should they be going?
Steven 00:16:27 Sure. prime guidance.com is our website, and you can reach out to us at (972) 885-9262. we can also find us on LinkedIn, Facebook and so forth. Search for Prime guidance. Awesome. Thanks again. Thanks again for having us, Josh. Really appreciate it.
Josh 00:16:45 Yeah. Thanks for your time again today, Steven. Take care.
Steven 00:16:48 Thanks.
Josh 00:16:49 Take care.
