In this Throwback episode, Amazon brand-building expert Kevin shares advanced strategies for established sellers aiming to scale to eight figures and beyond. He emphasizes the shift from selling generic products to building authentic brands, leveraging Amazon as a distribution channel rather than the sole platform. Kevin discusses creative tactics for collecting customer data—like compelling insert cards and personalized experiences—and highlights the importance of nurturing an engaged email list. The conversation covers email marketing best practices, the challenges of today’s Amazon landscape, and actionable steps for long-term brand growth both on and off Amazon.

Chapters:

The Shift to Real Brand Building on Amazon (00:00:00)
Discussion on the end of “me-too” products and the need for genuine brand building to scale on Amazon.

What Makes a Real Brand (00:01:41)
Explains the difference between a product and a true brand, using search volume and customer recognition as benchmarks.

Owning Customer Data & Creative Inserts (00:02:37)
Importance of collecting customer data, using creative insert cards, and leveraging off-Amazon channels for customer relationships.

Pet Brand Example: Insert Offers & Birthday Campaigns (00:03:27)
Detailed example of using free sample offers, pet registration, and birthday postcards to build loyalty and collect data.

Email Marketing Challenges & Deliverability (00:07:40)
Covers issues with email engagement, deliverability, and strategies to stay out of spam folders.

Email Frequency & Value-Driven Content (00:09:18)
Best practices for email frequency, balancing value and promotions, and the importance of testing.

Testing Offers & Audience Warmth (00:10:42)
The need to test different offers and tailor messaging based on audience familiarity with the brand.

Actionable Takeaways for Amazon Sellers (00:12:01)
Summarizes three key actions: build a real brand, create an email list, and provide value to your audience.

Top Billion Dollar Seller Summit Speakers (00:13:45)
Kevin names top speakers/attendees to follow for Amazon growth insights: Brandon Young, Casey Goss, and Josh Hadley.

How to Connect with Kevin (00:16:33)
Kevin shares the best way to contact him—primarily via Facebook.

Links and Mentions:

Tools and Websites
Shopify
WooCommerce
Amazon Prime now Prime Video
TaxJar
Billion Dollar Seller Summit

Recommended Speakers
Brandon Young on LinkedIn

Transcript:

Josh 00:00:00  You talked a lot about how important brand building is on Amazon now, as our audience primarily has established Amazon businesses, they’ve already found success, but they’re looking to go to eight figures and beyond. You know, what do you see going on in the Amazon space right now? And some of the advice and strategies that you would recommend to establish sellers right now?

Kevin 00:00:23  Yeah, that’s a tough one because some of them are going to need to pivot, and it’s going to be a little bit of a hard pivot because in the past on Amazon, there’s a lot of people that built successful businesses and even exited successful businesses just basically finding opportunities. Sticking a name on it, you know, on a label on it and selling it, then selling that to an aggregator. But that’s those days are pretty much over. I’m not going to say it doesn’t happen. It could still happen here and there. And then there’s a lot of people, as you know, that may have started with a small amount of money, and that’s way more difficult now.

Kevin 00:00:52  Not that you can’t do it, but, you know, I always say, I always hear stories that people say, yeah, I started with 500 bucks and now I got an eight figure business. And I always say, RBS, you might have started with $500. That may be true. But two weeks later, your uncle gave you ten grand. Or somebody. You got a credit card or you did something. There’s just no way it did. That just flat out does not happen. from 500. There was something else along the way. It might not be the money out of your pocket, but there’s something else along the way in those days are much more difficult now. And as Amazon’s you know Amazon’s everything is more towards rewarding brands. You know the brand registry the brand analytics the all the different you know the advertising thing. Everything is there trying to reward those brands. It’s because they’re trying to clean it up as well. They don’t want just this hodgepodge, flea market on there. They want, you know, people.

Kevin 00:01:41  They’re coming for brands. And a lot of people think they’re a brand and they’re really not. I say that if you don’t have at least 3000 searches a month on your brand name on Amazon, on Amazon, because Amazon is so big, you’re not a brand. If people are not looking for you, buy that that brand name and typing that in and you can see it in brand analytics and it’s got like 3000 searches a month or more, then you’re actually not a brand. You’re just a product. And so that’s where a lot of people get confused. And a brand is not a logo. A brand is not a name. That’s part of it. But a brand is what emotion is a feeling. It’s an evolution of something that people feel identity towards this or a passion towards this, or it represents something that they believe in or that they feel. And that’s where a lot of big sellers are making mistakes. you know, you see all these, these, Chinese brands on Amazon, that strange brand names like Z, X, T, Y, or whatever can even pronounce a damn thing, right? That’s not a brand.

Kevin 00:02:37  I mean, they’re doing that because it’s easy to get a trademark on that. They can. Those things can fly through, the trademark process really easy so they can get the brand registry and all that. But those aren’t aren’t really brand names. so I think you need to switch more toward brand and you need to switch to more towards they need to they need to own their customer lists. you know, on Amazon, you don’t get that data anymore. You used to be able to download that data. And so if you’re selling, FBA, FBA on Amazon, you don’t get that data. If you’re doing FBM, you can still get it. And there used to be a loophole like with tax jar that got, I think just recently got shut down. A lot of privacy issues there. But you need to figure out ways to actually get that data and whether that’s switching over, you know, if you’re selling on Shopify or WooCommerce, start using Amazon Prime. the new, ship with Prime, whatever it’s called Shopify shipping.

Josh 00:03:25  Shop with Prime. Yeah.

Kevin 00:03:27  Yeah. Where the Amazon will fulfill it for you off your, Shopify store. So you get that extra customer service level. Plus you get the customer data, plus anything you’re selling on Amazon. It’s just a huge market. You’ve got to figure out ways to try to get them into your ecosystem with, creative inserts and creative marketing stuff. I mean, like, one of the things that we do with one of my brands, for example, I have a pet brand of dog treats, and whenever someone buys these dog treats off of Amazon, you know, they spend 30 bucks to buy these dog treats. We will have a really cool. It’s not just like a business card, but like something that really gets their attention. into the in the package and it says, hey, get a sample of all of our treats and we’ll do a zero plus free plus shipping offer. So it’s like if we have, for example, if we’re selling bully sticks and we also have duck, duck feet and we have, antlers and we have, you know, it’ll be like a little sampler and we just take all the, the broken pieces and the leftovers and stuff like that, and we put them in a little bag, a little sample bag, and we say it’s free.

Kevin 00:04:24  Zero. for free, just pay 7.95 shipping. That covers our cost, but it gets that name a qualified name onto our list. and we’re successful with that. And it also gets some sampling out of their products. So hopefully they try it and we’ll do stuff where we’re like, if it’s your dog, it’s like, what? register instead of registering your warranty like other people do, we say register your dog for free gifts and they’ll go and they’ll, they’ll they’ll give us their dog’s name. you know, dog’s name. Spot. His birthday is April 11th. 2017. what kind of dog is it? Just ask some basic questions and we’ll say if you upload a picture of your dog, you get some, you know, you you get an extra entry into our monthly drawing of free treats for a year or something like that. And so we get some user generated content and we’ll ask for video or whatever. Maybe I’m eating our treats and then we can use in social media. And then what we do is about a week before the dog’s birthday is we drop a postcard into the mail and that postcard will will be addressed to the parents, and they’ll say, to the parents of, of spot, don’t forget, my birthday is coming up next week on Tuesday.

Kevin 00:05:29  Don’t forget. I really would love some of those, bully sticks that you bought me before. here’s a coupon for 25% discount. Or in some cases, we’ll do something where if you buy our new treat, we’ll give you this one. The one that they really want for free. And that gets them. You know that that that’s surprise and delight. And it gets them. They’re like, Holy cow. They remember my dog’s birthday. so we do things like that. That’s really helps keep build a list.

Josh 00:05:56  No, I completely agree. You’ve dropped some wicked smart strategies and tactics. I think the examples you shared were fantastic, because what you’ve done, Kevin, is you’ve taken the idea or the concept that everybody’s preached about, right? Hey, just include an insert in your package and, you know, have people register a warranty with you so you can collect their information. But that’s not a very compelling offer. What I love is that you’ve been creative with your ideas to say, hey, what is a creative offer that I can give to people such as like the dog, right? With your dog treats? Instead of saying Register your warranty for this pet toy.

Josh 00:06:37  Why don’t you register your dog so that he can claim some free gifts? And then you’re going to be sending out, you know, the birthday postcard? I mean, brilliant strategies and and also great value adds to the customer so that when they receive your product, they not only enjoy the existing product, you’ve obviously created a good product, but then on top of that, you’re adding extra value with hey, here’s a free sample pack of other treats. Just pay shipping. And so I love that all the way around. These are brilliant marketing tactics that I think any seven figure or any Amazon seller, regardless of what stage you’re at, should be implementing in their business. When you’ve built a brand and as you collect emails. Have you ever faced any challenges in terms of not getting the type of engagement you would like? or quite the opposite. Have you always, you know, had success? Like you collect their emails and then you’re just printing money whenever you send out an email. Have you had the opposite where it’s like, for whatever reason, like this audience, I send stuff out and it’s just crickets.

Kevin 00:07:40  It depends on what you’re sending as long as you’re sending. I mean, it’s all on the message. I mean, the list is the most important part, and then it’s the message that you send to that list. So yeah, there’s times where, you know, we have to test different subject lines or we get on to a real time blacklist because we’re sending so many emails that some of them end up, going into spam. Or if you get a couple people that mark this as spam, you know they report that back. And so you can have deliverability issues. So there’s a there is a battle sometimes there. with that, I mean, I even have it with like the billion dollar seller summit. You know, people get the replays or the PDFs and I send out, you know, 200 or something, emails or something. And, two weeks later, I’ll have like ten people say, hey, I never, I never got to the replays. When are you going to send those out? I was like, those went out two weeks ago.

Kevin 00:08:25  I didn’t get it. I was like, well, can you check your spam? you know, you’re using Gmail or something? Check your spam. Oh, there it is. And so, yeah, you have there are challenges on that. And it’s a that’s a constant battle, of staying whitelisted and fighting that, that, that can really mess you up. And, and it’s also, you know, the people don’t want to bug people too much, but you gotta stay top of mind. I don’t know how many times you’ve probably got an email from somebody and you’re like, oh, man, these guys are emailing me like every three days. And some of them, you just get frustrated and you unsubscribe. But other ones, that seventh email, you’re like, okay, what the heck is this? You know, you’re sitting in bored, waiting for the. Waiting for the Uber. And you’re like, oh, let me actually check and see what the hell these guys keep sending. And then maybe you buy.

Kevin 00:09:08  So you gotta balance that as well. The the pissing people off versus the, you know, trying to get them to convert into the engineer.

Josh 00:09:18  Do you have a recommendation with like how many times that you found based on your experience? Like this is three, four times a week that you’re reaching out to your audience or is it daily? Yeah, I wouldn’t for.

Kevin 00:09:28  Well, I used to do the daily one. Remember we used to do the daily one. This was. But this was before spam existed. And so we would we were sending out 250,000 a day and they weren’t going into spam or else. This was.

Josh 00:09:39  Amazing.

Kevin 00:09:40  yeah. I couldn’t do that today, even with full permission based that we would have some sort of issues, probably. but yeah, daily was would be ideal. But, and I get some daily newsletters, you know, that marketing newsletters and stuff like that, that, that I keep up with, daily would be ideal, but you got to deliver value.

Kevin 00:09:59  It can’t be a promotion every day. You know, I get sometimes you sign up for these, you know, you go to Macy’s dot com, and then every day you’re getting some promotion after that that you got to deliver value. And then it’s like, Gary Vaynerchuk says what’s it. Punch punch punch right hook or whatever it is.

Josh 00:10:14  right.

Kevin 00:10:15  That’s what you got to deliver value. And that’s what we were doing when we were doing those 250,000 a day, is we were delivering value. It was news, it was games. And then there would be like one line in there that’s like, oh, by the way, we have, this calendar for sale or go join this website or whatever. It works. You know, we that’s where you got to if you’re if you’re doing daily. But if you’re not twice a week, you know, if you’re doing promotional, straight up promotional stuff would be probably the most I would do good.

Josh 00:10:42  That’s good input. And I think another takeaway from what you just talked about is that you got to be willing to test.

Josh 00:10:47  Right. Test different offers. I think now you’ve been able to kind of refine what your offerings are. But I imagine along the way you probably tested multiple offers of like what? What free insert or what free product is going to get the best take rate right, or what is going to lead people to actually follow through the best way? Is that correct?

Kevin 00:11:09  That yes. And that depends on whether it’s a cold audience or a warm audience, like with our calendars. I don’t need to make a nice HTML email when I go out to my list, to my calendars and say, hey, they’re available on Amazon right now. I don’t need to make a nice HTML with covers of the calendars and, and have all this, like, fancy, like, looking, wet email. With all this explanation, I can do a three line email. This is that’s because it’s a brand. And I can make sure the email is coming from the brand name. So the instantly recognize it. And the email is literally three lines of text.

Kevin 00:11:40  Hey, the 2023 calendars are available. if you’re an Amazon Prime member, give them with free shipping on Amazon, click here. that’s it. And it works. I don’t need to spend a lot of time developing fancy emails or hiring copywriters or anything because they know that’s a brand. That’s what I was talking about earlier. They know this brand. They know it. I let Amazon the listing, do the selling. I don’t need to do an.

Josh 00:12:01  Email to kind of some things up for our audience. What I would say are some three actionable takeaways would be, number one, you’ve got to build a real brand on Amazon. Long gone are the days of just creating me two products or just not on Amazon.

Kevin 00:12:17  It’s not. It’s not build a real brand on Amazon. It’s build a real brand. And then Amazon is one of the, the marketplaces of choice where they buy it. So it’s not just on Amazon, but Amazon has become a marketplace of choice for people. But it needs to be a real brand independent of Amazon as well.

Josh 00:12:34  Yeah. Thank you for correcting me because that is an important mindset shift, right? Creating a real brand that is not just I’m just making money on Amazon. It’s I’m creating a real brand, and Amazon is one of my distribution channels that I’m focusing.

Kevin 00:12:49  Maybe your biggest and your most and that’s okay. But you need it needs to be able to stand alone as well.

Josh 00:12:54  Very good. Action. Item number two would be creating your own email list. Creating your own audience. Right? So testing out different insert cards tests, testing out different offers that you can include with your product so that you obtain customers contact info. And then number three is actually utilizing that audience to further your brand, not just sending them promotional material to just elevate your sales, but providing them actionable and content that can serve that customer. And as you do that, like Kevin has mentioned so much on this podcast, creating experiences, right. How can you create an experience with your customers as you reach out to your audience? Then as you create those experiences, they will more readily receive those future opportunities where you’re promoting a new product that you’re trying to launch.

Josh 00:13:45  So I think our audience has a lot that they can digest through this episode. But Kevin, one of the final questions I want to ask you is the Billion Dollar Seller Summit, one of the best conferences that I’ve ever been to. In regards to Amazon content and the type of people that are attending that event, so kudos to you there. But I want to hear who would you say are your top three kind of speakers or attendees that have ever been to your billion dollar seller summit? Who are those people that you know people should be paying attention to? And maybe I’m putting you on the spot, but I know you give away like best speaker awards as well. So you could also, you know, push it back onto who were some of those people as well?

Kevin 00:14:26  Well, I know I think in the Amazon space, I think someone that does a really good job as Brandon Young, I know, you know, he’s a a guest or maybe a guest or has been a guest on your, on your show, but I think that’s someone that does a really good job with his tools that, that people should be paying attention to.

Kevin 00:14:45  So he’s been to the billion dollar seller summit. So, that would be one of them. you know, Casey Goss has kind of disappeared a little bit, but he’s a super smart guy. You know, he started viral launch, and then he went to Thracian. And now he’s doing. Was doing some stuff. Or is. I’m not sure. Completely in carbon six. And, And then he’s kind of migrating over to some AI and just dabbling around. But that’s a super smart guy that if you’re able to ever hear him speak. I remember when he first spoke at one of our events in Mexico, like, 2017. He wasn’t very good. It was one of his first times on stage, and he was kind of scatterbrained. But you could just tell this guy is brilliant. There’s a super smart mind inside there, and he was just a little scattered. But he got better as he presented more and did more things. But that’s someone that if you get a chance that he’s been he’s he’s won a couple times, at the billion dollar store or someone’s best speaker.

Kevin 00:15:32  And that’s someone that’s been there. That’s good. The third one, man who would be the third one that, really would stand out, that you should follow? you know, this this guy, Josh Hadley that won, like, the best hack contest. You know, I would be if he has a podcast or something like that, I’d be making sure I listen to that, because it’s probably going to be some amazing value that comes out of that. And I’m sure you know, if you need some help growing your business from 7 to 8 figures. Yeah. This is a guy that probably has a clue and actually knows how to get you there pretty quickly and do a good job. So maybe someone like, you know, like, this guy Josh Hadley if you never heard of him.

Josh 00:16:10  All right, Kevin, your checks in the mail. I love it. Well, Kevin, this has been such an amazing episode. I really appreciate the insights that you shared with our audience. And if people want to contact you or continue to follow you, where’s the best place for people to go? I know you’ve got a lot going on, but what where would you like to direct people? Yeah, if.

Kevin 00:16:33  You just probably follow me on Facebook or something, that probably be the best place. I’m not really. I have an Instagram account, I have a LinkedIn account. I think I haven’t checked my LinkedIn in like a year. so I’m not really active on those, but, Facebook. Facebook would probably be the best place just to hit a follow there or, or reach out to me on messenger or something if you want to reach out.

Josh 00:16:51  Awesome. All right, Kevin, thanks again for joining the show.

Kevin 00:16:54  No problem. Glad to be here, man. Anytime.