In this episode, the host interviews Brian Johnson, a leading expert in online advertising and Amazon conversion strategies. Brian shares actionable advice on how brands can stand out in crowded marketplaces by highlighting unique product features, understanding buyer psychology, and continuously innovating their listings. He emphasizes the importance of clear, benefit-driven messaging and regularly analyzing competitors and customer feedback. Through real-world examples, Brian illustrates how deep customer understanding and attention to detail can drive sales and outpace competitors. Listeners gain practical tips for differentiating products and optimizing Amazon listings for higher conversion rates.

Chapters:

Introduction to Brian Johnson (00:00:00)
Host introduces Brian Johnson, his background in online advertising, and his achievements in Amazon strategy.

Differentiation Through Unique Features (00:00:57)
Discussion on using unique or overlooked product features (e.g., filtered beer, handcrafted products) to stand out in the market.

Mindset Shift in Product Optimization (00:02:16)
Emphasizes the importance of thinking beyond standard competition and adopting a new mindset for product differentiation.

Understanding Buyer Psychology (00:02:48)
Brian explains how most competitors ignore buyer psychology and the opportunity this creates for attentive brands.

Continuous Innovation and Adaptation (00:04:15)
Necessity of ongoing innovation and regular review of product listings to maintain differentiation as competitors adapt.

Communicating Benefits Quickly (00:05:12)
Advice on leading with clear, succinct benefits in product titles, images, and bullet points to answer “what’s in it for me?”

Conversion Rate Optimization Tactics (00:06:07)
Focus on the importance of quickly communicating benefits for higher conversion rates, especially in the first few seconds.

Three Actionable Takeaways (00:07:00)
Host summarizes three key takeaways: always innovate, analyze top search terms and listings, and focus on customer benefits.

Pattern Breaking in Listings (00:09:04)
Discussion on breaking visual and content patterns in listings to stand out, while staying within Amazon’s terms of service.

Understanding Customer Motivation (00:10:25)
Example of Wendy’s Frosty: understanding why customers buy and using those insights to improve product offerings.

Learning from Competitor Mistakes (00:12:00)
Brian shares a Wendy’s failure example, highlighting the importance of spotting and capitalizing on competitors’ mistakes.

Closing Remarks and Farewell (00:14:12)
Host thanks Brian for his insights and encourages listeners to follow his work. Brian expresses his appreciation.

Links and Mentions:

Tools and Websites
Amazon
Wendy’s

Concepts and Strategies
Differentiation in Product Listings: 00:07:07
Buyer Psychology: 00:03:16
Review Analysis: “00:03:16

Actionable Takeaways
Continuous Innovation: 00:08:17
Evaluate Top Search Terms: 00:09:04
Customer-Centric Copy: 00:10:25

Transcript:

Josh 00:00:00  Today I’m super excited to introduce you all to Brian Johnson. Brian has served as a leader in online advertising and conversion rate strategy for nearly two decades. He’s a trusted partner to tens of thousands of brands across the globe. And Brian’s work has earned him a reputation as a disruptive force in a world brimming with new and interesting challenges. Through his advertising agency, Canopy Management, as well as his highly successful Amazon advertising consultancy, community training and software, Brian has helped over 25,000 brands increase sales by over $2 billion on Amazon through advertising strategy, conversion rate optimization and differentiation. The results his products and services deliver continue to put him in high demand, with companies both large and small around the world. So with that introduction, Brian, I want to welcome you to the podcast.

Brian 00:00:56  Thanks for having me.

Josh 00:00:57  I don’t remember there’s a there was a beer company and you might know this, right? That what they changed in their marketing is that they said that their their beer was filtered, right. I think that’s the correct thing, right? Where their beer is the exact same.

Josh 00:01:14  Went through the exact same process as everybody else. Right. And that is the differentiating factor is like they just went through that thought process of like, all right, what’s the most expensive step or what’s the what takes the longest amount of time. And they’re like, oh, we spend a lot of time filtering. Let’s call out that our beer is filtered. And so at that time, nobody else was calling out that our beer was filtered, whether that was important or called out. You know, and and it differentiated them. And I think there’s a lot I mean, I’ve already had a big mindset shift with that, like with some of my products that, one thing that we can do is like there’s a lot of like, hand tooling time that takes a lot of, like, hand craftsmanship for some of our products. It’s like, why don’t we say that this is actually handcrafted like each one gets, you know, we can market that. And instead of just looking at the standard competition and just looking at like, oh, what does everybody say about planners? Right.

Josh 00:02:16  Well, our planner has 1000 pages. Mine has 1001 pages or things like that. That’s that’s the basic stuff. Like what? I love those questions that you talked about. And it can make such an impact. So I’ll let you continue going down that path. But I want the audience to know, like this is a huge mindset shift and I don’t we haven’t had any podcast guests on thus far that’s ever talked about something as simple as this when it comes to product optimization, that I think genuinely is like a true miss right now in the industry.

Brian 00:02:48  It is a huge opportunity because I can I can guarantee you that. But, you know, I wasn’t just being cheeky when I said, like, I could walk into any niche on Amazon and immediately see the opportunities. that is that is a true statement because your competitors, they don’t understand the buyer psychology. They’re not taking the time to consider their bio psychology. In fact, you’re probably even going up against some brands that have, you know, a thousand SKUs and they don’t have the time or the resources in order to even go through that process.

Brian 00:03:16  But you can, right? If you truly are passionate about the audience that you’re serving, I’ll probably mention it a little bit later on. As far as, review, analysis. That’s a whole, whole additional topic that goes into that. But, those examples, those are just a couple of, of, you know, 20 different, 30 different ways that you can make small improvements to how well that your product, you know, catches somebody’s eyes, compels them or interests them, hooks them, I call it, to pull them into your product listing just from what’s in your first 75 characters of your title. and then go towards the end the listing itself, 100% is that, yes, you can you can point out benefits and I and I made I pointed out a couple of examples here as far as like how do you come up with a benefit or feature that makes my product appear to be unique? Now, you brought up a very good point. And that is, you know, my competitors don’t do this currently, and that is.

Brian 00:04:15  Yes, they will adapt. When they see your success, they will emulate you. And you’ll need to continue to innovate. So just plan on every six months going back, looking at your niche and saying like, do I still stand out or do I need to to pivot a little bit? Do I need to adapt? And it’s okay for you to do that because you’re always the one leading the way, taking advantage of that change on the listing itself. Absolute no question. You can have as much text as you want, as much images, videos, whatever the case is. But if you’re not answering right near the top, in the secondary images, in the bullet points, in the A+ content, it’s going to show up differently depending on what device that you’re on anyway, so you might as well do it for all of these is lead with the first three things that you state. The first three features or benefits that you state in a secondary image, or the first three bullet points, or the first, you know, row of images on a plus content or something.

Brian 00:05:12  Is your quickly answering? What’s in it for me if I buy this product? What’s the benefit to me is the consumer. Keep it simple in language. Don’t go over flowery, you know, and tell a story and you know, haiku and all that kind of stuff. It’s more of a case of you’re simply just saying, like in 5 to 8 words. Here’s the benefit. And then follow that, chase that with another, you know, maybe the rest of the bullet points. For instance, here’s the feature or features that create this benefit for you. And if they’re unique or not, you know, they’re unique as well. Those are the things that you’re trying to get the shop to say, I want that, I want that, I want that. At that point, you’ve got your customer before that they if you’re making them work, if you’re making them read through and you’re telling your story and you’re you’re talking about stuff, they don’t care, like we donate 5% to the blah, blah, blah organization.

Brian 00:06:07  They don’t care. What they care about is when I get this product. It sounds selfish, but it works from a conversion rate standpoint, which is what you’re trying to do, and that is just hand it to them. Here is the pain that we’re going to solve. Or here’s the thing that’s going to solve your pain. Here’s the benefit to you. Here’s how we’re going to do it. certain certain niches, certain categories have some other requirements to like beauty, for instance, requires things like, brand pedigree to be mentioned, that kind of stuff. And I can that’s a different topic there. But, but in general, the what’s in it for me is, is absolutely the number one, I want to say the easiest thing to implement, but the number one biggest impact on conversion rate is coming in quickly with some very succinct, really easy to read and understand within five seconds. What’s the benefit to me? Yeah. Number two, number.

Josh 00:07:00  Three, I love it. I do love to leave the audience with three actionable takeaways from each episode.

Josh 00:07:07  So here are three takeaways that I noted. Brian, let me know if you think I’m missing something. but number one, you’ve got to. You got to think of your brand and your products as. How am I going to innovate or differentiate my product listing? you know, long gone are the days of creating me two products and saying, hey, the spatula niche looks awesome on Amazon. I’ll just go create another spatula. now, if you can come up with a brand new type of spatula that nobody has ever seen before, that’s where the innovation is required. and I think that people need to get comfortable in innovating all the time. so my action item here for our listeners is, is also kind of a mindset shift of like Amazon and e-commerce in general is not a passive income stream. because as you mentioned, you might have come out with a new and innovative product right now. If you can get a design pan or a utility pan on it, that’s one thing. But six months down the road you’re going to have people knocking you off no matter what.

Josh 00:08:17  So you need to continue to innovate. This is not a set it and forget it strategy. So I think that that’s kind of action. Item number one is like always be innovating. you can’t just set it and forget it. Right. action item number two is you need to think you need to go into those top search terms for your particular product and do the top 20 search terms and actually look at the listings, see what Amazon is pulling up. And you need to just evaluate, do my listings, just blend in with the see of everybody else. Because if they do, you need to continue to innovate there. I think that’s you mentioned like looking for patterns and trying to be, you know, how do you stand out right when you.

Brian 00:09:04  Break that pattern with your own product?

Josh 00:09:06  Yeah, yeah. And you used some great examples there, right, with the shoes or having a red background or in the case of an oversaturation of content, maybe the white clean background will make a big difference.

Brian 00:09:19  Yeah I always say red background. It could be just like a red red box that’s in the background, a foot behind the, you know. So there’s. Yeah. So it’s not it’s not breaking in terms of service by having, you know, like, oh that’s not a white background I want to hear it.

Josh 00:09:32  Yeah that’s true. That will clarify that red background. Everybody’s like wait, did Brian just say we could add red backgrounds. No.

Brian 00:09:41  no. I will tell you.

Josh 00:09:42  Thinking of how you can innovate though within the terms of service. Right. for your product listings. Okay. breaking that pattern and then third, last but not least is think about what’s in it for me, for the end customer. when you come up with your copy, when you come up with your secondary images, if you don’t have that thought process in mind of what’s in it for me and your first couple bullets and your title and the first two images of your listing, don’t immediately answer like how is the customer going to resolve their pain point by purchasing this this product, then you’re going to lose.

Josh 00:10:25  Because at the end of the day, there was a Harvard business study. it goes back to Wendy’s, was trying to understand why most of their frosty purchases were being done actually in the morning, contrary to belief like that, they were trying to figure out like, why are so many Frosties being purchased in the morning? What they found out is they actually interviewed their customers, right? And they’re like, why are you buying this frosty in the morning? What they found out is that people were doing it to kind of pass the time by while they were sitting in traffic, and their, their frosty was a good consistency where it didn’t go away too quick, like a drink. Right. But it wasn’t too chunky where and it was easy to sip on and still pay attention to the road. And so, you know, Wendy’s doubled down on kind of the thickness of their frosty because they understood that. Oh they’re they’re kind of using this to kind of pass the time by. it’s it’s it’s clean.

Josh 00:11:27  so that’s what I mean by like even Wendy’s is doing that. And it changed the way that they kind of formulated their product. That’s the same thing that we need to be doing and understanding. Like what is what is the customer hiring or purchasing our product for to solve because they’re solving something in their life, whether it’s boredom or whether it’s, you know, to not forget something or who knows what it is. But yeah, you can understand that. And I think that goes into reviews and you can dive deeper there with customers. So I think there could be go ahead Brian, what else.

Brian 00:12:00  Get into the Wendy’s thing. So I also and this actually is apropos because I don’t want in part because I don’t think I’ve got an example here, but I want to show an example where Wendy’s actually failed also.

Josh 00:12:14  All right.

Brian 00:12:15  and the reason for that is because I don’t want people to think it’s like, oh, well, I’m not Wendy’s. I’m not I don’t I don’t have, you know, some pedigree of education, Ivy League, all that kind of stuff.

Brian 00:12:24  Right? None of that. It is a matter of like if you assume that every person, every company is going to make mistakes. It’s your job within your environment, within your product niche, within your competitive set to simply identify where did they stumble, where did they make a mistake, and where can I put my best foot forward? That’s that’s part of the differentiation standing out the example that I want to that I kind of bring up on that is that that was brilliant for for Wendy’s to figure that out. Now I like Wendy’s, one of my local Wendy’s restaurants nearby during the summer. in the evening, I would go in there and I’d stick my head in the door and say, are you guys open? Yeah, of course we’re open. I can’t tell because it’s pitch black outside on the outside. Oh, corporate makes us tint the windows to keep the air conditioning costs down. You guys look closed. That’s why there’s one car in the drive through and they’re like yeah corporate doesn’t allow us to change that.

Brian 00:13:19  We actually put the managers of that restaurant actually put in an open neon sign. And corporate made them take it down because it didn’t fit. They didn’t conform, but they had these really dark windows in order to save against the Texas heat. To reduce the cost of air conditioning. And yet they are killing their business by half in the evening because people didn’t even think that they’re open or dark inside. So those are kind of the things that you can, if you observe it, jump on it. You know, if you’re a competitor, jump all over it.

Josh 00:13:53  Yeah. You build you build the, the McDonald’s next to Wendy’s. And you’re like, well, we’re open, right?

Brian 00:13:58  Well, you know, I mean, Texas, of course, we’ve got Whataburger, and Whataburger is right next to Wendy’s. Whataburger has got a line going around the block. Two lanes. Yep. Yeah. They also are, like, shining. Like we’re open for the next county to see.

Josh 00:14:11  So true.

Josh 00:14:12  I love that. That’s a great I’m glad that you added that in there. I think that’s a great point. Well, Brian, thanks so much for joining us today. You’ve dropped a lot of knowledge with us all. And so I encourage our listeners to go follow you and and check out your stuff moving forward. But thanks for joining us today.

Brian 00:14:29  Glad to be here. I had a lot of fun. Thank you.